Over the course of the day, however, Edward Snowden told his story. He had access to tens of thousands of documents taken from America’s National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters’ (GCHQ) internal servers. Most were stamped Top Secret. Some were marked Top Secret Strap 1 — the British higher tier of super-classification for intercept material — or even Strap 2, which was almost as secret as you could get. No one — apart from a restricted circle of security officials — had ever seen documents of this kind before. What he was carrying, Snowden indicated, was the biggest intelligence leak in history.
Glenn Greenwald bombarded him with questions. His credibility was on the line. So was that of his editors at the Guardian. Yet, if Snowden were genuine, at any moment a CIA Swat team could burst into the room, confiscate his laptops and drag him away.
As he gave his answers, they began to feel certain Snowden was no fake. And his reasons for becoming a whistleblower were cogent, too. The NSA could bug “anyone”, from the president downwards, he said. In theory, the spy agency was supposed to collect only “signals intelligence” on foreign targets. In practice this was a joke, Snowden told Greenwald: It was already hoovering up metadata from millions of Americans. Phone records, email headers, subject lines, seized without acknowledgment or consent. From this, you could construct a complete electronic narrative of an individual’s life: Their friends, lovers, joys, sorrows.
The NSA had secretly attached intercepts to the undersea fibre optic cables that ringed the world. This allowed them to read much of the globe’s communications. Secret courts were compelling telecom providers to hand over data. What is more, pretty much all of Silicon Valley was involved with the NSA, Snowden said — Google, Microsoft, Facebook, even Steve Jobs’s Apple. The NSA claimed it had “direct access” to the tech giants’ servers. It had even put secret back doors into online encryption software — used to make secure bank payments — weakening the system for everybody. The spy agencies had hijacked the internet. Snowden told Greenwald he did not want to live in a world “where everything that I say, everything that I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of love or friendship is recorded”.
Snowden agreed to meet Ewen MacAskill the next morning. The encounter went smoothly until the reporter produced his iPhone. He asked Snowden if he minded if he taped their interview and perhaps took some photos? Snowden flung up his arms in alarm, as if prodded by an electric stick. “I might as well have invited the NSA into his bedroom,” MacAskill says. The young technician explained that the spy agency was capable of turning a mobile phone into a microphone and tracking device; bringing it into the room was an elementary mistake. MacAskill dumped the phone.
Snowden’s own precautions were remarkable. He piled pillows up against the door to stop anyone eavesdropping from outside in the corridor. When putting passwords into computers, he placed a big red hood over his head and laptop, so the passwords could not be picked up by hidden cameras. On the three occasions he left his room, Snowden put a glass of water behind the door next to a bit of tissue paper. The paper had a soy sauce mark with a distinctive pattern. If anyone entered the room, the water would fall on the paper and it would change the pattern.
MacAskill asked Snowden, almost as an afterthought, whether there was a United Kingdom role in this mass data collection. It did not seem likely to him. MacAskill knew that GCHQ had a longstanding intelligence-sharing relationship with the US, but he was taken aback by Snowden’s vehement response. “GCHQ is worse than the NSA,” Snowden said. “It’s even more intrusive.”
The following day, Wednesday, June 5, Snowden was still in place at the Mira hotel. That was the good news. The bad news was that the NSA and the police had been to see his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, back at their home in Hawaii. Snowden’s absence from work had been noted, an automatic procedure when NSA staff do not turn up. Snowden agonised: “My family does not know what is happening. My primary fear is that they will come after my family, my friends, my partner.” He admitted, “That keeps me up at night.”
But the CIA had not found him yet. This was one of the more baffling aspects of the Snowden affair: Why did the US authorities not close in on him earlier? Once they had spotted his absence, they might have pulled flight records showing he had fled to Hong Kong. There he was comparatively easy to trace. He had checked into the $330 (Dh1,214)-a-night Mira hotel under his own name. He was even paying the bill with his personal credit card.
That evening, Greenwald rapidly drafted a story about Verizon, revealing how the NSA was secretly collecting all the records from this major US telecom company. Greenwald would work on his laptop, then pass it to MacAskill. MacAskill would type on his computer and hand Greenwald his articles on a memory stick; the sticks flowed back and forth. Nothing went on email.
In New York, Janine Gibson drew up a careful plan for the first story. It had three basic components: Seek legal advice; work out a strategy for approaching the White House; get draft copy from the reporters in Hong Kong. She wrote a tentative schedule on a whiteboard. (It was later titled The Legend Of The Phoenix, a line from 2013’s big summer hit, Daft Punk’s Get Lucky.)
Events were moving at speed. MacAskill had tapped out a four-word text from Hong Kong: “The Guinness is good.” This code phrase meant he was now convinced Snowden was genuine. Gibson decided to give the NSA a four-hour window to comment, so the agency had an opportunity to disavow the story. By British standards, the deadline was fair: Long enough to make a few calls, agree a line. But for Washington, where journalist-administration relations sometimes resemble a country club, this was nothing short of outrageous. In London, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, headed for the airport for the next available New York flight.
The White House sent in its top guns for a conference call with the Guardian. The team included FBI deputy director Sean M. Joyce, a Boston native with an action-man resume — investigator against Colombian narcotics, counter-terrorism officer, legal attache in Prague. Also patched in was Chris Inglis, the NSA’s deputy director. He was a man who interacted with journalists so rarely, he was considered by many to be a mythical entity. Then there was Robert S. Litt, the general counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Litt was clever, likeable, voluble, dramatic, lawyerly and prone to rhetorical flourishes. On the Guardian side were Gibson and Stuart Millar, sitting in Gibson’s small office, with its cheap sofa and unimpressive view of Broadway.
By fielding heavyweights, the White House had perhaps reckoned it could flatter, and if necessary bully, the Guardian into delaying publication. Gibson explained that the editor-in-chief — in the air halfway across the Atlantic — was unavailable. She said: “I’m the final decision-maker.” After 20 minutes, the White House was frustrated. The conversation was going in circles. Finally, one of the team members could take no more. Losing his temper, he shouted, “You don’t need to publish this! No serious news organisation would publish this!” Gibson replied, “With the greatest respect, we will take the decisions about what we publish.”
Over in Hong Kong, Snowden and Greenwald were restless. Greenwald signalled that he was ready and willing to self-publish or take the scoop elsewhere if the Guardian hesitated. Time was running out. Snowden could be uncovered any minute.
Just after 7pm, Guardian US went ahead and ran the story.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
The fifth and final part will be published tomorrow.
