Leaking supposedly confidential information to the press is hardly a novel technique in espionage, or in any social context for that matter, eg feeding a juicy tale to the village gossip to embarrass a rival. Machiavelli made a systematic study of such techniques centuries ago. What do you find so insane about it?
What is insane to me, is the reasoning behind suggesting "X is beneficial to Russia. Therefore Russia is doing X" without producing a shred of evidence.
I am inclined to at least consider the possibility that you are a NSA/GCHQ agent[1] attempting to discredit and diminish the reputation of Snowden and Greenwald.
So you're criticizing me for a suggestion I never made, about a country I never mentioned, and then you suggest my reasoning is insane? I think you need to work harder at this. If you can't countenance the possibility that your political hero figures could themselves be subject to manipulation then you're essentially adopting a religious attitude towards them.
Unfortunately I am too marginal a person to be hired as a disinformation agent; I'm just your friendly neighborhood sociopath reminding you that it's helpful to look both ways before crossing the street.
I apologize unreservedly if I read more into what you said than you meant. However, your original comment was
I'm inclined to at least consider the possibility that other foreign governments are helping out with making this information available because it suits their own interests
In my mind, Russia is congruent with 'foreign government' and is the first that came to my mind. Perhaps you could specify which foreign governments you were thinking of? I will rephrase my take on your allegation to "X is beneficial to country A. Therefore country A is doing X", which is a crazy thing to say without evidence.
> Unfortunately I am too marginal a person to be hired as a disinformation agent
I hope this shows the point I was making: I made an unfounded allegation that put you on the defensive just by raising the specter of it being a possibility (in your words "I'm inclined to at least consider the possibility".) It is this Bill O'Reilly-style insinuation that I objected to.
> If you can't countenance the possibility that your political hero figures could themselves be subject to manipulation
I countenance this possibility in the same manner that I countenance the possibility of Obama secretly being a muslim: the probability for both is non-zero, but I'm not going to waste cycles worrying about it. My attitude to both is "support your allegation with some proof or GTFO."
I don't think my statement added what he said: I only special-cased his generalized statement by substituting "foreign government" with the first one that came to my mind (the runner-up was China). See my other reply to sibling comment
