In June 2013, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old National Security Agency contract employee, surfaced in Hong Kong with the sensational announcement that he was the source of top-secret American intelligence documents already being published in the Guardian and the Washington Post. The information he was bringing to light, he claimed, reflected systematic violation of individual privacy by the omniscient surveillance machinery of the U.S. government: “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” Snowden warned in a recorded video in which he explained his decision to steal the documents and go public.
In many quarters, Snowden was hailed as a courageous whistleblower, a man willing to risk his entire future to bring wrongdoing to light. Inside the intelligence community, a different set of views prevailed: Snowden was regarded as a defector, possibly under the control or direction of a foreign power. Whatever his motives, one thing was clear to insiders as they began to assess what Snowden had taken and what he had exposed: A huge volume of precious secrets had been lost, intelligence methods had been compromised, and valuable sources of intelligence had been shut down around the world.
