Quotes from Edward Jay Epstein

There is no denying that Snowden's dramatic disclosures, despite the damage they did to U.S. intelligence, accomplished a salutary service in alerting both the public and the government to the potential danger of a surveillance leviathan." (p.299)

present depressed state of the market for diamonds was "the result of the economy, changes in social attitudes and the promotion of competitive luxuries.

he did not suffer bullet wounds.

Since the publicity campaigns for these blockbusters have proven effective in the popcorn economy, studios recycle their elements into endless sequels, such as those for Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, and Mission Impossible, which then become the studios' franchises on which they earn almost all their profits.

would strain credibility that such privileges would be awarded to an intelligence defector who had refused to cooperate with Russian authorities.

Greenwald told the Associated Press that the documents that Snowden had taken from the NSA constituted "the instruction manual for how the NSA is built" and that they "would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.

Unless one is willing to believe that the Putin regime acted out of purely altruistic motives in exfiltrating this American intelligence worker to Moscow, the only plausible explanation for its actions in Hong Kong was that it recognized Snowden's potential as an espionage source.

He further disclosed that before leaving the NSA, he had gained access to the lists of computers that the NSA had penetrated in foreign countries.

Snowden's penetration went beyond whistle-blowing, however. In the vast number of files he copied were documents that contained the NSA's most sensitive sources and methods that had little if anything to do with domestic surveillance or whistle-blowing. Snowden

The Deer Hunter is securely on my list of American movie events, by which I mean those films that aspired to the whole equation, to be show business and art at the same time.