"Cause again like, a whistleblower doesn't conspicuously pass through China to Russia, you know, reporters are always saying 'Are you telling me that you know that he was working for the Russians?', or what have you, I'm like, I'm not, I'm telling you what I see, which is this guy went to China and Russia, the two most adversarial intelligence competitors to the United States; he could've gone to some very liberal European country that probably would've taken him in, or he could have faced the music here; the choice of those destinations speaks volumes."
Does lying get any more flagrant or deliberate than this? Rhodes knows for certain that what he's saying here about Snowden is an absolute lie. He knows that Snowden did not "choose" Russia as his "destination." He knows that Snowden did exactly what Rhodes said he should have done: sought refuge in other countries. He knows that the only reason Snowden is in Russia is because Rhodes himself trapped him there by preventing him from leaving. We know that Rhodes knows all of this because he boasted about all of it in his book, in the above-quoted passage. And yet, over and over, Rhodes told the public the exact opposite of what he knew to be the truth.
As indicated, Rhodes was far from alone in knowingly disseminating this lie to the American public. In 2014, Hillary Clinton, in a Guardian interview, condemned Snowden by falsely claiming that he flew from Hong Kong to Russia with the intention of seeking asylum from Putin. Listen to her flagrantly lie:
From the perspective of the 24-hour news cycle, this may not be the timeliest revelation. But it is only within the last several days that I read Rhodes' book and could barely believe how clearly he laid out his own lies and those of his Obama administration colleagues. This level of conscious lying -- spending years implying that Snowden was a traitor or Russian spy because he fled to Russia when you know that he wanted to leave -- and did everything possible to do so but it was your actions that trapped him there against his wishes requires an unlimited willingness to lie the moment one's interests are served by doing so.
We do not usually have a case where the evidence of lying is this conclusive where it is offered by the liars in the first place but this behavior is far from uncommon. This is what the National Security State of the U.S. breeds, and it is vital always to remember that when listening to these people speak.
6
4
3
