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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If he'd had the courage of his convictions to stay here and face the consequences of his behavior, I'd probably view him as a hero and hope that he would be pardoned. That he instead [b]hightailed it out of the country and then decided to stay in Russia[/b], a place that should be so deeply antithetical to his beliefs about transparency, privacy and freedom, completely destroyed his credibility in my mind. He's an opportunist.[/quote]

Just a reminder about the facts of the situation -- he did indeed leave the US and head to Hong Kong where he turned over some documents to journalists, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.  Hong Kong offered a kind of legal lacunae for him -- a place where the protections of English common law still applied, while physically under the control of a government that likely had no existing channels of intelligence cooperation with the USG.  While in Hong Kong, the USG announced that it had charged him with espionage in an attempt to pressure Hong Kong to turn him over voluntarily.  Unfortunately, according to news reports, the USG did not provide adequate information in their request to the HKG to issue an arrest warrant for Snowden, so the HKG was unable to prevent him from leaving the country.

Snowden chose to fly to Moscow, but made it clear that he was seeking asylum in a 3rd country like Cuba, Equador or Iceland.  In another poor strategic move, the USG chose to revoke Snowden's passport and the timing of the revoked passport and incomplete arrest request resulted in Snowden being stranded in the Moscow airport for several days while trying to negotiate asylum.  It was clear his first choice wasn't Russia, but there was no way for him to fly commercially to a 3rd country which would provide asylum without crossing into the airspace of a country that might agree to force the plane down and arrest and extradite him to the US.

So, through the USG's own stupidities, Russia finally offered Snowden asylum, which he was forced to accept.

If the USG had moved more quickly with proper information while he was still in Hong Kong, they might have been able to get him there.

If the USG had kept quiet, he might have travelled to a location where he could have been arrested.

That Snowden ended up in Russia was due in large part to the fumblings of USG officials.

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