Epstein Secrets

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

cure debriefing room, he said that he had information that Russia would find interesting, but he wanted money in return. What interested me about the Pelton case was that Cherkashin proceeded to recruit Pelton, even though he was no longer working at the NSA and no longer had access to @ the NSA. In addi

urse grab them.” The final recruitment I asked Cherkashin about was that of Ronald Pelton, the civilian employee of the NSA who had retired in 1979. Pelton had left the NSA without taking any classified documents with him. After retiring, he had financial difficulties, and he sought to get money from the

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

urse grab them.” The final recruitment I asked Cherkashin about was that of Ronald Pelton, the civilian employee of the NSA who had retired in 1979. Pelton had left the NSA without taking any classified documents with him. After retiring, he had financial difficulties, and he sought to get money from the

return. What interested me about the Pelton case was that Cherkashin proceeded to recruit Pelton even though he was no longer working at the NSA, and Pelton no longer had access to the NSA. In addition, since the FBI had 24 hour surveillance on the embassy, Pelton had almost certainly been photographed en

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

ously tapped into Soviet undersea cables in the Sea of Okhotsk, which connected a to the Soviet Pacific Fleet's mainland headquarters at Vladivostok. Pelton received another $30,000 from the KGB. “Did the information in his head proved valuable?” I asked. “As long as the NSA didn’t know the tap was comp

he residence of the Soviet ambassador to Austria. A KGB’s electronic communications expert, Anatoly Slavnov, was then sent to Vienna to supervise the Pelton debriefings. The debriefing sessions, which went on for 15 days, were from 8 AM to 6 PM. In them, Pelton managed to recall Project A, a joint NSA-CIA

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

4 “There's definitely a deep state”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.” 255 according to Cherkashin: Cherkashin, interview with author. 258 Pelton had left the NSA: George E. Curry, “Ex-intelligence Expert Guilty of Espionage,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1986. CHAPTER 26 The Handler 261 “As for