"Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."

Edward Snowden answers questions, including "Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?" His answer is such a conundrum...

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

... that the questioner comes back and demands "a flat yes or no." He says:

No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.

I still don't know the complete answer to the first question, however, which asked if he will provide — that is, in the future — classified information to the Chinese.
He gives the flat "no," but I see that the followup question was "Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no?" That refers only to the past: have you given info. He says "no" only to that, and the sentence after the "no" also refers only to the past. The next sentence is in the present tense: I only work with journalists. There is no flat no about what he might do in the future. Even assuming that he's scrupulous about truth-telling now — we can infer that he wasn't scrupulous about the promises he made to gain security clearance — he has not made an assertion about the future.

Also "I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now" could be read as a clue that he's making things up, since there is no such beast as a phoenix. I check "phoenix" at Urban Dictionary:

3. Phoenix      128 up, 98 down
Coolest person you will ever meet. They're smart, funny, and extremely good-looking. In a nutshell they're the one everyone wants to be friends with and date.

You could pet that. (Miscellaneous: Urban Dictionary definitions #1 and #2 relate to the city in Arizona. Factoid discovered in Googling "phoenix": "Image of Jesus appears on floor tile at Phoenix airport... The smudge in Terminal 3 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has become a pilgrimage site in recent weeks, as visitors have come to see for themselves whether the Lord and Savior flies coach or first-class.")

Back to Snowden. Asked why he didn't stay in this country, he expresses complete mistrust for the legal system:

[T]he US Government...  immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Perhaps another way of putting this — without calling the legal system corrupt — would be to admit that you know you have committed serious crimes and the evidence is so clear that you are nearly certain that you will be convicted in a perfectly fair trial.

The final clause can stand as an independent opinion: Even with full justice, it's foolish to volunteer to go to prison if you think you can do more good outside of prison. In classic civil disobedience, one accepts the law's punishment. Volunteering to go to prison is portrayed as admirable and courageous, and not foolish. He is calling Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr. foolish, except to the extent that he's got a loophole: The question whether you do more good in prison than out of prison.

For Thoreau and King, perhaps being imprisoned does good — it's an important gesture. But for Snowden — he's done the cost benefit analysis and he can do more good if he stays free. That strikes me as ludicrous, but there's also the out of saying you're not doing old-fashioned civil disobedience. You're redefining it for a new era.

"Ladies and gentlemen..., you seem to accept as okay that the government, intelligence agencies, would be collecting all of this data on Americans."

"And what makes you mad is that this little twerp has come along and exposed how it's done. Do any of you care why this is being done? It matters to me who is doing it. I've accepted that it's being done just like a lot of you have. But... who is doing it... why are they doing it?  Are any of you interested in that aspect of this?  Well, of course they say national security, and then when they say national security, 'Oh, oh, okay, okay, fine, fine.'  And then you forget about it. Well, you don't forget about it, you just assume. I think everybody's walking around at some level of consciousness, thinking that if somebody wants to find out about them, they can.  In addition to that, everybody, if you go to these social networks, Facebook, Twitter, everybody, or a lot of people are volunteering every bit of information about themselves without having to be spied on.  Putting a lot of trust in everybody, putting a lot of trust in their fellow citizens, in their friends, in government...."

That's Rush Limbaugh, thinking out loud — which the previous post about the WaPo-Pew poll and the interplay of partisanship and ideology made me think of. It's a fascinating monologue, with Rush saying he's "in a holding pattern just to wait and see, because, as you know, I do everything I can to avoid the conventional wisdom of the day, to follow the crowd." I'm sure his antagonists have no idea he's so measured and thoughtful. It's practically Obamaesque. Or do you think Obama merely poses as thoughtful? The extent to which Obama and Rush pretend to be working through the issues is a mystery we're never going to solve.

Anyway, I recommend the Rush monologue, which has him interacting with "Mr. Snerdley," whom we never hear, so we never know what input he's actually getting from his producer/engineer James Golden. Rush tells us "Snerdley's livid at" Edward Snowden, that Snerdley's talking about trying Snowden for "treason" for "giving away... secrets." The implied participation of Snerdley, whose thinking, we're told "may represent the thinking of a lot of you," enhances the dialogic quality of the monologue.

ADDED: I say "enhances the dialogic quality" because Rush's thinking out loud from his "holding pattern" already involves him going back and forth taking different viewpoints. I notice and appreciate this because it feels similar to what I do as a law professor to show students what's going on in a case. But as a law professor, I'm not trying to get to my own answer. Developing the issue and the various arguments and opinions is the end in itself. Sometimes a student will ask me what I think, and I like to say that's irrelevant, but if I have an opinion — if — I'll admit it just to give them more power to try to extract any bias I might have injected into the discussion.

"Manning's act was that of a goofball anarchist. Snowden's, by contrast, seems to have been one of civil disobedience."

"That is, he seems to have known exactly what he was doing. Snowden does seem to have some elements of Manning, a mixed-up kid, but on balance seems to me to be more of an Ellsberg -- that is, a disillusioned insider who was appalled by what he saw and made a choice to disclose the existence of certain government programs,"  writes Thomas E. Ricks at Foreign Policy.

I have several friends who have a very different view, and think this guy is more of a Philip Agee, someone who has changed sides, and should be considered at worst a traitor and at best a self-righteous little jerk.... Leaving the country is not what a pure act of civil disobedience would entail. In addition, I find his choice of refuge, Hong Kong, a bit odd. It looks more like a defection than civil disobedience. It is possible that this guy will turn out to be more Guy Burgess than Daniel Ellsberg.

I don't see why knowing exactly what you're doing elevates you over the mixed-up goofball. How do we decide which of these characters to smile upon and which to contemn?

"Greenwald Says ‘There’s A Lot More Coming,’ Argues NSA Revelations Don’t Harm Security."

Well, all right then.

Extraditing Snowden: "Hong Kong Seen as Likely to Extradite Leaker if U.S. Asks."

"When the United States does issue a warrant, the Hong Kong authorities have generally been willing to extradite suspects, said Jonathan Acton-Bond, a barrister and former magistrate who has represented clients in some of the best-known extradition cases here."

Hong Kong enforces extradition laws more than other jurisdictions in Southeast Asia, Mr. Acton-Bond said. But Hong Kong did not follow Britain’s example after the Sept. 11 attacks of lowering the standard of legal evidence required before an extradition to the United States is approved. Hong Kong also has legal protections against politically motivated extradition cases, but they have seldom been invoked....

Mr. Snowden, a 29-year-old computer technician, has said that he had access to lists of all American agents overseas and other information, but that he did not take all of the data....

Snowden said that he was careful about choosing what to release and that he chose not to hurt any particular individuals:

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest... There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

But in revealing that he has more and could hurt American agents, he is building up his bargaining position.

Back to the first-linked article (in the NYT):

While Mr. Snowden — or possibly his personal computer — might be a valuable prize for China’s intelligence agencies, experts were skeptical that China would risk harming relations with the United States by exercising its legal authority to block an extradition request from the Justice Department.

So Snowden's choice of Hong Kong was — at least implicitly — pressuring the U.S. not to seek extradition, because once China puts its hands on him, they have their hands on that laptop, with all those names or whatever it was that he took when he "did not take all of the data."

“I don’t think he’s a big enough fish that Beijing would try to intervene to affect the decision of the Hong Kong authorities one way or the other,” said Willy Lam, a specialist in Chinese government decision-making at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He's not a big enough fish? How big can a fish get?!