Snowden Orchestrated Leak With Cryptic Instructions Involving A Hong Kong Hotel And A Rubik's Cube

Snowden Orchestrated Leak With Cryptic Instructions Involving A Hong Kong Hotel And A Rubik's Cube

Michael Kelley | Jun. 11, 2013

REUTERS/Bobby Yip

Photos of Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), and U.S. President Barack Obama are printed on the front pages of local English and Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong in this illustration photo June 11, 2013.

Charlie Savage and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times have published a story detailing how and why National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden pulled off what is being considered as the most significant leak in U.S. history.

The journey, which apparently began in January, sounds remarkably complicated.

Here's the first two sentences from the Times:

The source had instructed his media contacts to come to Hong Kong, visit a particular out-of-the-way corner of a certain hotel, and ask — loudly — for directions to another part of the hotel. If all seemed well, the source would walk past holding a Rubik’s Cube.

At the end of the trail, Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian told The Times, the 29-year-old Booz Allen employee who was contracted by the NSA turned over archives of “thousands” of classified documents — “dozens” of which are newsworthy — to documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill, and himself.

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, described the Snowden's disclosures — which amount to the first concrete evidence of the NSA's domestic surveillance apparatus — as the most important leak in American history.

And although Snowden is now on the run and facing a lengthy jail term, Greenwald says he "has tranquility."

“He is so convinced that he did the right thing," Mr. Greenwald told the Times, adding that Snowden is not "delusional ... He completely understands that more likely than not, he’s going to end up like Bradley Manning or worse."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-edward-snowden-leaked-classified-materials-2013-6#ixzz2Vv7tMvWC