Epstein Secrets

s, had granted only a handful of face-to-face press interviews. Most of these were with the journalists who had published his story, but one was with James Bamford for his 2014 Wired piece. According to Bamford, it took nearly nine months to arrange the meeting. “I have been try- ing to set up an interview with

ing the NSA. In 2010, the NSA division that handled such security and espio- nage threats reportedly initiated a counterespionage probe at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters. According to a former NSA official, “They [were] looking for one or more Russian spies that NSA [was] convinced resided at Fort Meade a

adversaries took full advantage of the setback. Sev- eral hundred U.S. and British intelligence officers worked around the clock in Washington, D.C., Fort Meade, Maryland, and Cheltenham, England, for months on end to determine which parts of the most powerful communications intelligence system in the world c

on this claim in three more interviews arranged by Wizner. These interviews were with three journalists who themselves had opposed NSA surveillance: James Bamford writing for Wired magazine, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation. He also gave a televised

the NSA. In 2010, the NSA’s “Q” division handled such security and espionage threats. It reportedly initiated a counter-espionage probe at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters on receiving the tip. But since the NSA’s cryptological service had in 2010 no fewer than 35,000 military and civilian contractor employ

le its adversaries took full advantage of the setback. Several hundred US and British intelligence officers worked around the clock in Washington DC, Fort Meade, Maryland and Cheltenham, England for months on end to determine if which parts could be still salvaged from what had been until the Snowden breach t

le concern about misleading journalists when it suited his purpose. For example, he told Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian, Brian Williams of NBC News, James Bamford of Wired, Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, Barton Gellman, and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker that the U.S. government intentionally | | Epst_9780

ing the breach to a team headed by Richard “Rick” Ledgett, who was then director of the NSA’s Threat Opera- tions Center at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Ledgett was the logical choice to head the damage assessment inves- tigation because the center’s regional branch in Hawaii was under his

gence services, as it did in 2013. Snowden, for example, took the NSA to task for its sharing information with Israel. In an interview in Moscow with James Bamford for Wired Magazine in August 2014, Snowden describes supplying intelligence to Israel as “One of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.” He was referring to

the sensitive job of investigating the breach to Richard “Rick” Ledgett, the Director of the NSA’s Threat Operations Center at NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. It was a key position since the top- secret unit was responsible for discovering and countering the threats posed by Chinese, Russian and