I see a lot of people trying to make something out of the fact that Edward Snowden didn’t graduate from high school. They would be amazed at the number of people in Mensa who didn’t see the point in hanging around for a piece of paper after they had gotten everything they thought was necessary from a training program.

Snowden was making a six figure salary with his GED, so a lot of other people weren’t worried about diplomas. He had something more important than a high school or college diploma to a military contractor – he had a security clearance. It costs a lot of money for a contractor to get a security clearance for someone, so they don’t worry about paper credentials.

Snowden was at the right place at the right time. When he went into the Army, he chose Special Forces and was accepted. Special Forces get a higher clearance than the Infantry. Even though they released him as a result of his injuries in training, he left with an honorable discharge.

That made him acceptable to the CIA which often works with Special Forces, where his clearance would have been elevated. Even though he started as a security guard, the CIA was undergoing a rapid expansion due to the GWOT™ so he was given an opportunity to move up, and chose computers. The military gives everyone intelligence and aptitude tests, so his bosses at the CIA knew what Snowden could learn to do.

Snowden learned his trade on the job, so when contractors were brought in to take over the computer operations, they hired him with a decent bump in salary. He was then established as a contract employee with known skills and the always important security clearance. That’s how he made his way to where he was when he left.

Given what he did, he obviously was good at his job, with or without paperwork and student loans from any educational institutions.

Oh, yes, Lambert noted that a piece in the LA Times reports that Snowden can’t be extradited from Hong Kong for disclosing classified information. The ‘high school dropout’ seems to know what he’s doing.

[Full disclosure: My first experience with computers was teaching myself COBOL ISAM programming with an IBM reference manual. It isn’t easy, but it can be done when the military doesn’t want anyone to know they are doing something that requires computers.]