Snowden Claims He's Torture-Proof

What has a former Navy SEAL calling Edward Snowden "very naive"? This fairly wild statement, plucked by Business Insider from a letter Snowden wrote to a US senator that was published by the Guardian:

• No intelligence service—not even our own—has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect. While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specializations was to teach our people at DIA how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (ie, China). You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture.

Geoffrey Ingersoll, writing for Business Insider, is gobsmacked. "Pretty strange coming from a guy who allegedly fled Hong Kong for fear of losing Internet, who's now growing 'tired' of living in a Moscow airport's hotel." Of course, there might be a little bluster involved. RT interviewed a lawyer who is consulting Snowden, and he had this to say: "When asked ... why [Snowden] chose to file a petition in Russia and why he came here, he replied that he fears for his life and well-being, that he is also afraid of torture, and that he could get executed. And what he says sounds quite convincing, because the US still administers capital punishment and torture." (More Edward Snowden stories.)