"We have no relation to Mr. Snowden, his relations with the American justice or his travel around the world."

"He chooses his route himself, and we have learned about it from the media," said Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S. officials, and we proceed from that."

I think back to what Michael Haz wrote in the comments to yesterday's Edward Snowden post:

Mr. Snowden, his computers and everything stored in his brain are now in possession of the KGB. He will now fully understand the meaning of the word 'disappeared'.

The press, the Department of State and Barack Obama have all been played for the rubes they are by Vladimir Putin. And there is nothing any of them can do about it. The amateurs have met the pro, and the pro won, then erased all tracks.

Meanwhile, 20 or so reporters were thrown way off the track as they happily enclosed themselves in a Snowdenless, Cuba-bound metal tube for 12 hours. What newsless meditations did they hammer out for publication? The New Yorker's John Cassidy lambasted the on-the-tube, not-in-the-tube newsmediafolk like David Gregory who, he asserts, have demonized Edward Snowden:

Snowden took classified documents from his employer, which surely broke the law. But his real crime was confirming that the intelligence agencies, despite their strenuous public denials, have been accumulating vast amounts of personal data from the American public. The puzzle is why so many media commentators continue to toe the official line. About the best explanation I’ve seen came from Josh Marshall, the founder of T.P.M., who has been one of Snowden’s critics. In a post that followed the first wave of stories, Marshall wrote, “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the U.S. military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does.”

In the end, for all its faults... Marshall's going all last-paragraph-of-"1984." ("O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.") Except... Marshall never resisted.

Back to Cassidy:

I suspect that many Washington journalists, especially the types who go on Sunday talk shows, feel the way Marshall does, but perhaps don’t have his level of self-awareness. It’s not just a matter of defending the Obama Administration, although there’s probably a bit of that. 

Oh, just a tad. Probably! But...

It’s something deeper, which has to do with attitudes toward authority. Proud of their craft and good at what they do, successful journalists like to think of themselves as fiercely independent. 

Like to... but trapped on Aeroflot flight to Cuba, you start noticing your lack of independence. And those journalists who didn't get bamboozled into your lamentable predicament look so enragingly smug.

It’s not surprising that some of them share Marshall’s view of Snowden as “some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law.”

A political philosophy I don’t agree with.... What is that? Resistance to big government? Cassidy — who says — he's "with Snowden" because he's "the underdog" — ends with "Which side are you on?" which is the title of an old union song. Here's Pete Seeger singing it. Bob Dylan repurposed it in "Desolation Row":

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”

Unlike the Titanic, the Aeroflot flight reached its destination uneventfully.

All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name