Epstein Secrets

earlier, and HealthCare.gov, a Web site that was undertested and overmatched, was a gift to them. There were other beribboned boxes under the tree: Edward Snowden's revelations about the National Security Agency; the failure to get anything passed on gun control or immigration reform; the unseemly waffling over

are most about are what's being reported on, and that we're not on any given day chasing after fifteen story lines." Then Obama insisted that what Snowden did was "not akin to Watergate or some scandal in which there were coverups involved." The leaks, he said, had "put people at risk" but revealed no

Marvin Nicholson, a tall, rangy man in his early forties who works as the President's trip director and ubiquitous factotum. He is six feet eight. Nicholson is the guy who is always around, who carries the bag and the jacket, who squeezes Purell onto the Presidential palms after a rope line or a clutch;

entation of more sophisticated secu- rity procedures, such as the polygraph examination and extensive background checks. In 1995, eleven years before Snowden joined it, the CIA’s inspector general completed a study of the KGB’s use of false defectors to mislead the U.S. government from the end of the Cold

sses of a nation’s potential adversaries. The most impor- tant of these in peacetime is communication intercepts. It was just such state secrets that Edward Snowden took from the NSA in the spring of 2013. Before that breach, America’s paramount advantage in this subterranean competition was its undisputed domina

ficials working abroad as diplomats, engi- @ neers, and military officers, its operations brought its officers in close @ contact with SVR officers. Nicholson therefore was required to meet with Russian intelligence officers in Manila, Bucharest, Tokyo, and Bangkok and “dangle” himself to the SVR by feignin

101 Even though Snowden had greatly exaggerated the positions he held with the CIA and DIA, no effort was made to check them by the team of journalists. Instead, MacAskill w

t does those sorts of things.” He had succeeded in defining himself for the public. The Guardian story accompanying the video carried the headline, “EDWARD SNOWDEN: THE WHISTLE BLOWER BEHIND THE NSA SURVEILLANCE REVELATIONS.” Snowden’s identity as a whistle-blower was now established in the media. Overnight, Sno

ssian officials working abroad as diplomats, engineers and military officers, its operations brought its officers in close contact with SVR officers. Nicholson therefore was required to meet with Russian intelligence officers in Manila, Bucharest, Tokyo and Bangkok and “dangle” himself to the SVR by pretendi