Snowden: There He Goes, the Ferret that Makes a Fool of Obama!

It’s a rhyme that children used to learn: “He runs, he runs, the ferret, he passed this way, he will pass by here, he runs, he runs…” Today it is wonderfully suited to Edward Snowden, the former CIA agent who revealed the explosive information about clandestine, illegal American electronic surveillance operations of politicians and even of individuals. After having fled Hawaii and taking refuge in Hong Kong with his secrets and his five computers on May 20, the one that the U.S. Secretary of State now openly considers a “spy” left China before Washington could expect — without too many high hopes — to obtain an extradition.

With the friendly consent of the Hong Kong authorities, he took advantage of the weekend to take one of the Sunday Aeroflot flights to Moscow. Snowden implied that he intended to seek refuge in Ecuador or maybe Venezuela, which we know are among the most loyal allies of the United States in Latin America. After having left for more than a month, Snowden takes it easy in a comfortable hotel in the former British concession and receives his supporters as well as journalists. China decided to let him go the day after the Americans declared his passport suspended.

Three reasons probably contributed to the decision of the Chinese. Since they had no desire to deliver Snowden, they feared that his continued presence would cause even greater damage to Chinese-American relations than the fact of letting him go without complying with American demands to hand over “the traitor.” But China is satisfied with the slight warming of its relations with Washington after the Obama-Xi Jinping meeting at Sunnylands in California, which occurred at the beginning of June. It could be, especially as the main topic of discussions with Obama was about the cyber crime that the Americans accuse the Chinese of practicing and that the subject of the Snowden case — almost too good to not have been operated remotely — arrives at just the right moment to illustrate the fable of the shoe being on the other foot.

“American Hypocrisy”

The second reason why the Chinese allowed Snowden to leave is that in light of his revelations, he became very popular in the Chinese public where everyone kids about “the American hypocrisy” on surveillance of the Internet and of telephone conversations. But the Beijing authorities may fear that it will rise to a fairytale in the opinion of an anti-American campaign that would go too far and could hamper the plans, particularly commercial, of China.

Finally, the last reason for which the Chinese could declare that the game was over as far as they’re concerned is that they had extracted all the information that they could hope for from Snowden. There is no doubt for the experts that, regardless of the precautions taken by the defector, the hard drives of his five computers were pumped for everything they could possibly contain of secrets potentially embarrassing for Americans or for others.

As for the declarations of Edward Snowden, according to which he did not reveal anything compromising to the Chinese, one only has to refer to the content of his interview with the South China Morning Post, in which he explained that the U.S. National Security Agency spied on Chinese phone companies in order to have access to millions of texts or that it had snared the computers of Tsinghua University in order to penetrate certain piercing research, in order to be aware that restraint to protect the secrets of his country is not a problem for Snowden. No more than with the journalists than with the thugs that made him talk in Hong Kong and Moscow and who will do it tomorrow in Quito or Caracas.