Epstein Secrets

arfare, conventional defensive rules do not apply. “There are no rivers or hills up here. It’s all flat. All advantage goes to the attacker,” General Hayden said in an inter- view in 2015 with the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. His point was that because there are no defensive positions, the United

lso be targeted in enemy ter- ritories. Although repairing the damage might take many “decades,” according to Michael McConnell, the vice-chairman of Booz Allen, the new director had to get on with that task. McConnell, a for- | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 207 @ 9/30/16 8:13AM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_01

ntruthful about his degree in computer sciences, he not only had a SCI secu- rity clearance but was willing to take a cut in pay. In keeping with the Booz Allen business plan, such a recruit provided another cog in its profit machine. Not only had the NSA outsourced much of its computer opera- | | Epst_9780

and they are very grateful” American intelligence officers knowledgeable about the operations of the FSB, agreed with Kalugin’s assessment. General Hayden, for example, who served both as director of the NSA, CIA, and Air Force counterintelligence, told me in an interview that he saw no other possibilit

have access to the Level 3 documents stored in these compartments. Nor, as was discussed earlier, was he given access to them when he transferred to Booz Allen because he had not completed the requisite training. Snowden had also, it will be recalled, relinquished his privileges as a system administrator wh

interest in exposing the NSA’s secrets, this person could supply him with the necessary guidance, steering a still unsuspecting Snowden first to the Booz Allen position and afterwards to his associates in Hong Kong. By taking sole credit for the coup in the video that he made with Poitras and Greenwald in Ho

RSIGHT_020405 254 10. CHAPTER FIFTEEN Did Snowden Act Alone? > “Totality of Snowden’s Actions,”— Author’s interview with Michael Hayden. Also, “Hayden interview,” Meet The Press, NBC, December 15, 2013 “Maclean stole immensely valuable. ..”—See Appendix A, Donald Maclean “Whistle blower Bradley Bi

the Level 3 breach was switching jobs on March 15th 2013. Snowden chose to leave his job as a system administrator at Dell SecureWorks to take job at Booz Allen as an analyst-in-training. His motive was not money, as it was a lower- paying position. At the time, he made this choice he had already set up an en

se” in Hawaii with his girl friend. Yet he chose to move to Booz Allen he also greatly increased the risk of exposure because the auditing system at Booz Allen could trace back unauthorized copying (though not in real time.) Presumably he knew, as he later told Greenwald and Poitras, that stealing documents

. Unlike the telephone program that Snowden revealed, the PRISM program produced actionable intelligence until the time when Snowden blew it. General Hayden, who was NSA director during the three years following the 9/11 attack, wrote that these surveil- lance powers, among other things, “uncovered illici

ndia?” Also, Shilpa Phadnis, “Edward Snowden Sharpened His Hacking Skills in Delhi,” Times of India, Dec. 4, 2013. 33 “It is a dead-end job”: Former Booz Allen official who requested anonymity, interview with author. 33 shaded by a sakura: The description of Snowden’s life in Maryland comes entirely from Li

e-piping.” One result was that the NSANet, which Snowden had access to at Dell in 2012, became a shared network. It had common access points. General Hayden described them to me as the equivalent of “reading rooms” in a library. They served as a means for NSA workers to exchange ideas about the problems t

it did not change that decision even after it found out about his subterfuge.). According to Admiral McConnell, Snowden never actually worked in the Booz Allen offices, which are housed in a skyscraper in downtown Honolulu. Instead, he was immediately assigned to work at the NSA’s highly-sensitive National O