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Snowden revealed a world of conspiracies I once would have scoffed at– Bryan Burrough

Bryan Burrough
Bryan Burrough

Last summer I did a post saying that Terry Gross of Fresh Air, one of the best interviewers around, doesn’t care about Edward Snowden. Since then, Snowden has come up at least twice on her show, with Gross using the forceps of a mainstream media voice to pick up the topic. Last September she interviewed Barton Gellman of The Washington Post. And last week she interviewed Brian Burrough about Snowden. (There may be other references, but I couldn’t find them in a cursory search.)

Burrough wrote about Snowden for Vanity Fair. “From Geeky Dropout to NSA Leaker,” is the NPR headline, and Gross pushed the notions that Snowden is driven by ego (as if that is not a layer of everyone’s motivation) and that reporters who publicized his leaks were irresponsible. But her probing questions produced Burrough’s admission that Snowden has changed the way he understands government: he used to reflexively dismiss conspiracy theories, but now that Snowden pulled back the curtain, he understands that is a naive stance. In fact, the conspiracies just “mushroom,” he says. “And the only thing that surprises me now is when I’m told that there’s something the NSA can’t do.” From the exchange:

GROSS: So you’re leaning toward thinking that Snowden’s motivation – or at least part of it – was ego. Let me quote something that Snowden said, and I think this is what he communicated to you: “Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witness some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there’s a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line and am no longer alone.”

So that’s what he says in response to why he did it. How much weight do you give that? And why are you giving so much weight to ego?

BURROUGH: I actually – I believe he did it for the reasons he stated he did it. In terms of secondary motivations, I think ego is strong. I mean, that’s a very dramatic, diplomatic way to put things that he probably had a little bit of help with, I suggest…

GROSS: So last week a George Polk Award, a very prestigious journalism award, was given to stories that were broken based on Snowden documents, broken by Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewan MacAskill, and Barton Gellman. This week they won Pulitzer Prizes, those stories. So these stories have been very acclaimed in the world of journalism. I’m wondering if you think these stories are also controversial at all in the world of journalism.

BURROUGH: I actually don’t. I think that they are widely acclaimed. And I think that people have made the case that this is, you know, the biggest leak, the biggest whistleblower situation since the Pentagon papers. One of the biggest, you know, journalism scoops since Woodward and Bernstein in Watergate. I think that their work was exemplary.

GROSS: Now, this is hardly the first long piece you’ve written about intelligence. You worked on the Vanity Fair piece on the path to 9/11 which was about dysfunction in the nation’s intelligence agencies and the security failures that left us open to attack. You were a writer on the Vanity Fair piece “The Path to War” about how the Bush administration used false intelligence to justify invading Iraq and now you’ve written – you know, now you’re the lead author on this piece about the Edward Snowden leaks.

So when you add this new piece to the other pieces about intelligence that you’ve written, how does that change the picture that you have of American intelligence?

BURROUGH: I don’t cover American intelligence regularly. I get called in every now and then to contribute to these large pieces that our editor Graydon Carter does. So I’m really not an expert on intelligence. I have to say my working theory about all these things – keep in mind I’m typically brought in when something goes wrong – has always been against conspiracy theories and in favor of human fallibility.

I must say that what Snowden has put out there suggests that I need to be a little bit more aware of the conspiracy theories because, in this case, many, many things that were said that the NSA could do, which sound like a conspiracy theory – you know, eavesdropping on Angela Merkel or the Indonesian prime minister’s mistress – I might have scoffed at.

And we now know are not only capable of being done but have been done. And the only thing that surprises me now is when I’m told that there’s something the NSA can’t do. Because when you’re in the middle of reporting and researching one of these stories, you just – the sense of the NSA’s capabilities just – they mushroom.

And you just come to believe that they can do almost anything. So, you know, I think it’s going to be interesting going forward in terms of we now have these capabilities to listen in on basically everything in the world to warehouse that information internationally and domestically. And I can see that the Obama administration wants to somehow put this genie back in the bottle.

And I question, you know, ultimately whether that either can be done or whether, in fact, there will be the political will to have it done. We’ll see.

A wonderful epistemological moment on mainstream media. Burrough is too sophisticated intellectually not to grapple with the consequences of Snowden’s revelations, and brave to make this admission. We will be better readers for it, and writers too. Nice work by Terry Gross.

P.S. In the Gellman and Burrough interviews, the brave leaker Chelsea Manning only came up once, and in a derisive manner. I’d suggest that Gross or others at NPR get Chase Madar on to explain her significance.

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Terry Gross is the epitome of the reason why the American public’s trust in the media has plummeted; journalists used to be interested in the plight of the weak and persecuted, now they are actively demonizing them. The approval rating for the media is now barely over Congress’ approval rating.

We saw the same thing in the smears and attacks against Greenwald in the aftermath of the Snowden story. I was stunned by the spectacle of elite journalists more or less accusing Greenwald of treason on live TV time and again.

This guy just broke a major story, the American government is complicit in mass surveillance and they turn against him and Snowden? They all just lined up with Dick Cheney who accused Snowden of being a traitor.

Maybe we shouldn’t discount ego in this discussion. Maybe a lot of this bitterness, both at Snowden and at Greenwald specifically is driven by professional jealously by lesser journalists like Gross, who has never done any serious work in her life, never stood up for any real cause and prefers the company of rich and influentual guests to going out in the world with the poor and the downtrodden. Her “journalism” is the bootlicking of the powerful.

But that’d be letting them off the hook too easy. We’d like to think a large amount has changed since the MSM rolled over for the Bush administration in their quest to invade Iraq. Maybe there has not been a large change.

Either way, the faster Gross can retire and disappear the better for everyone. She’s a “liberal” on board with ethno-nationalism (so long as the victims are brown in Palestine), pro-surveillance and more than generous with neoconservative guests and their ideas.

Snowden has done his best to make sure that the story is about what he revealed, not about himself. It’s been the media and our government that have tried to focus the story on him and his alleged flaws.

If he acted out of ego, there’s nobody who has not acted out of ego.

‘“Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witness some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there’s a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line and am no longer alone.”’ ..Snowden

Isnt that why we objectors are all here on I/P and USA-Isr?
I think so.

I listened to the Terry Gross interview with Bryan Burrough when it first aired, while I was driving (that is when I usually listen to NPR — in the car).

I think Gross is a great interviewer, with a supple and sensitive intelligence and a wide range of interests that I share, but when she tried to press the theme that Snowden was motivated by “ego,” my skin crawled. I don’t think she has any comprehension of the qualities of mind and spirit that drive people like Snowden and Greenwald — she is not in that league. But give her credit for doing this show.

As for Bryan Burrough — nice work, guy. You are beginning to grasp how the world really works beneath the steady stream of misleading and misinforming propaganda.

Regarding Terry Gross’s liberal Zionism — sad, boring and provincial.

BURROUGH: … I must say that what Snowden has put out there suggests that I need to be a little bit more aware of the conspiracy theories because, in this case, many, many things that were said that the NSA could do, which sound like a conspiracy theory – you know, eavesdropping on Angela Merkel or the Indonesian prime minister’s mistress – I might have scoffed at. …

Well, I guess Verint and Narus are “now” more likely/credibly to be firehosing everyone’s info to Israel.

Both Verint and Narus were founded in Israel in the 1990s. Both provide monitoring and intercept capabilities to service providers and government organizations, promoting claims that their equipment can access and retain large amounts of information on a vast number of targets.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6#ixzz2zd9eZUqp