How Glenn Greenwald Bamboozled People Who Should Know Better

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Let’s start with the obvious: If Glenn Greenwald is a “serious journalist,” I’m a McChicken sandwich with a side order of fries.

He’s an emotionally unbalanced weirdo who knows as much about national security as Andrew Sullivan knows about vaginas.

The proximity of Greenwald to the Snowden story should have aroused more suspicion than it did, but people bought into the narrative and just weren’t sufficiently skeptical:

From the moment I began researching Edward Snowden’s biography, there were hints that the NSA leaker was kind of . . . eccentric. Weird. Flaky.
A lot of computer geeks are kind of flaky, but Snowden’s flakiness is exacerbated by the fact that he dropped out of school in 10th grade and much of his education since then has been autodidactic. And it is this self-taught 29-year-old nerd who decided to leak top-secret information about the National Security Agency’s surveillance program because . . . he’s a kook.
Snowden’s buddy Glenn Greenwald has decided to give him more rope to hang himself with, in the form of additional video interview excerpts, some of which have been transcribed by Mandy Nagy at Legal Insurrection. . . .

You can read the rest of that at The American Spectator, but the basic point is that Snowden is a kook, which is directly relevant to Glenn Greenwald’s motives. Lee Stranahan at Breitbart.com:

The technique is simple: throw as much mud as possible, knowing that, when the mud is washed away and the facts are revealed, most people will only remember the mud. The goal is to create lingering doubt. If all that mud was there, there has to be something to the allegations, right? Something?
This is media legerdemain of the highest order and it’s Greenwald’s modus operandi. It feeds on human nature; once people are emotionally invested in a position, it’s very hard to get them to shake it. Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, and ever fewer people like to admit they were fooled. It’s easier for the people who have been conned to attack the person pointing out the con game.
Greenwald desperately wants to deflect from legitimate questions about whether he broke the law in his work with Edward Snowden. The timeline of events shows clearly that Greenwald was working with Snowden prior to Snowden taking a job at NSA contractor Booz Allen for the express purpose of getting classified information. . . .

Go read that whole thing, because Lee has put his finger on the key point: Greenwald got people “emotionally invested in a position” — i.e., that the government was spying on them — and now that we’re seeing facts that don’t seem to support this hyped-up paranoia, Greenwald is playing the martyr, so that to criticize Greenwald and/or Snowden offends people who have bought into their narrative.

GLENN GREENWALD IS AN EXPATRIATE
TAX EVADER AND A RATHER NOTORIOUS LIAR.

If you’re a conservative who is up in arms about NSA surveillance, you’ve been played for a chump by Greenwald, who has shrewdly exploited your anti-Obama sentiments for his own purposes. Again, here’s Lee Stranahan at Breitbart.com:

Here’s a Greenwald column from March of this year entitled “The racism that fuels the ‘war on terror'” — and the title sums up Greenwald’s position concisely: he’s opposed to the war on terror. He doesn’t even believe it’s a real thing, so he puts it in scare quotes. Greenwald believes it is fueled by racism.

You really should read the whole thing, then come to grips with the fact that you’ve been deceived by Greenwald.

 

69 comments

  2. Spot on reportage, Stacy.

    (Ya’ haff ta pernunciate it the French way: reh-pohr-tahj).

    Bonus: “He’s an emotionally unbalanced weirdo who knows as much about national security as Andrew Sullivan knows about vaginas.”

    Both descriptive and prescriptive at the same time. Excellent word economy.

  4. Exactly.

    Besides, besides, nothing in these “disclosures” is the least bit surprising to anyone who has ever looked into surveillance, even from a purely corporate or self-interest perspective.

  5. My question is “Is Snowden lying about the NSA collecting “metadata” on us? If not, then why does it matter about his motive(s)?”
    Or are you saying that the NSA is acting with proper authority and that the American public did not need or should not have been told that the Federal government is collecting “metadata” on each of its citizens/residents/aliens (legal or otherwise)?

  6. fwiw–Glen Greenwald is a known sock puppeteer. I don’t know if you were aware of that. I would be surprised if you were not aware of it.

  8. The capability has existed for years but the righteous anger and suspicion of the American people has kept it in check (as intended) until recent years (in Obama’s USSA). Part of the reason Americans hated me was the abuse of that power, an abuse that pales greatly in comparison to the activities of our government on any given day.

  10. “The technique is simple: throw as much mud as possible, knowing that, when the mud is washed away and the facts are revealed, most people will only remember the mud. ”

    Seriously? Nobody else heard the irony whistle?

    Greenwald is a progressive constitutional lawyer – which is an oxymoron. But so far, everything he reported here has been true.

    The government admitted lying.

  12. Stacy sees the light!

    Greenwald sells fear and this is his retirement story

    Lots more supporting this blog will be posted your friday

  14. Overlooked in all of this is the mechanisms for collecting private data:
    Private corporations collecting information, selling that information among themselves, and providing copies to the Feds under a number of laws, not just the Patriot Act. All very legal with a solid body of jurisprudence in regular ole courts.
    And if the NSA stops collecting the data? Your private data will continue to be collected, sold to the highest bidder (and lowest, and whomever wants to pay for it), and copies provided to the Feds under a number of laws not associated with the Patriot Act.
    This was a headfake so momentous that even the PRC and Russia failed to take the bait.

  15. But we permit it whenever we sign up for credit cards, apply for loans, use an Internet Service Provider. Why shouldn’t the US government be a customer of the information industry that We The People subsidize with each mouse click?

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