Alexander did not get his way. “He was just expressing frustration,” his deputy, Ledgett, told me four years later. “The director of NSA doesn’t make policy.” Under President Trump, he said, “I couldn’t predict what this administration would do. With the previous administration that was never going to go anywhere.”
Shawn Turner, who worked for Clapper, recalled later that he had this conversation repeatedly with senior program managers at the NSA. Each time a reporter prepared to reveal something new, “I’d have to go to these people and say, ‘Your program is next,’” Turner recalled. “Those people got angry. They couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t do more. It’s government property. We know where it is. Why can’t we go and get it back?”
Shortly after the Alexander video came a more official harbinger of legal jeopardy. On January 29, Clapper sat down at a Senate witness table to deliver the annual assessment of worldwide threats, his most extensive public testimony of the year. This was a tour of the horizon that covered the gravest dangers facing the United States. He did not open his remarks with terrorism or nuclear proliferation or Russia or China. He opened with Ed Snowden, and within a few words he was quoting one of my stories.
Snowden claims that he’s won and that his mission is accomplished. If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed, to prevent even more damage to U.S. security.
I pretty much stopped listening after the word “accomplices.” This was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was prepared testimony on behalf of the Obama administration, vetted for weeks across multiple departments, including the Department of Justice. And “accomplice” has a meaning in criminal law.
“I had in mind Glenn Greenwald or Laura Poitras,” Clapper told me years later, unrepentant, as the remains of his egg white omelet were cleared from the table. “They conspired with him, they helped him in protecting his security and disseminating selectively what he had, so to me they are coconspirators.”
“I wouldn’t distinguish myself categorically from them,” I replied.
“Well, then, maybe you are, too. This is the whole business about one man’s whistleblower is another man’s spy.”
In a similar vein came remarks by the NSA inspector general, George Ellard. Twice in February 2014, both times as I sat within his sight, Ellard referred to journalists on the story as Snowden’s “agents.” We had done more damage, he said at a Georgetown University conference, than the notorious FBI traitor Robert Hanssen, who helped Soviet security services hunt down and kill U.S. intelligence assets. Tight-lipped and curt, he walked away when someone introduced us after the panel. When we finally spoke nearly two years later, he said, “I must confess I read your work with keen interest.”
Did Clapper agree with Alexander’s idea?
“I understand what Keith was saying,” Clapper told me in late 2018, after retiring as director of national intelligence, publishing a book, and coming under sustained rhetorical assault from President Trump. “I understand why he would say it. Certainly at the time, when I was DNI, if there was some way we could have recovered what [Snowden] stole, I’d have been all for it. I have great reservations about that now, now that I’m part of the ‘fake media.’ I might have felt differently about it when I was in the government.” Still, there were practical impediments. The documents were in Germany with Poitras, in Brazil with Greenwald, and doubtless hidden online. “I don’t recall that [the idea] went anywhere,” Clapper said.
The NSA’s general counsel, Raj De, told Alexander to forget about taking the Snowden documents back, people told me later. The First Amendment protected me and the other journalists, De said, however unfortunate the effects of our work. But that was not really right, not altogether. American political culture and governing norms, not the letter of the law, were the real protection.
Copies of the Snowden documents were arguably evidence in a criminal case. They were arguably contraband as well, illegal to possess, and therefore subject to search and seizure. More significant, perhaps, they were alleged to be the fruits of espionage. The latter, I thought, might have allowed the invocation of counterintelligence tools, including secret physical and electronic searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was impossible to know for sure, because the Justice Department’s policy on these things was itself classified. After a FOIA lawsuit, the FBI was obliged to release a redacted copy of its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. The section called “National Security Letters for Telephone Toll Records of Members of the News Media or News Organizations” was entirely blacked out, as were several pages on use of secret FISA warrants against reporters. The Intercept later published a leaked copy of the classified Appendix G from the fall of 2013. It said the FBI could use secret administrative subpoenas “to identify confidential news media sources” with approval from the bureau’s general counsel, an executive assistant director, and the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s national security division.
Was I a valid counterintelligence target?
“Well, theoretically you could be,” Clapper told me. “Given how Snowden is viewed by the intelligence community, someone who’s in league with him, conspiring with him, that’s a valid counterintelligence—and for that matter law enforcement—target. That’s from the perspective of the intelligence community.”
The FBI had the same view, as a strictly legal matter. I asked James Comey, after Donald Trump fired him as FBI director, whether the bureau could have tried to seize my notes and reporting materials.
“I think you could,” he said. “Yeah, sure, you legally could. There was zero chance of that with Barack Obama as president and Eric Holder as attorney general, but I could imagine with Trump and Jeff Sessions at least exploring a search at a journalist’s premises, or following a journalist” to discover his confidential sources. On the other hand, Comey said, “that would be such a departure from the norms that they’d run a tremendous risk of a leak about that.
“They could say, ‘We’re searching for evidence of a crime, so we should be able to get a search warrant to recover this, just like we could if it was in a storage locker.’ It’s in the journalist’s computer. Technically you could, but . . . that would eventually become public and the world would be on fire. It’s the norms, practices, traditions, culture, and external pressure that would be brought to bear by the journalists. Not just journalists but by the community.”
Asked about Alexander’s proposal specifically, Comey paused for some time.
“I was at the dovish end because I knew you,” he said finally, “but I get it. That antagonism was real. You should have been paranoid because there were people out to get you.”
It became a running joke among U.S. officials that Gellman should watch his back. In May 2014, I appeared alongside Bob Mueller, Comey’s predecessor, to talk about Snowden on a panel hosted by former White House chief of staff and defense secretary Leon Panetta. Mueller cross-examined me: Were the NSA documents not lawfully classified? Were they not stolen? Did I not publish them anyway? I held out my arms toward him, wrists together, as if for handcuffs. The audience laughed. Mueller did not. I ran into Mueller again later that year in the dining room of a Saratoga Springs, New York, bed-and-breakfast. “There you are!” he boomed at me, all alpha male, as he pushed aside his plate. “We were just talking about that event we had out at the Panetta Institute.”
“Hello, Director,” I said.
“Are you surveilling me?” he asked, then walked out the door.
* * *
—
How exactly does one pack to visit a fugitive under asylum in Vladimir Putin’s Russia? As I planned my first visit, I began to approach security experts with thinly veiled questions. Suppose a reporter travels to Moscow, hypothetically. No special reason. (Nudge, wink.) He knows better than to carry sens
itive notes, let alone U.S. government documents. He will bring a secondhand phone, freshly wiped. An old laptop with a new solid state drive and nothing on it. He will not log in to his online accounts on the road. He’ll use disposable everything. What I cannot figure out is this: how can this reporter bring notes and photos and recordings home without exposing them to either government at the borders?
There was not much I could do about Russian physical surveillance or eavesdropping when Snowden and I met. Their turf, their rules, no plausible self-defense. If the Russians wanted to listen in, they would. I would make a pro forma effort, bringing water-soluble paper in case Snowden wanted to pass me a private note, but when the time came Snowden only laughed. “Don’t even bother,” he told me. “Assume everything here is monitored.”
Long negotiations preceded my trip. Snowden saw no need to meet with me or any journalist after leaving Hong Kong. The documents were the story. Although critics saw him as hungry for fame, and the spotlight did grow on him later, Snowden was truly reluctant to talk about himself. He had given only two interviews: to Poitras and Greenwald for his coming-out video and to a Hong Kong–based reporter as his local lawyer tried to stave off extradition. Hundreds of requests were pending from media celebrities around the world. He worried that I would hurt him “in an effort to be centrist.” Speaking of himself in the third person, he said, “If you put something damaging in the article, as you have in the past, our friend may not have time to recover before the issue is dead.”
“I’m not going to suck up to you,” I replied. “I’m not your advocate. But I’m fundamentally interested in the same debate.”
When it finally seemed that Snowden would consent to see me, I asked if I could bring him anything. Snowden, who sometimes referred to himself as “source” or “src” to preserve anonymity, said not to bother. “src lives off of ramen and chips, as always. has 400 books (as everyone brings but never has time to read). is an indoor cat, so doesn’t need much. . . . something that is not public is src’s natural asceticism. he has few needs.” I packed a few jars of salsa to go with his chips (“in short supply,” he had mentioned), and I framed the fortune from a fortune cookie that Dafna had opened as we finished a meal at our local Chinese standby. “Put the data you have uncovered to beneficial use,” the fortune said in little blue letters.
Anatoly Kucherena, a Putin-connected oligarch who had been appointed as Snowden’s asylum lawyer in Russia, sent me the invitation I would need for a business visa. I did not especially want to associate with him, and I did not want him knowing my travel plans. Kucherena had a bad habit of tipping off his friends in the Russian media when Snowden’s family visited, and I preferred not to be met at the airport, as Lon Snowden had been, by local television crews. I applied for a tourist visa instead and touched down at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, unmolested by paparazzi, at 10:15 a.m. on December 5, 2013.
“What time exactly does your clock say?” asked the voice on the telephone that afternoon, the first words Snowden ever spoke to me aloud. I glanced at my wrist—3:22 p.m. “Good. Meet me exactly at four. I’ll be wearing a backpack.” Of course he would. Snowden would not leave his laptop unattended.
The rendezvous point that Snowden selected was a gaudy casino hotel called the Korston Club on Kosygina Street. Enormous flashing whorls of color adorned the exterior in homage to Las Vegas. Inside the lobby, a full-sized grand player piano tinkled with energetic pop. The promenade featured a “Girls Bar” in purple neon decor, with stainless steel chairs and mirrors competing for attention with imitation wood paneling, knockoff Persian rugs, and pulsing strobe lights on twelve-foot plastic foliage. Also, there were feathers. The place looked as though a tornado had knocked down a trailer full of old Madonna stage sets.
As I battled sensory overload, a young man appeared near the player piano, his appearance subtly altered to allow a well-known face to travel unremarked. A minder might be anywhere in this circus of a lobby, but I saw no government escort. We shook hands, thumbs up, shoulder high, and Snowden walked me wordlessly to a back elevator. In phrasebook Russian he was soon ordering room service: a burger, fries, and ice cream. For the next two days, during fourteen hours of interviews, he did not once part the curtains or step outside. He remained a target of surpassing interest to intelligence services of more than one nation. He kept his head down.
Snowden nixed a photographer, who would complicate security, so I brought a good camera. He changed into a pale blue pinstriped shirt and charcoal blazer and fussed with his appearance, preoccupied with moles on either side of his neck—“Frankenstein bolts,” he called them, unfondly. These were the first photos taken of him in Moscow and they became iconic, reproduced thousands of times after I published them in the Post: Snowden standing in profile, Snowden in a mirror, Snowden under a gauzy painting of a woman with a white parasol, Snowden staring thoughtfully at an unseen laptop screen, the lid adorned with a bumper sticker that declared, “I Support Online Rights.” He insisted on taking my camera’s memory card and reviewing every frame before I could use it. I found that irritating but tried to see it his way. These photos and this interview were his reintroduction to the world after six months of silence. His disclosures were still roiling the news. There was no bigger story in the world at the moment, and he was the mystery figure at its heart.
More than half the questions I brought collided with boundaries that Snowden set around his privacy, security, or concept of what my story should be about. What were his living conditions? “Unnecessary question,” he said. Supporters in Silicon Valley had donated “enough bitcoins to live on until the fucking sun dies,” but he did not want to name any sources of his support. “You know this is off the record, and it has nothing to do with the substance,” he said about something else. “You’re showing bad faith.” Did he talk to his girlfriend? “Don’t jerk me around,” he said. He missed small things from home, he allowed. Milk shakes. Why not make your own? Snowden refused to confirm or deny possession of a blender. Like all appliances, blenders have an electrical signature when switched on. He believed the U.S. government was trying to discover where he lived. He did not wish to offer clues, electromagnetic or otherwise. “Raising the shields and lowering the target surface,” he said, one of his security mantras. He was not wrong about the capability. U.S. intelligence agencies closely studied electrical emissions when scouting Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan.
Snowden restricted the interview, in part, to try to control my story. I kept asking questions.
“You push too hard,” he said. “This is not a profile. You should point out that a price has been paid. ‘Look at how much this guy lost. He gave up his home, his job, this big salary, his family contact.’ But I wouldn’t go into the pornographic depths of voyeurism. Just enough to tell the story.”
On bathroom breaks, Snowden took his laptop with him, trusting me no more than Ashkan trusted a new girlfriend. “There’s a level of paranoia where you go, ‘You know what? This could be too much,’” he said when I smiled at the precaution. “But it costs nothing. It’s—you get used to it. You adjust your behavior. And if you’re reducing risk, why not?”
I replied that I was growing discouraged about my own security.
“I’ve been trying to imagine that if I could just get good enough at it—” I started to say.
“—that you’d be protected.”
“That I’d be protected,” I agreed.
“Safe,” he said, whispering in mock drama.
“So it appears there is not a purely technical answer.”
“What you’re forgetting is that while it is discouraging to think that you cannot be completely safe, the fact that I’m walking free today, the fact that I’m still able to communicate with you, it shows that there are cases and there are circumstances where if you do things right, if you do things carefully, you can win. Not because you’re invincible but . . . you can litera
lly win. You can beat them.”
Gradually, over six hours on that first day and eight hours on the next, Snowden loosened up a bit. He explained for the first time why he had agreed to bring me in on the story the previous spring. “It was important that this not be a radical project,” he said, an allusion to the politics of Greenwald and Poitras. “I thought you’d be more serious but less reliable. I put you through a hell of a lot more vetting than everybody else. God, you did screw me, so I didn’t vet you enough.” That first profile in the newspaper, he meant.
I had expected to find a man embattled and alone, in hiding, possibly full of regret for the life he had lost, disoriented by a language and culture he did not understand. Instead, the indoor cat appeared to be content.
“One of the very interesting things about doing the right thing is you have no trouble sleeping,” he said. “You have untroubled nights. It really hasn’t been the giant nightmare people assume it would be. For me, in terms of personal satisfaction and accomplishing the mission, the mission’s accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work I got everything I wanted. I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society the opportunity to change itself. I strongly believe in informed consent. As far as I’m concerned that’s a milestone we left behind a long time ago.”
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