14 DAY TRIAL // Former NSA and CIA chief General Michael Hayden seems to be on board of the campaign to discredit Edward Snowden.
In a recent event, Hayden took the time to address the issue of the NSA leaks, basically feeling entitled to spy on the Internet since the United States created the World Wide Web.
However, there were additional statements coming in the same pack, defending the NSA while also putting down Edward Snowden.
According to Hayden, the NSA whistleblower is a “troubled young man – morally arrogant to a tremendous degree – but a troubled young man,” Washington Post reports.
Of course, considering Snowden put his life on the line to tell the world exactly how much the NSA steps over the constitutional and legal lines to get its hands on communications from all over the world by using the word “terrorism” as the latest boogeyman to justify everything, that probably classifies him as “morally arrogant.”
Hayden goes a step further, saying that Snowden’s prospects aren’t all that good in his opinion. “I suspect he will end up like most of the rest of the defectors who went to the old Soviet Union: Isolated, bored, lonely, depressed – and most of them ended up alcoholics,” he mused.
That being said, it’s also worth to mention the circumstances under which Snowden got stranded in Russia. Upon returning from Hong Kong, on his way to Cuba, Snowden’s flight passed through Moscow. As the plane landed, he found he had no way to leave the airport since his documents had been canceled by the United States authorities, effectively putting the NSA whistleblower in the country the United States has the most diplomatic fights with – Russia.
It wasn’t long after that Snowden discovered the only way to leave the airport transit zone was to apply for asylum in Russia, which he was granted on August 1.