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288 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS
state secrets. It still needs to fog over the extent of its coup, as said
earlier, to prolong the value of the espionage. Hence it is likely that
the story that Snowden had thoroughly destroyed all the stolen
data in the month prior to departing for Russia, as well as the story
that he had turned down all requests to be questioned by the FSB
and other Russian intelligence officials, was part of the legend con-
structed for him. The repetitions of these uncorroborated claims in
his press interviews might also have enhanced his public image for
the ACLU effort to get clemency for him. Even so, in view of the
importance of such communications intelligence to Russia, it would
be the height of naiveté for U.S. or British intelligence to accept such
claims as anything more than camouflage.
As for Snowden’s motive, I see no reason to doubt his explana-
tion that he stole NSA documents to expose its surveillance because
he believed that it was an illicit intrusion into the privacy of indi-
viduals. Such disaffection is not a unique situation in the intelligence
business. Many of Russia’s worldwide espionage sources before
Snowden were also dissatisfied employees who had access to classi-
© fied secrets. Like some of them, Snowden used his privileged access ©
to reveal what he considered the improper activities of the organiza-
tion for which he worked. In that sense, I fully accept that he began
as a whistle-blower, not as a spy. It was also as a whistle-blower that
he contacted Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Barton Gellman,
who published the scoops he provided in Der Spiegel, The Guardian,
and The Washington Post.
Snowden’s penetration went beyond whistle-blowing, however.
In the vast number of files he copied were documents that contained
the NSA‘s most sensitive sources and methods that had little if any-
thing to do with domestic surveillance or whistle-blowing.
Snowden could not have acted entirely alone. It will be recalled
that the deepest part of his penetration was during the five weeks
he worked at the National Threat Operations Center in Hawaii as
a contract employee of Booz Allen Hamilton. It was there that he
copied Level 3 files, including the so-called road map to the gaps
in American intelligence. During this period, Snowden had neither
the passwords nor the system administrator’s privileges that would
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