The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man

by Luke Harding

  He arrived on the volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific with a plan. The plan now looks insane. It was audacious, but – viewed dispassionately – almost certainly going to result in Snowden’s incarceration for a very long time and possibly for the rest of his life.

  The plan was to make contact anonymously with journalists interested in civil liberties. Proven journalists whose credentials and integrity could not be doubted. And – though quite how this would happen was a little hazy – to leak to them stolen top-secret documents. The documents would show evidence of the NSA’s illegality. They would prove that the agency was running programs that violated the US constitution. To judge by what he later said, Snowden’s aim was not to spill state secrets wholesale. Rather, he wanted to turn over a selection of material to reporters and let them exercise their own editorial judgement.

  To corroborate his claims about the NSA to a sceptical Fourth Estate would not only require lots of documents, Snowden realised. It would also take a preternatural degree of cunning. And a cool head. And some extraordinary good fortune.

  Snowden’s new post was NSA systems administrator. This gave him access to a wealth of secret material. Most analysts saw much less. But how was he supposed to reach out to reporters? Sending a regular email was unthinkable. And meeting them in person was difficult, too: any trip had to be cleared with his NSA superiors 30 days in advance. Also, Snowden didn’t ‘know’ any reporters. Or at least not personally.

  His girlfriend of eight years, Lindsay Mills, joined him in June on Oahu, which means ‘the gathering place’. Mills grew up in Baltimore, graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art, and had been living with Snowden in Japan. Aged 28, she had worked in a number of jobs – ballet dancer, dance teacher, fitness instructor and pole-dance specialist. Her biggest passion was photography. Mills took a regular photograph of herself – often wearing not much – and posted it on her blog. It was titled: ‘L’s journey. Adventures of a world-travelling, pole-dancing superhero.’

  Snowden and Mills rented a three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow at 94-1044 Eleu Street, a sleepy, tree-lined neighbourhood in Waipahu, which was a former sugar plantation 15 miles west of Honolulu. It was a blue wooden property, comfortable but not luxurious, with no view of sea or mountains. The front yard had a small lawn, a Dwarf Bottlebrush shrub, some palm trees and a neighbour’s avocado leaning in. The rear had more palm trees, concealing it from the street and a knoll where teenagers furtively smoked.

  A sticker on the front door – ‘Freedom isn’t free’, adorned with a Stars and Stripes – hinted at Snowden’s convictions. Neighbours seldom, if ever, spoke to him. ‘A couple of times I’d see him across the street and he nodded and that was it. My impression was that he was a very private person. He did his own thing,’ said Rod Uyehara, who lived directly opposite. A retired army veteran, like many in the neighbourhood, he assumed the young man with short hair was also military.

  The island’s surroundings would have given Snowden plenty to brood about during his daily commute up Kunia Road. To the west of his bungalow cocoon lie the Wai’anae Mountains, the remains of an ancient volcano. The peaks are inhabited by menacing, bruised clouds: they have a tendency to suddenly replicate, blacken the sky and hammer the valley with torrential rain.

  Behind him, to the south, was Pearl Harbor, the target of Japan’s surprise attack on 7 December 1941. A day of ‘infamy’, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, which caught America’s spymasters with their pants down and brought the US into the second world war.

  At the time, ramping up intelligence capabilities, the chastened spooks built a vast tunnel complex in the middle of Oahu, and called it ‘the hole’. Originally intended as an underground aircraft assembly and storage plant, it was turned into a chamber to make charts, maps and models of Japanese islands for invading US forces. After the war it became a navy command centre and was reinforced to withstand chemical, biological and radiological attack.

  Today it is known as the Kunia Regional Security Operations Center (RSOC) and hosts the US Cryptological System Group, an agency staffed by specialists from each branch of the military as well as civilian contractors. At some point the facility’s nickname changed to ‘the tunnel’.

  Snowden’s bungalow was seven miles away, on the nearest housing estate – just 13 minutes, door to door. Largely deserted countryside stretches in between. It is not a beautiful drive. The two-lane highway dips and rises, flanked by high mounds of earth and tangles of weeds, which obscure the landscape. It is easy to feel boxed in. Occasionally you glimpse corn seed plantations and yellowing fields.

  ‘The tunnel’ had two main spying targets: the People’s Republic of China and its unpredictable, troublesome Stalinist satellite, North Korea. It was clear to everyone – not just NSA analysts – that China was a rising military and economic power. The NSA’s mission in the Pacific was to keep a watchful eye on the Chinese navy, its frigates, support vessels and destroyers, as well as the troops and military capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Plus the PLA’s computer networks. If penetrated, these were a rich source of data.

  By this point Snowden was a China specialist. He had targeted Chinese networks. He had also taught a course on Chinese cyber-counterintelligence, instructing senior officials from the Department of Defense how to protect their data from Beijing and its avid hackers. He was intimately familiar with the NSA’s active operations against the Chinese, later saying he had ‘access to every target’.

  The Japanese were no longer the enemy. Rather, they were among several prosperous East Asian nations whom the US considered as valuable intelligence partners. The NSA co-ordinated its SIGINT work with other allies in the region. Visitors to the subterranean complex included the new defence chief of South Korea’s security agency, the incoming boss of Thailand’s national security bureau and delegations from Tokyo. ‘The tunnel’ also tracked Thailand and the Philippines, supporting counter-terrorism operations there, as well as in Pakistan.

  According to an NSA staffer who spoke to Forbes magazine, Snowden was a principled and ultra-competent, if somewhat eccentric, colleague. Inside ‘the tunnel’ he wore a hoodie featuring a parody NSA logo. Instead of a key in an eagle’s claws it had a pair of eavesdropping headphones covering the bird’s ears. His co-workers assumed the sweatshirt, sold by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was a joke.

  There were further hints of a non-conformist personality. Snowden kept a copy of the constitution on his desk. He flourished it when he wanted to argue against NSA activities he felt violated it. He wandered the halls carrying a Rubik’s cube. He also cared about his colleagues, leaving small gifts on their desks. He almost lost his job sticking up for one co-worker who was being disciplined.

  The RSOC where Snowden worked is just one of several military installations in the area. Displays of US power abound. A giant satellite dish peeks from a hillside. CH-47 Chinook helicopters whump overhead. Camouflage trucks trundle by. Young men and women in uniform drive SUVs, sports cars and motorbikes. They go fast. As one Dodge Convertible’s bumper sticker put it: ‘Get in. Sit down. Shut up. Hold on.’

  The RSOC is almost invisible from the road, the complex set back behind dogwood trees and a 10-foot-high metal fence topped with barbed wire. There is just one small, generic sign – ‘Government property. No trespassing’ – to indicate this is an official facility. Take the turn off and you roll down a hill to a guardhouse containing two navy guards in blue camouflage with pistols strapped to their thighs. Beyond the security barrier is a car park with more than a hundred vehicles, as well as several billboards warning against drunk driving. ‘006 days since the last accident,’ says one.

  Given the number of vehicles, the dearth of people or buildings – just a few cabins – is puzzling, until you realise everyone is underground. They enter via a long, curious-looking, rectangular structure with an orange roof built into a steep hillside of brown earth. The gradient is so steep it’s a wonder the structur
e doesn’t slide down. Steps lead up the dark mouth. ‘The doors inside are huge. It’s like something out of King Kong. It takes ages just to get in,’ said a former air force officer who worked here.

  Exfiltrating secret material from here would be a high-risk undertaking. It would require quite remarkable nerve.

  In the regular blog written by Snowden’s partner, Lindsay Mills, Snowden makes the odd oblique appearance. She calls him E. He is very much an off-stage presence – a loyal boyfriend, certainly, but one who is prone to mysterious absences and disappearances. As in Switzerland, Hawaii Snowden is a man with a mask.

  On just a couple of occasions, E poses with Mills in her weekly portraits, posted to Instagram. You don’t see his face. In one shot Snowden is on a beach, bent over, trousers rolled up to his knees. A flapping black winter coat hides his face. Probably he’s laughing, but it’s difficult to tell, and he reminds one of a Richard III impersonator. ‘A world where people move like ravens,’ Mills writes on her blog, noting: ‘a rare shot of E’. Someone points out that Snowden looks a bit like Quasimodo. Mills shoots back: ‘Don’t mess with E!’

  Mills described the motivation for her blog: ‘Been shooting daily self portraits for several years now. They’re not just for mothers. I find it helps me work out my emotions and document my life. Not that anyone would be interested in it, but someday I may thank myself for these shots. Or hate myself – either way I’ll feel something. ’ The portraits are done in bright colours – a sort of artist’s diary – with Mills dressing up to capture a mood or an emotion. Many are coquettish. She meditates, hangs from trees or watches the Hawaii sunset.

  Snowden kept himself apart from other staff during the 13 months he spent in Hawaii. He was by nature reserved but he had special reason to be guarded. If it came off, his leak would be the most significant since the Pentagon Papers, eclipsing the 2010 release of US diplomatic cables and warlogs by a disaffected US army private, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. It would lift the lid on mass surveillance, not just of millions of Americans but the entire world. But it was a big if. A slip on his part, a careless word, an unusual work request, a rogue flash drive, could arouse questions, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

  Snowden was surrounded by spies dedicated to detecting hidden codes and patterns, to discovering secrets. If they discovered his, he would likely be quietly tried, convicted and jailed for decades, an anonymous geek who tried and failed to steal data from his employers. Little wonder Snowden appeared buttoned up.

  Friends likened him teasingly to Edward Cullen, the vampire played by Robert Pattinson from the Twilight saga. Snowden was pale, enigmatic, solemn and seldom seen by day. He hardly ever appeared at social gatherings. ‘He would barely say anything and hang out on the side, sort of hovering. So it became a sort of game to involve him, like “Go Team Edward!” ’ recalls one. ‘At a birthday party one night we prodded him into making an actual speech. It was about five words.’

  Snowden did describe his life in Hawaii as ‘paradise’. This, certainly, was how the Honolulu Star-Advertiser also tells it, declaring on its masthead: ‘The pulse of paradise.’ What passed for news headlines – ‘Officials contemplate weekend harbor hours’, ‘Pacific aviation museum honors daredevil’, ‘Bush blaze doused on Maui’ – tended to boost the image of a tropical idyll.

  But for Snowden there were few outwards signs of fun. No surfing, no golf, no lounging on the beach. ‘He was pale, pale, pale, pale, as if he never got out in the sun,’ the friend says. (In contrast, Barack Obama, who has a sister on Oahu, gives every impression of savouring the beaches, the surf and the shave ice, the local version of a snow cone.)

  Compared to Snowden, glued to his laptops, his partner Lindsay Mills was a social butterfly. After arriving in Hawaii she joined Pamela and the Pole Kats, a group that trained and performed using poles. It was not stripping – they did athletic performances at the Mercury, a hipster bar in downtown Honolulu, once a month. Mills also participated in street performances on the first Friday of each month.

  Despite her outward sociability, though, Mills remained a puzzle to some acquaintances in Hawaii. She half-hid behind huge sunglasses. She did not volunteer much personal information. Many were unaware she even had a boyfriend. She didn’t appear to have a job – that is, beyond her photography and dancing – yet drove a new SUV. The source of her prosperity was another riddle.

  Pam Parkinson, who founded the pole group, introduced Mills to the Waikiki Acrobatic Troupe, a dozen or so dancers, jugglers, tightrope walkers, fire-breathers and hula-hoopers who gathered a few times a week.

  On Sundays they practised till sunset at a park overlooking the beach in Waikiki. Mills thrived among this bohemian bunch, though by the standards of her new friends she was straight-laced. ‘She wouldn’t laugh at a sex joke,’ one recalled. Terryl Leon, co-ordinator of the troupe, said Mills was new to acrobatics but determined to improve. ‘She was working a short acrobatic sequence. I’d give her tips on form and technique. She was a bit reserved. Very pretty, attentive, alert, focused and co-operative.’

  Snowden on occasion collected Mills from practice but seldom got out of the car or spoke to her friends. ‘She didn’t really talk about him,’ one said. One exception was when Snowden was away for a prolonged spell and Mills lamented the difficulty of long-distance relationships. The troupe gossiped about her friendship with her ‘acro-partner’, a young muscular man named Bow. But, as Mills’s blog made clear, she remained devoted to E.

  E himself, meanwhile, was still biding his time at the NSA. Behind his quiet, unassuming surface, his disenchantment and anger with his employers was growing.

  Ed Snowden was not the first person from inside the NSA to be disillusioned by what he discovered there, and by the dark trajectory of US security policy after 9/11. Snowden had watched closely the case of Thomas Drake. Drake, a US air force and navy veteran, was an executive at the NSA. After the 9/11 attacks, he became unhappy with the agency’s secret counter-terrorism programs – in particular, an intelligence-collecting tool called TRAILBLAZER. Drake felt it violated the fourth amendment against arbitrary searches and seizures.

  Drake decided to raise his concerns through all the right channels. He complained to his NSA bosses. Using a prescribed framework for whistleblowers, he also testified to the NSA’s inspector general, the Pentagon and before the House and Senate congressional oversight committees. Finally, in frustration, he went to the Baltimore Sun. This ingenuous approach didn’t work. In 2007 the FBI raided his home. Drake faced 35 years in jail. Only in 2011, after four years of anxiety, did the government drop the major charges, with Drake pleading guilty to a minor misdemeanour. He was put on probation.

  For Snowden, Drake was an inspiration (the two would later meet). The punitive way the authorities hounded Drake convinced Snowden, moreover, that there was no point in going down the same path. He knew others who had suffered in similar circumstances. They included an NSA employee who jokingly included a line in an email that said: ‘Is this the PLA or the NSA?’ Snowden told James Risen that inside the NSA ‘there’s a lot of dissent – palpable with some even.’ But that most people toed the line through ‘fear and a false image of patriotism’, construed as ‘obedience to authority’.

  As an outside contractor, working for Dell, Snowden wasn’t entitled to the same whistleblower protections as Drake. Even if he had reported his concerns over NSA surveillance nothing would have happened, he later told Risen. He believed his efforts ‘would have been buried forever’, and that he would have been discredited and ruined. ‘The system does not work. You have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.’

  Snowden had lost faith in meaningful congressional oversight of the intelligence community. Instead, Congress was part of the problem, he felt. In particular he was critical of the ‘Gang of Eight’, the group of congressional officials who are notified about the most sensitive US intelligence operations.

  By December 2012
, he had made up his mind to contact journalists. Asked at what moment he had decided to blow the whistle, Snowden says: ‘I imagine everyone’s experience is different, but for me, there was no single moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress – and therefore the American people – and the realisation that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper – the director of national intelligence – baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.’

  In March 2013, Clapper told the Senate intelligence committee that the US government does ‘not wittingly’ collect data on millions of Americans. The statement was untrue, as Snowden would reveal and Clapper would himself later admit. It was also perhaps a felony.

  By his account, one document in particular pushed Snowden over the edge. He stumbled upon a classified 2009 report by the NSA’s inspector general – the same person to whom Drake had complained. Snowden had been carrying out a ‘dirty word search’: he was spring-cleaning the system to remove material that shouldn’t have been there. When he opened the document he couldn’t stop himself from reading it.

  The report was a detailed 51-page account of how the Bush administration had carried out its illegal wiretapping program following 9/11. The program, codenamed STELLAR WIND, involved the collection of content and metadata from millions of Americans without a warrant. Some of the facts about the wiretapping scandal had emerged a few years earlier, but nothing like the whole story. For Snowden this was incontrovertible proof that senior US officials were breaking the law. Without, he learned, any repercussions at all. ‘You can’t read something like that and not realise what it means for all of the systems we have,’ he told the New York Times.