Epstein Secrets

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

e was put in contact with Anatoly Grigorievich Kucherena, a silver-haired, fifty-two-year-old lawyer who is known to be a personal friend of Putin’s. Kucherena did tasks for Putin’s party in the Russian parlia- ment, or Duma. He had excellent connections in the Russian secu- rity apparatus because he served

had retained for himself and had not shared with the journalists in Hong Kong. Shevardnadze, who makes it a point to drill her interviewees, pressed Kucherena as to whether Snowden still had these NSA files, or “material,” in Russia. The dialogue went as follows (from the transcript supplied to me by Shevar

sian parlia- ment, or Duma. He had excellent connections in the Russian secu- rity apparatus because he served on the oversight committee of the FSB. Kucherena offered to serve as Snowden’s pro bono lawyer. On July 12, Snowden officially retained him as his legal representative in Moscow. In explaining the r

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

h Russia. He was put in contact with Anatoly Grigorievich Kucherena, a silver-haired 53-year old lawyer, who was known as a personal friend of Putin. Kucherena also did task for Putin’s party in the Russian parliament or Duma. Most important for Snowden, Kucherena had excellent connections in the Russian sec

who was known as a personal friend of Putin. Kucherena also did task for Putin’s party in the Russian parliament or Duma. Most important for Snowden, Kucherena had excellent connections in the Russian security apparatus since he served on the oversight committee of the FSB. He also offered to serve as the la

ernet appearance at well-attended events around the world, such as South by Southwest, TED, and other Internet conferences. Snowden was, according to Kucherena, was also furnished with bodyguards. To help earn his keep, he was employed at an unidentified Moscow cyber-security firm. To complete his resettleme

switching jobs Snowden had already taken most of the documents pertaining to the NSA’s domestic operations that he could have supplied to Poitras and Greenwald for whistle-blowing purposes. Indeed, while still at Dell, it will be recalled, he had he had told Poitras he had a copy of Presidential Policy Direc

he- nsa-and-commander-of-the-us-cyber-command-general-keith-alexander-20140507- itzhw#ixzz3m6TkuRal . “This discovery came when...”—Guardian staff, “Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours, Guardian, August 18, 2013 “What we know, what we don’t know...”-- Bryan Burroughs, Sarah Elliso

asked other countries for asylum.” Kucherena said that otherwise he could not represent him. Snowden agreed to that condition. Later that afternoon Kucherena accompanied Snowden to area G9 in the transit zone where they emerged from a door marked “authorized personnel only” shortly before 5 PM. The room wa

gn journalist, had ever obtained an interview with Snowden. At this point, Zamir was becoming increasingly doubtful about getting my access to either Kucherena or Snowden. But I had another contact in Moscow. When I had been investigating the 2006 Polonitum poisoning of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko i

to New York was in five days. My fixer, Zamir, had been trying to arrange an appointment for three weeks but he had only received one call back from Kucherena’s assistant, Valentina Vladimirovna Kvirvova. She wanted to know how I knew Oliver Stone. He told her of my part in Stone’s movie Wall Street 2: Mone

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

Curry, “Ex-intelligence Expert Guilty of Espionage,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1986. CHAPTER 26 The Handler 261 “As for [Snowden’s] communication”: Kucherena interview, Shevardnadze, “Snowden Believes He Did Everything Right.” 261 learned from a Russian researcher: Vassili Sonkine, interview with author.

r NSA Director: ‘I Would Lose All Respect for Russia if They Haven't Fully Exploited Snowden,” VentureBeat, May 23, 2014. 166 He was put in contact: Kucherena, interview with Der Spiegel, “Snowden’s Law- yer: ‘Russia Will Not Hand Him Over’” Spiegel Online International, Jane 24, 2013. 166 “Officially, he

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

the journalists with the lists of sources that were particularly relevant to the NSA’s surveillance of Russia. His legal represen- tative in Moscow, Kucherena, confirmed that Snowden had taken secret “material” to Russia and had access to NSA documents that @ he had not given to journalists. Those unreveal

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

to allow Mr. Snowden to board the Moscow flight—even though he had neither a valid passport nor a Russian visa, as his newly assigned lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena,said at a press conference in Russia on July 12, 2013. By falsely claiming his passport was invalidated after the plane departed Hong Kong— instead