| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020376)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020376" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2761 |
| 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" |
| --- |
| |
| 224 |
| the jewels in their crown of omniscience. " Snowden also suggested that to avoid being |
| automatically "targeted" by the NSA, one should avoid "jihadi forums." These tips for evading |
| U.S. and British surveillance, far from being an off-hand leakage of information, were supplied by |
| him in written answers to interrogatives sent to him by Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum while |
| Snowden was still on the NSA payroll in May 2013. If he intended to damage the NSA's ability |
| to monitor unsuspecting individuals abroad, he clearly succeeded. Just as Robert Hanssen had |
| compromised the NSA's interception of communication at the Soviet Embassy in the 1990s, |
| Snowden compromised the NSA's interception of Jihadist targets on the Internet. |
| The Snowden intervention was soon felt by the CIA. "Within weeks of the leaks," writes |
| Michael Morell, then CIA deputy director. He notes that "Terrorist organizations around the |
| world were already starting to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed. |
| Communication sources dried up." What heightened Morell's concern about this loss of |
| intelligence sources was the discovery a 26-page document on an ISIS computer in Syria |
| indicating that the terrorist group had been considering using plague germs and other biological |
| weapons on foreign targets. The NSA was also seeing the Snowden effect on the war on |
| terrorists. In 2013, the FBI, CIA, and DIA had compiled a watch list of some 400 foreign |
| terrorist targets for NSA's PRISM program. Up until June 6", many of these targets frequently |
| used Internet services, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Xbox live, to send what they believed |
| would be hidden messages. After the PRISM story broke in the Washington Post on June 6", |
| NSA "saw one after another target go dark," according to a senior executive involved in that |
| surveillance. In 2014, Admiral Rogers, the new NSA director, was even blunter. Asked whether |
| or not the disclosures by Snowden had reduced the NSA's ability to pursue terrorist, he |
| answered: "Have I lost capability that we had prior to the revelations? Yes." |
| In Moscow, Snowden insists that not a single death has been traced back to his disclosures. I |
| agree that it would be unfair to jump to the conclusion that he is responsible for any single event, |
| such as the massacre in Paris in November 2015, because we cannot know whether or not a |
| jihadist involved in the event, such as Abdelhamid Abaaoud in the case of Paris, would have used |
| the Internet if Snowden had not exposed the interception of it by the NSA. But however sincere |
| were his intentions, Snowden cannot escape his responsibility for his actions. He totally and |
| purposefully compromised an intelligence operation that could prevent such villainous attacks. |
| // |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020376 |
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|
