“There were times when I thought it would never happen,”
Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent, said about her recent trip to Moscow.
“I’m still amazed.”
I too was amazed when I received an encrypted email at
2am one recent October morning, with a photo of her and three other
whistleblowers standing shoulder to shoulder with one of the most wanted
men on the planet.
When Edward Snowden abandoned his Hawaii home, a long-term
relationship, and a six-figure salary as a government contractor in
order to lift the veil on the US's transnational surveillance system, he
also left behind any sense of safety or security. The US Justice
Department has charged the 30-year-old former "infrastructure analyst"
with theft of government property, and two serious charges under the
Espionage Act. The former director of the NSA, Michael Hayden, even
recently "joked" during a cybersecurity panel that Snowden should be put on America’s kill list. (Rep. Mike Rogers R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, responded, "I can help you with that.")
For four high-profile former spooks, each with their own
histories of whistleblowing and government persecution, arranging a
secret meeting with the world’s most wanted whistleblower was no simple
thing. In early October, they embarked on their mission to inaugurate
Snowden into the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a
group of ex-intelligence officials who demonstrate “courage,
persistence, and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences.” They
had chosen Snowden as the awardee of their 2013 Sam Adams Integrity
Award, and felt it would only be right to deliver the award—a
candlestick holder made on a 3D printer—in person. They would be the
first Americans known to meet with him since he arrived in Moscow on
June 23.
Holding a 3D-printed candle to power: From left, Coleen Rowley (retired FBI agent), Thomas Drake (former NSA senior executive), Jesselyn Radack (former Dept. of Justice advisor), Snowden, Sarah Harrison (WikiLeaks journalist), and Ray McGovern (retired CIA analyst).
“Arrangements were made,” said Thomas Drake, a former
senior executive at the NSA who was on the trip and who spoke carefully
about its details. Drake, who warned about abuses at the agency after
9/11 and was indicted under the Espionage Act before most of the charges
were dropped, has been cited by Snowden as an inspiration. After
Snowden's disclosures, Drake warned him publicly to “always check
six"—make sure you know what's behind you. "Obviously, with Snowden, no
communications can be electronic.”
The term "logistical nightmare" springs to mind, but that
would be an understatement. The challenges of what they called the
"mission to Moscow," of communicating with and meeting with Snowden
without revealing his location to people armed with the arsenal of
technology Snowden has revealed, appeared insurmountable when the group began planning their trip in earnest in early August, at a hacker conference outside Amsterdam.
“We cannot be entirely sure, but it would appear that we
did successfully meet Snowden without being tailed or giving his
location away,” said Drake, who spearheaded the planning of the trip.
“We arrived in Russia not knowing where we would meet him—and of course,
we did not meet him at his place of residence. This level of security
was at his request, and agreed upon to protect his safety.” They met in
an undisclosed place that Rowley said was "probably a third location" in
a series of possible rendezvous points, in order to throw off anyone
who might be following them, and perhaps to keep the visitors in the
dark too.
Moscow, via Flickr/apurturismo
Given the risks and difficulties of transportation,
accommodation, and communication between Snowden and his visitors, it's
not improbable, as some observers have speculated,
that Russia's state security services are responsible for their eminent
asylee. Some reports that emerged after the whistleblowers’ visit
referred to metal detectors at their meeting place, and the presence of
Russian officials. The visitors said that Snowden's attorney, Anatoly
Kucherena, and a translator were also in attendance, along with the
British journalist Sarah Harrison, of Wikileaks—"his shepherd, friend,
protector and constant companion since Hong Kong," according to
Radack. Ed's father, Lon, would visit the following day. But they would
not discuss other people who may have been at the ceremony. “Russia has a
duty to protect Ed as an asylee,” Drake explained. “That should tell
you everything you need to know.”
However hard they are, the challenges of
reaching Snowden might be somewhat diminished if you're already familiar
with the ins and outs of government power, as the Sam Adams Associates
certainly are. The award they were bringing was named for a CIA analyst
who, in 1967, discovered that there were more than half a million
Vietnamese Communists under arms, which was about twice the number that
the US command in Saigon would admit to, lest the narrative of the war's
"progress" prove to be false. Adams protested within the system, and
after retiring from CIA in 1973, wrote an article about about what he
called a CIA conspiracy for Harper's, testified before
Congress, and helped CBS News make a documentary. But up until he died
from a heart attack in 1988, he was nagged by the thought that he could
have said and done more. The new whistleblowers are determined to avoid
that regret.
“The US has unchained itself from the constitution,” said
Drake, who has spent the past few years railing against the government's
massive collection of Americans' data, which violates the Fourth
Amendment's principle that "searches and seizures" require warrants.
Snowden is a constitutionalist too, and when asked in an online Q & A what
he would say to other potential intelligence agency whistleblowers, he
expressed his nationalism in the plainest terms: “This country is worth
dying for."
Snowden's decision to expose the NSA, made in service, he's
said, to the American public and the Constitution, comes at a serious
personal cost. His year-long asylum protects him in Russia, but beyond
those borders, he risks prosecution, or worse. It's easy to imagine life
that has been hollowed, exiled in a freezing, alien terrain by his
crisis of consciousness; his daily existence shaken by the constant
anxiety of his inevitable persecution.
To the contrary, though, Snowden is doing “remarkably
well,” said Drake, who noted his "wicked sense of humor." Rowley rather
casually told me he “seemed fine.” There, they described a man living in
asylum, not as a fugitive—and not, as Snowden made sure to explain, as a
pawn of the Russian government. (His passport was revoked by the
U.S. while in transit to Ecuador, he points out, and his every move is
watched by Wikileaks' Harrison.) His biggest concerns, his visitors
said, tended to go well beyond his own safety.
“He has a poker face,” said Rowley. “He talked a lot about
the need for reform in the US—personal issues didn’t come up much.” What
about former director Hayden’s thinly veiled assassination comments?
“We asked him about that. It didn’t shake him at all. He shrugged it
off.”
Rowley, herself a remarkably resolute character who was
recognized as a Time Person of The Year in 2002 for her whistleblowing
at the FBI, describes Snowden as “one of the strongest and most stable
characters I have ever encountered.” He is practical and focused, she
added, an Epictetian stoic who carried on with life as best as possible,
sometimes getting out and about in Moscow (according to his attorney),
and apparently, working too. Rowley said Snowden's new gig is “working
on internet services of some sort.” No surprise there, but Snowden’s job, like his location, is likely to remain a closely guarded secret, for now at least.
Snowden's remarks at the Sam Adams Associates dinner, via Courtesy Wikileaks/The Daily Conversation
Being a Sam Adams Associate may not endow you with any
added sense of security, but it aims to provide a comforting sense of
solidarity. After the two-hour award ceremony, which included individual
speeches, an exchange of human rights texts and Russian literature, and
accounts of radical moments in American history, the attorney and
translator left, and the whistleblowers chatted until the early hours.
Another of his visitors, Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department
ethics attorney and whistleblower who has represented Thomas Drake and others, chose to read from Albert Camus.
“We have nothing to lose except everything," she recited.
"So let’s go ahead. This is the wager of our generation.” She drew
parallels between Camus’ wager and what Snowden called "the Work of a
Generation" in a statement he recently sent to the European Parliament's
Civil Liberties Committee. Radack reminded Snowden too that Camus
rejected what he termed “the paltry privileges granted to those who
adapt themselves to this world," adding, “those individuals who refuse
to give in will stand apart, and they must accept this.” Stoicism, not
anger, it seems, is a consistent motif among the US's intelligence
whistleblowers.
Ray McGovern, the 73-year-old founder of the Sam Adams
Associates, isn't among Snowden's generation, but he supports his
"wager." A former high-ranking CIA analyst who served under seven
presidents, McGovern argues that young people today who have grown up
with the internet possess technical abilities and a corresponding
conscience that motivates them to keep it free.
"One of the things that impressed me most," McGovern wrote,
"was Ed’s emphasis on the 'younger generation' he represents—typically
those who have grown up with the Internet—who have
(scarcely-fathomable-to-my-generation) technical expertise and equally
remarkable dedication to keeping it free—AND have a conscience."
"It is the sort of idealism," said Jesselyn Radack, "that allows someone to undertake such a magnificent act of civil disobedience. It’s an idealism that believes the democracy he once knew can be reined in from the surveillance state it has become, if only the public knew what was going on.”
Drake, who has been thinking a lot lately about civil
liberties in the digital age, believes that an internet-connected
generation that remembers the pre-9/11 world may “carry new principles
to do with the democratization of information and the protection of
civil liberties that help us resist this dystopic nightmare.” Perhaps
serving as some measure, the number of people using the anonymous web
browsing program Tor has rocketed since the Snowden revelations.
Will this generation manage to curtail the kind of dragnet
surveillance that Snowden helped disclose, whether through political
change or technological evasion? Do Americans want to resist the
spied-upon world that Snowden said he didn’t want to live in? In the
Nation, Radack described Snowden as “idealistic—in the best sense of the
word. It is the sort of idealism that allows someone to undertake such a
magnificent act of civil disobedience. It’s an idealism that believes
the democracy he once knew can be reined in from the surveillance state
it has become, if only the public knew what was going on.”
There was a dose of realism in their meeting too. “He was
always talking about what should we do next, how to achieve reform,”
Rowley said, recounting the whistleblower's three main political aims.
First, he would like to see section 215 of the controversial post-9/11
PATRIOT Act, and particularly section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act,
repealed, ending two elements of legislation that permit the collection
of metadata and warrantless surveillance, with dubious
constitutionality."
Snowden also said he wants to see the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) amended, as this is the legislation that permits the interception and storage of private electronic communications.
Third, he urged that an independent body conduct a thorough inquiry
into the surveillance practices of US intelligence agencies on a broader
scale. Rowley reminded me that the NSA is just one of sixteen US
intelligence agencies—and that there are around 2,000 private security
contractors. “There is even more going on than Snowden knows about,” she
said.
And for us, the public, too. Glenn Greenwald, who took hold
of Snowden's documents (Snowden has said he no longer has them),
estimates that he and other journalists are only about halfway through
the release of Snowden's trove of exported documents. And some of the
most shocking revelations, I am told, are yet to come.
The revelations likely won't end there. The ex-spooks tell
me, with scant detail, that more whistleblowers have begun to come
forward. There's a sense now that dawn is breaking in the Information
Age, revealing a staggering new horizon. If information is power,
Snowden has helped foretell a decade of unprecedented public
empowerment, his supporters say. He may be called an idealist for
wanting to change the world, but in the eyes of those who have dared to
tread a similar path, he already has.
“It is never about the majority,” Drake said of the
people who are instrumental in protecting the freedoms of the public,
“nor has it been throughout our history.”
Source: vice.com
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