The Edward Snowden Affair

by Michael Gurnow

  There is a debate about when Greenwald first communicated with Snowden. On June 10 via Twitter, Greenwald claimed he and Poitras had started “working with” Snowden in February.59 The statement is technically true, but the implication leaves a lot to be desired. Freelance reporter Peter Maass relays a different account in the Times from interviews he’d conducted with Poitras only a few weeks after she and Greenwald had visited Snowden in Hong Kong.60 The only person aside from Snowden who can offer legitimate discussion to the order in which the communications might have transpired is Poitras, yet she remained solemnly professional in her refusal to get into the middle of the debate. The existence of the Salon detainment report also makes Greenwald’s proclamation much less credible.

  Poitras emailed Greenwald in April stating they needed to meet in person. Snowden had provided her documents by this time. They met in a New York City hotel lobby. She instructed Greenwald not to bring his cell phone. She suspected the U.S. government had the ability to remotely listen to conversations even when a phone is turned off.61 She showed him Snowden’s emails. Greenwald took the matter seriously because Poitras had proof in hand and almost certainly informed him the Post had expressed interest but also apprehension.

  Greenwald and Poitras had met in March to do the Salon exposé. It is reasonable to believe since Poitras was willing to violate source confidentiality with Gellman, she would have seized the opportunity to do the same at this time with Greenwald, her “colleague and friend.”62 It was obviously a hot story, and she would make an express effort to bring it to Greenwald’s attention a month later. It is also sensible that one of the two journalists would mention the encryption key request if for no other reason than the sender’s dogged perseverance. She came to Greenwald because she and Gellman had delivered the story to the editorial board of the Post and knew the status of the article was on unstable ground.

  Greenwald would attest that it wasn’t until he and Poitras were in the air over the Pacific that he realized the person who had contacted him six months prior was the one they were about to meet despite he and Poitras previously congregating at The Guardian’s New York City offices to discuss the assignment.63 His late entry into the communication loop is also signaled by Greenwald’s dancing back and forth between the 20 rows separating him and Poitras on the flight to Hong Kong as he repeatedly sought her feedback on the documents recently placed in his possession.64 His giddiness superseded professional reserve because Poitras was on a watch list and he was holding highly classified materials. Had he been included as early as he implies, though he was not issued solid documentation until later, the basics of the situation would not have been novel by this time.

  The most condemning evidence for Greenwald is that Snowden didn’t proffer an all-or-nothing ultimatum to The Guardian as he had with Gellman. Snowden had learned his lesson and didn’t want to risk losing another journalist. As Greenwald would confirm, Snowden “never once made any demands about how we publish and never once complained about what we published.”65 To Greenwald’s credit, Snowden had been “working with” him and Poitras since February. As a team this is true. Snowden had been actively talking with Poitras, but he did not have an open dialogue with Greenwald until late May.66 Of the three journalists, Greenwald was the first to be contacted but the last to communicate with Snowden.

  In analogous essence, Snowden had tried calling Greenwald three times, but the phone was left ringing. Snowden then called Poitras and told her he had something urgent to say to Greenwald, with the implication that if Greenwald didn’t pick up, he would take his business elsewhere as he had once before. Fearful of losing her commission, Poitras quickly buzzed Greenwald and told him who was on the other line. Only then did Greenwald bother answering. When he finally did, Poitras uttered a sigh of relief.

  Greenwald’s evidence to the contrary was he was also in possession of the same PRISM documents as Gellman. Greenwald stated this was “because The Washington Post dragged its feet for so long.”67 Through this line of reasoning, Snowden’s selection of news outlets was predicated upon timing, not full disclosure. If this were the case, Snowden wouldn’t have bothered having Poitras contact a person who had exhibited no interest in his story. Also, the complementary PRISM articles debuted twenty minutes apart. Snowden had obviously chosen to play the safety should Poitras be detained and her copies of the information be confiscated. If this happened to the documentarian, it was reasonable to assume the Guardian team’s materials might meet a similar end since they were on the same flight. Gellman could still break the story if the U.S. government didn’t shut down the Post’s project.

  As a last-minute precautionary measure to help ensure the emailer was authentic, Poitras set up an anonymous online interview between the NSA contractor and former WikiLeaks associate and Internet security expert Jacob Appelbaum. Poitras was satisfied after Snowden deftly addressed a barrage of direct techno-political questions.68

  Once communication was open with Greenwald, Snowden told the filmmaker and journalist he was preparing to meet with them shortly.69 Greenwald had received approximately 20 confidential documents, but Poitras had rightfully earned the bulk.70 Poitras cleverly but necessarily asked if they would be traveling by train or airplane. In late May, he informed them of their destination: Hong Kong. The Guardian’s American editor insisted that since the paper’s reputation was at stake, they would be accompanied by veteran reporter Ewen MacAskill. They boarded at J.F.K. Sixteen hours later they landed in Hong Kong on Saturday, June 1. Though Poitras had brought Snowden’s story to the Post, she unofficially joined the Guardian team because of Greenwald’s legal background. He was more capable of conducting interviews, and having an attorney by her side might dissuade authorities from detaining her.71

  They met the man with the Rubik’s Cube shortly thereafter.

  The media entourage was taken aback by Snowden’s youth. Snowden was annoyed they had arrived before their prescribed meeting time.72 He took them back to his hotel room and, confirming Poitras’ suspicions, had them remove their cell phone batteries and placed the phones in the refrigerator. Snowden lined the doors with pillows to prevent eavesdropping.73 When he logged onto his computer, he draped a red hood over his head. If there were hidden cameras—or if Poitras’ footage was closely examined should she catch him at the right moment from the proper angle—his passphrases wouldn’t be comprised.74 Poitras immediately started filming.75

  Because full disclosure could no longer be demanded, Snowden’s priority became information dispersal. He was worried he (and those working with him) might be apprehended at any moment. His anxiety was justified. Snowden knew the government would send out the “Q Group,”76 the internal police force of the associate directorate for security and counterintelligence, even before he failed to return to work if intelligence suspected he’d left the country.77 It did not help that, having no other choice, he’d purchased tickets under his own name using his own credit cards. An electronic dragnet would be cast which would attempt triangulation through his recent purchases, online activity and his phone’s GPS. Snowden was racing against this contingency alongside a threat he himself had created.

  The Post began production upon its whistleblowing report no later than May 16. Confirmation with the government over the authenticity of the documentation followed. Snowden had either acknowledged the inevitable necessity and asked that cross-referencing take place after he took flight on May 20, or he withheld full document submission until he was on the ground in Hong Kong. Snowden’s trademark discretion makes the latter scenario more plausible. He was still communicating anonymously in mid-May while on medical leave. Even if the U.S. government became aware of a leak while Snowden was still on American soil, he knew he had a flawless, extended reputation with the intelligence community and numerous people had access to the classified PRISM information. On the afternoon of May 23 and two weeks before The Guardian’s Verizon report would go live, Obama delivered a speech on the government’s intell
igence gathering methods at the National Defense University. This implies the Post requested its data check between the afternoon of May 20 and the morning of May 23.

  If Snowden had been in control, the Verizon exposé would have debuted earlier. The delay in publication was not due to any laxity on Greenwald’s behalf. The journalist worked around the clock. When Greenwald wasn’t interviewing, he was writing, studying and researching. Snowden would commend Greenwald on his ability to remain focused after consecutive days without sleep.78 It was The Guardian that postponed the first article, probably because it, too, was seeking governmental validation of the source material. It might have taken even longer for the first story to premier had Greenwald not threatened to send a draft to another publisher or place it, along with all other reports, on a website titled “NSADisclosures.”79 Greenwald was obviously fearful that Gellman would break the story.

  As with Gellman, Snowden informed Greenwald before they met that he wanted to go public. He said his primary motive for putting a face with the documents was to keep the government from harassing his family and placing undue pressure on his colleagues. Greenwald and Gellman’s articles appeared Thursday evening while Poitras was still shooting. The first 12 minutes of Poitras’ video footage aired three days later, the same day Snowden would chat with Gellman over the Internet. Interviews had continued non-stop for almost a full week.

  A little over 10 minutes of footage was all the people of Hong Kong needed in order to figure out where Edward Snowden was hiding.

  Chapter 3

  The Whistle Blows

  “Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”

  –Edward Snowden, online chat via The Guardian, June 17, 20131

  AT THE START OF THE DAY on Wednesday, June 5, Washington was met with a typical bill of fare. The day’s headlines included oil concerns, a vacant Senate seat, IRS corruption and military abuse allegations.2 Yet the White House, intelligence community, Capitol Hill, multinational corporations, civil liberty groups, China and the American populace were about to be treated to a five-day production by Glenn Greenwald. Its star had yet to be named, but cameos included a Pulitzer-winning journalist and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. By the time the sun crept over the horizon the following Monday, it would be one of the longest weekends in Washington’s recent memory.

  Behind the headlines the U.S. government was already in a mad scramble. Greenwald had been clever. He was aware the American government knew there was a leak, be it due to the The Washington Post having yet published anything relating to the Snowden files, the coincidental nature of Obama’s National Defense University speech or Snowden’s failure to return from sabbatical on June 4. (FBI agents had spoken to Kerri Jo Heim, the real estate agent overseeing the sale of Snowden’s former rent house, Wednesday morning.3) Knowing the White House would be bracing for the worst, Greenwald judiciously threw a vicious curve ball.

  It is obvious Greenwald was aware Snowden had contacted Gellman, because the adjoining Guardian/Post PRISM articles appeared within 20 minutes of one another.4 Since Greenwald now had documents in hand, the story was no longer exclusive. Yet he was in no rush; there was a reason the Post was sitting on the material. It was very likely the U.S. government was either dragging its feet validating the documents for the Post or it was explicitly blocking publication as it had with The New York Times in 2004. Greenwald knew this because he had already been denied comment from the White House, the NSA and the Department of Justice about another leak no one knew about.5 Washington promptly responded to what it considered the lesser of the two leaks because it was unable to fathom the scope of what was to come.

  Most novice journalists in Greenwald’s position would select the most condemning exposé to debut. The two award-winning journalists would later prove which document in their mutual possession was deemed the most jaw-dropping. But because Washington expected PRISM, Greenwald presented Verizon.

  On Wednesday, June 5, The Guardian published “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily.”6 Greenwald paints a small portion of a collage which his readers anxiously complete. His strategy is to suggest then goad his audience. For example, his title forces readers to immediately wonder, “If Verizon is doing this … ?” but as a safety later adds, “It is not known whether Verizon is the only cellphone provider to be targeted with such a[n] [court] order” and, almost as an aside, briefly alludes to AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth having been caught doing the same in 2006. Greenwald doesn’t need to bother exploring the mirror situations of Verizon’s competitors. His readers—but more importantly the press7—were quick to satiate their curiosity.

  With equal brevity, Greenwald highlights that the U.S. government’s bulk telecommunications (telecoms) data collection had been occurring since April 25 and was slated to end on July 19. This was the result of the FBI being given the authority by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to force Verizon to submit the information to the NSA. The classified FISC order informs the telecommunications provider it will submit “[a]ll call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”8 As he had with the AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth tip-off, Greenwald later includes, “It is also unclear from the leaked document whether the three-month order was a one-off, or the latest in a series of similar orders.” He then summarily proceeds to what is being recorded by the NSA, thereby nudging inquisitive readers to research the covert edict. Without having to devote a single word toward an answer, Greenwald let the world discover for itself that the three-month surveillance window was not a singular incidence. Consecutive extensions of 50 U.S.C. §1861 within Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act had been occurring since 2006. Greenwald left his audience to connect the political dots and let history unravel itself.

  In 2006 USA Today picked up where Risen and Lichtblau had left off five months prior.9 It questioned American telecoms’ role in wiretapping. Shortly after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush signed a top secret executive order permitting the NSA to wiretap without a warrant. His administration later justified the directive by arguing the process of obtaining warrants was too time-consuming. As a result of the Times article, the FISC ruled in 2007 that warrants must be obtained if an NSA-desired communication passes through an American network. The Bush administration bought itself time by rebutting with a stopgap that permitted the NSA to continue wiretapping. The stopgap expired in 2008. By then everything was in place. Five years later it would be revealed that the U.S. government had merely placated the public. It had restricted one clandestine order, thereby insinuating wiretapping had come to an end shortly thereafter, all while gradually implementing a covert clone directive. As with the executive order, the public wasn’t privy to these machinations because they had taken place behind closed doors before being classified as top secret.

  The NSA’s power underwent a paradigm shift after 9/11. It was granted access to information which it did not have legal right to act upon. Before, the NSA’s domestic domain was restricted to American embassies and missions. (The FBI deals with domestic issues, while the CIA contends with foreign matters of security.) After 9/11, it was allowed to eavesdrop upon foreigners, then permitted to involve itself in communications between foreigners and Americans, all before obtaining the carte blanche ability to wiretap anyone.

  The irony is that in 1975 the NSA was subject to a congressional investigation. The inquiry revealed that the agency had been intercepting domestic communications without a warrant since its creation in 1952. The NSA was found guilty of abusing its power after spying on peaceful antiwar protests and civil rights activists.10 The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was chartered in 1978 as a result. The representative secret court which was created to uphold the FISA laws and prohibit warrantless wiretapping was now rubberstamping one order after another. Americans had been watched by the NSA for almost 60 years.
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  Greenwald’s report is pithy. Aside from publishing the top secret four-page order alongside the story, he bluntly contrasts blanket collection to what most would consider sensible surveillance terms: an individual who is targeted due to reasonable suspicion. The FISC order does not require probable cause before search and seizure, thereby violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. Greenwald makes sure to raise even more eyebrows by noting that the law expressly forbids the telecom provider from publicly acknowledging the government directive or, in other words, Verizon was under a gag order, “It is further ordered that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order [ … ].” (Greenwald nevertheless sardonically reports Verizon refused to comment.) He continues to hit hard by outlining the linguistic dexterity involved in the controversial legislation. The data being collected is labeled “metadata” instead of “communications” because individual warrants must be issued before “communications” can be confiscated.