That thought is prompted by this report from Bill Gertz called “Edward Snowden Seeking to Join KGB Veterans Group.”
Renegade National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has applied to join a group of former Russian intelligence and security officials, according to the group’s director.
Participation in a union of former KGB security, intelligence, and police officials, would likely change Snowden’s status from that of a whistleblower seeking to expose wrongdoing, to an intelligence defector who has changed sides.
I don’t wish to make light of this development. Kenneth deGraffenreid, former National Security Council staff intelligence director, says that Snowden’s embrace by former KGB officials is a sign the former contractor is being used as a pawn in an international program of political operations aimed at harming the United States.
That program, deGraffenreid says, “runs from Russia, to China to Iran to Venezuela to WikiLeaks and the European Union – all of whom want to do ill toward the United States.” He worries that the U.S. has “no ability, as we did during the Cold War, to conduct counter-active measures and political warfare.”
All this sounds a bit alarmist to me. But if KGB alums really are fixing to collaborate with the likes of Snowden, WikiLeaks, and Venezuela, then we should thinking about “counter-active measures.”
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