“And Then There Were Three”: Was A Documentary Filmmaker The ‘Mastermind’ Behind The Snowden Leaks?
Peter Maass of The New York Times has published a long article detailing how documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras helped Edward Snowden leak thousands of classified documents detailing the National Security Agency’s global surveillance apparatus.
What it makes clear is that Poitras’ experience protecting her information enabled Snowden to begin providing documents, and her skills as a filmmaker facilitated him identifying himself.
Basically, Poitras had a much larger role in Snowden’s leaks than previously known. Here’s what we learned:
“I keep calling [Poitras] the Keyser Soze of the story, because she’s at once completely invisible and yet ubiquitous,” Greenwald, referring to the character in “The Usual Suspects” played by Kevin Spacey, a mastermind masquerading as a nobody, told Maass.
When Greenwald began conversing with Snowden in April after he had met with Poitras in New York and installed encryption software on his computer. (Poitras began speaking with Snowden in January, and he got a job as a NSA contractor for Booz Allen in March.)
At that point, Maass writes, their work “was organized like an intelligence operation, with Poitras as the mastermind.”
Greenwald said of Poitras: “None of this would have happened with anything near the efficacy and impact it did, had she not been working with me in every sense and really taking the lead in coordinating most of it.”
Poitras wouldn’t say when Snowden began sending her documents, but she initially received many more than Greenwald (who received about 20).
In May “Snowden sent encrypted messages telling the two of them to go to Hong Kong” and told them that he wanted to go public with his identity.
Glenn Greenwald discovered the top secret order compelling Verizon to hand over all of its call data to the government during the flight to Hong Kong.
Poitras and Greenwald didn’t speak with Snowden between parting ways after he outed himself on June 9 in Hong Kong and early July. He had traveled to Moscow on June 23.
So it’s now clear that the Snowden saga wouldn’t have played out as it has without Poitras.
The article also indirectly touches on a primary mystery: What happened to Snowden between the time he outed himself and when he got on a plane to Moscow two weeks later?
On June 23, with the help of an Ecuadorian travel document obtained through WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Snowden landed in the jurisdiction of Russia’s intelligence services (i.e. FSB). He has since been granted temporary asylum and began establishing his life in Russia.
During this time he has been speaking with Poitras and Greenwald — he answered questions from Maass over encrypted chat — but otherwise he has been lying low while his FSB-linked Russian lawyer has been speaking for him.
Consequently, the significance of Snowden’s arrival in Russia is still unknown.
By: Michael Kelley, Business Insider, August 13, 2013
“Shifting Winds, Changing Landscape”: Eric Holder Steps Up, GOP Stands Down On Sentencing Reforms
If you missed Rachel’s segment last night on Attorney General Eric Holder’s dramatic announcement on sentencing in drug crimes, it’s well worth your time. Indeed, by any fair measure, yesterday may be one of the most important days of the Obama administration’s second term, at least insofar as criminal justice is concerned.
Holder declared what many have long argued: too many Americans convicted of non-violent drug crimes are stuck in too many prisons for far too long. It’s a policy that costs too much, ravages families and communities, and has no practical law-enforcement rationale. That the Attorney General is using his prosecutorial discretion to circumvent mandatory minimums is an incredibly important step in the right direction — it’s the kind of move that will put fewer Americans behind bars for low-level, non-violent drug crimes.
What I was also eager to see were the next-day reactions, most notably from the right. Would Holder face a backlash from Republicans? So far, no. The conservative Washington Times ran this report today:
Grover Norquist, a conservative libertarian Republican and founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform … [claimed] that the Holder directive simply cribs from legislation by Democratic Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, along with Republicans Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky, that would give federal judges greater discretion in sentencing certain drug offenders.
In the House, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, and Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, Virginia Democrat and ranking member on the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, terrorism, homeland security, and investigations, also have introduced legislation to reduce recidivism and federal prison costs through post-sentencing risk assessments and other evidence-based programs developed by states.
Mike Huckabee responded to the AG’s announcement by saying he “finally found something I can agree with Eric Holder on.”
As best as I can tell, not one member of the congressional Republican leadership in either chamber criticized Holder’s decision in any way.
And that matters enormously.
As we discussed earlier in the summer, in the not-too-distant past, the conservative line on these issues lacked all reason and nuance. The right wanted more prisons, more prisoners, harsher sentences, an aggressive “war on drugs,” and no questions. To disagree was to invite the “soft on crime” condemnation. As the nation’s prison population soared to unprecedented levels, the right simply responded, “Good.”
The landscape has, however, changed rather quickly. Twenty years ago, if an Attorney General from a Democratic administration had made this announcement, conservatives would have condemned “letting drug addicts onto our streets.” Yesterday, such reactionary, knee-jerk reactions were muted, and among prominent Republicans, non-existent.
On the surface, this gives the Obama administration some breathing room — Holder and other officials will realize they can adopt common-sense measures without facing political fury and instigating a national uproar. But below the surface, the response suggests more systemic reforms may yet be possible — the A.G.’s move represents progress, but Congress will have to act to make more sweeping changes.
And for the first time in recent memory, that now seems realistic. As Greg Sargent explained yesterday, as the political winds shift on this issue, the “soft on crime” attacks “no longer have anywhere near the cultural potency or political relevance they once did. As a result, “this may now be an area where compromise is possible.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 13, 2013
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