Snowden Documentary another Sign the Left is about to Throw Obama under the Bus - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

Last night, the first screening was held for Citizen Four, a new documentary about Edward Snowden that comes with backing from The Weinstein Company, one of the most powerful of Hollywood heavyweights. The trailer can be seen below. I haven’t seen the film, but Roger Friedman, who has, writes:

It doesn’t paint the Obama administration in a very good light as Snowden explains how the government has violated privacy rights on a massive scale.
Also the filmmakers clearly ind[i]cate that all roads lead to POTUS, a fairly serious accusation. There may be serious repercussions.

The film is the product of Laura Poitras, the filmmaker who worked with Glenn Greenwald in breaking the Snowden story, and obviously paints a favorable picture of him.

Here is the trailer:

There are several pieces of new information in the film that may be enough to bring it good box office returns. Seth Abramovitch and Chris O’Falt write in the Hollywood Reporter:

A second National Security Agency whistleblower exists within the ranks of government intelligence.
That bombshell comes toward the end of Citizenfour, a new documentary from filmmaker Laura Poitras about NSA informant Edward Snowden that had its world premiere on Friday at the New York Film Festival.
In the key scene, journalist Glenn Greenwald visits Snowden at a hotel room in Moscow. Fearing they are being taped, Greenwald communicates with Snowden via pen and paper.
While some of the exchanges are blurred for the camera, it becomes clear that Greenwald wants to convey that another government whistleblower -- higher in rank than Snowden -- has come forward.
The revelation clearly shocks Snowden, whose mouth drops open when he reads the details of the informant's leak.

This suggests that there are more bombshells coming. The left is already embarrassed by Obama’s failures, and fears being discredited by his application of leftist ideology to health care, the economy, and national security. As with excuses offered for the failures of communism, the problem is never with the ideology, but with the implementation being not radical or pure enough.

Thus, in order to protect The Cause, it will be necessary to portray Obama as a reactionary, and the NSA spying, along with the limited and ineffective Obama response to ISIS, are all the fodder the Left needs to feed that beast.

Snowden makes an interesting vehicle for the role of point man. Roger Friedman points out:

It’s instructive to see his evolution from eyeglass wearing nerd to contact lenses and moussed up hair sporting hero of his own thriller. It’s all very Tom Cruise.

One of the weirdest elements of Snowden’s initial narrative was his pole-dancing girlfriend, with whom he lived in Hawaii, whom he abandoned, even though they had been a couple for many years. The movie provides a happy ending of sorts:

 Near the end of the film, which received a rousing standing ovation, it is revealed that Lindsay Mills, Snowden's dancer girlfriend of 10 years, has been living with Snowden in Moscow.
When Poitras went to Moscow in July to show Snowden an early cut of the film, she shot footage of the two cooking dinner together, which appears in the final cut. 

Snowden remains an enigmatic figure. To be sure, there were some shocking abuses that he revealed. But he also took his information to the Chinese and to the Russians, (apparently ISIS was not available at the time, and besides, they were likely to behead him), thereby handing them crucial strategic advantage, and negating many years and many billions of dollars’ worth of work. We’ll probably never know the dimension of the disaster this has created, but it has to be substantial. This is not a good way to defend the Constitution.

But the most interesting aspect of all of this is the clue it gives to what the Left plans for Obama, who has become tarnished to the American public, and probably to history. If he thinks he’s had a tough two years, he doesn’t know what’s ahead for him. In order to save itself, the Left will have to portray him as a tool of the right, a flawed and destructive reactionary, and this film is an initial pre-election volley.

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/10/snowden_documentary_another_sign_the_left_is_about_to_throw_obama_under_the_bus.html

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