Epstein Secrets

the CIA’s sophisticated lie detector tests. Both Hanssen and Ames eluded intensive FBI and CIA investigations that lasted over a decade. According to Victor Cherkashin, their KGB case officer, who I interviewed in Moscow in 2015, the KGB was able to hide their existence from investigators for such a long period part

mestic Surveillance Under Obama.” Along with it was the FISA warrant to Verizon. The PRISM story broke hours later in the Washington Post. Written by Gellman and Poitras, it claimed that the NSA and FBI were tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S, Internet companies which were knowin

e name and provided his credit card, but he was he in contact with three high-profile journalists, two well-known hacktavists and, as he suggested to Gellman, a foreign diplomatic mission. Even if Snowden had failed to persuade the Washington Post to publish a coded identifier, the mission’s interest would

ely a deep state. Trust me, I’ve been there. —EDWARD SNOWDEN, Moscow, 2014 Wa WAITING to hear back from Kucherena’s office, I arranged to meet with Victor Cherkashin, who had been one of the most successful KGB spy handlers in the Cold War. Cher- kashin, born in 1932, had served in the KGB’s espionage branch from

ts that could undo the NSA’s intelligence gathering as “the single point of failure.” While still shielding his own identity in May 2013, he wrote to Gellman that U.S. intelligence “will most certainly kill you if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them

owden.” “Tf I were providing information”: Transcript of interview with Snowden in Moscow, Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.” Pelton, for example: Victor Cherkashin, interview with author. “This debriefing could not”: Intelligence source who requested anonymity, interview with author. Mike Rogers, the chairman:

”: Shils, Torment of Secrecy. 47 “|The elites] know everything”: Roy, “Edward Snowden Meets Arundhati Roy and John Cusack.” 47 “What do you think”: Gellman, “Edward Snowden, After Months of NSA Rev- elations, Says His Mission’s Accomplished.” 48 violate U.S. espionage laws: Michael Hayden, interview wit

have many notable cases...” For the cases of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, see Appendix A 16. “The greatest trick the...”—Author’s interview with Victor Cherkashin. The quote from Zhe Usual Suspects was adopted by the movie from Charles Baudelaire’s observation, “La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous per

ed rendezvous with a journalist. As previously mentioned, when he left Hong Kong not a single journalist had agreed to meet him in Hong Kong. Indeed, Gellman considered Hong Kong, as he put it, “in the jurisdiction of a country that’s unfriendly to the United States,” and notified Snowden that he would not