As I think I said in the other thread, less specific charges that require more specific proof and almost never leveled before a trial is set, because it forces the issue to be tried in the court of public opinion, where a lot of information can't be released lest it spoil an investigation or potential trial. There's also the fact that there'd be little to gain at this point by alleging that the slides are fake since there would be few people to believe it,

"NSA hasn't said it's fake" doesn't seem like a strong argument - especially for a non-NSA slide. And again - Snowden himself has accused outlets of releasing slides attributed to him that he says he did not provide.

On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 7:45 AM, Georgi Guninski <guninski@guninski.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 07:24:00AM -0400, Michael Best wrote:
> Can anyone poke a hole in my logic for any of the possibilities, or come up

IMHO this is a potential hole:

Assuming Snowden got the slide from the NSA, he didn't fake it and his
slides weren't modified by others AFTER he got them, some of your
options don't make any sense.

I don't know if these are sound assumptions, but Snowden appears widely
believed by non-us-natsec crowd (which call him a "traitor").

As pointed out in another thread, the usa wants to torture Snowden for
alleged crimes like "stealing classified stuff", NOT for distributing
fakes.

There appears to be quarrel between the usa and eu about surveillance:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/12/digi_commish_oettinger_admits_eu_should_have_done_more_in_reaction_to_nsa_spying/
EU Digital Commish: Ja, we should have done more about NSA spying

I wish you call the EU "fake believers".