Epstein Secrets

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

ght not be totally coincidental. Snowden blamed high officials in the U.S. government who pur- posely “trapped him” in Russia. He told the editor of The Nation, “I’m in exile. My government revoked my passport intentionally to leave me exiled” and “chose to keep me in Russia.” He repeated that assertion over

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 @

ca, because the CIA can oper- ate with impunity down there,” he explained in the previously cited interview with Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation, in 2014. He had already discussed the likelihood of his being captured in Ecuador with Assange before his departure for Moscow. He later told Alan R

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-

have caused any harm is preemptively dis- missed as government propaganda. Snowden’s word also is taken over that of government officials because, as The Nation explained, Snowden speaks “truth to power.” Such a formulation of distrust allows those who accept it to dismiss all assertions of government officia

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

g with the intention of staying in Russia, but that the U.S. government “trapped him” at Moscow’s Airport by revoking his passport. He told editor of The Nation magazine: “I’m in exile. My government revoked my passport intentionally to leave me exiled.” He added that the U.S. government “chose to keep me in

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

osed 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 interview to Brian Williams of NBC News in which he explained that since he had no access to the NSA documents in Russia, h