USG had no problem blaming Russian intelligence for many other things that were going on at the same time, but they never tied TSB to that bigger picture.

Given what we know about the likes of Hal Martin, there's little reason to believe that only Russian intelligence could have been behind the shadow brokers leaks. In fact, there were rather suspiciously timed twitter DMs written by Hal Martin within minutes of TSB releasing NSA files.

However Marcy Wheeler does argue rather convincingly that Hal Martin's twitter account may have been hacked by TSB in an effort to frame him.

A curious OSINT detail about Hal Martin is that he was using the email address teamtao999@gmail.com on fling.com while looking for women interested in fetishes and group sex. The email address is a reference to the tailored access operations team within the NSA.

His twitter account (@HAL_999999999) created in 2010, also referenced TAO2 in it's avatar at the time of the TSB leaks. It's unclear for how long that was the case, as it was changed later on and there are no archives. Interestingly, he also used to be fairly active on the infosec twitter between 2011 and early 2016 and is featured in tweet chains with many fairly prominent individuals.

His OPSEC wasn't very good, it's perfectly possible he was compromised by some random person.

Edit #89: Okay, I'll throw in one more detail. Very interestingly, it was allegedly Kaspersky who turned in Hal Martin to the NSA after he tried to approach them over twitter. This might seem like a big deal right now, but at the time it wasn't. Russian cybersecurity companies used to be quite happy to work with their western counterparts and law enforcement shortly after this incident when among others Ruslan Stoyanov from Kaspersky was charged with (and later convicted of) treason for allegedly giving information to an American researcher.

Why would they? It was a deeply embarrassing event for them.

At the very least blaming Russian intelligence would have tied right in with all the other election related hacking allegations.

Also, I think you may overestimate just how embarrassing this is relatively. USG regularly announces that they got owned, is the NSA getting owned worse than OPR getting owned? Maybe not.

That's not how it works. There is no coordinated messaging campaign across agencies against adversarial nations.

It might seem that way based on media reports, but there isn't.

If the FBI believed that TSB was Russian intelligence, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that it's not mentioned in the Mueller report.

We also still don't know how Hal Martin was related to TSB, the timing of the messages sent from his twitter account to Kaspersky (who apparently reported him to the NSA!) does pretty directly tie him to the TSB.

And the Mueller report was specifically scoped down to not include anything outside of the 2016 presidential election. I don't know why you keep going back to that.

What we know is he went to China, then Russia.

Also, it's not clear why he would have wanted to stay in Moscow if he had a choice. If he had prior contact with Russian authorities, they presumably wouldn't have made him stay at Sheremetyevo for over a month.

Also it's worth noting that in 2013 Russia had much friendlier relations with the US. This was pre-Crimea. It’s not surprising that it took Russia so long to decide what to do with Snowden. Eventually, they concluded that letting him stay wouldn’t significantly harm their relationship with the US while also gaining goodwill elsewhere.

> wanted to stay in Moscow if he had a choice

None of this has to do with his decision to seek protection from the Russian government, which is a formal arrangement with their security services, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

His options at that point were pretty much limited to prison in the US or seeking protection from the Russian government. If you wouldn't have made the same choice as him in that situation, you can reasonably criticize his choice, you'll just have a hard time convincing anyone that you would've chosen prison in that situation.

There's also no evidence that his arrangement involves any work on behalf of the Russian government.

You're just justifying his decision, not refuting that he made it.

Honest question, what more needs to be said?

The part where he is actively working to Russia's benefit.

With every interview he gives, he's the gift that keeps on giving.

You could argue Snowden never intended to become an asset of the Russian government but you can't argue that he didn't eventually become one.