In 2013, three months before Edward Snowden’s monumental leaks thrust the NSA’s mass surveillance programs into the public limelight, I published a ground-breaking story on the four NSA whistleblowers who exposed much of the agency’s illegal activities and its corrupt relationship with big defense-intelligence contractors such as SAIC and Booz Allen. Getting this into print was not easy. I first pitched this story to Rolling Stone, thinking that they would be keenly interested in the corporate cronyism at the world’s largest surveillance network. Nope: “Sorry, this is an old story, nobody’s interested,” their investigative editor told me (six months later, Snowden’s revelations became a global sensation; oops). I finally managed to persuade The Nation to run this. But apparently because they had missed the boat on President Obama’s use of the Espionage Act to go after leakers, their editors slapped on a headline that made the story all about policy. That totally diluted my emphasis on the corporations that had corrupted NSA and, according to the whistleblowers, damaged the agency’s ability to track the terrorists who organized the 9/11 attacks; a pretty major blunder, I would say. As a result of my story and the hours of interviews I spent with these guys, we became friends. Here I am a few years ago with Tom Drake, Kirk Wiebe and Bill Binney at the National Press Club (not pictured: Edward Loomis). I’m extremely proud of this story and the impact it has had. It still remains one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Click here to read the story.
