The
story of Ed Snowden: With Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt?
Chapman and Snowden in: 'The Ghost of Sheremetyevo' (Gazeta, Russia)
"Boy, would Sydney Pollock be excited if he still lived.
The script of a thriller is there to be had, and I'm sure it is already being
written. We haven’t seen bugging like this since the war criminal Nazis. Isn't
that so? I can’t remember another worldwide manhunt on this scale. If you try
telling me Snowden brought this on himself, I won’t put up much of an argument.
But following this to its logical conclusion, I’m not sure where I stand toward
him personally, less so toward what he has done."
Russian spy Anna Chapman: After a Chapman imposter tweeted a marriage proposal to Snowden last week, the global media found it worthy of headlines. But would the real Chapman turn down a starring role in 'The Ghost of Sheremetyevo'?
As
of today, we have had 53 days of Snowden.
Boy, would Sydney Pollock be excited if he still lived. The script of a
thriller is there to be had, and I'm sure it is already being written. We
haven’t seen bugging like this since the war criminal Nazis. Isn't that so? I
can’t remember another worldwide manhunt on this scale. If you try telling me
the guy brought this on himself, I won’t put up much of an argument. But
following this to its logical conclusion, I’m not sure where I stand toward him
personally, less so toward what he has done. On May 20, he flies from Hawaii to
Hong Kong; on June 23, to Moscow. Moscow of all places. It’s pure cinema: The Ghost of Sheremetyevo.
One
minute it’s the transit zone, the next it’s a capsule hotel, then ABC’s latest "secret
location." Anna Chapman, heroically prepared to marry the guy, provides
the obligatory touch of eroticism. Obviously this should be set at transit zone
E, the newest and therefore best suited to filming, right there on the floor,
no hotels or beds, just pure hardcore. His passport is revoked, Cuba is tense,
and a couple of countries south of Cuba are deep in meditation. A number of brooding
presidents demand a plane flying over Europe be brought down when they think
he's on it. Western journalists are provided Cuban visas and take every flight
from Moscow to Havana - just on the off-chance. Their colleagues monitor the
paths of these flights, which suddenly deviate from the north so as to avoid U.S.-controlled
airspace.
Meanwhile,
Snowden remains on the neutral territory of Sheremtyevo,
escorts Brad Pitt and meets Johnny Depp, and is now
himself a star. Either of them, incidentally, could play him in the upcoming
film. Our compassionate Russian gals feed the former foreign agent in the
business class lounge, where there are showers and free Internet all night
long. Russian leaders gives the former foreign agent an opportunity to meet and
explain himself to Russia’s present-day foreign agents, whom it is now
fashionable to call human rights activists. The latter, in their turn, demand
that rather than creating competition in this already-crowded field, the former
should be sent home, to a court, to prison. Snowden immediately seeks political
asylum in five countries, and meanwhile, to the displeasure of many, is
prepared to live in Russia, with or without Chapman. Here, documentation is
prepared for his future life in Venezuela, where he will likely have to be
transported on the president’s aircraft (one of them, at least), via an
indirect, hard to track route.
The
intelligence services of a world struck dumb by Snowden, starting with
Russia's, promptly uncover their dust-covered typewriters and go unequivocally
offline, back to record keeping on paper. No more virtual toys, no more
gadgets, and no more Internet-enabled phones, either. Just dependable, tried
and true old stuff.
Terrorists
recruit the well-connected: dedicated, preferably dumb, and most importantly
with no experience working with computers. There is no more e-mail, no more
social or any other online networks, or Skype. The world changes before our
eyes.
Snowden
begins to enjoy buckwheat porridge and piroshki
with cabbage. Bouts of epilepsy give way to attacks of panic. But he’s at his
computer the whole time all the same. He keeps going, although he takes up
smoking on the sly. He spends long Moscow nights dreaming of his native home in
Maryland, hacking school, cherry blossoms, Hawaiian women, and a car ambling
slowly behind him, and he knows what will happen next: A press conference in
Washington D.C., and (for reasons that remain unclear) unencrypted files, which
he transfers over and over again. Close by, behind a wall, on their own home
turf, Russian intelligence officers sit reading information again and again extracted
long ago from his computer. Far off in China, countless hours are spent at the
same work by Chinese intelligence officers. And from time to time, they gently
whisper in their own language: "what the fuck!"
Meanwhile,
France has unearthed its own Big Brother with which it outright illegally
monitors, if not the content of conversations, at least the details of conversations.
Aaron
Sorkin hurriedly writes and films one more episode
for the new season
of Newsroom, which starts
literally the day after tomorrow, because he simply must delve into the Snowden
affair. Barack Obama in his heart of hearts is just glad people have
temporarily forgotten about Guantanamo.
Vladimir
Putin, with mixed joy and disgust, flies to his Sochi dacha, taking with him a
package of pre-translated transcripts. He loathes traitors, but he adores top
secret material. Robert Redford for the first time laments that age has taken
its toll. Snowden’s lonesome girl shoots sandy landscapes, drinks cocktails
with umbrellas and sends encoded SMS messages (as opposed
to files). Microsoft justifies itself thus: yes, we gave away information, but
only in accordance with court orders. Google and the rest quickly dismiss
agents planted at the NSA who it knows by name. Life
carries on, but will never be the same.
Credits
roll, and the finally commences, but without any hint of a happy ending.
I
don't consider Snowden a hero. He took on this dirty work willingly and
consciously. Such work comes with its own rules, and he signed up to them. If
he had wanted the world to know about Big Brother - if this really was the warning
cry of an honest guy shocked at what he had discovered, and not some more
intricate game - it doesn’t make sense that he would go on the run, with all
the complicated logistics that entails. He should have gone to one of the major
American newspapers or TV channels, found lawyers, and held a big press
conference to discuss the matter. True, all this would come with its own risks.
But I must confess, the idea of revealing the full scale and scope of global
surveillance has left an unpleasant sensation.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
I
would agree with an American friend who left Russia for the U.S. many years ago
to work in the IT sector. On the Snowden story he told me, "Of course
Snowden is a traitor. But all the same, after his ‘leak,’ I have to admit sadly
that the country I moved to all those years ago was different - a different
America." For fairness sake I remark that his wife - an "American
American," if it can be so expressed - said no such thing. For her, it is
the exact opposite - it doesn’t matter so long as it’s done for her security at
least in part, and she doesn’t care who’s listening to what, where or how.
I'm
more sympathetic to the discomfort of her husband. Moreover, the doubts of
former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft about the legality of the
president’s surveillance program, despite his being an ardent Republican, are
still fresh in the memory. In March 2004, lying in a hospital bed with the
onset of pancreatitis, he refused to sign on.
The
true story, too, has an open-ended final scene - and also without any
particular hope of a happy ending.
