Full cache of Snowden papers to be bared soon
17 May 2016
The full cache of secret documents from former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is being opened to journalists and organizations willing to work with the news organization holding the archive.
The Intercept, the news site launched by journalist Glenn Greenwald - who was part of the team that first interviewed Snowden in 2013 - announced on Monday that it would "invite outside journalists, including from foreign media outlets, to work with us to explore the full Snowden archive".
The move could vastly increase the disclosures from Snowden, who fled the United States with a trove of documents detailing vast surveillance programs by the US National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies from around the world.
"From the start of our reporting on the archive, a major component of our approach has been to partner with foreign (and other American) media outlets rather than try to keep all the material for ourselves," Greenwald said.
"We have collectively shared documents with more than two dozen media outlets, and teams of journalists in numerous countries have thus worked with and reported on Snowden documents," in addition to other media outlets with some documents such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, ProPublica and The Guardian.
Greenwald said that under an agreement with Snowden, the journalists reporting on these documents must agree to certain rules.
"There are still many documents of legitimate interest to the public that can and should be disclosed," he said.
"There are also documents in the archive that we do not believe should be published because of the severe harm they would cause innocent people."
Greenwald said The Intercept has already begun to provide archive access to French daily Le Monde and other media outlets, and added that "we are excited by the reporting this new arrangement will generate."
Guantanamo grilling
The Intercept on Monday also released dozens of internal newsletters from the National Security Agency including one highlighting the secret agency's role in interrogation of Guantanamo prisoners.
Documents uncovered by Snowden show how the NSA worked with interrogators in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.
The latest trove of 166 articles published by the Intercept, reveals how US Central Intelligence Agency and military officials sought the help of the highly secretive intelligence agency during the early days of the War On Terror.
The agency used articles in an internal newsletter to entice officers to travel to places such as Baghdad and Cuba and help interrogate terrorist suspects.
There, they would help the brutal questioning of detainees by sharing intelligence, or would try and extract information themselves. They would then report back any details that would help NSA operations.
The documents have also uncovered how six men were taken from Bosnia to Guantanamo in 2002 as part of a secret extradition and how NSA signals discovered the North Korean's attempt to develop its uranium enrichment capabilities.
