| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019518)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019518" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2487 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 30| HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS |
| Snowden still had his security clearance, despite his highly prob- |
| lematic exit from the CIA, because the agency had instituted a policy |
| a few years earlier that allowed voluntarily retiring CIA officers to |
| keep their clearance for two years after they left. This "free pass," as |
| one former CIA officer called the two-year grace period, had been |
| intended to make it easier for retiring officers to find jobs in parts of |
| the defense industry. This accommodation, in turn, made it easier for |
| the CIA to downsize to meet its budget. |
| Not only did Snowden retain his clearance, but unlike when he |
| had applied for his job at the CIA in 2006, he could now list on his |
| résumé two years of experience in information technology and |
| cyber security at the CIA. Dell could check only a single fact: that |
| Snowden was employed at the CIA between 2006 and 2009. His CIA |
| file, which contained the "derog," was not available to Dell or any |
| other private company because of government privacy regulations |
| Even though the CIA had "security concerns" about Snowden, it |
| could not convey them to either Dell or the NSA without violating |
| the privacy rules. "So the guy with whom the CIA had concerns left |
| the Agency and joined the ranks of the many contractors working |
| in the intelligence community [IC] before CIA could inform the rest |
| of the IC about its worries," Michael Morell, then CIA deputy direc- |
| tor, explained. "He even got a pay raise." |
| Obviously, this was a glitch in the security system. As a result of |
| it, though, Snowden entered the secret world of the NSA only five |
| months after being forced out of the CIA |
| For the next forty-five months, Dell assigned him various IT tasks |
| at the NSA. In June 2009, he was sent to Japan to work in the NSA |
| complex at the U.S. Yokota Air Base, which is about two hours by car |
| from downtown Tokyo. He moved into a small one-bedroom apart- |
| ment in Fussa, just outside the sprawling base. |
| His initial job for Dell was teaching cyber security to army and air |
| force personnel. In this capacity, he instructed U.S. military officers |
| stationed at the base in how to shield their computers from hack- |
| ers. Such security training had been required for military person- |
| nel dealing with classified material after several successful break-ins |
| to U.S. military networks by China, Russia, and other adversary |
| nations. It was not a challenging or interesting job. |
| Epst_9780451494566_ 2p_all_r1.z.indd 30 |
| 9/29/16 5:51 PM |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019518 |
|
|
