Epstein Secrets

Hong Kong, Greenwald was awaiting a green light to go there from Janine Gibson, the editor of the Guardian website, who was based in New York. Under Gibson’s leadership, The Guardian's website had effectively “gone into the business of publishing gov- ernment secrets,” as the Guardian columnist Michael W

ade her vul- nerable to NSA surveillance. To get to her through an encrypted channel, Snowden chose a circuitous approach. On January 11, he wrote to Micah Lee in Berkeley, California. Given Lee’s residence in the United States, as Snowden knew, the NSA would be legally barred from monitoring his communicati

is cell phone in the minibar refrigera- tor. Not without irony, Snowden’s own phone can be seen on his bed recharging. Although MacAskill was sent by Gibson to the event to verify the source’s bona fides, he had apparently hardly been briefed. The questioning went as follows: MACASKILL: Sorry, I don’t kn

rs in the anti-surveillance movement, including such well-known activists as Runa Sandvik (to whom he revealed his true name and address via e-mail), Micah Lee, Jacob Appelbaum, Parker Higgins, and Laura Poitras. “It is not statistically improbable that members of this circle were being watched by a hostile

ce His Epic NSA Leaks.” asked Appelbaum to help: Appelbaum, “Edward Snowden Interview.” Greenwald was awaiting: Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 16-18. Gibson authorized Greenwald's trip: The description of The Guardian’s reac- tion to Greenwald’s offer of a scoop was reported by Luke Harding, a Guard- ian

er film Citizenfour and published in Wired. See Greenberg, “These Are the Emails Snowden Sent to First Introduce His Epic NSA Leaks.” 63 he wrote to Micah Lee: Lee’s involvement with Snowden, although known to the journalists Greenwald and Poitras since April 2013, was not revealed to the pub- lic for some

Guardian. He needed to get a green light to go to Hong Kong from Janine Gibson, the editor of the Guardian website, who was based in New York. Under Gibson’s leadership, the Guardian's website effectively “gone into the business of publishing government secrets,” as Guardian columnist Michael Wolff point

journalist. Like Poitras, he joined the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The foundation, which eventually Runa Sandvik and Micah Lee would join, had been set up expressly to funnel money to both Assange’s Wikileaks site and the defense fund for Bradley Manning after he was arrested

ote Janine Gibson 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 Sn

erational security about his contacts with her, but that injunction did not prevent her from telling at least five people about her source, including Micah Lee, the Berkeley- based technology operative for the Freedom of the Press Foundation; Jacob Appelbaum, the TOR proselytizer; Ben Wizner, the ACLU lawyer