Snowden! Don't do it that way!
Snowden reportedly wants to return to USA STRONG if he can get a guaranteed "fair trial".

Dumb. There's no such thing. He's focusing on the abstract instead of making highly specific concrete demands.

If he goes through the USA STRONG court system, he WILL be disappeared. Absolutely. Fed prisons are full of "white-collar" criminals, most of whom are either part of the Deep State or totally blackmailed by the Deep State. Super-easy to have a "heart attack" or a "previously undiagnosed congenital condition." Condolences to the survivors and all that.

In his place, I'd ask to be tried in a county court in a Western state with a basically honest government and lots of Mexican or Injun gangsters, and then held in the county jail or possibly a state reformatory. Someplace like Kansas or Wyoming or Alaska. No Feds would be allowed anywhere near the trial. Presumably he could use his tech skills to detect violations of the rule.

County judges in such states are genuinely fair, within limits of human nature, and distrust the Feds for a thousand excellent reasons.

But here's the most important part. In a county jail Snowden would have a sporting chance of protection against the Deep State. He's a prettyboy, which means his rectum would be a high-traffic zone for a little while. He'd have to tolerate that. But he's also the BEST SOURCE of criminally useful information and training who ever walked into a jail. Mexican or Injun gangsters have no loyalty to the Deep State. They would recognize and use his value and would ruthlessly protect his rectum from all comers, including Fed stingers and Fed snitches.

= = = = =

Later: Greenwald, who certainly knows, says this current story is nonsense. Snowden has always said he'd come home under the proper conditions, and no new effort is underway. Good. I'd rather see Snowden stay in a sane country on the other side of the world where his safety is assisted by plain old geography as well as the sane Russian government.
  ¶ 4:57 PM