The Edward Snowden Affair (3 page)

For example, on May 19, 2006, in semi-sardonic reference to a strange clicking heard within another forum member’s Xbox360 gaming console, The TrueHOOHA commented, “NSA’s [National Security Agency] new surveillance program. That’s the sound of freedom, citizen!”
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If this is Snowden, what is perhaps most interesting is at the age of 20, he was already probing into the intricacies of Internet security. Under a thread titled, “In-depth thoery (sic) questions: How proxies WORK. (Difficulty: Guru),” he inquired, “Is it possible to reroute -all- traffic through a remote proxy? By all, I mean traffic such as SMTP [email] as opposed to the standard HTTP/FTP/SSH/Socks. How could you go about doing this (Is special software required)?” When asked why he wanted this fairly technical knowledge about how to surf the Internet anonymously, he responded, “I want to be protected, but I’m not sure where to draw the line” because of “[the] Patriot Act. If they misinterpret that (sic) actions I perform, I could be a cyb4r terrorist and that would be very fucking bad.”
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During this time, Snowden left the condo and did something characteristically atypical: He joined the military. He would report almost a decade later that he chose to enlist “[ … ] to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression”
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and “I enlisted in the army shortly after the invasion of Iraq and I believed in the goodness of what we were doing, I believed in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people overseas.”
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His justification for action would remain consistent throughout his life. History proves he was not fabricating the existence of a youthful patriotism. In a September 2003 Ars discussion about recently released French playing cards whose faces parodied the Bush administration, Snowden’s opinion was short and pithy, “Fuck the [F]rench and their bitchy little cards. They can’t even come up with decent rules for pronunciation. I certainly couldn’t care less what they think of our country’s politics.”
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However, the underlying motive for enlisting might have been unemployment. “Waiting for hiring to pick back up,” he would comment on Ars during this time, while announcing he spent “eight hours a day surfing [on the Internet], four doing Kung Fu (Tues-Sat), and two playing Tekken at [the dojo where he studied] Kung Fu.”
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From May 7 to September 28, 2004
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he was part of the 198th Infantry Brigade in the Army Reserve’s 18-X program at Fort Benning, Georgia.
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The program is designed to fast-track recruits into the Special Forces. This is where Snowden reveals his agnosticism, because he was obligated to list Buddhism as his religion on his military paperwork in the wake of his true belief.
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(The TrueHOOHA discussed agnosticism a year before on the Ars message board with one of the website’s writers, Peter Bright, and its editor-in-chief, Ken Fisher.)
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But he didn’t make it very far in the military. Army spokesman Col. David H. Patterson Jr. stated, “He [Snowden] attempted to qualify to become a Special Forces soldier but did not complete the requisite training and was administratively discharged from the Army.” Snowden would later inform
The Guardian
he had been let go after suffering two broken legs in an advanced infantry training
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accident. This occurred in late July or early August.
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Since the 18-X program is comprised of 14 weeks of basic training, then airborne skills, followed by another month of training, given his release date, it is likely Snowden broke his legs in a parachuting mishap.

Considering Snowden would later rise through the highest ranks of America’s most secretive government agencies with no formal education, it is tempting to hypothesize whether this vague period in the military was early detection and subsequent espionage training by the government, especially since his discharge was inexplicably delayed for over a month. Moreover, to be admitted into the 18-X program, recruits have to pass a vocational aptitude test. Thus the military would have been privy to Snowden’s mental capabilities and might have sought to capitalize upon them. To add weight to this theory, Snowden did not post once on his beloved Ars message board during the whole of 2004. The next time such a comparable online absence would take place is after he’d begun work overseas for the CIA. Yet, since Snowden was willing to sacrifice a six-figure salary at a job located in a location getaway all for the sake of earnestness, it is unlikely he would continue to cloak this facet of his life if indeed his intelligence career had begun in 2004. It is more likely because of his temporary incapacitation and rehabilitation that he elected to return to AACC later that year. He took classes until 2005.
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Surprisingly, his AACC transcript does not cite him having enrolled in a single computer science course.
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As much as his academic record is a vague mirage cast in a foggy haze, many of the particulars of his life from this period until June 6, 2013 often fall under the same veil of uncertainty, especially what he did during the second half of 2005 until his employment with the CIA in November 2006. It leaves much to speculation.

A majority of press releases and exposés cites Snowden as having assumed the role of security guard for the NSA during the next six months. This is somewhat of a misnomer, because he worked at the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) in College Park, Maryland.
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The reason most media report his first professional government position as being with the NSA is that the CASL, founded in 2003, is a joint enterprise between the U.S. government and the University of Maryland. It is the largest language research institute in America and is funded through the Department of Defense. It is tempting to humor whether his title of “security guard” was a cover, because when asked, University of Maryland spokesman Brian Ulmann listed Snowden’s official position as having been “security specialist.”
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Snowden himself does not help the situation. At one turn he reported via an April 2006 Ars post that he was “making twice the average income” before later announcing his CIA position “double[d] my salary.”
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Unless security guards at the CASL earn a lot more than the national average or the CIA hires computer technicians at pennies on the dollar, something is amiss. Further deepening the plot, a month later Snowden would be leading an Ars discussion on how to enter the IT industry. In the process he brags, “I make $70k, I just had to turn down offers for $83k and $180k,”
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yet, frustrating in its contradiction, in 2006 he would reflect, “I was unemployed for a full year and then had to work in a non-IT field for six months before I was able to
get back
in IT [my emphasis] and double my salary.”
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Even if his time at the CASL is credited as being with the NSA, a presumed biographical typo took place in June 2013 which went largely unnoticed. In a letter addressed to the president penned by Lon Snowden’s attorney, it is reported, “Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community.”
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Lon could have his dates incorrect, but 2005 predates Snowden’s CASL employment and follows his military discharge. To Lon’s discredit, he would later state his son started working in American intelligence in 2003.
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The most intriguing mystery about Snowden is how—regardless of whether he did so first for the CASL, NSA or CIA—he was hired to conduct classified IT work without being enlisted or having a college degree. By reverse engineering Snowden’s timeline from his November 2006 start date with the CIA, this would mean he held the position of security “guard” from April/May until almost the end of the year. Given his curiosity and the basic requisite skills required to even get a foot in the door with any national security agency, it is reasonable to assume Snowden devoted the preceding 12 months to computer study. Later, another individual with a government cover who worked alongside Snowden would indirectly second this notion, stating she thought Snowden was “an IT whiz [ … ] who came by most of his skill and knowledge on his own.”
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Turning the biographical thumbscrews even more, though unemployed for almost a full year by that time, Snowden reported in July 2006 on Ars that he had “spen[t] some time in Ireland in February [of 2006].”
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Regardless of the how or why, by early 2007 he was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland. He was living in a four-bedroom apartment
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and working for the CIA as, in Snowden’s own words, a senior adviser.
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The Swiss foreign ministry confirmed he was in residence from March 2007 to February 2009, not as an intelligence officer but as a U.S. mission employee. This means he was given a cover or, in spy terms, a secret identity by the American government.
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Many in the press interpret this to mean he was conducting espionage work, and his job of “maintain[ing] computer network security”
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might not have been as benevolent as it sounds. Snowden confirmed he had received “classified technical training”
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before being deployed.

A fellow contractor who also possessed high-level clearance was stationed in Geneva with Snowden from 2007-2009. Mavanee Anderson, a Vanderbilt Law School graduate, worked as an intern alongside, in her words, “Ed.” She referred to him as an “incredibly smart, kind and sincere person,” a skilled martial artist and someone who, like herself, reveled in Chinese New Year parades. She also noted the moral weight of his position was apparent even at this time: “He was already experiencing a crisis of conscience of sorts.”
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Snowden would prove her right. He later informed
The Guardian
, “Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world.” Snowden added, “I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”
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These statements were made in (partial) reference to Snowden being privy to CIA operatives who were assigned to extract financial information concerning pending transparency legislation from a Swiss banker. The mission was accomplished by taking the banker out drinking, goading him to attempt to drive home in his impaired condition and waiting until he got pulled over before offering him understated legal assistance for a
quid pro quo
.
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The operation was in direct violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
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Some found Snowden’s story dubious, namely Swiss President Ueli Maurer. “This would mean that the CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I just can’t imagine it,” he told the Zurich-based German newspaper
SonntagsBlick
.
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However, aside from subtly defending the capability and integrity of his own security forces by doubting the veracity of Snowden’s claim, Maurer is basing his assessment on the assumption that CIA agents—who were very likely, like Snowden, recognized by the Swiss government as being in the country for diplomatic purposes—would break cover by formally introducing themselves and divulging their agenda to a foreign police force and various judiciary boards before attempting to pay them off. It is much more feasible that one team of operatives treated the banker to dinner while another set of agents posing as Swiss police officers awaited the banker’s drunken departure. Aside from being trained professionals, their ruse would have been all the more convincing to someone who was intoxicated.

Critics of Snowden’s report where quick to ask why the United States would have an interest in keeping tabs on the Swiss. It is well known that many American entrepreneurs hold offshore accounts to evade taxes, and a handful of Swiss banks have a reputation for being sympathetic to these interests because of their profitability. As time would tell, the most powerful nation in the world was not content to merely monitor American tax dodgers. In January 2013, Switzerland’s oldest bank, Wegelin & Co., was for all intents and purposes closed by U.S. authorities. This was after Swiss banking executives failed to appear in court once it was confirmed that from 2002 to 2010 the bank had made agreements with American clients to hide funds and aid in submitting false tax returns. The cumulative loss was $1.2 billion in U.S. revenue.
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Others questioned the plausibility of Snowden’s assertion on the grounds of how someone contracted to work in IT would learn of other highly classified, non-IT-related CIA assignments. Yet closer examination doesn’t necessarily remedy an already-puzzling storyline but convolutes it.

What is undeniable and equally remarkable is that Snowden’s latent mental abilities lunge forward during this time, probably because his 140 IQ
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was finally being engaged and challenged. This is clear by his writing at the time. In all truth, the largest bulk of his 773 Ars posts relates to video games, with various IT and personal exchanges sprinkled in along the way.
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After five months of Ars silence, which had been, barring the whole of 2004, preceded by a steady stream of chatter since he began posting in 2001, Snowden appeared online once again. He avidly and almost exclusively engaged in highly involved stock market discussions. For example, on November 18, 2008, he posted, “Holy [J]esus, have you guys started using the new triple levered long/short Russell 1000/2000 index etfs? BGZ/BGU & TNA/TZA are the tickers, I believe. Puts the 2x ultra etfs to shame.”
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Two days later, he announced he’d invested $4,000 in TZA stock. He had bought it at $127.90 a share. By the end of the day, it was trading at $141.37.
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An “etf” is an exchanged-trade fund. It functions as a normal stock but is actually a security that tracks an index, commodity or basket of assets as an index fund does. Because of its duel-sided nature, expense ratios of an ETF are lower than regular stock. The owner gets the benefit of the diversification an index fund provides but with the malleability of selling short if desired. As irony would have it, the best known ETF is the Spider, whose stock exchange symbol is “SPY.” An “ultrashort,” “inverse” or “bear” ETF is a type of fund designed specifically to profit from loses. It is a component of the highly complex derivative market. Some share holders invest in inverse ETFs in order to hedge their portfolios.