Edward Lucas - The Snowden Operation

The Communist Party of Great Britain played a leading role in CND in the 1970s, when the organisation was largely moribund. CPGB member Dr John Cox was chairman of the CND for seven years during this period. According to ex-MI5 desk officer Cathy Massiter, CND was regarded by the Security Service not as a Communist front organisation but as a Communist-penetrated organisation. Individual pro-Soviet Communists held key positions. Bruce Kent, general secretary of CND, said at the 38th Congress of CPGB in November 1983: ‘We owe a debt of gratitude to the Morning Star newspaper, which has given steady, honest and generous coverage to the whole disarmament case. I do not believe we [i.e. the Communists and the CND] are so very far apart on many of the major issues. We are partners in the cause for peace in this world ’ ( Morning Star , November 14, 1983, emphasis added). A good account of the one-sided nature of the CND campaign, together with fully sourced details of its links with the left, including the Soviet front network, is set out in Paul Mercer’s book ‘ Peace’ of the Dead (Policy Research Publications, 1986). For details, see the website of Julian Lewis MP, for example this letter: http://www.julianlewis.net/letters-in-the-press/3199:yes-the-cnd-was-pro-soviet-108; and http://www.julianlewis.net/letters-in-the-press/3158:cnd-cannot-rewrite-history-67; as well as http://www.julianlewis.net/selected-news-cuttings/3530:moscow-gold-and-the-cpgb-47and http://www.julianlewis.net/selected-news-cuttings/3601:gorbachevs-view-of-the-ss20s-2

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/verizon-providing-all-call-records-to-us-under-court-order/2013/06/05/98656606-ce47-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

Secrets and Leaks: The Dilemma of State Secrecy (Princeton, 2013).

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/exclusive-in-2009-ed-snowden-said-leakers-should-be-shot-then-he-became-one

Interview with the author.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=503777#p503777. He made two more contributions, one about a computer game in November 2011 and the other a rather cryptic one about a ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ in May 2012: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22878085#p22878085

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-12-04/india/44756015_1_edward-snowden-information-security-koenig-solutions

http://news.yahoo.com/watchdog-faults-background-check-nsa-leaker-235639806.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE95K01J20130621

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/08/15/usa-security-snowden-dell-idINDEE97E0CE20130815

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-sought-booz-allen-job-gather-evidence-nsa-surveillance

An excellent account of the muddled and extremist views of Assange, Greenwald and Snowden can be found at http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116253/edward-snowden-glenn-greenwald-julian-assange-what-they-believe

This is described in the 1989 classic The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll. Fitzpatrick has a good blog post on the subject: see http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/08/the-chaos-computer-club-and-links-to-wikileaks-assange-and-snowden.html

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/07/idiot-wind.html

A long and friendly account of the story, based on Greenwald and Poitras’s account, can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?pagewanted=6&_r=0&pagewanted=all

http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=7524

https://web.archive.org/web/20130414223022/http://www.lsjourney.com

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/08/surfs-up-or-whats-up-hacker-convergences-in-hawaii.html

This theory is elaborated by Fitzpatrick at http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/11/the-crypto-kids-and-the-rubiks-party-signal-to-snowden.html

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2263705(in Russian). See also Fitzpatrick’s analysis at http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/08/edward-snowden-partied-with-the-russians-in-hong-kong-on-his-30th-birthday.html

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russia/2013/10/how-to-find-edward-snowden-in-moscow.html