Epstein Secrets

ted as a hero for defying the US government. He had not sacrificed himself, he had transformed himself. He had risen from being a lowly technician in Hawaii whose talents went largely unrecognized, to the status of an international media star in Moscow. In his new messianic role, he could make Internet ap

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

en a massive breach. Thousands of secret files bearing on com- munications intelligence had been stolen from a heavily guarded regional base in Oahu, Hawaii. The suspect was Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old civil- ian analyst at that base, who had fled to Hong Kong before the breach was discovered.

e the American establishment. So he had Poitras write to Barton Gellman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post. Poitras had met Gellman in 2010, when they were both fellows at NYU’s Center on Law and Security. Poitras had requested help in encrypting her computer from Karen Greenberg,

r exchange between him and Mills (who was in Honolulu). That day Mills informed Snowden that two government investiga- tors had come to their home in Hawaii, asking her about Snowden’s whereabouts. When he had failed to show up for work on June 3 it | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 91 @ 9/29/16 5:

s scale of domestic surveillance under Obama.” Along with it was the FISA order. The PRISM story broke hours later in The Washington Post. Written by Gellman and Poitras, it claimed that the NSA and the FBI were tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, which were k

gence by the NSA @ was hardly a secret. As the NSA expanded further, it delegated part of its work to regional bases, including ones in Utah, Texas, Hawaii, and Japan. The paramount task of the NSA remained monitoring the channels of communications that an adversary might use. The vast prolifera- tion of

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

not believe an investigative book should be written without the author visiting the crime scene and other pertinent ven- ues, I undertook research in Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, and Moscow. Where possible, I flew the same flights that Snowden did. I am grate- ful to Ena and Ines Talakic for their assistance

”: 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

e number of its most secret files had been stolen. The suspect was Edward Snowden, a 29 year old civilian analyst at the NSA’s regional base in Oahu, Hawaii, who had fled to Hong Kong. The stolen documents revealed, among other things, the secret tools and capabilities that the NSA employed to do its job.

s for his journalistic event. He was also apparently in contact with at least one foreign mission during this period, according to what he written to Gellman on May 25". In that email concerning when and how his story was to be published by the Washington Post, Snowden even asked Gellman to include in it s

workers, such as Ames, it is plausible that it spotted Snowden through his Internet rants against U.S. surveillance. Even if it had missed Snowden in Hawaii, a disgruntled ex-civilian employee at the NSA would have received its full attention after he contacted Russian officials in Hong Kong. While the ta

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