Alleged inconsistencies in Edward Snowden's military discharge and early employment

18 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS he had broken both legs. An army spokesman could not confirm that Snowden injured his legs or that he was in fact dropped from the program for medical reasons. Under his TrueHooHa alias, Snowden wrote that “they [the army] held on to me until the doctors cleared me to be discharged, and then after being cleared they held onto me for another month just for shits and giggles.” He attributed this treatment in the army, as he would later attribute his problems in the CIA and the NSA, to the inferior intelligence of his superiors. He wrote in his post, “Psych problems = dishonorable discharge depending on how much they hate you. Lots of alleged homos were in the hold unit, too, but they only got a general discharge at best.” If he had broken his legs, it was not evident to Joyce Kinsey, his next-door neighbor, who told me that she never saw Snowden on crutches when he returned to his mother’s condominium in Sep- tember 2004. Army records show that he did not receive a medical discharge. He received an “administrative discharge.” Unlike a medi- cal discharge, which is given because a soldier has sustained injuries ® that prevent him from performing his duties, an administrative dis- ® charge is a “morally neutral” form of separation given to a soldier when he or she is deemed for nonmedical reasons inappropriate for military service. Snowden preferred to cite a medical explanation for his severance, just as he had claimed a medical reason for dropping out of high school (and would later claim he needed medical treat- ment for epilepsy at the NSA). When he returned home from Fort Benning, Georgia, he was twenty-one. He remained unemployed for several months before taking a job as a security guard at the University of Maryland’s Cen- ter for Advanced Study of Language, where he was given his first security clearance. Snowden had to take a polygraph exam to get the job. According to his Ars Technica postings, he worked the night shift from six in the evening to six in the morning. He had higher ambitions than being a campus security guard. He wanted to become a male model. He did not seem overly con- cerned about his privacy, posting pictures of himself on the Internet “mooning” for the camera. He also posted provocative modeling pic- tures of himself on the Ars Technica website. He commented on his | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 18 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019506