“NSA was operating”: Joel F. Brenner, “Forty Years After Church-Pike: What’s Different Now,” address at the National Security Agency, May 15, 2015, on file with author.
“You may have time constraints”: Author to Edward Snowden, email, May 18, 2013. Our conversation that day was prospective, as I did not yet have the document in hand. I was trying to understand his urgency, but his seventy-two-hour countdown had not yet begun.
“Alright, let’s talk”: Snowden email, May 25, 2013. The misspelling of “whistleblower” is in the original.
something bigger to think about: See chapter 3.
“has not been edited or changed”: Snowden to author, email, May 16, 2013.
akin to a royal seal: Cryptographers use mathematics to do what kings and dukes once did with their wax stamps. Aside from attesting to the authenticity of a message, a signature enforces what cryptographers call “non-repudiation.” A signer cannot disavow a document after signing it. I was hoping for a U.S. government signature because those are backed by a verifiable chain of digital trust called the public key infrastructure, or PKI.
“It creates a ‘chain of custody’”: Snowden to author, email, May 17, 2013.
The result was disappointing: I have simplified the file names and file paths in my rendering of the command. I have also blacked out the alphanumeric identity of the Verax key, because that could be used to discover the email address Snowden used. Although some of his anonymous addresses have become public, this one has not. Experts will also note that a standard government PKI signature would have used a different file format than the one Snowden sent me.
“I used to work in our U.N. spying shop”: Snowden’s reference here was to his assignment as technical officer at the CIA station in Geneva, the home of several large UN agencies, not to the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Poitras and I did not need: Verax had signed, as well as encrypted, all his emails to us, so a separate signature on the PRISM file added nothing to our knowledge of its provenance.
Snowden could demonstrate: In order to prove he was our source, Snowden could generate a signature that matched the one we published online. Only someone who possessed the unique Verax key and knew its passphrase could do that.
“well-founded fear of being persecuted”: That is the language of the controlling authority in international law, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Chapter I, Article 1(A)(2), July 28, 1951, at www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/StatusOfRefugees.aspx.
And I was the one: Snowden could not easily prove that he was our source by showing someone the signature himself. Anyone could download and sign the PRISM document once we published it. The time stamp would demonstrate at least that he possessed the file before publication, and there were other technical options available to Snowden, but no proof would be nearly as persuasive as the Post’s own affirmation that he was our source.
He wanted me to help him: I told Snowden in another context that I would be happy to publish his name and an interview, if that was what he wanted. The purpose of the cryptographic signature was to allow him to expose his identity in private to foreign diplomats, not to an audience of news consumers at large.
“I just read his email”: Transcript of anonymous, encrypted chat between author and Laura Poitras, May 25, 2013. I am aware that this exchange with Poitras may be quoted selectively by critics who have long accused Snowden of betraying his country. As I note explicitly, it is now quite clear that I was wrong. I rested a worst-case conclusion on ambiguous words that turned out to mean something else.
“I am not sure I will have”: Snowden to author, email, May 24, 2013.
“I look forward to meeting”: Author to Snowden, email, May 24, 2013.
“This all makes me”: Poitras to author, email, May 27, 2013.
“I thought I was pretty good”: Author to Poitras, email, May 27, 2013.
“Implying an affair”: Poitras to author, email, May 24, 2013.
“The response in the last few days”: Snowden to Poitras, email, May 26, 2013. Poitras and I were sharing all our correspondence with him then.
“working hard to do”: Snowden to author, email, May 26, 2013.
“What a nightmare”: Poitras to author, email, May 27, 2013.
“Please understand that the only”: Author to Snowden, email, May 27, 2013.
When I mentioned this sequence: Barton Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax’: Snowden, in Exchanges with Post Reporter, Made Clear He Knew Risks,” Washington Post, June 9, 2013, http://wapo.st/2a4lo2Q, archived at https://archive.is/dNEqk. When I wrote this story, the day Snowden went public in a Guardian video, I was unable to reach Poitras or Snowden before deadline. Though accurate, my story was therefore highly incomplete, omitting the central role that Poitras played and what little I knew of Snowden’s history with Greenwald. Most of my interactions with Snowden and Poitras were still strictly off the record.
“Bart Gellman’s claims”: That was the first of several angry declarations in the next several days. Tweet by Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald), June 9, 2013, https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343960115227025408, archived at https://archive.is/B67nS. Greenwald was responding to the following lines in a story I wrote that day: “Snowden replied succinctly, ‘I regret that we weren’t able to keep this project unilateral.’ Shortly afterward he made contact with Glenn Greenwald of the British newspaper the Guardian.” As I explain in the previous note, my account was accurate but unavoidably incomplete. Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax,’” Washington Post, June 9, 2013.
“Laura Poitras and I”: Tweet by Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald), June 10, 2013, https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/344040301972815872, archived at https://archive.is/VMnMk. See also Mackenzie Weinger, “Gellman, Greenwald Feud over NSA,” Politico, June 10, 2013, http://politi.co/1WJKx4W, archived at https://archive.is/ou3py.
an unwelcome “new turn”: The gist of Greenwald’s account was that I obtained last-minute access to a limited number of documents, pertaining solely to PRISM, amid his own ongoing work on the larger story. None of that was correct. Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014), 16–18.
the Post and I assembled lawyers: Ibid. This was a curious reproof, I thought, from a former litigator. Every news organization consulted lawyers on the NSA story. The Guardian, Greenwald’s newspaper at the time, killed some of its stories for legal reasons and delayed others for months; editors there destroyed a copy of the Snowden documents under threat of the more draconian British law. The Intercept and its parent company, First Look Media, which Greenwald helped found in late 2013, hired the New Yorker’s media lawyer, Lynn Oberlander. Greenwald was not against legal advice for himself when considering whether to visit the United States. For nearly a year he said publicly that his lawyers advised him it would be too risky because of his role in disclosing the NSA documents.
cut the balls off our story: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 55, 56. Greenwald said the Post “would dutifully abide” by unwritten rules “which allow the government to control disclosures and minimize, even neuter, their impact.”
as he told the Huffington Post: “Greenwald set up the encryption software and began speaking directly with Snowden in late March or early April, he said,” according to that story. Michael Calderone, “How Glenn Greenwald Began Communicating with NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden,” Huffington Post, June 10, 2013, http://huff.to/1pBnqfl, archived at https://archive.is/fFeol.
unaware that Verax was the Cincinnatus: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 82.
“clueless on the security-technical side”: Laura Poitras, “Berlin Journal,” in Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2016), 95.
Verax connected with Greenwald: In his book, Greenwald wrote that his first
encrypted communications with the still-anonymous source took place “during the week of May 20.” As shown in my next note, the date must have been May 27. Greenwald wrote that he asked Verax for a sample of the classified material on the following day, which makes it May 28, and that it took “a couple of days” more before he figured out how to receive and decrypt the twenty-five documents that Verax sent in reply. If a couple of days means two, he opened the sample on May 30, by which point Poitras and I had been working through the full Pandora archive for ten days. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 19.
During the summer and fall of 2013, Greenwald adjusted the timeline to demonstrate the primacy of his role. According to the New Yorker’s media writer, “Greenwald told me that Snowden initially sent him a small number of encrypted documents through Poitras,” and then later, “in May, Snowden offered to share extensive government documentation of what the N.S.A. was doing.” Ken Auletta, “Freedom of Information,” New Yorker, October 7, 2013, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/07/freedom-of-information. In reality, Greenwald had no substantive contact with Snowden until the end of May, and Poitras had no documents she could have shared with him until May 21, when she and I received them. What Poitras showed Greenwald when she met with him in April were two of the still ambiguous emails from her pseudonymous source. She did not hand Greenwald the Pandora archive until the two of them boarded their flight to Hong Kong on June 1, which is also when Greenwald learned Snowden’s identity.
I will not belabor the timeline: The following dates are drawn from the author’s contemporary, time-stamped notes and emails, many of them cited in chapters 1, 3, and 4; and from Micah Lee, “Ed Snowden Taught Me to Smuggle Secrets Past Incredible Danger. Now I Teach You,” Intercept, October 28, 2014, http://interc.pt/1DXiB2S; Greenwald, No Place to Hide, especially 7–26; the “Berlin Journal” extracts reproduced in Laura Poitras, ed., Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2016); screen shots from the documentary film Citizen Four (Praxis Films, 2014); and Edward Snowden’s pseudonymous video, anon108, “GPG for Journalists—Windows edition | Encryption for Journalists | Anonymous 2013,” Vimeo, January 6, 2013, https://vimeo.com/56881481. I know of no essential omission or conflicting documentary record.
December 1, 2012—Snowden, as “Cincinnatus,” writes to Glenn Greenwald, asking him to send an encryption key. Greenwald says he does not know how.
January 6, 2013—As anon108, Snowden sends Greenwald an instructional video on encryption. Greenwald does not reply.
January 11, 2013—anon108 shifts focus to Laura Poitras, asking technology activist Micah Lee of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to supply a trustworthy encryption key for her.
January 28, 2013—As “Citizen Four,” Snowden sends his first substantive email to Poitras.
January 31, 2013—Poitras, writing from Berlin, asks to meet me, saying she needs advice.
February 2, 2013—At a New York café, Poitras tells me about her source and his (still vague) story. I offer to help her validate it. According to her journal, she is also asking advice from privacy advocate and technologist Jacob Appelbaum in Berlin.
March 30, 2013—Citizen Four sends Poitras a link to an encrypted file called “astro_noise,” but not the key to open it.
April 19, 2013—Poitras learns that Greenwald is visiting New York. She asks to meet and shows him two emails from Citizen Four, suggestive but still vague about the story.
April 22–28, 2013—Poitras meets twice more with Greenwald, joined the second time by Appelbaum and ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer. She finds Greenwald “clueless on the security-technical side of things,” which rules out long-distance collaboration or direct contact with the source.
May 7, 2013—Poitras and I agree to partner on the story. She vouches for me with Snowden, who now goes by “Verax.” We expect a document any day.
May 9, 2013—Poitras, who still hopes Greenwald can join the reporting, asks Micah Lee to teach him how to communicate securely.
May 13, 2013—Lee sends Greenwald a thumb drive with encryption software, instructions, and preconfigured email and chat accounts. The package is held up in Brazilian customs for two weeks.
May 16, 2013—Poitras and I begin to meet intensively, sharing some of our separate correspondence with Verax.
May 20, 2013—Verax sends us the forty-one-page NSA slide deck on PRISM.
May 21, 2013—Verax tells us his name and employment history and sends the keys to Pandora, an archive of tens of thousands of classified documents.
May 24, 2013—Poitras and I sign contracts to write the PRISM story for the Washington Post. We plan to fly to Hong Kong together.
May 25, 2013—Snowden tells us he intends to seek foreign asylum. He presses us to post online a small digital file, called a cryptographic signature, which he can use to prove to foreign diplomats that he is our source.
May 26, 2013—Poitras and I decline the request and cancel our Hong Kong plans.
May 27, 2013—Snowden tells me he is withdrawing the Post exclusive. He chats online for the first time with Greenwald.
May 30, 2013—Greenwald receives and opens a sample of about twenty-five documents from Snowden.
June 1, 2013—Poitras flies to Hong Kong with Greenwald, joined by the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill. Just before the flight she hands Greenwald a thumb drive containing the classified archive we received on May 21.
June 3, 2013—Poitras, Greenwald, and MacAskill begin several days of meetings with Snowden, obtaining additional NSA documents in person. I continue to talk to Snowden by encrypted email and chat.
June 5, 2013—Greenwald, alerted by Poitras to my story plans, publishes his first NSA article in the Guardian. It reveals bulk collection of telephone calling records.
June 6, 2013—The Post, followed by the Guardian, publishes the PRISM story.
June 9, 2013—Snowden identifies himself publicly as the source of the NSA disclosures.
“audacious journalism”: He described his “fearlessness,” “courage,” and “audacious journalism” in Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 51, 58, and periodically in comparable terms elsewhere.
“timid, risk-averse government obeisance”: We were also “fear-driven,” “muddled,” “subservient,” “pro-government,” and “obsequious.” Ibid, pp. 18, 58, 68, 77.
“to pursue the truth”: Marty Baron, Acceptance Remarks at the Hitchens Prize Dinner in New York, November 28, 2016, www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/washington-post-editor-marty-baron-message-to-journalists.
holding power to account: I discussed this, with examples, in chapter 1.
were trembling servants: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, p. 89, with similar language at pp. 18, 58, 68, 77.
“Hey Bart”: Glenn Greenwald to author, June 11, 2013.
behind-the-scenes account: Savage was referring to Gellman, “Code Name ‘Verax,’” Washington Post, June 9, 2013. In that story, I mistakenly used the term “cryptographic key” when I meant “cryptographic signature.”
all my communications with Snowden: I did not share all our live chats and correspondence even with Poitras, though she certainly took part in exchanges about the digital signature. For security reasons, Snowden did not keep copies of our emails and chats, and he periodically discarded the keys we used to encrypt them. When I asked, he told me categorically that he had not showed a word of our correspondence to Greenwald.
“Charlie Savage tells me”: Author to Glenn Greenwald, June 11, 2013.
“I never said”: Glenn Greenwald to author, June 11, 2013.
reporters were still: Most commonly, the reporters told me that Greenwald described internal Post legal and editorial deliberations in unflattering terms, asserting falsely, for example, that the paper ran away from tough NSA stories and forbade me to travel to Hong Kong. I declined to comment
for publication. Sometimes I asked the reporters off the record how they imagined Greenwald could know these things. Two among many of those queries came in the reporting for Janet Reitman, “Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets,” Rolling Stone, December 4, 2013, http://rol.st/1bIGujx, and Auletta, “Freedom of Information.” See also Peter Maass, “How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets,” New York Times Magazine, August 13, 2013, http://nyti.ms/2eAYykb.
Now and then, when critics accused him of treason, of selling classified secrets for profit, or of endangering American lives, Greenwald pulled me into his foxhole. I had done the same things he did, he told his accusers. Why not shoot at me, too? Still, if he paid a passing compliment (“I respected Gellman . . .”), the punch line was not usually far behind (“. . . but not the Washington Post”). Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 54.
I had an exceptionally sensitive story: Author to Ben Rhodes, June 5, 2013. I summarize from old notes, but neglected to save the original email before a scheduled purge of older content from the Post exchange servers.
described him as deceptive: See Gellman, Angler, 147–49.
That evening, June 5: I was sorry to learn from Greenwald’s book that he got regular updates on my story plans from the notes I sent Poitras, who was still my coauthor and on contract with the Post. Evidently she found herself in an awkward position, and I suppose she hoped to deconflict our work. Greenwald had other ideas. He used the inside knowledge, he wrote, to ensure that he—not “the Washington Post, with its muddled, pro-government voice, its fear, and its middle-of-the-road-ese”—would define the story. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 58, 77.
first story from the Snowden archive: See Glenn Greenwald, “NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily,” Guardian, June 6, 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order, archived at https://archive.is/OgNKZ. Notwithstanding the dateline, which reflected the print edition, the story appeared online on June 5.
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