years, until they had squeezed out of him whatever state secrets he
had. Because Snowden was rewarded with sanctuary, a residence, and
bodyguards, there is no reason to doubt that he refused to accommodate
his hosts. While he might continue to see himself as a whistleblower
on a supranational scale, as far as Russian intelligence was
concerned, he was an espionage source.
For an intelligence service, the game is not over when it obtains
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state secrets. It still needs to fog over the extent of its coup, as said
earlier, to prolong the value of the espionage. Hence it is likely that
the story that Snowden had thoroughly destroyed all the stolen
data in the month prior to departing for Russia, as well as the story
that he had turned down all requests to be questioned by the FSB
and other Russian intelligence officials, was part of the legend constructed
for him. The repetitions of these uncorroborated claims in
his press interviews might also have enhanced his public image for
the ACLU effort to get clemency for him. Even so, in view of the
importance of such communications intelligence to Russia, it would
be the height of naïveté for U.S. or British intelligence to accept such
claims as anything more than camouflage.
As for Snowden’s motive, I see no reason to doubt his explanation
that he stole NSA documents to expose its surveillance because
he believed that it was an illicit intrusion into the privacy of individuals.
Such disaffection is not a unique situation in the intelligence
business. Many of Russia’s worldwide espionage sources before
Snowden were also dissatisfied employees who had access to classified
secrets. Like some of them, Snowden used his privileged access
to reveal what he considered the improper activities of the organization
for which he worked. In that sense, I fully accept that he began
as a whistle- blower, not as a spy. It was also as a whistle- blower that
he contacted Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Barton Gellman,
who published the scoops he provided in Der Spiegel, The Guardian,
and The Washington Post.
Snowden’s penetration went beyond whistle- blowing, however.
In the vast number of files he copied were documents that contained
the NSA’s most sensitive sources and methods that had little if anything
to do with domestic surveillance or whistle- blowing.
Snowden could not have acted entirely alone. It will be recalled
that the deepest part of his penetration was during the five weeks
he worked at the National Threat Operations Center in Hawaii as
a contract employee of Booz Allen Hamilton. It was there that he
copied Level 3 files, including the so- called road map to the gaps
in American intelligence. During this period, Snowden had neither
the passwords nor the system administrator’s privileges that would
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allow him to copy, transfer, and steal the electronic files. He therefore
must have obtained that assistance from someone who had the
passwords and privileges. Other workers there might have shared
his sensibilities and antipathy toward NSA surveillance. It therefore
seems entirely plausible that he found a co- worker willing to
cooperate or, vice versa, a co- worker found him. Snowden might
not have been aware of his new accomplice’s true motives or affiliations,
but without some co- worker’s providing him with entry to
the sealed- off computers, he could not have carried out the penetration.
To our knowledge, whoever helped him evidently did not want
to expose himself to prosecution or defect from the NSA. That was
Snowden’s role. By accepting the sole blame in the video that Poitras
made about him in Hong Kong, Snowden shielded anyone else from
suspicion, which was, as he told Poitras, his purpose. Whoever helped
him may still be working at the NSA.
To be sure, there remains that other glaring gap in the chain of
events that led Snowden to Moscow: his whereabouts and activities
during his first eleven days in Hong Kong. Mike Rogers, the
chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, even suggested,
without any evidence, that Snowden might have been taken
to mainland China during this period. What drove his speculation
was the admission of U.S. intelligence that despite its vast global
resources for searching credit card charges, banking transactions,
hotel registrations, e- mails, police records, and even CCTV cameras,
neither it nor its allies were able to find a trace of Snowden during
that time. It was, in a phrase made famous by the former secretary
of defense Donald Rumsfeld, “a known unknown.” Just as likely he
could have been staying in a well- prepared safe house anywhere in
Hong Kong or even at the home of an unknown associate. All that is
really known is that soon after he emerged from this venue, moved
to the Mira hotel, and gave his celebrated interview to journalists, he
was safely settled in Russia.
Snowden’s actions appear squarely at odds with his assertions of
serving his country’s interests. Even accepting that he began with a
sincere desire to be a world- class whistle- blower, his mission evolved,
deliberately or not, into one that led him to disclose key communica-
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tions intelligence secrets to a foreign power with an agenda that is
hardly aligned with his country’s interests. A defector is defined in
the Cambridge English Dictionary as “a person who leaves his or her
own country or group to join an opposing one.” Snowden’s actions
fit that description. In the end, it is Snowden’s actions, not his words,
that matter.
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c h a p t e r 29
The “War on Terror” After Snowden
Because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of
hand- wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to
uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal
and other actions that make our ability collectively, internationally,
to find these terrorists much more challenging.
— cia director john brennan,
in response to the Paris terrorist attack, November 2015
On the evening of November 13, 2015, nine jihadist terrorists
acting on behalf of ISIS brought normal life in Paris to a
screeching halt. Three suicide bombers blew themselves up at the
stadium at Saint- Denis while President Hollande was inside attending
a match between France and Germany. Other terrorists that
night killed 130 people at cafés, restaurants, and a theater. Three
hundred and eighty- eight others were wounded in the carnage.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a twenty- eight- year- old Belgian citizen of
Moroccan origins who served ISIS as a logistics officer in Syria in
2014, planned the attack over many months with the help of others
in Syria. To organize it, they smuggled three suicide bombers into
Europe through Greece, raised financing, set up a base in the Molenbeek
section of Brussels, imported deactivated assault weapons from
Slovenia that were restored by a technician, bought ammunition,
acquired suicide vests, obtained “burner” cell phones, rented cars,
and, two months before the attack, rented three additional apartments
under fake identities to conceal the operation. Finally, in
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November, they made online bookings for quarters in Paris for the
nine attackers. Even though Abaaoud was well- known to Western
intelligence services, none of the communications surrounding the
preparations for the attack came to the attention of the NSA or its
allied services in Europe. A critical find for the investigators enabled
them to unravel the chain that eventually led them to the perpetrators,
but it had nothing to do with electronic surveillance. A cell
phone belonging to one of them was found by the security forces,
following a broad search they conducted, which included trash cans
situated in the vicinity of the concert halls. So this breakthrough in
the investigation had nothing to do with systematic data analysis
conducted prior to the attack.
Indeed, in the sequence of the Paris events, as in other terror
events, the challenge is not just bringing culprits to justice. It is preventing
the terrorists from carrying out their attack to begin with.
Police cannot constantly protect “soft targets” such as restaurants,
cafés, theaters, and street gatherings. The only practical means by
which a government can prevent such attacks is to learn in advance
their planning and preparations. One means of acquiring this information
is by listening in on the channels through which members
of loosely knit terrorist organizations, such as ISIS, communicate.
This form of intelligence gathering obviously works best so long
as the terrorists remain unaware that the communication channels
they are using are being monitored. Once they find out that their
messages and conversations are being intercepted, they will likely
find a safer means to communicate important information. For that
reason, communications intelligence organizations keep the sources
and methods they employ for monitoring these channels in a tightly
sealed envelope of secrecy.
Yet, in June 2013, the NSA found that envelope had been breached
by Snowden, who knowingly compromised three programs that it
used to keep track of terrorist organizations around the world. The
first system he divulged, and the one that received the most public
attention, was what the NSA called the “215” program because it
had been authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act of 2001. This
program compiled the billing records of every phone call made in
America. The data included the number called and the duration of
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the call but not the name of the caller. This anonymous data was
archived into a huge database. The idea was that when any foreigner
on the FBI’s watch list of terrorists called any number in the United
States, the FBI could trace that person’s entire chain of telephone
contacts to try to determine if he or she was connected to a known
terrorist cell. There was, however, a major flaw in this program: it
did not cover e- mail and other Internet messaging, which by 2013
had largely replaced telephone calls. In addition, terrorist organizations,
after the tracking down of Osama bin Laden in 2011, had
become fully aware of the vulnerability of telephoning overseas. So
although the NSA could cite a handful of early successes that “215”
yielded, Snowden’s exposure of it did only limited damage.
Snowden did vastly more damage by revealing the PRISM program,
also called “702” because it was authorized in 2008 by Section
702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Its effectiveness
proceeded from the misplaced confidence that terrorist organizations
in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan had in the encryption and
other safeguards used by giant Internet companies, such as Apple,
Google, Twitter, and WhatsApp. They evidently had not known
that in 2007 the NSA found a way to intercept this data before it
was encrypted. The Internet, despite metaphors such as “the cloud”
and “cyberspace,” initially travels through fiber cables, almost all of
which run through the United States and its Five Eyes allies. So by
2013 the NSA was able to access 91 percent of the Internet before
it was encrypted. This so- called upstream data included Google
searches, tweets on Twitter, social media postings, Skype conversations,
messages on Xbox Live, instant messages sent over WhatsApp,
and e- mails sent via the Internet. The NSA could also read concealed
messages in photographs and online game moves. According to a
declassified 2015 inspector general’s analysis, the actual interceptions
in this program in 2013 were mainly limited to the communications
of preselected foreign terrorists.
Until the Snowden breach was revealed on June 6, 2013, this program
gave U.S. intelligence a valuable tool for gathering unexpected
intelligence. Snowden must have been aware of how highly the NSA
valued this program because, according to the documents he released,
PRISM was “the number one source of raw intelligence used for
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NSA analytic reports.” From the continued use of these intercepted
channels by suspected terrorists on the NSA’s watch lists, it could
be reasonably assumed that these users were unaware of the NSA’s
capacity to intercept their messages on the unencrypted Internet.
Unlike the telephone program that Snowden revealed, the PRISM
program produced actionable intelligence until the time when
Snowden blew it. General Hayden, who was NSA director during
the three years following the 9/11 attack, wrote that these surveillance
powers, among other things, “uncovered illicit financing networks,
detected suspect travel, discovered ties to aviation schools,
linked transportation employees to associates of terrorists, drew
connections to the illicit purchases of arms, tied U.S. persons to Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, and discovered a suspect terrorist on the
no-fly list who was already in the United States.” More specifically,
just between 2007 and 2013, according to the testimony of NSA and
FBI officials, it resulted in the preempting of at least forty-five terrorist
attacks. Almost all of the thwarted attacks occurred outside
the jurisdiction of the United States, and therefore did not result in
U.S. prosecutions. One of the plots that targeted Americans was a
planned attack using high explosives on the subways in Grand Central
station and the Times Square station at rush hour in New York
City in 2009. It was averted after British intelligence supplied the
NSA with the e- mail address of the terrorist suspect Najibullah Zazi
in Aurora, Colorado. The PRISM surveillance program then traced it
to an IP address on the watch list associated with Rashid Rauf, an al-
Qaeda bomb maker in Pakistan. Zazi, evidently unaware that e- mails
sent via Yahoo! could be intercepted before they were encrypted
by Yahoo!, continued sending e- mails to Rauf as he prepared to
assemble the bombs in early September 2009. As a result, the NSA
search of its database yielded e- mails from Zazi discussing the proportions
of explosives to be used. These e- mails recovered through
the PRISM program, according to an analysis done for the Senate
Judiciary Committee in 2014, provided the “critical lead” that led to
the arrest of Zazi and his confederates before they could detonate
bombs in the subways of New York City. The members of the House
and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence had no doubt that the
702 program played a key role in aborting this plot they had been
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secretly briefed on in 2009. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate
Select Committee, pointed out with privileged knowledge that it
saved “subway cars stuffed to the gunwales with people”; Representative
Mike Rogers also spoke with privileged knowledge when he
said on June 9, 2013, referring to the 702 program, “I can tell you in
the Zazi case in New York, it’s exactly the program that was used.”
The third NSA program of interest to terrorists that Snowden
revealed was called XKeyscore. Using Internet data from PRISM, the
NSA had created the equivalent of digital fingerprints for suspected
foreign terrorists on watch lists. The “fingerprint” for each suspect
was based on his or her search pattern on the Internet. These algorithms
made it difficult for suspects to hide on the Internet by using
aliases. Once a suspect was “fingerprinted,” any attempt to evade
surveillance by using a different computer and another user name
would be detected by the XKeyscore algorithms. The “fingerprints”
only worked so long as XKeyscore remained secret from those on
the watch list. After Snowden exposed it, suspects could evade surveillance
by changing their search patterns when they changed their
aliases.
Further enabling furtive Internet users to evade the surveillance
of the government, Snowden offered specific tips about the secret
sources and methods used by both the NSA and the British GCHQ.
He revealed in a public interview, for example, that the GCHQ
had deployed the first “full- take” Internet interceptor that “snarfs
everything, in a rolling buffer to allow retroactive investigation
without missing a single bit.” When asked how to circumvent it,
he replied, “You should never route through or peer with the UK
under any circumstances. Their fibers are radioactive, and even the
Queen’s selfies to the pool boy get logged.” Aside from this warning
about using Internet providers whose wiring passes through Britain,
he also warned Internet users about trusting the encryption of any
U.S.- based Internet company because of their secret relationships
with the NSA. He added that the NSA considered “telecom collaborators
to be the jewels in their crown of omniscience.” He also gave a
warning about the attention the NSA was paying to “jihadi forums.”
He said that to avoid being automatically “targeted” by the NSA,
one needed to avoid them.
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These precise tips for evading U.S. and British surveillance were
not accidentally leaked. Snowden supplied them in written answers
to interrogatives sent to him by Poitras and Appelbaum in May
2013 while he was still on the NSA payroll. He also carefully orchestrated
the exposure of the PRISM surveillance programs, precisely
specifying, as Greenwald writes in his book No Place to Hide, who
was to release the “scoops” in which newspapers. He gave Gellman a
seventy- two- hour ultimatum for exposing PRISM, as we know. He
further provided Poitras with well- organized files for publications
revealing, among other things, that the NSA had paid RSA, a leading
computer security provider, to build flawed encryption protocols,
which allowed the NSA to read encrypted messages on computers
and online video games. In short, he used these journalists to accomplish
his purpose. In light of the way he micromanaged the leaks, it is
difficult to conclude that he did not deliberately plan to compromise
and render useless these U.S. and British operations.
Whatever he intended, he clearly succeeded in blowing the cover
off NSA’s operations authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act for monitoring terrorists’ activities. After all, terrorist
groups are no different from other criminal enterprises in their need
to keep their communications secret from the authorities pursuing
them. If they find out that the police are tapping their phone lines or
intercepting other channels of communication, they can be expected
to either stop using them or use them to divert attention away from
their real plans.
In addition, Snowden suggested an alternative means to those who
wanted to evade government surveillance. He recommended that
they use end- to- end encryption, which results in messages being
encrypted before they are sent over the Internet. He told Greenwald,
for example, that encryption was “critically necessary” for anyone
to evade NSA surveillance. Just as Robert Hanssen had deliberately
compromised the NSA’s interception of Soviet communications in
Washington, D.C., in the 1990s, Snowden deliberately compromised
the NSA’s interception of concealed messages by potential terrorists
on the Internet. We cannot know whether or not any of the jihadists
involved in subsequent terrorist attacks (such as those in Paris or
San Bernardino, California, in 2015) would have used the Internet
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or phone lines more freely if Snowden had not divulged the NSA’s
surveillance of them, but there can be little doubt that his breach
of the secrecy envelope had serious consequences for U.S., French,
and British intelligence. For example, François Molins, the former
head prosecutor of Paris, pointed out that after the Paris attacks the
French investigation had run into an obstacle: end- to- end encryption.
“We can’t penetrate into certain conversations,” he said about
“Telegram,” the end- to- end encryption program that Snowden had
repeatedly recommended, and as a result “we’re dealing with this
gigantic black hole, a dark zone where there are just so many dangerous
things going on.”
The effects of Snowden’s intervention were soon realized by the
CIA, according to Michael Morell, who had closely followed intelligence
about terrorist groups in the Middle East ever since he had
acted as the CIA’s briefer for the president on the day of the 9/11
attack. “Terrorist organizations around the world were already starting
to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed,”
Morell wrote in 2015. “Within weeks of the [Snowden] leaks, communications
sources dried up, tactics were changed.” Even more
disturbing, suspects on the CIA’s watch list began switching to an
“encryption platform.” Instead of continuing to rely on the Internet
to protect their messages, they increased their use of end- to- end
encryption, which defeated the effectiveness of PRISM’s capturing
Internet traffic before it was encrypted by Internet companies.
Indeed, after the Snowden breach, ISIS even provided a tutorial on
its websites about using end- to- end encryption. So Morell and others
at the CIA helplessly watched as this previous source of unexpected
intelligence went dark.
What further heightened Morell’s concern about this sudden loss
of NSA intelligence from these sources was the discovery by the
CIA in January 2014 of two documents, one 26 pages and the other
19 pages, on a captured ISIS computer in Syria. These documents
discussed the advantages of using bubonic plague germs and other
biological weapons against Western civilian populations. They even
provided a religious justification for using biological warfare against
civilian targets in the West. In addition, evidence uncovered from
the safe house used by the ISIS terrorists involved in the Paris attack
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suggested they had been interested in acquiring radioactive isotopes.
Without the advance warning that the NSA’s surveillance of the preencrypted
Internet had provided in the past, could the CIA now contend
with such unconventional threats?
The NSA also saw its sources disappearing from its surveillance.
Before the Snowden breach, the FBI, the CIA, and the DIA, which
were the NSA’s partners in the PRISM program, had compiled a
watch list of highly active foreign terrorist targets for the NSA’s
PRISM program. These “targets” included logistics officers, bomb
builders, weapons specialists, and suicide bomber recruiters. Until
June 6, 2013, many of these targets had frequently used Internet
services, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Xbox Live, to send what they
believed would be hidden messages. After the PRISM story broke
in The Washington Post on June 6, the NSA “saw one after another
target go dark,” according to a senior NSA executive involved in
that surveillance. The NSA has watched about one thousand of
these targets take “steps to remove themselves from our visibility.”
According to the NSA’s deputy director, Richard Ledgett, in 2016,
the vanishings included a group planning attacks in Europe and the
United States.
Admiral Rogers, the new NSA director, was asked about the damage
done by Snowden. He was blunt and direct. Asked in February
2015 whether or not the disclosures by Snowden had reduced the
NSA’s ability to pursue terrorists, he answered, “Have I lost capability
that we had prior to the revelations? Yes.”
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Epilogue
The Snowden Effect
Governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of
tagged animals.
— edward snowden, Moscow, 2016
The enormous effect that Snowden has had on America can
be divided into three categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good proceeds from the national conversation on the issue of
surveillance in 2013 that his disclosures ignited. There is no denying
that Snowden’s dramatic disclosures, despite the damage they did to
U.S. intelligence, accomplished a salutary service in alerting both the
public and the government to the potential danger of a surveillance
leviathan. The steady expansion of the NSA’s collection of telephone
billing records under the cloak of secrecy, for example, revealed a
bureaucratic mission creep that badly needed to be brought under
closer oversight by Congress. Snowden’s breach provided another
benefit. It pointed to the security dangers proceeding from the NSA’s
headlong rush to outsource its computer servicing to private contractors.
Opening this back door, as Snowden amply demonstrated,
greatly increased the risk that America’s secrets would fall into the
hands of its enemies. An intelligence service has little if any value if
it cannot keep secret its sources from its adversaries.
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The conversation that Snowden began is necessary for another
reason. The relentless growth of data- collection technology had
come to endanger personal privacy. Smart phones in our pockets,
GPS recorders in our cars, fitness bands on our wrists, CCTV monitors
in stores, and network- connected devices in our homes leave a
digital trail of every move we make. The government can subpoena
as part of an investigation, as we know, our personal data, including
our Internet searches, social media postings, electronic communications,
and credit card records. In addition, the government has its
own tools of surveillance. Snowden, by disclosing that the government
was vacuuming in phone billing records and Internet activities,
hit a sore spot in the public’s consciousness. How far did the
surveillance state extend? Did an Orwellian government intercept
private conversations of American citizens? Should Apple, Google,
and other Internet giants use a doomsday system of encryption to
prevent court- ordered searches for data? Were there adequate safeguards
against government snooping?
In popular culture, surveillance is often associated with the sinister
measures taken by a totalitarian government to suppress individual
dissidence. On television we see government agents in black
vans operating arrays of tape recorders, following people on the
street, and breaking into homes to steal files and tap telephone lines.
In the 2006 Academy Award– winning film The Lives of Others, for
example, East Germany’s Stasi police use listening devices to gather
information to blackmail intellectuals to assist in the eradication of
dissent. East Germany was not the only place in the Cold War era
using surveillance to suppress dissent. Even in the United States
in the 1950s and 1960s, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI bugged the phones
of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., to root out
suspected subversive elements. Most Americans viewed this as a
reprehensible use of government surveillance, and the very mention
of the word, even before Snowden’s disclosure, evoked disquiet
among the public. But what Snowden exposed was not any sort of
rogue operation but programs authorized by the president and Congress
and approved by fifteen federal judges. If one accepts that the
nation’s security remains a legitimate function of government, the
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issue is not surveillance itself; it is the proper way such surveillance
is conducted.
The NSA surveillance of telephone records that Snowden exposed
was different in its intent from the surveillance of the Cold War. Its
target was a selected list of 300 to 400 foreign jihadists living abroad.
Many of these individuals residing in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan had
been identified by the FBI and the CIA as active bomb makers, assassins,
and weapon specialists. This was not domestic surveillance, but
when any of these suspects telephoned a phone number in the United
States, the NSA checked the billing records of the domestic phone
number that had been called to determine all the calls emanating
from it. The purpose of this search was to assemble for the FBI a list
of contacts that a foreign suspect might have in the United States. To
expedite this task, it obtained from telephone companies the billing
records, without any names attached, of all their users and stored
them in a single archive under its control. While this surveillance
targeted foreign terrorists, not domestic dissent, the bulk collection
of phone records had the potential for more nefarious use, a danger
that Snowden brought to the public’s attention. As a result, Congress
modified the Patriot Act so that billing records would remain
on the computers of the phone companies for a limited time rather
than on those of the NSA. The NSA could still search them after
obtaining an order from the FISA court, though it could not archive
the data for future use, so little harm to individual privacy could be
done. Snowden deserves a large share of the credit not only for this
change but for making the public aware of domestic surveillance.
The bad part of the equation is that Snowden deeply damaged an
intelligence system that American presidents have relied on for over
six decades. The heart of that system was the sources and methods
used to intercept other nations’ communications. Until Snowden, the
NSA’s wall of secrecy kept these nations from knowing about them
or, in some cases, even realizing that they were vulnerable to interception.
For example, as previously discussed, the NSA had developed
the remarkable ability to tap into an adversary nation’s computers,
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even though they had been isolated from any network. This innovation
had provided President Obama and his national security team
an edge of which our adversaries were unaware from 2008 to 2013.
However, Snowden deliberately nullified this advantage in 2013 by
revealing this technology (which was published in The New York
Times and other newspapers). The vast number of documents that
he compromised contained many other secret sources and methods.
The full extent of the damage Snowden did may never be fully
known, even though the Department of Defense spent the better
part of a year, and tens of thousands of investigative man- hours,
trying to sort out just the compromised sources and methods pertaining
to military and cyber- defense operations. In addition to the
direct and significant cost to taxpayers represented by this investigation,
one measure of how serious the loss has been was revealed by
Michael McConnell, the vice- chairman of the company for which
Snowden had worked at the time of the breach. McConnell stated
publicly, “Snowden has compromised more capability than any spy
in U.S. history.” McConnell had no obvious reason to exaggerate the
loss because his company, Booz Allen Hamilton, was partly responsible
for the damage. It hired Snowden, as will be recalled, even after
its vetters had detected an untruthful statement in his application.
McConnell said, “This will have impact on our ability to do our
mission for the next twenty to thirty years.” By any measure, two
decades of lost intelligence is a steep price to pay.
To be sure, the practical value of peacetime intelligence about
the activities of adversary states is not always evident. What is far
clearer to the public is the value of intelligence that can thwart terrorist
attacks against subways, theaters, and other civilian targets.
We have seen that Snowden also deprived the NSA of much of the
effectiveness of its PRISM program by revealing it, through the articles
published at his specific behest in The Guardian and The Washington
Post that explained how it worked. This single revelation
compromised a system, duly authorized by Congress and the president,
that had been the government’s single most effective tool for
learning in advance about attacks in America and Europe by jihadist
terrorists.
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The ugly part of the equation is the rampant growth of the public’s
distrust of the institutions of government in America. According
to recent polls, 4 out of 5 Americans distrust the government.
Snowden did not create this new age of distrust, but his disclosures
greatly contributed to it, as well as to the worldwide distrust of the
U.S. government. This post- Snowden distrust is especially powerful
in the section of the international media that assisted Snowden in
his release of NSA documents. In defending Snowden, it questions
the truthfulness of any government official or member of Congress
who discloses information contradicting Snowden’s claims or showing
that there was some benefit to the multibillion- dollar intelligence
system that he compromised. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein,
who herself fought the secrecy of the CIA for years, was not exempt
from such distrust when she asserted in June 2013 that the program
that Snowden had compromised had helped avert a bloody carnage
on the New York subways in September 2009, as mentioned earlier.
That she was the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, and briefed on the program at the time of the attack,
did not prevent a distrustful press from attempting to impeach her
credibility and that of the fourteen other members of the Senate
Select Committee and the twenty members of the House Select
Committee on Intelligence who had affirmed her assertion.
In this culture of distrust, any claim that any of the secrets that
Snowden disclosed could have caused any harm is preemptively dismissed
as government propaganda. Snowden’s word also is taken
over that of government officials because, as The Nation explained,
Snowden speaks “truth to power.” Such a formulation of distrust
allows those who accept it to dismiss all assertions of government
officials representing power who contradict Snowden’s version of
reality. Such is Snowden’s glorified aura that even when his revelations
expose purported U.S. government actions in foreign lands,
including the alleged tapping of friendly government officials’ conversations,
such as Angela Merkel’s, these are implicitly conflated
with the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, around which a
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304 | how america lost its secrets
popular movement has emerged questioning its purpose and methods.
As a result, a legitimate debate on what should constitute our
domestic liberties— and potential limits to those when facing significant
security concerns— has largely obfuscated in this mind- set
the reality of Snowden’s weakening, durably and structurally, the
critical ability of the United States and its allies to address their
mounting external security challenges. In this culture of distrust,
whatever contradicts the innocent whistle- blower narrative can be
preemptively dismissed because Snowden, even though he remains
ensconced in Moscow at an unknown location, remains the ultimate
truth teller.
I do not accept either this formulation of Snowden or his version
of the events in which he was the hero. Opening a Pandora’s box of
government secrets is a dangerous undertaking. Whether Snowden’s
theft of state secrets proceeded from an idealistic attempt to right a
wrong, a narcissistic drive to obtain personal recognition, an intent to
weaken the foundations of the surveillance infrastructure in which
he worked, or a combination of such factors, by the time he arrived
in Moscow, it had evolved, deliberately or not, but necessarily, into
a mission of disclosing key national secrets to a foreign power. In
the end, such conjectures about Snowden’s motives matter less than
that he was helped, consciously or not, by others with interests that
differed from those of the United States. The effects on America of
such a massive breach of confidence might not easily be reversible.
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Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the many individuals who put their knowledge
and expertise at my disposal during the course of writing this
book. Unfortunately, I cannot give due credit to some of those people
to whom I owe the greatest debt in understanding the intelligence
issues, because they spoke to me on condition that I keep secret their
identities.
I greatly benefited from the insights, erudition, and criticisms provided
by those who read draft chapters at various stages of my investigation.
I am particularly indebted in this regard to Tobias Brown,
Rachelle Bergstein, Richard Bernstein, Sidney Blumenthal, David
Braunschvig, Ash Carter, Susana Duncan, Joe Finder, Ben Gerson,
Andrew Hacker, William Haseltine, Eli Jacobs, Bruce Kovner, Robert
Loomis, Gary Lucas, John Micklethwait, Frederick Mocatta, Andrew
Rosenberg, Curt Sawyer, Sean Wilentz, and Ezra Zilkha.
I am especially grateful to Harold Edgar, the Julius Silver Professor
in Law, Science, and Technology at Columbia Law School; and
to Jack Goldsmith, Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law
School, for sharing with me their legal perspective on the espionage
statutes and other legal issues.
I thank Edward Lucas of The Economist for recommending
Catherine A. FitzPatrick, a writer and translator at The Interpreter
magazine as someone who “posseses a unique knowledge of the labyrinthine
world of Russian disinformation.” She proved a godsend
for this book. With her deep understanding of the workings of the
Internet, she helped me retrieve information from the dark side of
the Internet that I would otherwise would not have found.
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306 | Acknowledgments
Because I do not believe an investigative book should be written
without the author visiting the crime scene and other pertinent venues,
I undertook research in Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, and Moscow.
Where possible, I flew the same flights that Snowden did. I am grateful
to Ena and Ines Talakic for their assistance on these research trips.
As talented documentarians in their own right, they filmed a number
of my interviews on these trips, and generously provided photographs
for this book. I thank Alexander Bitter in Hawaii, Joyce Xu
in Hong Kong, Ko Shoiya in Japan, and Zamir Gotta, Natalie Filkina,
and Svetlana Chervonnaya in Russia for their help in arranging my
interviews in those places. I also owe special thanks to Nick Grube,
an editor at Civil Beat in Honolulu, for accompanying me to the
NSA base where Snowden was working in 2013.
I am indebted to Nancy Novick for her skill, patience and enterprise
in helping me find the selection of photographs for this book.
I am grateful to Zachary Gresham for his meticulous fact- checking
and proofreading, and to Ingrid Sterner for her immensely helpful
copyediting skills. Because I perform all my own research, I alone am
responsible for any errors that appear in this book.
Mort Janklow, who has represented me for three decades, did a
superb job in arranging for Alfred A. Knopf to publish this book.
I am thankful to Julia Ringo and the team at Knopf for their help
in preparing this book. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Jonathan
Segal for meticulously editing this book. The manuscript gained
immeasurably from both his keen eye and his wise judgment.
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Notes
prologue Snowden’s Trail: Hong Kong, 2014
3 “No Such Agency”: The best description of the birth of the NSA can be found in
Bamford, Puzzle Palace, 1–4.
4 the NSA learned: General Keith Alexander, interview with author.
4 twelve-minute video: This video can be seen at http://www.theguardian.com
/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview
-video. All of the dozens of videos Snowden made after this initial one can be
viewed in chronological order at https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/snowden.html.
5 I had written several books: My book Inquest examined the failure of the FBI,
the Secret Service, and the CIA to establish the context of the John F. Kennedy
assassination. This interest continued in other books of mine, including Deception,
in which I investigated the vulnerability of intelligence services involved in
espionage during the Cold War, and Agency of Fear (New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1977), in which I explored intelligence failures of domestic intelligence in
the war on drugs.
5 extradite Trent Martin: The FBI press statement on this case was released
on March 27, 2013, less than two months before Snowden bought his ticket
for Hong Kong: https://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2013/australian
-research-analyst-extradited-on-insider-trading-charges.
6 “It’s very mysterious”: Hayden, interview with author.
6 My first surprise: I interviewed six members of the Mira staff, all of whom asked
me not to identify them. Te-Ping Chen, a journalist for the Asian edition of
The Wall Street Journal, received similar replies when she interviewed Mira
hotel employees the day Snowden left the Mira. Chen and Brown, “Snowden’s
Options for Refuge Narrow.”
6 to send Greenwald: Greenwald’s description of his encounters with Snowden
is taken mainly from chapter 1, “Contact,” and chapter 2, “Ten Days in Hong
Kong,” in Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 7–32.
7 Snowden also contacted: Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax.’ ”
7 He proposed we meet: Bradsher, interview with author. Bradsher wrote a number
of excellent articles about Snowden and Ho. See Bradsher, “Hasty Exit Started
with Pizza Inside a Hong Kong Hideout.”
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308 | Notes to pages 8–23
8 appointment with Robert Tibbo: Tibbo, interviews with author.
11–12 “angel descending”: Snowden, interview with Brian Williams, NBC, May 28,
2014.
chapter 1 Tinker
15 “It’s like the boiling frog”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
15 Lon Snowden, like his father: The best reporting on Snowden’s childhood was
done by Suzanne Andrews. See Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden
Saga.”
16 Brad Gunson, who knew Snowden: Carol D. Leonnig, Jenna Johnson, and Marc
Fisher, “Who Is Edward Snowden?,” Washington Post, June 15, 2013.
16 Snowden stayed home: Kinsey, interview with author.
16 Posting under the alias: Mullin, “NSA Leaker Ed Snowden’s Life on Ars
Technica.”
16 He even went to anime conventions: Christopher Johnson, “Chatting About
Japan with Snowden,” Japan Times, June 18, 2013.
17 “body fat percentage”: Leonnig, Johnson, and Fisher, “Who Is Edward Snowden?”
17 “I’ve always dreamed”: Mullin, “NSA Leaker Ed Snowden’s Life on Ars
Technica.”
17 Admiral Barrett: Coast Guard Biography, http://www.uscg.mil/history/people
/Flags/BarrettEBio.pdf. Also, for his FBI career, see http://www1.umn.edu
/humanrts/OathBetrayed/FBI%2047.pdf.
18 Army records show: Author interviews. The U.S. Army spokesman George
Wright stated Snowden was enrolled in the program between May 7, 2004,
and September 28, 2004. The spokesman Colonel David Patterson said, “He
attempted to qualify to become a Special Forces soldier but did not complete the
requisite training and was administratively discharged from the army.”
18 taking a job as a security guard: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden
Saga.”
19 “So sexxxy it hurts”: The information about Snowden’s modeling career comes
from his posts on Ars Technica. See Mullin, “NSA Leaker Ed Snowden’s Life on
Ars Technica.”
19 Jonathan Mills, Lindsay’s father: Daniel Bates, “Snowden Totally Abandoned His
Girlfriend When He Fled amid NSA Revelations, Her Dad Says,” Daily Mail,
Jan. 17, 2014. The information about Lindsay Mills comes from her Twitter and
Instagram postings.
19 The CIA’s minimum requirements in 2006: https://www.cia.gov/careers
/application-process.
chapter 2 Secret Agent
22 “It seems to me spies”: Snowden, interview with Williams.
23 team of information technologists: Former CIA officer who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
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Notes to pages 23–25 | 309
23 The only person: “Edward Snowden’s Friend Mavanee Anderson Exclusive
Interview,” Last Word, MSNBC, June 12, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=
beQUMdolBWE.
25 “was trying to break into”: Schmitt, “C.I.A. Warning on Snowden in ’09 Said to
Slip Through the Cracks.”
26 explained the discrepancy: Former CIA officer who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
26 “It was not a stellar”: Drumheller, interviews with author.
26 “e-mail spat”: Snowden was interviewed via the Internet by Risen, “Snowden
Says He Took No Secret Files to Russia.”
26 “totally incapable”: Snowden, interview with Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
27 “through the system”: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden Saga.”
chapter 3 Contractor
28 “Much of what I saw”: Greenwald, Poitras, and MacAskill, “Edward Snowden.”
30 This “free pass”: Tyler Drumheller, interview with author.
30 “So the guy with whom the CIA”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 284.
30 His initial job for Dell: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden Saga.”
31 Lindsay Mills: The information about Lindsay comes from her postings on Instagram
and her blog L’s Journey, https://twitter.com/lsjourneys. The information
about her and Snowden’s travel to Mount Fuji and other places in Japan
comes from the Little Red Ninja blog written by Jennie Chamberlin: https://www
.facebook.com/Little-Red-Ninja-214045021941347/timeline/.
32 working on a backup system: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden
Saga.”
32 most of the classified data: Source who requested anonymity, interview with
author.
32 spotted a major flaw: Snowden, interview with Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
32 “I actually recommended”: Ibid.
33 Snowden made a ten-day trip: Harris, “What Was Edward Snowden Doing in
India?” Also, Shilpa Phadnis, “Edward Snowden Sharpened His Hacking Skills
in Delhi,” Times of India, Dec. 4, 2013.
33 “It is a dead-end job”: Former Booz Allen official who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
33 shaded by a sakura: The description of Snowden’s life in Maryland comes entirely
from Lindsay Mills’s Internet postings. See L’s Journey.
34 The guest speaker was: Michael Hayden, interview with the author.
34 “They [the NSA] are intent”: Greenwald, Poitras, and MacAskill, “Edward
Snowden.”
34 “none of whom took any action”: Andrea Peterson, “Snowden: I Raised NSA
Concerns Internally over 10 Times Before Going Rogue,” Washington Post,
March 7, 2014. The NSA’s response came from the NSA spokesperson Vanee
Vines in an author interview.
35 U.S. Investigations Services: Dion Nissenbaum, “U.S. Gives New Contract to
Firm That Vetted NSA Leaker Edward Snowden,” Wall Street Journal, July 2,
2014.
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310 | Notes to pages 38–48
chapter 4 Thief
38 In Hawaii in 2012: Former Dell executive who requested anonymity because of
company policy restricting Dell employees from discussing the Snowden case,
interview with author.
38 “You’re in a vaulted space”: Transcript of interview with Snowden in Moscow.
Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
39 “Law is a lot like medicine”: David Weigel, “Edward Snowden and Ron Paul
Kick Off Libertarian Student Conference,” Bloomberg News, Feb. 13, 2015.
For Ron Paul’s position on “secret government,” see http://www.presstv.ir
/Detail/2015/06/02/413952/US-Ron-Paul-CIA-NSA-secret-government.
39 “The [American] government”: Arundhati Roy, “Edward Snowden Meets
Arundhati Roy and John Cusack,” Guardian, Nov. 28, 2015.
40 “fear and a false image”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
40 Snowden was fully aware: Snowden in Moscow, e-mail interview with James
Risen. Risen, “Snowden Says He Took No Secret Files to Russia.”
41 Physical Phatness: Lindsay Mills’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com
/lindsay.mills.90/about.
42 the first known document: Ledgett revealed this in an interview with Vanity Fair.
Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden Saga.”
42 “He stole the [NSA] test”: Snowden’s obtaining the NSA examination is
described by Michael McConnell. See King, “Ex-NSA Chief Details Snowden’s
Hiring at Agency, Booz Allen.” The extended video of the interview is at www
.wsj.com.
42 “It was totally unrealistic”: NSA executive who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
43 subsequently joking to a reporter: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
chapter 5 Crossing the Rubicon
44 “What I came to feel”: Snowden quoted in Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
44 “was moving copies of that data”: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden
Saga.”
45 he later pointed out: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
45 Ledgett subsequently reported: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden
Saga.”
45 This theft was made: Michael Hayden, interview with author.
46 “I crossed that line”: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden Saga.”
46 “We’re subverting our security”: Transcript of Snowden interview on PBS. James
Bamford and Tim De Chant, “Edward Snowden on Cyber Warfare,” Nova, Jan. 8,
2015, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/military/snowden-transcript.
46 bragged to James Risen: Risen, “Snowden Says He Took No Secret Files to
Russia.”
47 this counterculture is “tormented”: Shils, Torment of Secrecy.
47 “[The elites] know everything”: Roy, “Edward Snowden Meets Arundhati Roy
and John Cusack.”
47 “What do you think”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA Revelations,
Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
48 violate U.S. espionage laws: Michael Hayden, interview with author.
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Notes to pages 49–59 | 311
chapter 6 Hacktivist
49 the group Anonymous: Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, 1–8.
50 “My own forays”: Sue Halpern, “In the Depths of the Net,” New York Review of
Books, Oct. 8, 2015.
51 Silk Road, which acted: Holman W. Jenkins Jr., “The Anti-hero of Silk Road,”
Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2015. Also, Justice Department official who requested
anonymity, interview with author.
51 “Tor’s importance”: Hastings, “Julian Assange.” Also see Julian Assange, introduction
to Underground, by Suelette Dreyfus and Julian Assange (Edinburgh:
Canongate, 2012).
51 Tor was a creation: Fitzpatrick, Privacy for Me and Not for Thee, pt. 6.
52 “the state is all-powerful”: Fitzpatrick, introduction to ibid.
53 “Meet the Most Dangerous Man”: Appelbaum, interview with Rolling
Stone, “Meet the Most Dangerous Man in Cyberspace: The American Behind
WikiLeaks,” Rolling Stone, Dec. 2, 2010.
53 In Berlin, Appelbaum: Packer, “Holder of Secrets.”
54 she identified herself: Runa A. Sandvik, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites
/runasandvik/.
54 According to an anonymous: Andy Greenberg, “An NSA Coworker Remembers
the Real Edward Snowden,” Forbes, Dec. 16, 2013.
54 “Without Tor,” he later wrote: Twitter, https://twitter.com/snowden/status
/682257506018672640.
54 “Tor Stinks”: Sean Michael Kerner, “Snowden Leaks Show NSA Targets Tor,”
E Week, Oct. 4, 2013.
55 He would later tell Sandvik: Runa A. Sandvik, “What Edward Snowden Said at
the Nordic Media Festival,” Forbes, May 10, 2015.
55 According to Sandvik’s account: Sandvik did not reveal her encounter with
Snowden in any of her blogs until eleven months after Snowden went public in
June 2013. It was only after Greenwald disclosed in his book No Place to Hide
that Snowden used the alias Cincinnatus that Internet investigators discovered
he had hosted with Sandvik the CryptoParty. Sandvik then wrote her account of
it. See Sandvik, “That One Time I Threw a CryptoParty with Edward Snowden.”
Also, Kevin Poulsen, “Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in
Hawaii,” Wired, May 21, 2014.
56 owner of BoxJelly: Fujihira, interview with author.
57 “The idea was to spread”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 288.
58 “Snowden was not an NSA”: Former NSA executive who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
chapter 7 String Puller
59 “It wasn’t that they put”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA
Revelations, Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
59 He used the same alias: All of Snowden’s post-party activities in 2012 and 2013
come from the Twitter account of “Oahu Crypto Party.”
59 The journalist to whom: The description of Snowden’s attempts to contact
Green wald in December 2012 and January 2013 can be found in Greenwald, No
Place to Hide, 7–10.
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312 | Notes to pages 59–70
59 Greenwald had not always: Mark Memmott, “He Broke the NSA Leaks Story,
but Just Who Is Glenn Greenwald?,” NPR, June 11, 2013. For his part ownership
of the HJ website, see Dareh Gregorian, “Glenn Greenwald, Journalist Who
Broke Edward Snowden Story, Was Once Lawyer Sued over Porn Business,”
Daily News, June 26, 2013. Also, Jessica Testa, “How Glenn Greenwald Became
Glenn Greenwald,” BuzzFeed, June 26, 2013.
60 by “ordering illegal eavesdropping”: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 2. On Ron
Paul, see ibid., 24.
60 Freedom of the Press Foundation: Michael Calderone, “Freedom of the Press
Foundation Launches to Support WikiLeaks,” Huffington Post, Dec. 16, 2012.
60 “The first serious info war”: David Sarno, “ ‘Hacktivists’ Fight for Their Cause
Online,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 11, 2010.
61 “The US operates a sprawling”: Glenn Greenwald, “FBI’s Abuse of the Surveillance
State Is the Real Scandal Needing Investigation,” Guardian, Nov. 13, 2012.
62 Poitras had been diligently filming: Adan Salazar, “Mini Documentary Reveals
Full Extent of ‘Stellarwind’ Domestic Spy Program,” Infowars, Aug. 28, 2012.
62 Poitras had other impressive credentials: “Laura Poitras: Secret No Longer,” New
School News, Aug. 14, 2013.
63 “I didn’t. You chose yourself”: Snowden’s e-mails to Poitras were extracted from
her film Citizenfour and published in Wired. See Greenberg, “These Are the
Emails Snowden Sent to First Introduce His Epic NSA Leaks.”
63 he wrote to Micah Lee: Lee’s involvement with Snowden, although known to the
journalists Greenwald and Poitras since April 2013, was not revealed to the public
for some eighteen months. Lee, “Ed Snowden Taught Me to Smuggle Secrets
Past Incredible Danger.”
63 “I was at that point filming”: Poitras, interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy
Now, Jan. 15, 2015, http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/1/15/oscars
_2015_laura_poitras_film_on.
64 “At this stage”: Greenberg, “These Are the Emails Snowden Sent to First Introduce
His Epic NSA Leaks.”
65 surveillance of her communications: Glenn Greenwald, “U.S. Filmmaker Repeatedly
Detained at Border,” Salon, April 8, 2012.
65 “Kafkaesque government harassment”: Ben Child, “Citizenfour Director Laura
Poitras Sues US over ‘Kafkaesque Harassment,’ ” Guardian, July 14, 2015.
65 “more paranoid”: Snowden, interview with vanden Heuvel and Cohen,
“Snowden Speaks.”
66 “Is C4 a trap?”: Andy Greenberg, “Snowden’s Chronicler Reveals Her Own Life
Under Surveillance,” Wired, Feb. 4, 2016.
66 Stellarwind: Greenberg, “These Are the Emails Snowden Sent to First Introduce
His Epic NSA Leaks.”
67 “No one, not even”: Ibid.
68 under enormous stress: Greenberg, “Snowden’s Chronicler Reveals Her Own
Life Under Surveillance.”
69 he had Poitras write: “The Frontline Interviews,” “Barton Gellman,” PBS, March 7,
2014, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics
/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-barton-gellman/.
69 Poitras had requested help: Karen Greenberg, interview with the author.
70 Council on American-Islamic Relations: CAIR-NY Blog, “Glenn Greenwald
Speaks at CAIR-NY Annual Banquet,” May 16, 2013.
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Notes to pages 71–80 | 313
71 When they finally settled: The descriptions of the initial two meetings between
Greenwald and Poitras in April 2013 are provided in Greenwald’s 2014 book, No
Place to Hide, pp. 10-15.
chapter 8 Raider of the Inner Sanctum
73 “They think there’s a smoking gun”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
74 system for stratifying its data: Michael McConnell, interview with King, “Ex-
NSA Chief Details Snowden’s Hiring at Agency, Booz Allen.”
74 Snowden applied to Booz Allen: Booz Allen officer who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
5 “Snowden was an IT guy”: John R. Schindler, “Snowden Is a Fraud,” XX Committee,
June 12, 2015.
75 “get access to lists”: Lana Lam, “Post Reporter Lana Lam Tells of Her Journey
into the Secret World of Edward Snowden,” South China Morning Post, June 23,
2013.
75 “He targeted my company”: King, “Ex-NSA Chief Details Snowden’s Hiring at
Agency, Booz Allen.”
75 he would not have password access: Former NSA executive who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
75 engaged in a minor subterfuge: Hosenball, “NSA Contractor Hired Snowden
Despite Concerns About Resume Discrepancies.”
76 “playing with fire”: Spencer Ackerman and Ewen MacAskill, “Snowden Calls
for Whistleblower After Claims by New Pentagon Source,” Guardian, May 22,
2016.
76 establish a paper trail: Director of National Intelligence, IC on the Record (blog
on Tumblr), May 27, 2014, http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/87218708448
/edward-j-snowden-email-inquiry-to-the-nsa-office. Snowden response, in
“Edward Snowden Responds to Release of E-mail by U.S. Officials,” Washington
Post, May 29, 2014.
77 He returned on April 13: Lindsay Mills’s blog.
77 a brief medical leave: Former NSA executive who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
77 needed to get passwords: Stephen Braun, “NSA to Congress: Snowden Copied
Co-worker’s Password,” Military Times, Feb. 13, 2014.
78 software applications called spiders: David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, “Snowden
Used Low-Cost Tool to Best N.S.A.,” New York Times, Feb. 8, 2014.
78 Finally, Snowden had to: Former intelligence officer who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
78 These later acquisitions: The document can be seen in the National Security
Archives, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB436/docs/EBB-059.pdf.
chapter 9 Escape Artist
80 “I’m not self-destructive”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
80 “I took everything”: Edward Snowden and Peter Taylor, “Are You a Traitor?,”
transcript, Panorama, BBC, Oct. 15, 2015 (aired on BBC Oct. 10, 2015).
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314 | Notes to pages 80–96
80 At this point: Former DIA officer who requested anonymity, interview with
author.
80 He had visited Hong Kong: Lindsay Mills’s blog.
80 According to Albert Ho: Bradsher, “Hasty Exit Started with Pizza Inside a Hong
Kong Hideout.” Also, Keith Bradsher, interview with author.
81 for the next ten days: Former DIA officer who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
81 “his first priority”: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 43.
81 “That whole period”: Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
81 He e-mailed Gellman: Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax.’ ”
81 Gellman could not make: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 51–52.
82 more pressure on Gellman: Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax.’ ”
82 “I’ve been working on”: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 11.
83 Continuing his string pulling : Greenberg, “These Are the Emails Snowden Sent
to First Introduce His Epic NSA Leaks.”
83 asked Appelbaum to help: Appelbaum, “Edward Snowden Interview.”
84 Greenwald was awaiting: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 16–18.
85 Gibson authorized Greenwald’s trip: The description of The Guardian’s reaction
to Greenwald’s offer of a scoop was reported by Luke Harding, a Guardian
reporter commissioned to write The Snowden Files, a book that Oliver
Stone bought the film rights for from The Guardian for $700,000. See Harding,
Snowden Files, 100–115.
86 Snowden arranged for Micah Lee: Lee, “Ed Snowden Taught Me to Smuggle
Secrets Past Incredible Danger.”
chapter 10 Whistle-blower
88 “They elected me”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA Revelations,
Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
88 “I feel alone”: Lindsay Mills’s blog.
89 “so we don’t have a clue”: Greenberg, “These Are the Emails Snowden Sent to
First Introduce His Epic NSA Leaks.”
89 “On timing, regarding meeting”: The description of the meetings with Snowden
in Hong Kong, June 3–June 9, is taken from Poitras’s documentary Citizenfour.
The film can be found at https://thoughtmaybe.com/citizenfour/.
90 “The initial impression”: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 30.
90 “Minutes after meeting”: Packer, “Holder of Secrets.”
90 One possible reason: Snowden, interview with Williams; Bamford, “Edward
Snowden”; Jane Mayer, “Snowden Calls Russian-Spy Story ‘Absurd’ in Exclusive
Interview,” New Yorker, Jan. 21, 2014.
92 the Guardian policy required: Harding, Snowden Files, 114–16.
94 The next morning he: Packer, “Holder of Secrets.”
94 Tibbo and Man planned: Patrick Koehler, “The Hong Kong Layover in Snowden’s
Getaway,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 2016.
94 “I am in a safe house”: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 8.
95 The journalist chosen: Lam, “Post Reporter Lana Lam Tells of Her Journey into
the Secret World of Edward Snowden.”
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Notes to pages 98–109 | 315
96 “I was being tailed”: Corbett, “How a Snowdenista Kept the NSA Leaker Hidden
in a Moscow Airport.”
chapter 11 Enter Assange
98 “Thanks to Russia”: Julian Assange, “How ‘The Guardian’ Milked Edward
Snowden’s Story,” Newsweek, April 20, 2015.
98 Julian Assange had made: David Leigh and Luke Harding, “Julian Assange: The
Teen Hacker Who Became Insurgent in Information War,” Guardian, Jan. 30,
2011.
99 Sarah Harrison: Sarah Ellison, “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” Vanity Fair,
Oct. 2013.
99 Snowden telephoned Assange: Assange interview, in Giles Whittell, “Julian
Assange Unmasked,” Sunday Times (London), Aug. 29, 2015.
99 “Snowden told me they had abused Manning”: Michael Sontheimer, “Spiegel
Interview with Julian Assange,” Spiegel Online International, July 19, 2015.
100 Assange called Harrison: Corbett, “How a Snowdenista Kept the NSA Leaker
Hidden in a Moscow Airport.”
101 “We were working very hard”: Ibid.
101 U.S. government informed: Jane Perlez and Keith Bradsher, “China Said to Have
Made Call to Let Leaker Depart,” New York Times, June 23, 2013.
102 Tibbo wanted Snowden to remain: Tibbo, interview with author.
103 “The purpose of my mission”: Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
chapter 12 Fugitive
104 “If I end up in chains”: Snowden video on the Guardian site, June 17, 2013, www
.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/jul/17/edward-snowden-video-interview.
104 insert an encrypted key: Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax.’ ”
104 “I can’t help him evade”: Gellman quoted in Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews,
“Snowden Saga.”
105 asked Fidel Narváez: Juan Forero, “Ecuador’s Strange Journey from Embracing
Snowden to Turning Him Away,” Washington Post, July 2, 2013.
106 “My only comment”: Lam, “Post Reporter Lana Lam Tells of Her Journey into
the Secret World of Edward Snowden.”
106 his passage through: Perlez and Bradsher, “China Said to Have Made Call to Let
Leaker Depart.”
107 Snowden first met Harrison: Corbett, “How a Snowdenista Kept the NSA Leaker
Hidden in a Moscow Airport.”
107 Assange continued creating: Assange interview, in Whittell, “Julian Assange
Unmasked.”
108 “Anyone in a three-mile radius”: Corbett, “How a Snowdenista Kept the NSA
Leaker Hidden in a Moscow Airport.”
108 $20,000 fee: Station KGUN9, “Documents: Snowden Paid 20K for UA Skype
Talk,” ABC 15 Arizona, April 1, 2016, //www.abc15.com/news/region-central
-southern-az/tucson/documents-snowden-paid-20k-for-ua-skype-talk.
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316 | Notes to pages 113–121
109 first live interview in Moscow: Snowden met with James Bamford, the author
of the 1982 book The Puzzle Palace, in Moscow in June 2014. Bamford, “Edward
Snowden.”
chapter 13 The Great Divide
113 “That moral decision”: Edward Snowden, statement, http://wikileaks/statement
-from-Edward-Snowden.
114 “Sitting on his unmade bed”: Packer, “Holder of Secrets.”
114 This powerful narrative: See Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 248–54; Snowden,
interview with Williams.
114 “There was no question”: Emily Bell, “Snowden Interview: Why the Media Isn’t
Doing Its Job,” Columbia Journalism Review, May 10, 2016.
115 When two NSA analysts: “Claim US Spy Caught with Secrets,” Los Angeles
Mirror, Aug. 2, 1960, 1. Also see Rick Anderson, “Before Edward Snowden,”
Salon, July 1, 2013.
115 “man up”: Interview with John Kerry, CBS This Morning, May 28, 2014.
115 By the Lawfare Institute’s count: https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden
-revelations.
116 British cyber service GCHQ: RT television report, “NSA, GCHQ Targeted
Kaspersky, Other Cyber Security Companies,” June 22, 2015, http://www.rt.com
/usa/268891-nsa-gchq-software-kaspersky/.
116 six government employees: Matt Apuzzo, “C.I.A. Officer Is Found Guilty in Leak
Tied to Times Reporter,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 2015. The notable exception
to the policy of seeking imprisonment of intelligence workers found guilty of
passing classified information to journalists is the extraordinary case of the ex-
CIA director General David Petraeus. Petraeus had given classified information
from his personal notebooks to his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.
Although none of this information appeared in her 2012 biography, All In: The
Education of Davis Petraeus, he had violated his oath to protect this information.
Yet in a 2014 deal with the Justice Department, Petraeus was allowed to
plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and sentenced to two years’ probation and
a $100,000 fine. See Eli Lake, “Petraeus, Justice, and Washington’s Culture of
Leaks,” Bloomberg View, March 4, 2015.
117 he posted about it: Snowden wrote in chat rooms on the Ars Technica site
between May 2001 and May 2012. His posts are quoted by Mullin, “NSA Leaker
Ed Snowden’s Life on Ars Technica.”
117 “an act of civil disobedience”: Mayer, “Snowden Calls Russian-Spy Story
‘Absurd’ in Exclusive Interview.”
117 Ben Wizner, a lawyer: Wizner called his representation of Snowden the “work of
a lifetime.” Hill, “How ACLU Lawyer Ben Wizner Became Snowden’s Lawyer.”
118 “We’ve crossed lines”: Snowden quoted by Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
119 “Snowden a whistleblower”: Cheryl Arvidson, “Distrust of Government Apparent
in Snowden Case,” Leader’s Edge, Oct. 2013.
119 “they can trust”: “Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government,”
Pew Research Center, Nov. 23, 2015.
119 “Thanks to one man’s”: Rebecca Shabad, “Former Rep. Ron Paul Launches Petition
for Snowden Clemency,” Hill, Feb. 13, 2014.
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Notes to pages 121–129 | 317
119 his son Senator Rand Paul: See Katie Glueck, “Rand Paul Backs Snowden, Bashes
Clapper,” Politico, Jan. 5, 2014.
119 “We actually buy cell phones”: Snowden quoted in “New The Guardian Interview
with Edward Snowden,” Guardian, July 17, 2014, https://www.theguardian
.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-interview
-transcript.
121 Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Edward Jay Epstein, “What Really Happened to
Strauss-Kahn,” New York Review of Books, Dec. 22, 2011. Vance made his statement
on the Charlie Rose show, Feb. 19, 2016.
121 Apple made headlines: Mike Isaac, “Apple Still Holds the Keys to Its Cloud Service,
but Reluctantly,” New York Times, Feb. 21, 2016.
121 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Newt Gingrich, “A Government Snoop
That Puts the NSA to Shame,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2015.
122 the FISA court: http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/courts_special_fisc
.html.
123 “His approach was”: Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, “For NSA Chief, Terrorist
Threat Drives Passion to ‘Collect It All,’ ” Washington Post, July 14, 2013.
123 Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: Charlie Savage and Jonathan Weisman,
“N.S.A. Collection of Bulk Data Is Ruled Illegal,” New York Times, May 5, 2015.
This court decision was stayed three months later on August 27, 2015, by a
three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals on procedural grounds. By this
time, however, the legal issue was rendered moot by Congress. See http://law
.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/2015/.
124 knowledge of the service providers: Timothy B. Lee, “Here’s Everything We
Know About PRISM to Date,” Washington Post, June 12, 2013.
125 “Edward Snowden is not the ‘whistleblower’ ”: Nicole Mulvaney, “NSA Director
Adm. Michael Rogers Discusses Freedom, Privacy, and Security Issues at Princeton
University,” NJ.com, March 14, 2015.
126 “Snowden stole from the United States”: Mark Hosenball, “U.S. Spy Agency
Targets Changed Behavior After Snowden,” Reuters, May 12, 2014.
126 “The vast majority”: “Snowden Leak Could Cost Military Billions: Pentagon,”
NBC News, March 6, 2014.
126 “over 900,000” military files: The document was obtained via a Freedom of
Information request by Vice. See Leopold, “Inside Washington’s Quest to Bring
Down Edward Snowden.”
126 “has caused grave damage”: Hearings Before Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
Jan. 27, 2014. See http://www.dia.mil/News/SpeechesandTestimonies
/ArticleView/tabid/11449/Article/567078/dia-director-flynn-unauthorized
-disclosures-have-caused-grave-damage-to-our-nat.aspx.
126 The CIA’s assessment: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 298.
127 “the greatest damage”: Transcript of interview with General Keith Alexander,
Australian Financial Review, May 8, 2014, http://www.afr.com/technology/web
/security/interview-transcriptformer-head-of-the-nsa-and-commander-of-the
-us-cyber-command-general-keith-alexander-20140507-itzhw#ixzz3m6TkuRa1.
127 “I don’t look at this”: Jeremy Herb and Justin Sink, “Sen. Feinstein Calls Snowden’s
NSA Leaks an ‘Act of Treason,’ ” Hill, June 6, 2013.
128 duck-rabbit cartoon: Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psychology, 202–4.
128 “I haven’t shot anybody”: Mark McClish, “The Last Words of Lee Harvey
Oswald,” Statement Analysis, Jan. 3, 2013, http://www.statementanalysis.com
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318 | Notes to pages 130–141
/lee-harvey-oswald/. Like Snowden, Oswald was a high school dropout from
a broken family who joined an elite unit of the U.S. military but failed to get
an honorable discharge, became hostile to policies of the U.S. government, and
defected to Russia. See Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey
Oswald (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), 64–104.
129 Clapper answered that: The transcript was published by The Washington Post,
Jan. 29, 2014. For Clapper’s earlier closed-door testimony, see Steven Aftergood,
“The Clapper ‘Lie’ and the Senate Intelligence Committee,” FAS, Jan. 6, 2014.
130 On his application to Booz Allen: Hosenball, “NSA Contractor Hired Snowden
Despite Concerns About Resume Discrepancies.”
130 in contacting Laura Poitras: Greenberg, “These Are the Emails Snowden Sent to
First Introduce His Epic NSA Leaks.”
130 “read” in the news reports: Snowden Q&A, Moscow, July 12, 2013, https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=yNQSVurlAak.
131 “Consul General–Hong Kong”: James Gordon Meek et al., “NSA Leaker Edward
Snowden Seeks Asylum in Ecuador,” ABC News, June 23, 2013.
131 “had an enormous interest”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 284.
131 the Enigma machines: Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma, 286–94.
chapter 14 The Crime Scene Investigation
133 “Any private contractor”: Snowden, interview with Williams.
133 Fifteen miles northwest: U.S. Navy Information Operations Command, “History
of NIOC Hawaii,” http://www.public.navy.mil/fcc-c10f/niochi/Pages/AboutUs
.aspx.
134 General Alexander: Alexander, interview with author.
134 The NSA had also notified: Former NSA executive who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
136 NSA did not immediately share: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 283–88.
136 briefed by the NSA: See “Unclassified Declaration of David G. Leatherwood,”
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Case 1:10-cv-02119-RMC
Document 63-8 Filed 04/26/13, https://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/shaffer/042613
-leather.pdf.
137 By late July: Former intelligence executive familiar with the initial investigation
who requested anonymity, interview with author.
137 According to Ledgett: Tabassum Zakaria and Warren Strobel, “After ‘Cataclysmic’
Snowden Affair, NSA Faces Winds of Change,” Reuters, Dec. 13, 2013.
138 “Something is not right”: Transcript of interview with Alexander, Australian
Financial Review, May 8, 2014.
138 This discovery came: “Glenn Greenwald’s Partner Detained at Heathrow Airport
for Nine Hours,” Guardian, Aug. 18, 2013.
139 downloading documents: Ledgett was interviewed in this timeline by Bryan Burrough.
See Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden Saga.”
139 the chronology: NSA executive who requested anonymity, interview with author.
140 “millions of records”: Snowden interview, German NDR TV, Jan. 26, 2014,
http://www.tagesschau.de/snowden-interview-englisch100.pdf.
140 The FBI could assume: Former Justice Department official with knowledge of the
Snowden case who requested anonymity, interview with author.
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Notes to pages 141–159 | 319
141 “I’m in exile”: Former member of the national security staff who cited State
Department records, interview with author. Also, Jen Psaki, the State Department
spokeswoman, told AP, “As is routine and consistent with US regulations, persons
with felony arrest warrants are subject to having their passport revoked.”
That arrest warrant was issued on June 14, 2013. The State Department Operations
Center alert said “Snowden’s U.S. passport was revoked on June 22, 2013,”
after the Justice Department unsealed the charges that had been filed in the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on June 14, 2013. “The Consul
General in Hong Kong confirmed Hong Kong authorities were notified that Mr.
Snowden’s passport was revoked on June 22,” according to the State Department’s
senior watch officer.
142 had met nearly every day: Miller, “U.S. Officials Scrambled to Nab Snowden.”
142 Putin admitted: Interview, Channel One, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president
/news/19143.
143 “Vladimir Putin had personally approved”: Jennifer Martinez, “Report: Snowden’s
US Passport Revoked,” Hill, June 23, 2013.
chapter 15 Did Snowden Act Alone?
146 “When you look at the totality”: Hayden, interview with author. Also, “Hayden
Interview,” Meet the Press, NBC-TV, Dec. 15, 2013.
146 whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld: David Kocieniewski, “Whistle-Blower
Awarded $104 Million by I.R.S.,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 2012.
147 whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg: Martin Arnold, “Pentagon Papers Charges Are
Dismissed,” New York Times, May 11, 1973.
147 FBI office in Media: Mark Mazzetti, “Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon
Shadows,” New York Times, Jan. 7, 2014.
147 “treasure trove”: Andrew, The Sword and the Shield, 206.
150 “It is inconceivable to me”: Former Booz Allen executive who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
152 we know that Snowden: Sandvik, “That One Time I Threw a CryptoParty with
Edward Snowden.”
152 The FBI, which was: Senate Intelligence Committee staff member who requested
anonymity, interview with author.
153 “Snowden may have carried out”: Drumheller, interview with author.
153 As Snowden acknowledges: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
154 “absence of evidence”: Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), 49.
154 “The greatest trick”: Cherkashin, interview with author. The quotation from The
Usual Suspects was adopted by the movie from Charles Baudelaire’s observation
“La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.”
chapter 16 The Question of When
156 “The NSA was actually”: Bamford and De Chant, “Edward Snowden on Cyber
Warfare.”
156 The career of the KGB mole: Bagley, Spy Wars, 46.
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320 | Notes to pages 159–171
157 A counterespionage review: Member of the PFIAB who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
157 “in that they both used”: Kevin Gosztola, “NSA Inspector General Speaks on
Snowden for First Time,” Shadow Proof, Feb. 25, 2014.
157 KGB major Anatoliy Golitsyn: Bagley, Spy Wars, 6–11.
158 Wang Lijun: Steven Lee Myers and Mark Landler, “Frenzied Hours for U.S. on
Fate of a China Insider,” New York Times, April 17, 2012.
159 “I think Snowden is”: Vincent Kessler, “Snowden Being Manipulated by Russian
Intelligence: Ex-NSA Chief,” Reuters, May 7, 2014.
160 A former CIA officer: Tyler Drumheller, interview with author.
161 “It is not statistically improbable”: Former NSA officer who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
162 “when and how he”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 296.
163 “looking to capitalize on”: Transcript of interview with Alexander, Australian
Financial Review, May 8, 2014.
164 “He can compromise thousands”: Carol J. Williams, “NSA Leaker Edward
Snowden Seeks Return to U.S. on His Terms,” Los Angeles Times, July 22,
2015.
165 “I am still working”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA Revelations,
Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
165 “every facet of Snowden’s communications”: Reitman, “Snowden and
Green wald.”
165 “his hosts”: Richard Byrne Reilly, “Former KGB General: Snowden Is Cooperating
with Russian Intelligence,” VentureBeat, May 22, 2014.
165 “I would lose all respect”: Richard Byrne Reilly, “Former NSA Director: ‘I
Would Lose All Respect for Russia if They Haven’t Fully Exploited Snowden,”
VentureBeat, May 23, 2014.
166 He was put in contact: Kucherena, interview with Der Spiegel, “Snowden’s Lawyer:
‘Russia Will Not Hand Him Over,’ ” Spiegel Online International, June 24,
2013.
166 “Officially, he is my client”: “Snowden in the Kitchen,” Interpreter, Nov. 18,
2013.
167 an interview as “great”: Bamford and De Chant, “Edward Snowden on Cyber
Warfare.”
167 Putin’s telethon: Elias Groll, “Snowden Called in to Putin’s Telethon. Does That
Really Make Him a Kremlin Pawn?,” Foreign Policy, April 17, 2014.
chapter 17 The Keys to the Kingdom Are Missing
168 “There’s a zero percent chance”: Risen, “Snowden Says He Took No Secret Files
to Russia.”
168 “the instruction manual”: Glenn Greenwald, “ ‘Guardian’ Journalist: Snowden
Docs Contain NSA ‘Blueprint,’ ” USA Today, June 15, 2013.
168 a heart attack: Citizenfour.
168 “keys to the kingdom”: Walter Pincus, “Snowden Still Holding ‘Keys to the
Kingdom,’ ” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2013. Also, Ledgett interview, 60 Minutes,
CBS, Dec. 15, 2013.
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Notes to pages 171–184 | 321
169 “touched” documents: Former NSA official who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
169 more than half the documents: Staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee
who requested anonymity, interview with author.
170 Snowden also disputed: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
170 via a Vice magazine: Leopold, “Inside Washington’s Quest to Bring Down Edward
Snowden.”
171 previously cited road map: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden Saga.”
171 The compartment logs showed: Former NSA official who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
171 “No intelligence service”: Glenn Greenwald, “Email Exchange Between Edward
Snowden and Former GOP Senator Gordon Humphrey,” Guardian, July 16, 2013.
171 An answer soon came: Sophie Shevardnadze, “ ‘Snowden Believes He Did
Everything Right’: Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena,” SophieCo, RT television, Sept. 23,
2013, //www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/snowden-russia-lawyer-kucherena-214/.
172 “all the reports”: Kucherena, interview with author.
173 Russian cyber service: Former member of the staff of the national security
adviser who requested anonymity, interview with author.
174 State Department explicitly told: Ibid.
175 “I had spent ten years”: Hill, “How ACLU Attorney Ben Wizner Became
Snowden’s Lawyer.”
176 In the case of Stone’s movie: Irina Alexsander, “Edward Snowden’s Long, Strange
Journey to Hollywood,” New York Times Magazine, Sept. 4, 2016.
176 “I went the first six months”: Bell, “Edward Snowden Interview.”
176 “There’s nothing on it”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA
Revelations, Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
176–177 former CIA officer Ray McGovern: Mark Hosenball, “Laptops Snowden
Took to Hong Kong, Russia Were a ‘Diversion,’ ” Reuters, Oct. 11, 2013.
177 “break my fingers”: Snowden, interview with Williams. See also Burrough, Ellison,
and Andrews, “Snowden Saga,” and Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
178 “said they believed that”: Perlez and Bradsher, “China Said to Have Made Call to
Let Leaker Depart.”
178 “Both the Chinese and the Russians”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 284.
179 “What I can say”: Snowden interview, ARD-TV, Jan. 26, 2014, https://docs
.google.com/file/d/0B95Id3j0M0lrdDA5WIZd11Ubjg/preview.
179 She urgently texted Snowden: Citizenfour.
180 Poitras’s co-interrogator: Appelbaum, “Edward Snowden Interview.”
180 there was no document: Former NSA official who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
180 He reported that no: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
181 another person in the NSA: Ibid.
181 Greenwald suggested to the New York Times: Jo Becker, Steven Erlanger and Eric
Schmitt, “How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveal’s the West’s
Secrets, “ New York Times, Sept. 1, 2016.
181 Greenwald and Poitras: “Snowden Leak: Israeli Commandos Killed Syrian General
at Dinner Party,” Jerusalem Post, July 16, 2015.
182 Specifically, it disclosed: Cora Currier and Henrik Moltke, “Spies in the Sky,”
Intercept, Jan. 28, 2016.
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322 | Notes to pages 185–199
182 Putin had publicly enjoined him: Interview, Channel One, http://en.kremlin
.ru/events/president/news/19143. Also, former Russian intelligence officer who
requested anonymity, interview with author.
183 “If Snowden didn’t give”: Former NSA official who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
183 German federal prosecutor: Theodore Schleifer, “Germany Drops Probe into U.S.
Spying on Merkel,” CNN Politics, June 13, 2015.
184 “Russian planners might have”: Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes, and Siobhan
Gorman, “U.S. Scurries to Shore Up Spying on Russia,” Wall Street Journal,
March 24, 2014.
184 Britain also discovered: Tom Harper, Richard Kerbaj, and Tim Shipman, “British
Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese,” Sunday Times (London), June 14, 2015.
184 “losing some of its capabilities”: Chris Strohm and Gopal Ratnam, “NSA Leader
Seeks Openness on Secret Surveillance Orders,” Bloomberg News, June 13, 2013.
Also, staff member of National Security Council who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
chapter 18 The Unheeded Warning
185 “The NSA—the world’s”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 287.
185 Alexander Poteyev: Sergei L. Loiko, “Former Russian Spymaster Convicted of
Treason,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2011.
186 “live under cover in the West”: Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of
an Unwanted Witness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), xxii.
186 The CIA learned of this: Former NSA official who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
187 “the business of intelligence”: Angleton, interview with author.
187 preparing these “Americans”: FBI, “Operation Ghost Stories: Inside the Russian
Spy Case,” Oct. 31, 2011, https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/october
/russian_103111/russian_103111.
188 NSA at Fort Meade: Gertz, “Counterspies Hunt Russian Mole Inside National
Security Agency.” Also, Bill Gertz, interview with author.
188 “They [were] looking for one”: John R. Schindler, “The Painful Truth About
Snowden,” XX Committee, http://20committee.com/2015/07/19/the-painful
-truth-about-snowden/.
188 “insider threats by trusted insiders”: Gellman and Miller, “ ‘Black Budget’ Summary
Details U.S. Spy Network’s Successes, Failures, and Objectives.”
189 The preemptive arrests: Gregory L. White, “Russia Convicts Former Spy Official
for Exposing Agents in U.S. Ring,” Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2011.
189 turned up no evidence: Former NSA executive who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
190 “broke the record”: Tennent H. Bagley, Spymaster (New York: Skyhorse, 2015), 3.
190 Russia had dispatched: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 450–51. Also, Walter Pincus,
“CIA Passed Bogus News to Presidents,” Washington Post, Oct. 31, 1995.
190 “There are no rivers”: Baker, “Michael Hayden Says U.S. Is Easy Prey for
Hackers.”
191 “The best defense”: Former NSA official who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
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chapter 19 The Rise of the NSA
Notes to pages 199–214 | 323
195 “There are many things”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA
Revelations, Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
196 By 1914, the U.S. Army: National Security Agency, Pearl Harbor Review: The
Black Chamber, NSA, 2009, https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage
/center_cryptologic_history/pearl_harbor_review/black_chamber.shtml.
196 “Its far-seeking eyes”: Kahn, Codebreakers, 358.
198 The NSA also organized: Woodward, Veil, 471–75.
198 In 1980, President Ronald Reagan: David R. Shedd, “How Obama Unilaterally
Chilled Surveillance,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 30, 2015.
198 “We are approaching”: Turner, Secrecy and Democracy, 92.
198 “vastness”: Woodward, Veil, 202.
199 James Bond provision: Ian Cobain, “How Secret Renditions Shed Light on MI6’s
Licence to Kill and Torture,” Guardian, Feb. 13, 2012.
199 The NSA had assiduously: Kevin Poulsen, “New Snowden Leak Reports
‘Groundbreaking’ NSA Crypto-cracking,” Wired, Aug. 29, 2013.
200 “Yes, my continental European friends”: Woolsey, “Why We Spy on Our Allies.”
200 “very foundation of U.S. intelligence”: John McLaughlin, “We Need NSA to Do
What It Does—It Makes Us Safer,” Press of Atlantic City, Jan. 8, 2014.
201 It made leading hacktivists: Charlie Savage et al., “Hunting for Hackers, N.S.A.
Secretly Expands Internet Spying at U.S. Border,” New York Times, June 4,
2015.
202 “one of the most regulated”: De, “Former NSA Lawyer on ‘Harm’ of Edward
Snowden’s Revelations.”
203 the attack on Sony: Rob Lever, “Some Experts Still Aren’t Convinced That North
Korea Hacked Sony,” Business Insider, Dec. 30, 2014.
204 “The Chinese are viewed”: Alexander quoted in Kelley Vlahos, “America’s
Already-Failed Cyber War,” American Conservative, July 23, 2015.
204 “We are bolstering our support”: “Black Budget: Congressional Budget Justification
Excerpt,” Washington Post, Aug. 30, 2013.
205 These compartments were: Former NSA officer who requested anonymity, interview
with author.
205 “The queen on our chessboard”: Former NSA officer who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
205 to confront flagging morale: Hayden, interview with author.
205–206 “the nation has lost”: Mulvaney, “NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers Discusses
Freedom, Privacy, and Security Issues at Princeton University.”
206 Although repairing the damage: King, “Ex-NSA Chief Details Snowden’s Hiring
at Agency, Booz Allen.”
chapter 20 The NSA’s Back Door
207 “You have private for-profit”: Bamford and De Chant, “Edward Snowden on
Cyber Warfare.”
208 According to a report: “Out of Control,” NSA, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu
/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-009.pdf.
211 “All of us just fell”: Baker, “Michael Hayden Says U.S. Is Easy Prey for Hackers.”
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324 | Notes to pages 214–231
212 “it stays secret”: De, “Former NSA Lawyer on ‘Harm’ of Edward Snowden’s
Revelations.”
212 North Korea in 1968: John Prados and Jack Cheevers, “USS Pueblo: LBJ Considered
Nuclear Weapons,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book
No. 453, Jan. 23, 2014.
212 Booz Allen Hamilton: Booz Allen Hamilton issued a history of its evolution in
2004. “Helping Clients Envision the Future,” PDF file, 2004, https://www.booz
allen.com/content/dam/boozallen/documents/90th-History-Book-Complete
.pdf.
213 The private company named: Julie Creswell, “The Private Equity Firm That
Grew Too Fast,” New York Times, April 24, 2015.
214 USIS had prematurely closed: Tom Hamburger and Debbi Wilgoren, “Justice
Department Says USIS Submitted 665,000 Incomplete Background Checks,”
Washington Post, Jan. 23, 2014.
214 USIS was also open to: Ellen Nakashima, “DHS Contractor Suffers Major Computer
Breach, Officials Say,” Washington Post, Aug. 6, 2014.
214 successful 2011 attack: Andy Greenberg, “Anonymous Hackers Breach Booz
Allen Hamilton,” Forbes, July 11, 2011.
215 a computer system called e-QIP: Joe Davidson, “Federal Background Check System
Shut Down Because of ‘Vulnerability,’ ” Washington Post, June 29, 2015.
215 this memorandum noted: Former NSA executive who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
chapter 21 The Russians Are Coming
217 “The collapse of the Soviet Union”: Nick Allen, “Soviet Break-Up Was Geopolitical
Disaster, Says Putin,” Telegraph, April 26, 2005.
217 Russian units had managed: Entous, Barnes, and Gorman, “U.S. Scurries to
Shore Up Spying on Russia.”
218 Russian acronym SORM: Steven Aftergood, “The Red Web: Russia and the
Internet,” FAS, Oct. 5, 2015.
219 William Martin and Bernon Mitchell: David P. Mowry, “Betrayers of the Trust,”
Cryptologic Almanac 50th Anniversary Series (NSA), Feb. 28, 2003.
220 Victor Norris Hamilton: “American Defector Is Found in Russian Prison,” New
York Times, June 4, 1992.
220 He was found dead: Edward Jay Epstein, “The Spy Wars,” New York Times,
Sept. 28, 1980.
222 Harold Nicholson: Elizabeth Farnsworth, “Update on the Case of CIA Agent
Harold Nicholson,” PBS (transcript), Nov. 19, 1996. See also “Affidavit in Support
of Complaint, Arrest Warrant, and Search Warrants: United States v. Harold
J. Nicholson,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm
/ciaspy/affidavt.htm.
223 When it comes to recruiting moles: Angleton, interviews with author.
224 well experienced with false flags: Epstein, Deception, 22–28.
224 the “Trust” deception: Ibid. Also, Raymond Rocca (the CIA’s former research
chief for the counterintelligence staff), interview with author.
227 “a learning experience”: “Out of Control.”
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Notes to pages 232–252 | 325
228 127-page Standard Form 86: David Larter and Andrew Tilghman, “Military
Clearance OPM Data Breach ‘Absolute Calamity,’ ” Navy Times, June 18,
2015.
229 Under Putin: Nicole Perlroth, “Online Security Experts Link More Breaches to
Russian Government,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 2014.
229 “It is next to impossible”: Schneier quoted in Jenkins, “Anti-hero of Silk Road.”
230 The Silk Road founder: Jenkins, “Anti-hero of Silk Road.” Also, former Justice
Department official who requested anonymity, interview with author.
230 “better cyber security”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 291.
chapter 22 The Chinese Puzzle
231 “The first [false assumption]”: Snowden video in Hong Kong.
231 “China its first credible”: 2014 Annual Report to Congress by the U.S.-China
Economic and Security Review Commission, quoted in David Tweed, “China
Takes Nuclear Weapons Undersea Away from Prying Eyes,” Bloomberg Business,
Dec. 8, 2014.
232 “results of decades”: Select Committee, U.S. Congress, Report, 1999, http://
www.house.gov/coxreport/chapfs/over.html.
233 a vast enterprise in China: Nir Kshetri, The Rapidly Transforming Chinese High-
Technology Industry and Market (London: Chandos, 2008), 92.
233 By 2007, Paul Strassmann: “China Has .75M ‘Zombie Computers’ in U.S.,” UPI,
Sept. 17, 2007.
234 cyber attack had harvested: David E. Sanger and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Hackers
May Have Obtained Names,” New York Times, June 11, 2015.
234 “Those records are”: Baker, “Michael Hayden Says U.S. Is Easy Prey for Hackers.”
235 any attempt to “monopolize”: Patrick Goodenough, “Chinese President in Veiled
Warning to the US: Don’t Try to ‘Monopolize Regional Affairs,’ ” CNS News,
May 22, 2014.
236 Chinese intelligence maintains: Former U.S. intelligence officer stationed in
Hong Kong who requested anonymity, interview with author.
236 “hostile territory”: Drumheller, interview with author.
chapter 23 A Single Point of Failure
238 “the single point of failure”: Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax.’ ”
239 “Snowden thinks he is smart”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 285.
239 “The purpose of my [Hong Kong]”: Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
240 “This guy”: Ibid.
240–241 “It was a nervous period”: Ibid.
242 “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.
243 “huge strategic setback”: Harper, Kerbaj, and Shipman, “British Spies Betrayed
to Russians and Chinese.”
243 Adding insult to injury: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.”
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326 | Notes to pages 252–280
chapter 24 Off to Moscow
247 “They talk about Russia”: Bamford and De Chant, “Edward Snowden on Cyber
Warfare.”
247 Before flying to Moscow: Stone, interview with author.
248 $1 million: Mike Fleming Jr., “Oliver Stone Buys Edward Snowden Russian
Lawyer’s ‘Novel’ About Asylum-Seeking Whistleblower,” Deadline, June 10,
2014.
249 “I have been trying”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
249 “There is only one door”: Gotta, e-mail exchange with author.
250 “A special operation”: Gridasov, Yavlyansky, and Gorkovskaya, “Secret Services
in Moscow with WikiLeaks Conducted Operation Snowden.”
251 “If they [the U.S. government]”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.”
251 Over a hundred reporters: Irina Galushka, interview with author.
251 A statement posted: “Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow,” https://
WikiLeaks.org/Statement-from-Edward-Snowden-in.html.
252 Sarah Harrison, Snowden’s companion: Corbett, “How a Snowdenista Kept the
NSA Leaker Hidden in a Moscow Airport.”
252 So either the rule: The maximum stay is listed on the hotel’s website, http://
www.v-exp.ru/en/price/.
253 “It was a total vanishing act”: Piskunov, interview with author.
Chapter 25 Through the Looking Glass
254 “There’s definitely a deep state”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.”
255 according to Cherkashin: Cherkashin, interview with author.
258 Pelton had left the NSA: George E. Curry, “Ex-intelligence Expert Guilty of
Espionage,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1986.
chapter 26 The Handler
261 “As for [Snowden’s] communication”: Kucherena interview, Shevardnadze,
“Snowden Believes He Did Everything Right.”
261 learned from a Russian researcher: Vassili Sonkine, interview with author.
261 When I had been investigating: Edward Jay Epstein, The Annals of Unsolved
Crime (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2013), 209–40.
262 “I don’t know him”: Lugovoy, interview with author.
264 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.
265 “It was totally bizarre”: Lokshina, interview with author. Also, “Meeting Edward
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Notes to pages 281–293 | 327
Snowden,” Dispatches, July 13, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/12
/dispatches-meeting-edward-snowden.
265 “I will be submitting”: “Statement by Edward Snowden,” July 12, 2013, https://
WikiLeaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html.
265 “When I accepted the case”: Kucherena, interview with author.
265 Kucherena had personally approved: Shevardnadze, interview with author.
chapter 27 Snowden’s Choices
272 Presidential Policy Directive 20: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 75.
272 to trace the theft: Michael Hayden, interview with author.
273 “For our enemies”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 294.
274 “I had a special level”: Snowden and Taylor, “Are You a Traitor?”
277 “You should remain anonymous”: Burrough, Ellison, and Andrews, “Snowden
Saga.”
279 He was also willing: Snowden and Taylor, “Are You a Traitor?”
280 “The mission’s already accomplished”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After
Months of NSA Revelations, Says His Mission’s Accomplished.”
chapter 28 The Espionage Source
281 “The government’s investigation failed”: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.”
282 “If I were providing information”: Transcript of interview with Snowden in
Moscow, Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.”
282 Pelton, for example: Victor Cherkashin, interview with author.
283 “This debriefing could not”: Intelligence source who requested anonymity,
interview with author.
285 Mike Rogers, the chairman: “Congressman Says Snowden Planned Escape to
China,” UPI, June 16, 2013.
285 “a known unknown”: Donald Rumsfeld, press conference at NATO headquarters,
Brussels, Belgium, June 6, 2002.
chapter 29 The “War on Terror” After Snowden
287 “Because of a number”: Amy Davidson, “Don’t Blame Edward Snowden for the
Paris Attacks,” New Yorker, Nov. 19, 2015.
287 On the evening of: David Gauthier-Villars, “Paris Attacks Show Cracks in
France’s Counterterrorism Effort,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 23, 2015.
289 According to a declassified: Charlie Savage, “NSA Discloses Inspector General
Report,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2016.
289 “the number one source”: “NSA Slides Explain the PRISM Data-Collection Program,”
Washington Post, June 6, 2013.
290 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,
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328 | Notes to pages 293–299
http://intelligence.house.gov/1-four-declassified-examples-more-50-attacks
-20-countries-thwarted-nsa-collection-under-fisa-section.
290 Grand Central station: Mark Hosenball, “U.S. NSA Internet Spying Foiled Plot
to Attack New York Subways: Sources,” Reuters, June 7, 2013.
290 provided the “critical lead”: Marshall Erwin, “Connecting the Dots,” U.S. Senate
Committee on the Judiciary, Jan. 13, 2014,.
290 “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.
290 The third NSA program: Glenn Greenwald, “XKeyscore: NSA Tool Collects
‘Nearly Everything a User Does on the Internet,’ ” Guardian, July 31, 2013.
291 Further enabling furtive Internet: Appelbaum, “Edward Snowden Interview.”
291 These precise tips: Joseph Menn, “Exclusive: Secret Contract Tied NSA and
Security Industry Pioneer,” Reuters, Dec. 20, 2013.
291 as Greenwald writes: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 2.
292 “We can’t penetrate”: Rebecca Savransky, “Head Prosecutor of Paris Attacks
Encryption Program,” Hill, March 13, 2016.
293 “Terrorist organizations”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 294.
293 What further heightened Morell’s concern: Ibid., 315.
293 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.
294 “saw one after another”: Mary Louise Kelly, “NSA: Fallout from Snowden Leaks
Isn’t Over, but Info Is Getting Old,” NPR, March 16, 2016.
294 “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
295 “Governments can reduce our dignity”: Edward Snowden, “Governments Can
Reduce Our Dignity to That of Tagged Animals,” Guardian, May 3, 2016.
298 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.
298 “Snowden has compromised more”: McConnell interview, King, “Ex-NSA Chief