Epstein Secrets

also finance and release Mediastan. This sponsorship suggests that the Russian government saw potential value in the document-gathering activities of WikiLeaks. Snowden telephoned Assange at his refuge at the Ecuador embassy on June 10, 2013. According to Assange, Snowden needed help for his exit plan. He w

| | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 98 @ 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019586 CHAPTER 11 Enter Assange Thanks to Russia (and thanks to WikiLeaks), Snowden remains free. —JULIAN ASSANGE, Newsweek, 2015 ULIAN ASSANGE had made a brilliant career of trafficking in state, military, and corporate

st you try the lounge instead. I’ll offer to show you where it is, @ and at that point we’re good. You simply need to follow naturally.” According to Greenwald’s account, Snowden changed the plan to the upper lobby. “We were to go to the third floor,” Greenwald writes. “We were to wait on a couch near a ‘gia

ty for what would turn out to be the largest theft of top secret documents in the his- tory of U.S. intelligence. In the video, it will be recalled, Glenn Greenwald, who had bro- ken the NSA story in The Guardian, questioned Snowden. What was his motive? Greenwald asked. Why did he do it? Snowden replied that he

to disembark from the plane, Russian plainclothes officers from the special services boarded the plane and asked both Snowden and Sarah Harrison, his WikiLeaks-supplied “ninja,” to accompany them to a waiting car that whisked them away. According to the account in Izvestia, “A special operation was conducted

ere in contact with high-profile activists who were part of the anti-surveillance movements. This would include core participants in the Tor Project, WikiLeaks, Noisebridge, CryptoParties, the Free- @ dom of the Press Foundation, and the Electronic Frontier Founda- @ tion. (Snowden, for example, had been in

technology operative for the Freedom of the Press Foundation; Jacob Appelbaum, the Tor proselytizer; Ben Wizner, the ACLU lawyer; Barton Gellman; and Glenn Greenwald. “It is not me that can’t keep a secret,” Abraham Lincoln joked. “It’s the people I | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 231 @ 9/30/16 8:13AM | |

’t.” In the same vein, Poitras could hardly rely on these five confidants not to tell her secrets (and Snowden’s) to others. Hours after he was told, Greenwald told his lover, David Miranda, about the source in great detail. He even asked him to evaluate the source’s bona fides for him. Gellman, for his part

were responsible for hacking into the Dem- ocratic National Committee's computers, stealing millions of files, and turning the information over to WikiLeaks, which in turn circulated it to the media. Some may find the evidence unsatisfactory. But given Russia's well-established record of cyberwarfare,

wes its popularity to radical theorists who have gained a strong foothold in academia and even among some who call themselves journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald. While accusations that the press is biased or publish- es lies are common in American political campaigns, the hysterical charges hurled by Donald

e who call themselves journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald. While accusations that the press is biased or p

Instead of asking them to “throw off their chains,” as Marx did, he asked them to send clas- sified documents about secret government activity to the WikiLeaks site. Snowden, as a “sys admin,” was aware he had the power to do so. He recalled in Moscow in 2014, “I actually recommended they [the NSA] move to t

d contact with Snowden a year earlier, Unfortunately, that room was occupied, but I was given a nearby room that served my purpose. Snowden had told Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the Guardian reporters he met in Hong Kong, that he had hidden out at the Mira hotel since his arrival in Hong Kong because he fea

he later said, she was in charge of their “operational security.” When they finally settled at a table in the nearly empty restau- rant, she showed Greenwald e-mails she had received from Citizen Four. Greenwald, as he recounted, made “no connection” to the “long-forgotten emails” he had received from Snowden

nly 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 Overa hundred reporters: Irina Ga

013 while he was still on the NSA payroll. He also carefully orches- trated 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 P

. 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

ir IP addresses. Since Wikileaks did not know the identity of their sources, they could not be legally compelled to reveal them. "Tor's importance to WikiLeaks cannot be overstated," Assange said in an interview with Ro/ling Stone in 2010. Indeed without the anonymity provided by its TOR software, Wikileaks

y 20" to June 1? Wherever he was, he apparently considered himself safe enough to take another irrevocable step in his defection. He sent journalist Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian a “welcome package,” as he called it, of 20 top-secret NSA documents on May 25, 2013. He had now not only downloaded documents but, i

Snowden was questioned by Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist living in Brazil who had broken the NSA story in the Guardian. What was his motive? Greenwald asked. Why did he do it? Snowden replied that he had become horrified by the NSA’s secret operations which, to him, represented a kind of distillatio

it from Hong Kong. He placed a call to Julian Assange. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020256 105 CHAPTER THIRTEEN Enter Assange “Thanks to Russia (and thanks to WikiLeaks), Snowden remains free.” — Julian Assange Born on July 3, 1971 in Queensland, Australia, Julian Assange had made a brilliant career of trafficking i

ibson in New York “The Guinness is good.” It was a pre-arranged code by which MacAskill certified Snowden’s credibility for the Guardian. Gibson told Greenwald to proceed with the story. Greenwald wrote his first story about NSA transgression based almost entirely on the FISA watrant that Snowden had copie

evealed to Wizner that she had found an anonymous source with access to U.S. government surveillance secrets. So he was not completely surprised when Glenn Greenwald, Poitras’ writing partner, asked him in July 2013 to contact Snowden in Russia. Snowden offered an opportunity for Wizner since the ACLU already had

old federal investigators that he overheard a July 2016 phone call between Stone and then-candidate Trump in which Stone claimed to have spoken with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Stone claimed the website planned to release a batch of information, according to Cohen's testimony. Rick Gates, a former T

of a family settlement or that there was any wrong done by the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster." The Washington Post (7/13, Jacobs, 14.2M) says Greenwald's decision "prioritizes the First Amendment over a dated confidentiality agreement among members of the Trump family." Greenwald "refused to apply

tive began soon after Mr. Snowden arrived in Hong Kong, where he arranged to meet with Laura Poitras, a Berlin-based documentary filmmaker, and Glenn Greenwald, a Brazil-based blogger for the Guardian. Both journalists were longtime critics of NSA surveillance with whom Mr. Snowden (under the alias Citizen F

Hong Kong, as Mr. Putin admitted in a televised press conference on Sept. 2, 2013. To provide a smokescreen for Mr. Snowden’s escape from Hong Kong, WikiLeaks (an organization that the Obama administration asserted to be a tool of Russian intelligence after the hacking of Democratic Party leaders’ email in

s owes its popularity to radical theorists who have gained a strong foothold in academia and even among some who call themselves journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald. While accusations that the press is biased or publish- es lies are common in American political campaigns, the hysterical charges hurled by Donald

es were responsible for hacking into the Dem- ocratic National Committee's computers, stealing millions of files, and turning the information over to WikiLeaks, which in turn circulated it to the media. Some may find the evidence unsatisfactory. But given Russia's well-established record of cyberwarfare, pre