Epstein Secrets

h journalists. They were Shamai Leibowitz in 2010, Chelsea Manning in 2013, John Kiriakou in 2013, Donald Sachtleben in 2013, Stephen Kim in 2014 and Jeffrey Sterling in 2014. Like Snowden, they claimed to be whistle-blowers informing the public of abuses of the government. But since they disclosed classified docum

N AFFAIR A Spy Story in Six Parts By Edward Jay Epstein HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020153 Chapter One Chapter Two

onald Sachtleben in 2013, Stephen Kim in 2014 and Jeffrey Sterling in 2014. Like Snowden, they claimed to b

the sensitive job of investigating the breach to Richard “Rick” Ledgett, the Director of the NSA’s Threat Operations Center at NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. It was a key position since the top- secret unit was responsible for discovering and countering the threats posed by Chinese, Russian and

,000 documents. As was discussed in Chapter I, just revealing the partial content of a single document to a journalist, as in the case of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, could result in two years in prison. So in the eyes of the law disclosing the full contents of 58,000 highly-classified documents constituted an unp

nt to a journalist, as in the case of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, could result in two years in prison. So

the NSA. In 2010, the NSA’s “Q” division handled such security and espionage threats. It reportedly initiated a counter-espionage probe at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters on receiving the tip. But since the NSA’s cryptological service had in 2010 no fewer than 35,000 military and civilian contractor employ

le its adversaries took full advantage of the setback. Several hundred US and British intelligence officers worked around the clock in Washington DC, Fort Meade, Maryland and Cheltenham, England for months on end to determine if which parts could be still salvaged from what had been until the Snowden breach t

nald Sachtleben in 2013, Stephen Kim in 2014, and Jeffrey Sterling in 2014. Like Snowden, they claimed to b

ing the breach to a team headed by Richard “Rick” Ledgett, who was then director of the NSA’s Threat Opera- tions Center at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Ledgett was the logical choice to head the damage assessment inves- tigation because the center’s regional branch in Hawaii was under his