The dramatic plot of the Edward Snowden NSA whistleblowing saga has just taken an interesting twist: in a letter to U.S. Senator Gordon Humphreys, Snowden declares himself impervious to torture.
Furthermore, he claims his encryption cannot be hacked.
From his letter, posted in the Guardian:
[N]o intelligence service — not even our own — has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect. While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specializations was to teach our people at DIA how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (i.e. China).
You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture.
So everyone is to understand that Snowden's counter-cyber-intelligence capability is greater than that of the U.S. government, Chinese government, and Russian government ... combined?
Also, that methods of torture that make waterboarding look like a walk in the park — fingernail torture, cattleprods, smashed toes, blaring Sesame Street songs directly into the ears for hours on end— are all in a day's work for Snowden?
Pretty strange coming from a guy who allegedly fled Hong Kong for fear of losing Internet, who's now growing "tired" of living in a Moscow airport's hotel.
Not to mention other forms of coercion.
"They have drugs and women. He's very naive," Former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb, president of the Special Operation website SOFREP, told Business Insider.
A few of the nation's CIA and military special operators who have gone through extensive simulated"torture"training have told BI that guys who complete such training can handle many levels of discomfort.
But that type of training is usually only provided to operators who run the risk of actually getting caught and actually getting tortured. It's easy to doubt that Snowden — an analyst — was ever under that type of risk ... until, of course, he fled to Hong Kong and Moscow, selectively spilling NSA secrets all the way.
National security and intelligence expert Joshua Foust wrote concerning Snowden's claims, "That he also brags of being immune to torture (a laughable claim), while spouting delusions of assassination, just makes the whole affair terribly odd."