How America Lost Its Secrets
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CHAPTER 23 A Single Point of Failure
“the single point of failure”: Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax.’ ”
“Snowden thinks he is smart”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 285.
“The purpose of my [Hong Kong]”: Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
“This guy”: Ibid.
“It was a nervous period”: Ibid.
“I’m not going to”: Dave Boyer, “Obama on Snowden: ‘I’m Not Going to Be Scrambling Jets to Get a 29-Year-Old Hacker,’ ” Washington Times, June 27, 2013.
“huge strategic setback”: Harper, Kerbaj, and Shipman, “British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese.”
Adding insult to injury: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.”
CHAPTER 24 Off to Moscow
“They talk about Russia”: Bamford and De Chant, “Edward Snowden on Cyber Warfare.”
Before flying to Moscow: Stone, interview with author.
$1 million: Mike Fleming Jr., “Oliver Stone Buys Edward Snowden Russian Lawyer’s ‘Novel’ About Asylum-Seeking Whistleblower,” Deadline, June 10, 2014.
“I have been trying”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
“There is only one door”: Gotta, e-mail exchange with author.
“A special operation”: Gridasov, Yavlyansky, and Gorkovskaya, “Secret Services in Moscow with WikiLeaks Conducted Operation Snowden.”
“If they [the U.S. government]”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.”
Over a hundred reporters: Irina Galushka, interview with author.
A statement posted: “Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow,” https://WikiLeaks.org/Statement-from-Edward-Snowden-in.html.
Sarah Harrison, Snowden’s companion: Corbett, “How a Snowdenista Kept the NSA Leaker Hidden in a Moscow Airport.”
So either the rule: The maximum stay is listed on the hotel’s website, http://www.v-exp.ru/en/price/.
“It was a total vanishing act”: Piskunov, interview with author.
CHAPTER 25 Through the Looking Glass
“There’s definitely a deep state”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.”
according to Cherkashin: Cherkashin, interview with author.
Pelton had left the NSA: George E. Curry, “Ex-intelligence Expert Guilty of Espionage,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1986.
CHAPTER 26 The Handler
“As for [Snowden’s] communication”: Kucherena interview, Shevardnadze, “Snowden Believes He Did Everything Right.”
learned from a Russian researcher: Vassili Sonkine, interview with author.
When I had been investigating: Edward Jay Epstein, The Annals of Unsolved Crime (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2013), 209–40.
“I don’t know him”: Lugovoy, interview with author.
It was rare: The vast majority of the fifteen American defectors to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, including Joel Barr, Morris and Lona Cohen, Victor Hamilton, Edward Lee Howard, George Koval, Bernon Mitchell, William Martin, Isaiah Oggins, Alfred Sarant, Robert E. Webster, and Flora Wovschin, were involved in espionage. The remaining three, Harold M. Koch, a Catholic priest protesting the Vietnam War; Arnold Lockshin, a Communist Party organizer; and Lee Harvey Oswald, a U.S. marine, defected for idealistic principles. All were given asylum, and two, Webster and Oswald, redefected to the United States.
“It was totally bizarre”: Lokshina, interview with author. Also, “Meeting Edward Snowden,” Dispatches, July 13, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/12/dispatches-meeting-edward-snowden.
“I will be submitting”: “Statement by Edward Snowden,” July 12, 2013, https://WikiLeaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html.
“When I accepted the case”: Kucherena, interview with author.
Kucherena had personally approved: Shevardnadze, interview with author.
CHAPTER 27 Snowden’s Choices
Presidential Policy Directive 20: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 75.
to trace the theft: Michael Hayden, interview with author.
“For our enemies”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 294.
“I had a special level”: Snowden and Taylor, “Are You a Traitor?”
“You should remain anonymous”: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden Saga.”
He was also willing: Snowden and Taylor, “Are You a Traitor?”
“The mission’s already accomplished”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA Revelations, Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
CHAPTER 28 The Espionage Source
“The government’s investigation failed”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
“If I were providing information”: Transcript of interview with Snowden in Moscow, Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
Pelton, for example: Victor Cherkashin, interview with author.
“This debriefing could not”: Intelligence source who requested anonymity, interview with author.
Mike Rogers, the chairman: “Congressman Says Snowden Planned Escape to China,” UPI, June 16, 2013.
“a known unknown”: Donald Rumsfeld, press conference at NATO headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, June 6, 2002.
CHAPTER 29 The “War on Terror” After Snowden
“Because of a number”: Amy Davidson, “Don’t Blame Edward Snowden for the Paris Attacks,” New Yorker, Nov. 19, 2015.
On the evening of: David Gauthier-Villars, “Paris Attacks Show Cracks in France’s Counterterrorism Effort,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 23, 2015.
According to a declassified: Charlie Savage, “NSA Discloses Inspector General Report,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2016.
“the number one source”: “NSA Slides Explain the PRISM Data-Collection Program,” Washington Post, June 6, 2013.
according to the testimony: Ellen Nakashima, “Officials: Surveillance Programs Foiled More Than 50 Terrorist Plots,” Washington Post, June 18, 2013. Details of four of the plots were then released by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/50attacks.pdf.
Grand Central station: Mark Hosenball, “U.S. NSA Internet Spying Foiled Plot to Attack New York Subways: Sources,” Reuters, June 7, 2013.
provided the “critical lead”: Marshall Erwin, “Connecting the Dots,” U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Jan. 13, 2014,.
“I can tell you”: Rogers quoted in Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt, “NSA Surveillance Played Little Role in Foiling Terror Plots, Experts Say,” Guardian, June 12, 2013.
The third NSA program: Glenn Greenwald, “XKeyscore: NSA Tool Collects ‘Nearly Everything a User Does on the Internet,’ ” Guardian, July 31, 2013.
Further enabling furtive Internet: Appelbaum, “Edward Snowden Interview.”
These precise tips: Joseph Menn, “Exclusive: Secret Contract Tied NSA and Security Industry Pioneer,” Reuters, Dec. 20, 2013.
as Greenwald writes: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 2.
“We can’t penetrate”: Rebecca Savransky, “Head Prosecutor of Paris Attacks Encryption Program,” Hill, March 13, 2016.
“Terrorist organizations”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 294.
What further heightened Morell’s concern: Ibid., 315.
In addition, evidence: Milan Schreuer and Alissa J. Rubin, “Video Found in Belgium May Point to a Bigger Plot,” New York Times, Feb. 18, 2016.
“saw one after another”: Mary Louise Kelly, “NSA: Fallout from Snowden Leaks Isn’t Over, but Info Is Getting Old,” NPR, March 16, 2016.
“Have I lost capability”: Bill Gertz, “NSA Director: Snowden’s Leaks Helped Terrorists Avoid Tracking,” Washington Free Beacon, Feb. 24, 2015.
EPILOGUE The Snowden Effect
“Governments can reduce our dignity”: Edward Snowden, “Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity to That of Tagged Animals,” Guardian, May 3, 2016.
published in The New York Times: David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, “N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway into
Computers,” New York Times, Jan. 14, 2014.
“Snowden has compromised more”: McConnell interview, King, “Ex-NSA Chief Details Snowden’s Hiring at Agency, Booz Allen.”
a distrustful press: Pilkington and Watt, “NSA Surveillance Played Little Role in Foiling Terror Plots, Experts Say.” The first “expert” was Michael Dowling, a Denver-based attorney who acted as Zazi’s defense counsel. He said he had no access to the undisclosed basis of the government position because Zazi pleaded guilty in 2011. The second expert was David Davis, a British MP, who was in the shadow government of the Conservative Party. He resigned from the shadow government in June 2008, more than a year before the Zazi arrest. In any case, because the PRISM program was a closely held secret, he would not have had, and does not claim to have had, access to it.
Snowden speaks “truth to power”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.”
In a stunning video in Hong Kong on June 9, 2013, Edward Snowden admitted he stole NSA documents published earlier that week by The Guardian and The Washington Post. Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old employee of an outside contractor for the NSA, said that he took the documents to expose the NSA’s surveillance of U.S. citizens. Credit 1
Twenty-two days before Snowden’s video confession, the largest theft of American secrets in history had taken place at the pastoral-looking NSA base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. When I viewed it from the outside (above left, behind parking lot), it looked like little more than a grassy hillock, but it contained some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, including a road map to all its intelligence targets. Snowden copied hundreds of thousands of documents, including this road map, before he fled to Hong Kong. Credit 2
Snowden, using an alias, sent Barton Gellman secret NSA documents from Hong Kong fifteen days before he went public. He asked Gellman to write a story for the Post and put in it a cipher key to help prove his bona fides to an unnamed foreign mission. Gellman refused the request and did not go to Hong Kong but published the story. Credit 3
Snowden, using another alias, also sent the filmmaker Laura Poitras, right, and the blogger Glenn Greenwald NSA documents after Snowden arrived in Hong Kong on May 20. Poitras and Greenwald flew to Hong Kong to meet their anonymous source, who they discovered was Snowden. Credit 4
Snowden moved into the Mira hotel on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong on June 1 after spending eleven days in an undisclosed location arranged by a “carer.” He would later falsely tell Poitras and Gellman that he had been at the Mira since he arrived on May 20. It was not the only untruth he would tell them. Credit 5
Snowden took Poitras and Greenwald to room 1014 at the Mira on June 3. The glass partition separates the bedroom from the bath. Even though Snowden said he didn’t want “to be the story,” he allowed Poitras to film him for twenty hours during the next six days. In this cramped space, he let her film him revealing the contents of stolen NSA documents to her colleague Greenwald. This footage became the centerpiece of Poitras’s full-length documentary Citizenfour. Credit 6
General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, flew to the crime scene in Hawaii soon after the story by Poitras and Greenwald appeared. The damage assessment would take over a year to complete because more than one million documents from the NSA, the CIA, and the Department of Defense had been compromised by Snowden. Alexander resigned seven months later, concluding Snowden’s theft had done “irreversible and significant damage” to the United States and that “the [NSA] system did not work as it should have.” Credit 7
Vladimir Putin personally authorized Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, bragging about ordering Snowden’s exfiltration. Putin not only gave Snowden a safe haven in Russia but invited him to participate in one of his press conferences on Russian television. Credit 8
Snowden called Julian Assange of WikiLeaks for assistance from Hong Kong. Assange booked false flights for Snowden to divert Western intelligence. Credit 9
The Russian airline Aeroflot allowed Snowden to board its flight on June 23 without the necessary visa. When the flight landed in Moscow, he was taken off the plane by security officials in what was termed a “special operation.” From that moment on, he was in Russian hands. Credit 10
General Michael Hayden was CIA director when Snowden, then twenty-three, began his intelligence career. In 2007, Snowden was sent to Geneva as a junior CIA communications officer. His CIA career ended less than two years later, when he was caught tampering with a CIA computer system. After the general was briefed on the extent of Snowden’s theft, Hayden said, “I would lose all respect for the Russian and Chinese security services if they haven’t fully exploited everything Snowden had to give.” Credit 11
After leaving the CIA, Snowden was hired by Dell, an outside contractor for the NSA, and sent to work on computer issues at the Yokota base in Japan. While working as a system administrator there in 2010, he spotted a hole in the security system that would allow a disgruntled employee or spy to steal classified information. It was the same flaw he would use three years later to steal documents. Credit 12
Still working for Dell, Snowden moved to Hawaii, where he rented this house. It was no more than a ten-minute drive to the NSA base where he worked in a windowless structure eight hours a day with eighteen-year-old military employees of the NSA. It was here that he maneuvered to get greater access to secret documents. Credit 13
Snowden lived in Hawaii with twenty-seven-year-old Lindsay Mills, his girlfriend for six years. She described her life with him as an “emotional roller coaster.” Soon after arriving, she began pole dancing at a local bar. Credit 14
NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, had a position that Snowden sought in 2012. After three years in dead-end jobs at Dell in Japan and Hawaii, Snowden sought to advance himself by getting an executive position at the NSA itself. In the summer of 2012, he stole the answers to the NSA entrance exam and, with the answers, easily aced it. Even so, he didn’t get the NSA executive position. He continued working at Dell in Hawaii but grew progressively more disgruntled about the NSA. Credit 15
Jacob Appelbaum, called by Rolling Stone the “most dangerous man in cyberspace,” shared an interest with Snowden in promoting Tor software, which allowed hacktivists and others to hide their identities on the Internet. Aside from working at the NSA, Snowden was “moonlighting” by operating the largest server in Hawaii for this software. Snowden allowed Appelbaum to question him about NSA activities, along with Poitras, in mid-May 2013 while he was still at the NSA. Credit 16
Runa Sandvik was Appelbaum’s associate in promoting Tor software. She went to Hawaii in December 2012 to co-host with Snowden an anti-surveillance hackers’ gathering, an event called by hacktivists a CryptoParty. Although Snowden revealed to her his true identity, Sandvik did not disclose that she knew Snowden prior to his going public until nine months after he went to Russia. Credit 17
Snowden held his CryptoParty in BoxJelly in downtown Honolulu in December 2012. Here, he advocated measures designed to defeat NSA surveillance while working for the agency. He even invited selected NSA co-workers to attend, and some did. Whether or not any helped him, he couldn’t have committed his thefts in May 2013 without help, witting or unwitting. The owner of BoxJelly told me he had not been questioned by the FBI or anyone else about the CryptoParty. Credit 18
Anatoly Kucherena was appointed Snowden’s “legal representative” in Russia at Sheremetyevo International Airport outside Moscow on July 12, 2013. A man with connections in high places, Kucherena effectively blocked access to Snowden to all but a few foreigners. Because he served as the liaison between Snowden and Russian security services, he was in a unique position to answer a key outstanding question of the case: Did Snowden bring American secrets to Russia? The answer, as he confirmed to me, is yes. Credit 19
Snowden’s first appearance in Russia was in a cordoned-off lounge at the Moscow airport on July 12, 2013. Seated to his right is Sarah Harrison, the “ninja” Assange had sent to Hong Kong
to help him get to Russia; a government-supplied translator is on his left. No press was allowed into this Russian-style “press conference.” Snowden officially requested asylum. Credit 20
Anna Chapman, one of the “sleeper agents” planted by Russian intelligence in America after the Cold War ended, jokingly offered to marry Snowden. One objective of her sleeper network in America was to service a possible recruit in the NSA. The FBI arrested her in 2010 and sent her back to Russia. Credit 21
Left to right, the director Laura Poitras, the journalist-author Glenn Greenwald, and Snowden’s longtime girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, accept the best documentary feature Oscar for Citizenfour during the eighty-seventh Academy Awards. Capturing on film a true crime in progress, the transfer of state secrets, as Poitras did, is truly an extraordinary achievement. But the documentary, based on Snowden’s self-serving narrative, reinforced the myth that Snowden stole only documents that revealed the crimes of the U.S. government so as to give them to journalists. It neglects the reality that the vast majority of the documents he took, including military secrets, had nothing to do with the misdeeds of the government and were not given to journalists. Credit 22