“How America Lost Its Secrets” – Snowden, Spies, &
Whistleblowers
Edward Snowden is for many a hero who revealed the unconstitutional
surveillance activities of the federal government[1]. Others consider him an enemy of, even a
traitor to, his country[2]
or a mix of hero and traitor[3]. In How America
Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man, and the Theft, Edward Jay
Epstein describes Snowden as both a whistleblower and, effectively, a spy.
Epstein makes a point that is important for understanding
whistleblowers. Snowden was not a
whistleblower or a spy or even a mix of the two. Instead, his nature evolved over time, and
the camp to which he truly belongs will always be uncertain. Like Snowden, many begin ingenuous and turn
whistleblowers before they aim to harm their organizations.
At the start, Edward Snowden’s story is like that of an
ordinary whistleblower. His background
has its messy spots: dropping out of high school, nerdy or excessively
introverted computer interests that swell into real skills, spotty early job
history. According to Epstein, Snowden’s
well-placed grandfather may have helped him jumpstart his career with a computer
job at the CIA. His libertarian ways and
high sense of his own value (to judge by some profanity-sprinkled social media
posts) may have made him a challenge for bosses. Apparently Snowden poked around where he
should not have and lost the CIA job. Although
annoyed, he recovered with a system analyst job at Dell SecureWorks, which did
contract work for the National Security Administration.
The Dell position gave him access to secret NSA files. Those documents, combined with what he
obtained by hacking classified systems, enabled Snowden to picture a
surveillance network that was both unethical and illegal. His special knowledge revealed that statements
of intelligence officials to Congress were lies. The complex he confronted was rotten; that was
clear to him.
The web of wrongdoing that Snowden discovered has
counterparts in other organizations with whistleblowers. It was small surprise, for example, that news
of Wells Fargo’s fraudulent
sale of insurance products to its customers followed discovery of its creation
of phony customer accounts. After I found
one then two compliance violations at HomeFirst, it was to
be expected that I would keep finding more
violations until I was finally fired.
He had raised security concerns to his management, Snowden
claimed. Later, Dell management would deny
those reports, but that sort of denial is a common experience for
whistleblowers. HomeFirst dismissed my
internal complaints of wrongs, and several of my external complaints were lost
or ignored.
That Snowden did not force his internal complaints made historical
sense: whistleblowers who pursued the approved channels at NSA did not fare
well. Thomas
Drake, John Crane, and Bill
Binney were among earlier NSA employees who had identified problems and
were punished for their efforts. While he
was gathering evidence at Dell to support his disclosures, he decided to take a
route used by other whistleblowers, famously including Daniel Ellsberg, and
turned to journalists.
Snowden’s plan to disclose NSA documents would violate his
oath to protect national secrets, yet that offense is analogous to the
violations of company loyalty and (sometimes) confidentiality that all
whistleblowers commit. As many of us do[4],
Snowden pointed to a higher obligation in justifying his action.
Epstein contends that Snowden moved outside the ranks of
whistleblowers with his decision to quit Dell and work for Booz Allen Hamilton in
order to get access to a more highly classified group of documents not
available at Dell. While his security
access was limited during his probationary period at Booz Allen, he obtained
entry into highly classified caches of documents through, Epstein speculates,
the cooperation of unidentified others in the firm – not a traditional
whistleblower procedure. Then he copied
onto thumb drives roughly a million secret documents from domestic and
international sources – a mammoth undertaking, even with Snowden’s skills, that
smells of something other than merely gathering evidence to support a theory of
wrongdoing.
Rather than remain in the U.S. after his disclosure
(understandably) or exit to a neutral country that lacked an extradition treaty
with the U.S., such as Brazil, (not so understandably) he left for China on his
way to Russia, both adversary countries to the U.S. Epstein goes on to question Snowden’s
unexplained first 10 days in Hong Kong, the ease with which he left for Russia
without valid travel documents, and the cordial support he has received from
Russian intelligence for the past three years.
He wonders too about the disposition of the 1.2 million classified
documents that Snowden copied but did not provide to the journalists he met in
Hong Kong. All of that is far from
typical whistleblower behavior and disturbingly close to the expected behavior
of a traitor, Epstein concludes.
Epstein and others describe an arc to the Snowden story:
from loyalist to disgruntled whistleblower to possible sympathizer with, or
even supporter (intentionally or not) of, enemies of the U.S. That path was traversed by American traitors
in the past, Epstein writes: William
Martin, Bernon Mitchell, and Victor Norris
Hamilton were all former NSA employees who defected to communist Russia. Critically, in Snowden’s case we are unlikely
ever to know his motivations, and we cannot rely on his own explanations,
which are as self-serving as those any of us give for our actions.
Each whistleblower gathers a personal momentum, becoming first
disaffected, then bothered by misdeeds that may have been present all along,
then angered enough by organizational responses to disclose confidential material. Suspicion that a web of wrongdoing exists
leads to more investigations and more whistleblowing. The fatigue and costs of defeated revelations
may discourage the whistleblower from continuing. But success, such as Snowden achieved, or the
luxury of forced retirement, such as mine, may inspire further action.
In its 2016
audit report, HomeFirst restated its 2015
presentation of administrative costs, which had significantly understated
those costs and gave the impression of great efficiency. My April 2016
complaint on the 2015 misstatement had gone unnoticed by the AICPA. Now, though, with the new 2015 information, I
may be able to find evidence that HomeFirst improperly billed government
contracts again[5] in
2016.
[1] For
example, ACLU,
Amnesty
International, Glenn
Greenwald et al, Ewen
MasAskill, New
York Times Editorial Board, Wired
[4]
For example, Johnson, Roberta Ann. Whistleblowing:
When It Works and Why. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 2003. Miceli, Marcia
P., Janet P. Near, and Terry Morehead Dworkin. Whistle-blowing
in Organizations. New York: Rutledge. 2008
[5]
Following the 2003-6 overbilling
of HUD by $1.2 million and the 2010-13 overbilling
of Santa Clara County by $140,000.
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