Among the three nations that have offered National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden political asylum, the Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story, said that Venezuela is the "plausible choice," but added that figuring out how to get Snowden from Moscow into Caracas could still more weeks, CBS News reported.
"Venezuele seems to be the most plausible choice," Greenwald told CBS Radio News on Tuesday. "They are the ones best equipped to, I think,, get him from Moscow to Latin America safely, and then to protect him once he's there."
Venezuelan President Nicolas Madura's foreign minister Elias Jaua said that Snowden could find 'humanitarian protection" if he accepted their offer of asylum. "Even if we wanted to, and we don't, we wouldn't extradite him, nor should we because it is not legal nor ethical."
"The difficulty is figuring out how to get to where he wants to go without the world's empire [or the U.S] preventing him from getting there," Greenwald said. "And they're going to take their time and figure that out, so it could be days, it could be, I think, still weeks."
For weeks, the U.S. has been trying to get Snowden back on U.S. soil to face federal criminal charges, including espionage. Greenwald has ruled out the possibility of Snowden buying a commercial ticket and just travel with other fliers to specific Latin American destinations that will offer him asylum. Greenwald said "the real option" for Snowden was a private aircraft.
"It's remarkable that he still has this calmness, this equanimity to him, even given the last two weeks of what would almost drive a lot of other people crazy in not knowing his fate," Greenwald also said on Tuesday.
Americans remain split as to whether government secrets that Snowden has released about the government's surveillance programs has helped or hindered the national discourse of the topic. His critics have argued that he has made the U.S. more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, while his supporters contend he has done a national service for his supposed hopes to make the government more accountable and transparent in their actions.
