David Miranda Is Nobody’s Errand Boy

[Hissyspit]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/natashavc/david-miranda-is-nobodys-errand-boy

David Miranda Is Nobody’s Errand Boy

When Glenn Greenwald’s 28-year-old Brazilian partner was detained in London this summer while transporting documents related to the bombshell Edward Snowden story, many assumed he was unfairly roped into a situation he didn’t understand. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

posted on November 14, 2013 at 10:40pm EST

- snip -

One of those theories posited that the gaping social chasm between Miranda's and Greenwald's backgrounds suggested that the highly educated American lawyer turned whistle-blowing journalist with a background in the ruthless world of New York corporate law had cynically manipulated his younger, slum-raised, hunky, ostensibly ignorant boyfriend into being an unwitting human courier dispatched on a highly dangerous mission.

"I don't mean to be unkind, but he was a mule," Jeffrey Toobin, chief legal analyst for CNN, told Anderson Cooper in the days following Miranda's detention. "He was given something — he didn't know what it was — from one person to another at the other end of an airport." Toobin said he believed the U.K. government was totally justified in detaining Miranda and that the Brazilian native "was lucky that they used the terrorism law" because he was ultimately not arrested.

- snip -

Miranda knew very well that he was traveling from Rio to Berlin to see Greenwald's reporting partner, documentarian Laura Poitras, and that he would be returning through the U.K., all the time carrying a heavily encrypted flash drive directly related to the trove of documents that former and now notorious CIA employee Edward Snowden had vacuumed from the National Security Agency and had given to Greenwald earlier in the year.

- snip -

"I have been involved in every aspect of Glenn's life, why wouldn't I be a part of this?" Miranda asserts over lunch at a fashion mall in Rio's São Conrado neighborhood the next afternoon. "I think what Snowden did was heroic. Glenn and Laura's reporting is so important. It caused a serious debate about privacy and internet freedom in my country and around the world. I'm so proud to be able to play any role at all in that. I'd go to jail for that."

- snip -

"Glenn and I have talked all the time about what doing these stories would do to our lives. Since we met, I've pushed him and supported him..."

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[Hissyspit]

1. Kick nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. A good read - thanks (nt)

[Oilwellian]

3. Fantastic read

Love these two guys.

K&R

[sabrina 1]

4. Jeffrey Toobin does it again. Making stuff when he has no idea what he is talking about.

If you're going to be on TV posing as a journalist of some kind, you should either go to the source to check your theories, or make it very clear that you are being paid a huge sum of money to make stuff up.

His elitism is showing.

[Hissyspit]

5. Kick nt

[Luminous Animal]

6. Fantastic read! Thank you!

[alarimer]

7. I really hate the American and UK governments

This is so contrary to what we allegedly believe in.

I really don't believe in this country anymore.

[LuvNewcastle]

8. I enjoyed this. They seem like a wonderful couple.

They've really been through hell together, and I appreciate what they've done in order to inform the rest of us.

[bemildred]

9. Yes, I always thought that "mule" idea was bullshit. Spin.

The British Cops still apparently haven't figured out that they were suckered.

[Luminous Animal]

11. Also, it explains why Greenwald (in my opinion) concluded

that he was targeted because Miranda was his partner.

In the article it mentions that several other Guardian employees had travelled unmolested but not Miranda.

Pure intimidation to curtail Greenwald's reporting by targeting his family.

That is what fascists to.

[bemildred]

12. I think they ARE that stupid.

They were gibbering with fear of exposure (and rightly so) and much too shallow and ignorant to understand that "seizing" the data Miranda had was pointless, the horse will not be put back in the barn. They are so used to being able to rig the game in their favor that that is all they know, direct application of as much force as needed. That's their emergency plan, and when it fails, they panic. One-trick ponies.

But yeah, attempted intimidation, for sure.

[Luminous Animal]

10. Kick.