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

ithstanding, Snowden had made plans to seek a haven from American justice well before his meeting them. As early as May 24, 2013, he had suggested to Barton Gellman that he was making arrangements with a foreign government. To that end, he asked Gellman to insert an encrypted key in the Internet version of the NS

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

the Berkeley-based 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 @

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

ut also violated the oath he had signed when he took his job by provid- ing them to an unauthorized party. During this period, Snowden also contacted Barton Gellman, on behalf of The Washington Post, via e-mail. Indeed, while he was staying someplace other than the place he claimed to be staying, he made almost a

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

er 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-

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

ts but, in a violation of his oath, he provided them to an unauthorized party. He also in Hong Kong, for the first time, directly contacted via email Barton Gellman of the Washington Post. Indeed, it was during these first 11 days during which he was staying someplace other than the place he claimed to be stayin

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

d distributed to journalists. Snowden reinforced this narrative in almost in a series f interviews arranged by Wizner. In December 2013, he met with Barton Gellman of the Washington Post. It was his first face-to- face meeting with a journalist since he had arrived in Russia in June. To advance his narrative , S