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4. In my mind the sudden appearance of that momentarily almost-famous
5. "pole dancer girlfriend" of Snowden's is of a piece with the rest
6. of The Snowden Affair:  It raises more questions than it answers,
7. and adds more reasons to suspect a double game.
8.  
9. Did the "pole dancer girlfriend" ever exist, and is that really
10. her?  I will assume so, for the sake of a fun story.  What are the
11. odds that she has travelled more than one mile in any direction
12. since Ed went walkabout, without that motion being logged for
13. analysis by a consortium of TLAs?  Other than "she has always
14. worked for us and is still passing polygraph exams," how could her
15. bona fides as a person of no interest be so confidently endorsed
16. by the public servants who let her walk away?  If on the other
17. hand Russia worked some hocus pocus on her behalf, why have public
18. officials and partisan propaganda mills that already call Snowden
19. a Russian agent remained silent on that subject?
20.  
21. Painting the young lady in question as a Russian agent who used
22. her pole dancing skills to steal U.S. secrets would not be hard:
23. The story sells itself.  Part two of the story would be how she
24. fluttered away free as a bird to the waiting welcome of her
25. Russian paymasters:  First Benghazi, now Boris and Natasha in a
26. Moscow love nest?  It's an outrageous story that would suit many
27. of our partisan political propagandists very nicely right about...
28. now.  But all I hear so far is crickets.
29.  
30. "Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not
31. learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do
32. not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what
33. cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it
34. will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." -- Ursula K. LeGuin
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