WikiLeaks: a True History

On 9 June 2013 the face of Edward Snowden appeared on TV screens and newspapers around the world. His 12 minute interview with Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, filmed by Laura Poitras, had been recorded over several days in a Hong Kong hotel room. He spoke carefully, but with evident confidence and conviction.

In the previous four days, Greenwald, MacAskill and the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman had shocked the world with explosive revelations about the US intelligence community’s extraordinary powers of surveillance. Systems already exposed included PRISM, which gave the NSA direct access to data held by Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, plus the Boundless Informant program, a big data analysis and visualization tool which let the NSA record and analyse where information was coming from. President Obama had quickly defended the intrusive NSA programs, claiming "the right balance" had been struck between security and privacy. He said US citizens had to make a choice:

Now Snowden was coming forward as the source of these stories, explaining that his conscience would not let him continue working for the NSA while their powers grew exponentially year by year, without any public scrutiny. Like Chelsea Manning, he said his aim was to reveal the truth and trigger a public debate about "the world we want to live in".

Snowden said he was prepared for whatever might happen to him, noting that the CIA had "an office just up the road here in Hong Kong", but "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong". He said he was revealing himself so that the media’s attention would be on the documents he revealed, rather than the search for an unknown whistle-blower. But of course the world’s media - not to mention intelligence agents - were now desperate to get hold of him ASAP.

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The next day, Snowden said goodbye to Poitras and the Guardian journalists, knowing that any further contact with them could reveal his location and jeapordize his life.

Snowden checked out of his hotel and moved into Hong Kong’s crowded tenements, where - with a little help from a Canadian human rights lawyer - he was sheltered by a group of asylum seekers.

The Hong Kong government quickly made it clear they did not want to damage relations with the USA by allowing Snowden to stay. This is where WikiLeaks stepped in.

Sarah Harrison was "on WikiLeaks business" in Melbourne, Australia - presumably helping with the WikiLeaks Party - when Julian Assange asked her to urgently fly to Hong Kong, a city she knew well because her two sisters lived there. Harrison quickly packed her bags, leaving half her luggage behind as she expected to return soon.

For the next thirteen days, Harrison and Assange tried to obtain diplomatic protection for Snowden, meeting with lawyers in Hong Kong and working trusted connections within the Ecuadorian government. WikiLeaks booked more than a dozen different flights for Harrison and Snowden.

Harrison didn’t actually meet Snowden until the morning of Sunday 24 June, when he climbed into a car with her and headed to the airport. They both dressed casually, hoping to look like a young couple on vacation, and barely spoke until their Aeroflot flight to Moscow was in the air. Then Snowden turned to Harrison and smiled:

The USA had hurriedly filed multiple charges against Snowden and were demanding his immediate arrest. But Hong Kong officials said the US documents seeking his detention did not "fully comply" with their legal requirements. After confirming that Snowden had left the country, they explained that US officials wrote Snowden’s middle name as "James" instead of "Joseph". Then they angrily demanded that US officials clarify Snowden’s recent claims that the NSA was spying on Hong Kong and mainland China.

The WikiLeaks "ninja" still had a lot of work to do. Arriving safely in transit at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on 23 June 2013, Snowden and Harrison tried to check-in for their onward flight to Latin America, only to discover that Snowden’s passport had been cancelled.

By now journalists were swarming all over the airport. Media were reporting that Snowden would be flying to Havana, Cuba. At least one journalist booked a seat on Snowden’s expected flight, only to find it empty. Snowden - and Harrison - had disappeared.

The next day, both US President Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Russia to hand over the "fugitive from justice". But Russia’s foreign minister insisted that Snowden had never even crossed the border into Russia. This was technically true: Harrison and Snowden, who did not have a Russian visa, were trapped in the airport’s "In Transit" zone.

Russian President Vladimir Putin eventually admitted that Snowden was at Sheremetyevo airport but he said the NSA whistle-blower was free to leave Russia at any time and would not be extradited to the USA.

Obama immediately toned down his rhetoric, telling a press conference in Senegal that he didn’t want to be “wheeling and dealing and trading” just to “get a guy extradited.”

Snowden, of course, was not a criminal hacker, and he had celebrated his 30th birthday just before leaving Hong Kong. In a statement marking his first year in the embassy, Julian Assange said President Obama was far more deserving of the label "traitor" than Snowden ever would be:

Assange praised Snowden’s courage, saying "the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Prize, but an espionage indictment from the US Department of Justice".

Meanwhile the USA was putting immense pressure on countries around the world.

Ecuador initially appeared ready to give Snowden asylum, especially after discovering a bugging device in their London embassy. But President Correa back-tracked after Spanish media leaked documents including a safe conduct pass for Snowden, dated 22 June 2013, which bore the name (but not the signature) of Ecuador’s London consul, Fidel Narvaez, who was a strong supporter of Assange. Ecuador’s ambassador to the USA told a colleague that someone should talk to Assange, because "from outside, he appears to be running the show." This was embarrassing for President Correa, who had already cancelled a key US trade pact and slyly offered the USA a $23m donation for human rights training.

Correa said US Vice President Joe Biden had personally and very politely asked him not to give asylum to Snowden, but Ecuador would not make such a decision unless Snowden turned up on their soil:

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On 1 July 2013 Edward Snowden published a statement on the WikiLeaks website.

Snowden condemned Obama for promising no "wheeling and dealing" but then asking Joe Biden and others to exert pressure on states where asylum was being requested.

A day earlier, Sarah Harrison had personally delivered a number of requests for asylum to an official at the Russian consulate in Sheremetyevo Airport. The countries petitioned included Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela. Previous requests had been submitted to Ecuador and Iceland (where the CEO of DataCell had offered to fly Snowden in a private jet).

Vladimir Putin immediately rejected Snowden’s appeal:

These harsh comments, which lead to Snowden withrawing his Russian asylum application a day later, came despite many Russian MPs calling for Snowden to stay, with some even offering to nominate him for a Nobel peace prize. Putin, a former KGB intelligence officer, also denied that Snowden was a Russian spy, as many critics in the US media were claiming.

Snowden later claimed that he had been approached by Russian agents in the airport but turned them away. Sarah Harrison noted that it wasn’t possible to broker a deal on asylum because Snowden had already handed over all his files to Western journalists.

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In early July 2013, Moscow hosted a major summit of gas exporting countries, with numerous world leaders in attendance. On the last day of the summit, Bolivian president Evo Morales said his country was keen to "shield the denounced" and would likely consider Snowden’s asylum request favourably. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, also in Moscow, insisted that Snowden should be given a "humanitarian medal".

The next day, after flying uninterrupted over Poland and the Czech Republic on the way home to Bolivia, the Presidential airplane of Evo Morales was forced to land unexpectedly in Vienna, the Austrian capital. France, Spain, Portugal and Italy had all suddenly denied access to their airspace. Austrian officials insisted on searching the plane, which remained grounded for 14 hours. Bolivian officials accused the United States of trying to “kidnap” President Morales, just because they thought Edward Snowden was on board the plane (he was not). The White House declined to comment.

A host of Latin American nations filed complaints with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who himself had come under fire for blaming Snowden for leaking the NSA files.

Two years later, Julian Assange revealed that WikiLeaks had inadvertently played a part in the grounding of Morales' plane. He said WikiLeaks staff, while trying to help Snowden get out of Moscow, had "managed to get some intelligence on the US government thinking of the different types of jets and that they were concerned that the presidential jets might be difficult for them, from a legal perspective".

Assange said this caused the WikiLeaks team to start thinking about getting Snowden out of Moscow on one of the Presidential jets that were in town for the oil summit. WikiLeaks was using the word "Bolivia" as a codename for the real country where they hoped to send Snowden, even when talking "on open lines to lawyers in the United States".

Assange said the downing of Morales' jet revealed "the true nature of the relationship between Western Europe and the United States".

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Meanwhile, week after week of major media revelations from Snowden’s files were changing how the world understood government surveillance. Journalists used to ridicule Julian Assange’s protective security measures - like putting a cover over a laptop camera - as "paranoid". But now they learned that Edward Snowden, an experienced NSA professional, had lined the door of his Hong Kong hotel room with pillows and put a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering passwords. It is beyond the scope of this book to examine all Snowden’s revelations, but the whole world was suddenly looking at their emails, phones, laptops - and the US intelligence agencies - in a whole new light.

World leaders were not the only ones coming under pressure from Washington. On 5 July the editors of the Washington Post - whose own journalist Bart Gellman had published front page scoops based on the files given to him by Laura Poitras - wrote a bizarre editorial titled "Plugging the leaks in the Edward Snowden case". After helping expose PRISM and other intrusive NSA surveillance programs, the paper now said it was necessary to prevent Snowden from leaking information that "harms efforts to fight terrorism and conduct legitimate intelligence operations."

In London, meanwhile, the Guardian had published scoops revealing that GCHQ (Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters) also had access to PRISM, had intercepted foreign politicians' communications at the 2009 G20 summit, could tap into to the global network of Internet cables, and was sharing information with the NSA. The British government then threatened the UK Guardian with legal action, which could have forced them to stop publishing further Snowden revelations or even shut down the newspaper.

The Guardian backed down and made a deal. On 20 July, GCHQ officers watched on as Guardian editors with angle grinders and electric drills destroyed the hard drives in their London office that had contained the Snowden files. Bizarrely, the Guardian’s US office - and others - still had copies of the files. Two weeks later the Guardian reported that GCHQ had received at least £100m from the US government in exchange for "access to and influence over" Britain’s intelligence gathering programmes.

In January 2014 the head of GCHQ resigned. Iain Lobban had also been called before the Commons committee, the first time a head of GCHQ had given evidence in public. The Foreign Office insisted his resignation had nothing to do with the Snowden revelations.

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Journalists at Moscow airport had by now spent weeks desperately hoping for a glimpse of Snowden.

Sarah Harrison later explained how she and Snowden had managed to hide from the media for 39 days. She said the Moscow airport officials were "very kind", partly because this was "the most exciting thing that had happened to them in a long time."

They did their laundry in a small sink, watched movies on their laptops, and survived on airport food. Harrison managed to occasionally move around the airport with some simple disguises - "For girls, it’s a bit easier to fit in”" - but mostly stayed with Snowden to provide a form of 24/7 protection, knowing WikiLeaks could reach a huge global audience very quickly if needed.

Assange said he had advised Edward Snowden that he would be safest in Russia, but Snowden "didn’t want to be accused of being some kind of Russian spy…​ he didn’t want that kind of propaganda attack to distract from the revelations, even though it would place him at some increased risk".

After the downing of the Bolivian President’s plane, however, and even though a handful of angry Latin American governments had stepped forward to offer asylum, "at a legal level, in terms of asylum law, it was very clear that there could not be a fair process". Any attempt by Snowden to leave Russia now would put his life at risk. If he was on a plane, it could be shot down.

On 1 August 2013, with help from a prominent Russian lawyer, Edward Snowden and Sarah Harrison finally left the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and officially entered Russia. WikiLeaks issued a statement explaining that Snowden’s certificate of temporary asylum afforded him "the right to live in and travel around Russia, where he can now plan his next steps in safety".

WikiLeaks noted that President Barack Obama "while elected on a platform promising to protect whistleblowers, has now prosecuted more national security whistleblowers than all other presidents in United States history combined". They also noted US efforts to block asylum were a violation of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2312 (1967): "the grant of asylum. . . is a peaceful and humanitarian act and…​ as such, it cannot be regarded as unfriendly by any other State."

In the end, of all the countries in the world, it was only Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua who "stood strong and granted Mr Snowden asylum".

Harrison and Snowden left the airport in a taxi and headed to a "secure, confidential place." Sarah Harrison stayed with Ed Snowden for another three months before flying to Berlin at the end of 2013. She said her lawyers had advised her not to return home to Britain, where she could be detained under sweeping new antiterrorism laws. Edward Snowden praised the woman who had helped save him from life in a US supermax prison - or worse.

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In early August 2013, in response to mounting public anger, President Obama announced changes to US surveillance programs, which he claimed to have been planning for a long time. He insisted that Edward Snowden did not deserve any credit:

In response, Bart Gellman said Snowden “has accomplished far more than anyone in his position could have reasonably hoped to have accomplished.”

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On 19 June 2013 WikiLeaks tweeted that they were deeply saddened to hear of the sudden death of journalist Michael Hastings, who had spent three days with Julian Assange for a front page Rolling Stone interview in early 2012 (see Chapter Thirteen).

Hastings died in a ball of flames when his C250 Mercedes hit a tree in Los Angeles' Hancock Park neighborhood around 4:30 am on Tuesday 18 June. The ejected motor reportedly came to rest 50 meters away from the burning chassis. Video from a nearby intersection showed the car racing straight through a red light at high speed. A witness claimed she saw flames and sparks coming out from under the car before the crash.

The next day, WikiLeaks revealed that Hastings had been in touch with their lawyer Jennifer Robinson and he believed the FBI was investigating him.

In an usual step, swamped with angry phone calls, the FBI publicly denied they were investigating Hastings.

In response to an FOI request, however, the FBI soon admitted that they had collected information on Hastings:

Public suspicion over the tragic death was not unjustified, particularly as the Snowden revelations were still front page news. Hastings' last article for Buzzfeed had explored Obama’s "war on journalism", including recent efforts to subpoena the phone records of twenty Associated Press (AP) reporters. In a Young Turks interview, Hastings angrily stated that President Obama had declared war on the press and journalists should respond by saying "we declare war on you". He said journalists "have been way too easy going with these guys" and should refuse to keep co-operating with government officials.

It was soon revealed that Hastings had also sent an email to his Buzzfeed colleagues the day before he died, warning that federal authorities were interviewing his friends and he needed to go "off the rada[r]" for a bit.

A neighbor told the Los Angeles Weekly that Hastings had been scared to get into his own car just hours before he died, and had begged her to let him borrow her Volvo. She turned him down, saying her car had mechanical problems.

Online forums began speculating that the US intelligence services may have murdered Hastings by hacking into his car’s onboard computer and forcing it to drive at full throttle till he crashed. In 2017 the WikiLeaks Vault7 release confirmed that such dangerous CIA software tools did indeed exist.

Nevertheless, Michael Hastings' family were quick to hose down such "conspiracy theories". They revealed that Hastings had suffered a "manic episode" fifteen years earlier, where drugs and alcohol were involved, and they believed he was experiencing a similar episode when he died. In a Rolling Stone interview on 5 November 2013, Hastings' elder brother Jonathan explained that he had flown down from New York a day before Michael died, hoping to get him into a rehab clinic.

Jonathan Hastings said his family had "no real complaints" about the LA police or the coroner’s report, which "didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know or strongly suspect." The report said Michael Hastings had been been proscribed "medical marijuana" to help deal with PTSD since his war reporting years; after using marijuana the night before he died, he had "passed out" around 1 am, at which stage his brother had gone to stay with a neighbour. The report said Michael Hastings was also "believed" to be using the hallucinogenic drug DMT:

Nevertheless, Jonathan Hastings said he ruled out foul play "entirely".

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On 28 November 2013 London Mayor Boris Johnson delivered a lecture in honour of Margaret Thatcher, where he repeated the 1980’s Wall Street mantra that "greed is good". In his closing statements, the future Prime Minister stated, to laughter and loud applause:

On the same day, British Prime Minister David Cameron warned journalists that "if they don’t demonstrate some social responsibility it will be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act".

Days later, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee, where he was forced to defend the publishing of Snowden stories, which MPs labelled “woefully irresponsible”.

Rusbridger revealed that in every case bar one he had consulted the DA Notice pre-publication censorship committee before publishing. Nevertheless, he was accused of "putting lives at risk" by sending unredacted Snowden documents overseas to the New York Times. Rusbridger responded that he had told the UK Cabinet Secretary he was doing this in July and the government had not complained. Cressida Dick, the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, insisted that the the alleged communication of agents’ names abroad was a potential breach of section 58(a) of the Terrorism Act.

In August 2013, David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, had been detained for nine hours at London’s Heathrow Airport and questioned under anti-terrorism laws. Miranda was en route from Berlin to his home in Rio De Janeiro, carrying encrypted material from the Snowden files, which was seized. Greenwald had angrily responded that he would "write much more aggressively than before.” He resigned from the Guardian two months later to help set up a new, supposedly more aggressive, news organisation called "The Intercept". Now Cressida Dick told the Commons comittee that police still had not been able to decrypt the files taken from Miranda, but the investigation might yet result in charges.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, who was born in Yemen, asked Rusbridger: "Do you love this country?" Somewhat taken aback, the Guardian EIC insisted that he and his staff were "patriots".

Asked by Conservative MP Michael Ellis whether he had broken the Terrorism Act, Rusbridger replied that he was not a lawyer so could not answer the question. He said the paper had "made very selective judgments"' about what to publish:

This might have been what saved the Guardian from further government attacks. To WikiLeaks, of course, such an admission was like a red rag to a bull.

Edward Snowden later explained that he never intended for his entire archive to be published; he left it at the discretion of Glenn Greenwald and other trusted journalists to decide what to publish. WikiLeaks tweeted that the limited release to date was "a result of pressure, self-censorship, control issues".

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In the final week of 2013, the 30th Chaos Computer Club Congress was held in Berlin.

Glenn Greenwald delivered a one hour speech via satellite on the opening night, praising Snowden’s courage and warning that the surveillance state "by its very existence, breeds conformity".

Two days later Jacob Applebaum took the stage and introduced a "surpise guest". Sarah Harrison received a rapturous standing ovation from thousand of attendees. She humbly noted that WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was now spending his fourth Christmas detained without charge.

Assange joined the stage via Skype and was knocked offline a minute later. He rejoined the discussion to encourage system administrators and other "high-tech workers" to organize against national surveillance programs. He said the NSA and CIA were now keen to recruit from this new generation of skilled online workers, who should consider joining such organisations: "go in there, get the ball and bring it out."

Assange said that if people did not recognise what was happening and speak up then "we are the group that will be crushed." Then he was knocked off line again.

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NEXT CHAPTER: SEVENTEEN

The author of this book can be found on Twitter: @Jaraparilla

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