Snowden’s 2012 NSA theft linked to post‑9/11 “stove‑piping” network integration

67 This 2012 theft was made even more serious by the interconnection of NSA computers with those of other intelligence agencies. It will be recalled that prior to the 9/11 attack in 2001, NSA data had been protected by “stove-piping” that separated NSA’ computers from networks used by other intelligence services. After the 9/11 Commission concluded that part of the reason why US intelligence agencies were unable to “connect the dots” in advance of the attack was because this “stove-piping, the NSA stripped away a large part of its “stove-piping.” One result was that the NSANet, which Snowden had access to at Dell in 2012, became a shared network. It had common access points. General Hayden described them to me as the equivalent of “reading rooms” in a library. They served as a means for NSA workers to exchange ideas about the problems they were encountering on various projects for the intelligence community. In maintaining them, system administrators, or “system admins,” like Snowden acted as the “librarians.” If a stem administrator copied data from this network, no one knew. For Snowden, the NSANet, which included CIA and Defense Department documents, provided a rich hunting ground for Snowden in the fall and winter of 2012. Many of the documents he took off the NSANet revealed not only operations of the NSA but also those of the CIA and Pentagon. By taking them he had come to a Rubicon from which there would be no return. He later explained in an email to Vanity Fair from Moscow, “I crossed that line.” As far as is known, he was not sharing them with any other party prior to May 2013. He was not even yet in contact with Poitras, Greenwald or any other journalists. Presumably, Snowden was collecting them drives, despite the risks that possessing such a collection of secrets might entail, for some future use. But why would Snowden jeopardize his career and, if caught, his freedom, by undertaking this illicit enterprise? He may have had by now strong ideological objections the NSA’s global surveillance. As he said later in Moscow, “we’re subverting our security standards for the sake of surveillance.” But ordinarily even ideologically-opposed employees don’t steal state secrets and risk imprisonment. If they are disgruntled, they seek employment elsewhere. Certainly, Snowden, with his three years experience working for Dell, would have little problem finding a job as an IT worker in the booming civilian sector of computer technology. Instead of resigning, he sought to widen his access to NSA documents. This behavior suggests to me that he had another agenda. One possible clue to it is the first document he took; the NSA exam. The secret in that document, the answers to the questions, were a form of power to him: power to burrow deeper into the executive structure of the NSA. It would unlock the door to door to even the more powerful documents containing the NSA’s sources stored in Level 3 compartments. His later actions demonstrated that he equated the possession of such secrets with personal power. For example, after he arrived in Moscow in 2013, he bragged to James Risen of the New York Times that he had access to secrets that gave him great leverage over the NSA. He told him specifically his access to “full lists” of NSA’s agents and operation in adversary countries could, if revealed, closed down the NSA’s capabilities to gather information in them. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020219