I doubt he is a double agent. I think he wanted to do the right thing but didn't plan it well.  He'd have been better off booking travel to Iran than Russia or China, in retrospect.  Poor guy.  I agree he is likely to be used as a bargaining chip, sadly.  his actions alone show he's a double agent.     first off, the information he has is information he NEVER had legal access to. therefore in order for him to get it, he would have to poke around where his nose didn't belong. from this job standpoint, he wouldn't have even known prism existed to go looking for it.    second, the NSA was already investigating him for espionage before he went public. they were building a case against him. ask yourself, if he's a whistleblower, then why would he have been investigated for espionage BEFORE he decided to whistleblow. he obviously wasn't leaking information publicly....but he was leaking information to the chinese.    third, he specifically got himself transferred to the hawaii branch. look at snowden.....he obviously wasn't there to enjoy the weather....you'd think he'd have a tan from laying at the beach ONCE. he obviously doesn't get much sun, and it doesn't take much sun to get a tan especially when you're that white. the hawaii branch is the branch that does surveillance on china -- IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PRISM SPYING ON THE US. this is a huge fact. PRISM doesn't spy on Americans from the hawaii branch, simple as that. so his own story contradicts itself.     so snowden wasn't some insider whistle blower, he was an outsider that broke inside. he was leaking information to his chinese handlers, was about to get caught, so panicked and fled to china, the only place he thought he could turn to. but before he fled, he took one last treasure trove of data with him: ALL the data the US has on china. this is entirely about china wanting to know what the US knows. look at the world around you, all the factors. china wants to become the next world power -- they're testing the waters, seeing how accurate US information on china is, see what they can get away with, etc.     This is nothing but an early prelude to WW3.     It's in china's best interests to have US citizens not support their government, it's a form of political warfare. by eroding the foundations of the USA, they can more easily fight it or push it aside as they move forward into the future. there's a lot of complexities at play here, and you need all the pieces to the puzzle to see it. these things are going to be leading up to future events that could be as far as 20 years into the future.     yes, prism is bad. but prism wasn't snowdens target, it was his cover. it's the oldest trick in the book -- no one knows what the left hand is doing if they're looking at the right hand.    notice how right before his trip to russia, he escalated the situation by insinuating even more stuff other than PRISM? that's because china told him sorry, we know you work for us, but we've gotta cut you loose, we can't have this type of political exposure, nor can we have this traced back to us. which is exactly why he started saying those things.