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short-term travel to meet with me.” He added pointedly “You need to be involved in this story." To further convince him, he suggested that they immediately speak on the phone via a website that encrypts conversations. The subsequent conversation lasted, according to Greenwald, two hours.
Snowden began the encrypted call by complaining, “I don’t like how this is developing.” He made it clear that he, not the journalist he had selected, was pulling the strings. If Greenwald wanted the scoop, he had to follow Snowden’s instructions, which included dividing the scoops between the Guardian and the Washington Post. According to his plan, Gellman would break the PRISM story in the Washington Post and Greenwald would break the “mass domestic spying” story in the Guardian. In addition, he insisted that the Guardian publish his personal manifesto alongside its story. As he envisioned it, the media event would also include a video component in which Greenwald would interview him.
Once Greenwald agreed to this micro-managing, Snowden would send him what he called a “welcome package” of documents to demonstrate his good faith. His plan also required a face-to- face meeting. When Greenwald said he was aboard the project, Snowden told him “the first order of business is to get you to Hong Kong.”
Snowden next sent him 20 classified NSA documents labeled “TOP SECRET.” He also included in the package his personal manifesto, which asserted that the NSA was part of an international conspiracy of intelligence agencies that were working to “inflict upon the world a system of secret, pervasive surveillance from which there is no refuge.”
Meanwhile, Snowden told Poitras, he was sending her a number of NSA documents including a recent FISA warrant. It had been issued less than a month earlier. He wanted that FISA warrant to serve as the basis of Greenwald’s scoop. It was perfect whistle-blowing material for the Guardian because it ordered Verizon to turn over all its billing records for 90 days to the NSA. It was as close to a smoking gun as anything he had copied at the NSA. It would also get attention since James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, had stated before Congress just two months earlier that the NSA did not collect phone data in America. This warrant would allow the Guardian, in the best tradition of “Gotcha” journalism, to catch Clapper in an apparent lie.
Continuing his string-pulling, he instructed Poitras not to show the FISA warrant to Greenwald until they were safely aboard the plane. That measure would prevent Greenwald from releasing the story without coming to Hong Kong. He also sent Poitras an entire encrypted file of NSA documents, saying it would “include my true name and details for the record, though it will be your decision as to whether or how to declare my involvement.” He did not send her the key to decipher the file, saying “The key will follow when everything else is done.” He further told her that he preferred that her film focus on him as the sole perpetrator of the leak so that no one else at the NSA would be suspected. He instructed her “Your destination is Hong Kong.”
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