Media

The story of Snowden and Greenwald's NSA leaks.

""I crave the hatred of those people," Greenwald says about the small, somewhat incestuous community of Beltway pundits, government officials, think-tank experts and other opinion-makers he targets routinely. "If you're not provoking that reaction in people, you're not provoking or challenging anyone, which means you're pointless.""

You got to love that.

"Like Bradley Manning, whose case he would later study, Snowden had an idealized view of the United States and its role in the world. He also had a gamer's sense of his own ability to beat the odds – he'd later tell Greenwald that his moral outlook had been shaped by the video games he played as a kid, in which an everyman-type battles tremendous and seemingly invulnerable forces of injustice, and prevails."

The never-mentioned, positive aspect of video games. Much like comic books.

"Snowden came to be bothered by much of what he saw in the CIA. He would later cite an operation to recruit a Swiss banker as an asset that involved getting the man arrested on drunk-driving charges. He also recalled, in an interview with The New York Times' Risen, the retaliation from a senior manager whose authority he'd once questioned. The incident arose over a flaw Snowden found in some CIA software, which he pointed out to his superiors. Rather than praising his initiative, however, one manager, who didn't appreciate such enterprising behavior, placed a critical note in his personnel file, effectively killing Snowden's chance for promotion."

That's exactly what I would expect from the kind of people attracted to and successful at government work.

""You have to learn the game," he says. "I put on a suit. I speak in sound bites. I know what I'm talking about – and I don't drone on and on. One of the main criticisms I have of Noam Chomsky is that he allowed himself to get marginalized by not ever strategizing how to prevent it. If you're an advocate and believe in political values, your obligation is to figure out how to maximize your impact."

This is why Ron Paul failed to win the 2012 nomination. Being honest, of great character and correct isn't enough. He could have adapted to the playing field of the campaign and won on those terms, but he didn't.

"Snowden, who left the CIA in 2009, was a natural fit for the NSA, which embraced the kind of problem-solving initiative his CIA bosses seemed to resent. "The NSA was very blue-collar, much more utilitarian than the CIA," says Drake. "If you could prove your chops with computers, it didn't matter what your background was, or what your grades were. We had a lot of people like Snowden at the NSA, who I hired. And there was no limit on the contracting side.""

That's because the NSA wanted to out-compete the CIA, competition is a wonderful motivator, but that philosophy is dead after Snowden.

"The more Snowden saw of the NSA's actual business – and, particularly, the more he read "true information," including a 2009 Inspector General's report detailing the Bush era's warrantless-surveillance program – the more he realized that there were actually two governments: the one that was elected, and the other, secret regime, governing in the dark. "If the highest officials in government can break the law without fearing punishment or even any repercussions at all, secret powers become tremendously dangerous.""

Good for him.

"As a result, Alexander was able to fully realize a concept, promoted by Hayden, of the NSA's "owning the Net" – gaining access to virtually everything. By February 2012, the agency had laid out its strategic vision in a five-page mission statement declaring its intention to acquire data from "anyone." One program in support of this goal, known as "Treasure Map," was so overarching it claimed to map out information from "any device, anywhere, all the time." The agency referred to the present as the "golden age of SIGINT.""

Some golden age.

"Snowden has been vague about when he decided to leak, but he has been very clear on what compelled him to act. "It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress – and therefore the American people – and the realization that Congress . . . wholly supported the lies," he said. "Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper – director of National Intelligence – baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy.""

Good for him again.

"Greenwald's methods, and his unabashed denunciation of those who criticize them, have raised questions about his own agenda. "This is a carefully constructed narrative," says James Lewis of CSIS. "They've got documents pertaining to foreign spying against the U.S., but not a single one of those has been released. Instead, this is scripted to lead you to a certain outcome, that it's just the U.S. doing this. The fact that they haven't released these documents makes me very suspicious. They're spinning as much as the U.S. government is.""

All government's do it, but the US is the richest by far, and I'm sure it has the greatest capability by far. And we have seen reports about Canada spying. Greenwald is unlikely to release anything about Russia while Snowden lives there.