Edward Snowden on history: what the evidence says · JRE #1368
SUBJECT: HISTORY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
The New York Times published a story in the wake of, you know, this contested 2016 election, where they looked into the history of electoral interference in Russia and the Soviet Union. And they found in roughly 50 years, 36 different cases of election interference by Russia or the Soviets.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Snowden's figures match political scientist Dov Levin's count of partisan electoral interventions by the US and the Soviet Union/Russia in foreign national elections between 1946 and 2000: 81 by the US and 36 by the USSR/Russia, out of 938 competitive elections studied. In an NPR interview, Levin states directly: "My estimate has been 36 cases between 1946 to 2000" for Russia/the USSR, describing the US as using the technique "half as much" more often. This research (Levin's Partisan Electoral Intervention by Great Powers dataset) was popularized by a widely cited 2016 New York Times report and has since been cited across mainstream outlets discussing US and Russian election interference history. Snowden's description of it as a single unified "study" simplifies what is actually an academic dataset that journalists reported on rather than a Times-authored study, but the underlying 36/81 figures and roughly 50-year span are well-supported and have not been challenged or retracted.