Category Archives: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden Is Working With Russia’s Federal Security Service, According To Former KGB General

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Snowden at SXSW 2014 YouTube

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden may have a new job.

According to an interview inVentureBeatwith former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin on Thursday,Snowden is now working with the Russian federal security service, the intelligence institution that replaced the KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The 80-year-old, now retired Soviet intelligence officer said that Snowden is working with Russian intelligence as a consultant or technical advisor.

Whatever he had access to in his former days at NSA, I believe he shared all of it with the Russians, and they are very grateful, Kalugin said.

After Snowden released thousands of top-secret NSA documents he had gained access to during his time as a contractor there, Russia was the first country to grant him asylum in August. Perhaps Kalugin is correct and asylum came at a price.

Earlier this month, ex-NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander told the Australian Financial Review that he believes Snowden was being manipulated by Russian intelligence. "Understand as well that theyre only going to let him do those things that benefit Russia, or stand to help improve Snowdens credibility," Alexander said. "Theyre not going to do things that would hurt themselves. And theyre not going to allow him to do it. So I wouldnt fall for the line that everything Snowden is doing is altruistic. The fact is, hes in Russia, and theyre not going to allow him do something that is detrimental to their interests. They are looking to capitalize on the fact that his actions are enormously disruptive and damaging to U.S. interests."

The question is, why would a former Russian spy divulge such juicy intel? He does not support Vladimir Putin and he left Russian in the early 1990s and has since been living in the U.S. According to VentureBeat reporter Richard Byrne Reilly, "Kalugin still has juice within Russian intelligence circles and maintains contacts with friends in Russia from his days as a Soviet spy."

These days, the Russians are very pleased with the gifts Edward Snowden has given them, Kalugin told VentureBeat. Hes busy doing something. He is not just idling his way through life.

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Edward Snowden Is Working With Russia's Federal Security Service, According To Former KGB General

EXCLUSIVE: Edward Snowden Gives Wide-Ranging Interview to Brian Williams

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"NBC Nightly News" anchor and managing editor Brian Williams traveled to Moscow this week for an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Edward Snowden. The former NSA contractor's first-ever American television interview will air in an hour-long NBC News primetime special on Wednesday, May 28 at 10 p.m. Eastern/9 p.m. Central.

Williams' in-person conversation with Snowden was conducted over the course of several hours and was shrouded in secrecy due to Snowden's life in exile since leaking classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs a year ago. Williams also jointly interviewed Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has reported stories based on the documents in media outlets around the world, about how they came to work together and the global debate sparked by their revelations.

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Snowden, now 30, is a former systems administrator for the CIA who later went to work for the private intelligence contractor Dell inside a National Security Agency outpost in Japan. In early 2013, he went to work for Booz Allen Hamilton inside the NSA center in Hawaii.

While working for the contractors, Snowden downloaded secret documents related to U.S. intelligence activities and partnerships with foreign allies, including some that revealed the extent of data collection from U.S. telephone records and Internet activity.

On May 20, 2013, Snowden went to Hong Kong to meet with Greenwald and with filmmaker Laura Poitras. The first articles about his documents appeared in the Guardian and The Washington Post in early June, as did a taped interview with Snowden.

Follow NBC News Investigations on Twitter and Facebook.

The U.S. government charged Snowden with espionage and revoked his passport. Snowden flew to Moscow on June 23, but was unable to continue en route to Latin America because he no longer had a passport.

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After living in the airport transit area for more than a month, and applying for asylum in more than 21 countries, he was granted temporary asylum in Russia, where he has been living ever since.

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EXCLUSIVE: Edward Snowden Gives Wide-Ranging Interview to Brian Williams

Brian Williams lands interview with Edward Snowden

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"NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams has scored the first American television interview with Edward Snowden, the network announced Thursday.

In a major get, Williams traveled to Moscow, where the former National Security Agency contractor is now living in exile, for an exclusive sitdown earlier this week. The interview will air on May 28 in an hourlong prime time special at 10 p.m. Pacific/Eastern.

The interview will be Snowden's first for American television since he leaked classified documents about the NSA's widespread domestic surveillance program last year, sparking intense debate about personal privacy and government intrusion. Snowden's media profile has been on the rise in recent months, with speaking engagements (via teleconference) at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, a TED Conference in March and an interview in Vanity Fair's May issue.

According to NBC, the conversation took place over several hours. Also sitting for an interview in the special will be Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who originally broke the NSA surveillance story for the Guardian (and helped the British newspaper win a "public service" Pulitzer with the Washington Post) and is now employed by First Look Media, which has a collaboration agreement with NBC.

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Brian Williams lands interview with Edward Snowden

Brian Williams grills Snowden

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"NBC Nightly News" anchor and managing editor Brian Williams traveled to Moscow this week for an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Edward Snowden. The former NSA contractor's first-ever American television interview will air in an hour-long NBC News primetime special on Wednesday, May 28 at 10 p.m. Eastern/9 p.m. Central.

Williams' in-person conversation with Snowden was conducted over the course of several hours and was shrouded in secrecy due to Snowden's life in exile since leaking classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs a year ago. Williams also jointly interviewed Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has reported stories based on the documents in media outlets around the world, about how they came to work together and the global debate sparked by their revelations.

It has come to our attention that the browser you are using is either not running javascript or out of date. Please enable javascript and/or update your browser if possible.

Snowden, now 30, is a former systems administrator for the CIA who later went to work for the private intelligence contractor Dell inside a National Security Agency outpost in Japan. In early 2013, he went to work for Booz Allen Hamilton inside the NSA center in Hawaii.

While working for the contractors, Snowden downloaded secret documents related to U.S. intelligence activities and partnerships with foreign allies, including some that revealed the extent of data collection from U.S. telephone records and Internet activity.

On May 20, 2013, Snowden went to Hong Kong to meet with Greenwald and with filmmaker Laura Poitras. The first articles about his documents appeared in the Guardian and The Washington Post in early June, as did a taped interview with Snowden.

Follow NBC News Investigations on Twitter and Facebook.

The U.S. government charged Snowden with espionage and revoked his passport. Snowden flew to Moscow on June 23, but was unable to continue en route to Latin America because he no longer had a passport.

It has come to our attention that the browser you are using is either not running javascript or out of date. Please enable javascript and/or update your browser if possible.

After living in the airport transit area for more than a month, and applying for asylum in more than 21 countries, he was granted temporary asylum in Russia, where he has been living ever since.

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Brian Williams grills Snowden

Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii

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Edward Snowden. Photo: Barton Gellman for The Washington Post, via Getty

It was December 11, 2012, and in a small art space behind a furniture store in Honolulu, NSA contractor Edward Snowden was working to subvert the machinery of global surveillance.

Snowden was not yet famous. His blockbuster leaks were still six months away, but the man destined to confront world leaders on a global stage was addressing a much smaller audience that Sunday evening. He was leading a local Crypto Party, teaching less than two dozen Hawaii residents how to encrypt their hard drives and use the internet anonymously.

He introduced himself as Ed, says technologist and writer Runa Sandvik, who co-presented with Snowden at the event, and spoke about the experience for the first time with WIRED. We talked for a bit before everything started. And I remember asking where he worked or what he did, and he didnt really want to tell.

The grassroots crypto party movement began in 2011 with a Melbourne, Australia-based activist who goes by Asher Wolf. The idea was for technologists versed in software like Tor and PGP to get together with activists, journalists, and anyone else with a real-life need for those tools and show them the ropes. By the end of 2012, thered been more than 1,000 such parties in countries around the world, by Wolfs count. They were non-political and open to anyone.

Dont exclude anybody, Wolf says. Invite politicians. Invite people you wouldnt necessarily expect. It was about being practical. By the end of the session, they should have Tor installed and be able to use OTR and PGP.

The site of Edward Snowdens December, 2012 Crypto Party. Image: Google Street View

That Snowden organized such an event himself while still an NSA contract worker speaks volumes about his motives. Since the Snowden revelations began in June 2013, the whistleblower has been accused in editorial pages, and even the halls of Congress, of being a spy for China or Russia. A recent Wall Street Journal column argues that Snowden might have been working for the Russians and Chinese at the same time. [O]nly a handful of the secrets had anything to do with domestic surveillance by the government and most were of primary value to an espionage operation.

For the most part, these attacks have bounced harmlessly off Snowden, deflected by the Teflon of his well-managed public appearances and the self-evident risk and sacrifice he took on. One notable exception came last month, when Snowden submitted a video question to a televised town hall with Russian president Vladamir Putin; his question to Putin about Russias surveillance apparatus came across as a softball, and for a moment Snowden looked like a prop in Putins stage show.

But regardless of what you think of his actions, Snowdens intentions are harder to doubt when you know that even before he leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to expose the surveillance world, he spent two hours calmly teaching 20 of his neighbors how to protect themselves from it. Even as he was thinking globally, he was acting locally. Its like coming home to find the director of Greenpeace starting a mulch pit in your backyard.

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Snowden’s First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii