Gordon Carrera
Appearances
The Rest Is Classified
46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
You know, there's risks to this. You could end up in jail. But he's clearly made that decision. They're going to find him. He wants to be public. He's going to make his mark and reveal himself. to the world.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
He wants the world to meet him, as he says. And so on the evening of Sunday, June the 9th, remember this very well, we're just kind of reeling as journalists from all these leaks and stories. And then suddenly, on the Guardian website, up pops this video Edward Snowden, the man reveals himself in a film by Laura Poitras.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
So now we have Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, exposing the NSA's innermost secrets, and he's just told the world exactly where he is.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
He's bringing stuff to light, David, rather than darkness.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
This episode is sponsored by Incogni. Now, David, in the world of espionage, you're trained, aren't you, to assume one thing, someone's always watching.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
That's right, your address, phone number, family ties, even political leanings, all online. It's like your personnel files being left open on a cafe table.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
They act on your behalf, demanding data brokers delete your information. And they keep doing that automatically because it's not a one-time breach. It's the risk of constant exposure.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Well, these days, there are eyes and ears everywhere across the internet. Ad companies, data harvesters, parties unknown. NordVPN blocks all of its malware pop-ups and the creepier corners of the web.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
So if you want to stay one step ahead, and really, who doesn't, head to nordvpn.com slash rest is classified for an exclusive deal with four extra months free.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Great dialogue for your next novel. I mean, there is a touch of Jason Bourne to it, I think. I think maybe, I can't remember when the first Bourne films came out, but I think there is a touch of- Prenate this by several decades, I believe. Yeah, the first books did, yeah. But of the guy who's, you know, the insider who's now on the run.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
So you can see him almost kind of linking himself to those popular culture tropes of the guy who the CIA are going to come after and they're going to use the triads, the kind of local organized crime in Hong Kong and to go after him. I mean, it's fascinating, I think.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
It's only one part of a bigger video in which he's talking about the 12 minute video that goes on The Guardian, but it's quite a telling bit, isn't it?
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
It is a massive one. The world doesn't yet know that the source for this article is Edward Snowden. All they get is this remarkable story. I remember it dropping and thinking, where has this come from? It just felt so unusual as a story. We should explain what it was and why it's so significant.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Although, dare I say, occasionally the CIA has been known to undertake certain acts of rendition from certain countries, even friendly countries like Italy. So it's not entirely implausible. But not against its own citizens. Not against an NSA contractor. Who's also just gone public.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
He's the hero in his own video game. He's the hero in his own video game. Precisely. Yeah. I mean, and what's fascinating here is he's going public. He's revealing himself to the world. He's saying this, that I could be hunted down by the triads or by the CIA. And yet he hasn't planned an exit strategy yet. And I think it's really kind of telling and odd that he hasn't.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And I mean, one option would have been for him to go back to say, here I am and I'm going back to the US and I'm going to go on trial and I'm going to make my case. Now, his argument is that he would have faced a kind of sham trial. You know, he might not have been able to have a jury trial in which he gave a defence and because of the Espionage Act, he wouldn't be able to make his case.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And yet he still doesn't really know what he's going to do. And here now he's gone public in Hong Kong. And in the video, they don't say he's at the Mirror Hotel, but it's clear it's Hong Kong. And so now it becomes clear that people are going to track him down. Hong Kong press and the world's press are descending on Hong Kong to find this whistleblower.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And they're looking at the kind of, as you do now with kind of open source intelligence, looking at the pictures of him in his hotel room and going, that looks like the Mirror Hotel, you know. You refer to him by the W word, Gordon. Yeah. Whistleblower. Leaker. So he realizes he's got to run the next day. He's got to go on the move.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
friendly, would accept him. Yeah. And Iceland seemed to have been his first choice. I mean, it's interesting because I think China does become an option at one point. So the next day after the video, he's bundled out of the Mira Hotel. I mean, you see a bit of it in the film. Lawyers in Hong Kong help him and help hide him.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
They take him to a kind of cramped apartment in a poor neighborhood filled with refugees rather than the kind of five-star hotels he's been in. And he kind of wears a hat and sunglasses. He's moving from place to place with people who are trying to escape deportation. There is a point here where I think he does consider going over the border into China.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
As the story you read says, it's a court order to the company Verizon that demands it hands over the details of every phone call in America. under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. This was the successor of the secret program we talked about before, known as Stellar Wind, created after 9-11. And what it was after was what's called the metadata, not the content of the call.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And it's interesting because he does an interview with a local paper in Hong Kong revealing that the NSA had hacked Chinese mobile phone companies and a university.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Now this is particularly awkward at this time because almost literally at this moment President Obama is meeting the leader of China for a big summit at Sunnylands in America and the argument was the US was going to press China about its hacking of American companies and stealing of intellectual property and at this moment Edward Snowden turns up and goes, actually, we're hacking you.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And we're carrying out cyber espionage on China. And it is very awkward for the United States and for President Obama at that summit. But also, to me, it suggests that Snowden is trying to maybe buy some support in China in order to get out and get over there, perhaps, as one option.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
No, and his argument is, and it's interesting, I think we'll come back to it, but his argument is there's an element of US hypocrisy in complaining about others spying on America when it's spying on them and that it's carrying out mass surveillance of Chinese citizens and collecting their bulk data. Now, I'll give you that's what spy agencies do, but you're right.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
There is a kind of different tenor to some of these articles. But what's interesting is if he is trying to buy support to get into China, perhaps- Doesn't work. Doesn't work. They don't want him. It's really interesting because, you know, something which I think has only become clearer now is that the Chinese at that point know that this could become a big diplomatic row with the US.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
The US are going to want him back. And if the Chinese are seen as sheltering him, they're going to get into problems. And relations with the US and China then, they're not as bad as they are now. And one former spy chief told me, he said, China should have kept him and squeezed him dry. That now is what a Western spy chief would have expected China to do.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
He's kind of a political hot potato at this point. Yeah, he's a hot potato. And on June 21st, the US formally requests his extradition.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
This attempt to bag Ed Snowden had failed. So he's going to be charged on the Espionage Act. And now his lawyers are kind of looking for a way out. So they are talking to Iceland and other countries where they think the kind of long arm of America might not reach them. And Iceland, it's interesting, is his first choice because it's quite big into internet freedom. Why doesn't he go there first?
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of interesting. Why didn't he pop up in Iceland, if that's the case, rather than in Hong Kong?
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
So it's basically saying these two phones connected at this time for so long, not necessarily what was said in that phone call. But it allows the idea for the NSA and then the FBI to kind of carry out searches on it to look for terrorists or other suspects. The point being, though, that this looks like domestic surveillance by the NSA, a foreign intelligence agency.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And it's at this point where... Who else comes onto the stage but Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Enter WikiLeaks. Ed Snowden had previously not chosen to go to WikiLeaks with this stuff. But he's in this no-man's land. He's looking for kind of ways out. And Julian Assange, who is not shy when it comes to publicity, has clearly seen this massive leak of documents. And I think to some extent wants to associate himself with it and so offers help.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Julian Assange, we should say, WikiLeaks, this Australian hacker who takes on the US state, releases loads of videos and documents, becomes a kind of thorn in the side of the US. At this point, Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, trying to fight extradition to, I think, Sweden on sexual assault charges, which he thinks are a means to get him extradited to America.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
It's all part of the plot against him. But he sends one of his lawyers out to help Edward Snowden. And the plan seems to be to get him to Ecuador as the route to freedom. Ecuador being kind of anti-American, anti-imperialist place, which would give him an element of freedom.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Exactly. So they come up with a plan, which is to take a long route to Ecuador via, it looks like Havana. The slow boat to Ecuador.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
I mean, that is quite a route. It's like Moscow, Caracas, Havana, you know, Ecuador. Yeah, I've flown that route before. It's exhausting.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
You're speculating about that. We have no idea.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
I mean, it does seem odd, naive, to transit through Moscow, you know, as a US intelligence whistleblower.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
It's interesting. And so on Sunday, 23rd of June, he checks in on Aeroflot SU213 to Moscow. We're all familiar with that flight. It's late all the time. Constantly delayed. Yeah. It's not quite clear how he could travel, given his US passport had been cancelled. But the truth is, I think Hong Kong and China are like, on you go. We don't care what passport. You just get out of here.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Yeah, come through, come through.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Let him through. Yeah. He lands in Moscow on June 23rd, about 5 p.m. local time. Now, journalists already have heard about this, so they're scrambling to get there. The Ecuadorian ambassador arrives in Moscow's airport, and all the journalists are like, where's Snowden? Where is he? And the Ecuadorian ambassador arrives. He's heard Snowden's coming, and he says to the journalist, where's Snowden?
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And they're like, We thought you knew. You're the one who's supposed to be looking after him. There's no sign of him. So for a while, there's this fascinating mystery where no one knows where he is. And some people are sure that what he's going to do is get aboard a flight to Cuba, to Havana, which is then going to Venezuela and then will eventually take him to Ecuador.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And that was stunning, partly because the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, just a few months before had been asked in Congress by a senator, almost a question which suggests that the senator knew about this program, because the senator said, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? And Clapper's reply was, no.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And so they're convinced that he's getting on a particular flight. And I remember one of my colleagues, Daniel Sanford, amongst other journalists, booking themselves on this flight to Havana from Moscow. He was the Moscow correspondent. Sure, the Snowden's going to be there. And they think, right, we're going to be stuck on a flight with him. We're going to get the interview with him on it.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And then they're sat there on the plane and the door to the flight closes. As they look at the seat that's been booked for him, 17A, it's empty. He's not on it. A seat. Someone's leaked it, I guess. And someone's told them. And there's this empty seat. And of course, by then, it's too late. The doors close and the plane's taken off.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And then in the final blow to these journalists, they are told the flight is dry. There's no booze on the flight. Now, why is that a dry flight? I don't know. It's almost like to taunt these journalists. Because this is the worst disaster for a journalist. The story's in Moscow. You've got onto a plane to Venezuela, not a short flight, without the target of your story.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
You're going to have to turn around and go back again. And you can't even have a drink. It doesn't get much worse than that.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
All in the hunt for Edward Snowden. So I think that is the place to maybe leave it because all we know is Edward Snowden is in Moscow. So next time we'll see what happens to Snowden and the rather dramatic story, actually, of what happens to him as he arrives in Moscow, which the journalists don't yet know about, and the fact that his revelations are still going to go on.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
It's the fairly unique chance to hear about Scotland Yard's view of minions, which is not something I ever thought I'd be discussing on a podcast, but there you go. And here you are.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
You be the judge. No, he did. He did. So anyway, listen out for that on the club, but thanks for listening, everyone. And we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
I think what's interesting, if it had just been that one story, it would have been big, but actually it's really an American story. It's about the American Constitution and legal protections. But, and I think you can imagine US officials going, okay, well, you know, that's bad.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
But then the Guardian tells US officials who they're in contact with, that they've got another story coming down the line. And I think that's important because it makes clear that it's not just a single document that's been leaked, but there's more and it's coming from what looks like the inside the NSA. So the next day...
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
There's a little race, but The Guardian publishes a story on something called PRISM. The Washington Post, which also, remember, had got some of these documents, also publishes just before, a few moments before, to get ahead. So you get a sense of the journalistic race there. Now, this is another biggie in terms of a reveal. And I think for a lot of people, this is perhaps...
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
particularly around the world, this is the more famous one, Prism. So maybe just briefly I'll try and explain what it is. This is about the content of emails and communications which are coming from big US tech firms. So this is about basically the idea that the US and the Prism story and the slides that it was based on suggested that the NSA had access to
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
directly, and we can come back to what that really meant, to companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, to things like Gmail, Outlook, photos, all the data that people are sending around the world. This is, in some ways, a more stunning revelation because everyone around the world... uses American tech companies.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Those were basically the only companies you used for email and for everything else. Suddenly, this program is being revealed saying the NSA appears to have access to it and is able to target and get particular accounts and details of it. It's different from the bulk collection of American data, which is the phone records. This is more about foreigners around the world having their
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
and the content of their communications targeted specifically as individuals. But it's still, again, pretty stunning.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
I mean, there's a phrase which, you know, in the spy agencies they use, which was home field advantage. And it's an interesting one because it works in two ways that the US and the UK for a long time built and owned the infrastructure of the internet, the kind of fiber optic cables. which meant they could kind of tap into them. And we'll come to that a bit later.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
But also now at this period, the US has a particular home field advantage because it's US tech companies, which are being used by everyone around the world. And as we know, collecting a whole load of their data. And I guess the spies think, well, we want access to that. I mean, it is interesting because much of the story is built around a kind of slide deck, which Snowden had passed on.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Because you've got the logos of these tech companies on it. So, I mean, that's part of the kind of drama of this story. And also, the slides implied and the initial reporting implied that the NSA had direct access into the company's servers. And actually, it's interesting, but it's one of those things where over time it became a bit clearer. It was a more complicated thing.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
that actually there was a kind of interface which allowed the NSA and FBI to send queries and then for the companies had a kind of interface which would pull it out. It wasn't a secret backdoor hacking into the companies, nor is it a kind of front door where they're going openly publicly.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
It's a kind of discrete side door which allows the NSA and the FBI to go to these companies and get a flow of data that they are collecting from their customers. But you can see why that's pretty explosive for the companies and for the public who had no idea this was happening.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Yeah. Because I remember talking to tech company people at the time. First of all, they'd never heard the phrase prism. So people would go, what's this prism? And only a very few people inside the tech companies would have known it was happening.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
One of the things I was saying was some of the confusion over how the servers were accessed and whether it was direct access. And I think that also points to one of the challenges with these stories is that Snowden had often provided a set of slides and charts to the journalists
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
But he hadn't necessarily always worked directly on these programs because he was an IT guy rather than on the whole a kind of intelligence analyst. And so one of the problems was he hadn't actually necessarily worked the programs or didn't necessarily know all the details. So they're left trying to decipher it.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And sometimes, as we know, people make shortcuts in how they write slides and do presentations. I take offense at that as a former management consultant, Gordon. My slides were perfect and accurate. Clear and concise. It's fair to say these slides were not meant for public consumption. And, you know, there are more questions raised by that initial Guardian article. For instance, whether...
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
GCHQ had access to this data, which they did have in some cases, what's called the Five Eyes Alliance, which is the kind of five countries, US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, who basically cooperate, particularly on signals intelligence. And they're not supposed to spy on each other and they're not supposed to spy on their own citizens without kind of warrantry and legal things.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And there are all these questions, well, is this being used to get round it? Didn't necessarily appear to be the case, but suddenly all these questions are kind of thrown up partly because all of this had been so secret. There'd been a vacuum of understanding. There'd been no kind of public knowledge about these programs. So suddenly, everyone is like, whoa, what are the spy agencies doing?
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
But if you go back to that time, I mean, some of it was confusing. It was stunning and confusing, I remember. If you then talk to people now about what it was like in GCHQ, Britain's intelligence agency, I mean, there is blind panic when particularly PRISM comes out Ian Lobben, who was then the director, later said, when I heard the news, I lay awake saying to myself, I hope this isn't a Brit.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Because, you know, they've realised they've got a leak. Some of it looks like it relates to Britain. You know, he's reported to have gone round colleagues asking, is anyone in your teams at GCHQ taking a long holiday? And also, I mean, the US tried to get him to lean on the Guardian to get him to stop it. And he's like, you know, that's not what we do.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And I think meanwhile, in NSA as well, there's this kind of desperate panic as they realise their secrets are being unfurled. But first, they could hope that maybe the Verizon story was a leak from inside Verizon. Which would make sense. Which would make sense. But once you get Prism, you're like, oh, no, this is someone who's got access to the secrets.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
They do the classic leak inquiry thing, which is, I guess, say, who's got access to these documents and try and narrow it down. It's kind of hard. It's too many people, probably.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
So at this point, we're heading to kind of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and the NSA are kind of, it seems like, and I've been asking people about this, they say they were narrowing down their list of suspects.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
So I'm going to be honest. I still think there are some mysteries around this investigation that leads to Snowden, which I think are unresolved and don't make sense to me even years later. Because the fact Snowden's girlfriend is visited, that could be because he's absent.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Buy an American journalist for a British newspaper.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
But the person who provides an email account, which Snowden has been using to anonymously contact journalists, he said, and he told me years ago, that he had been contacted at the end of May.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
by the FBI to ask for details of a certain account, which suggests that they were looking at something, you know, whether they were monitoring the journalists and had spotted something and were working that way by having, you know, monitored Laura Poitras and seen she was contacting someone.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
Whether you've got two different inquiries and then you have Snowden's absence and then you have this and then they all converge on Snowden, I don't know. But I think there are some things we've still not understood yet about what was going on inside the investigation there. Anyway, it's mysterious.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
But what's interesting is that they're kind of narrowing it down, and they're certainly kind of heading towards Snowden, if they don't know it already at this point. Typically, someone who'd done this would keep themselves secret. And normally, you'd have this kind of process, and you've seen it before in news stories, where there's weeks or months of like, who is it?
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
And then eventually, the FBI or someone will leak or come out that he's their top suspect.
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46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)
No, but I also kind of think he wants to be public and he's made that decision all the way along. And it's interesting. He seems to know that they're going to trace him as well. Well, he's letting Laura Poitras film all of this in Hong Kong. Yeah. He's made the decision. He's going to go public. And some of the journalists are kind of like, are you sure you want to go public?
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
That's right. And this week, we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden, and how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American history.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
And it's a story which really also gets to wider questions about what privacy means in the modern world, how technology has changed our lives, and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
If this sounds good, we've left a clip at the end of the episode for you.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
It is a massive one. The world doesn't yet know that the source for this article is Edward Snowden. All they get is this remarkable story. And I mean, I remember it dropping and thinking... where has this come from? It just felt so kind of unusual as a story. We should explain what it was and why it's so significant.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
It's a court order to the company Verizon that demands it hands over the details of every phone call in America. And what it was after was what's called the metadata, not the content of the call. So it's basically saying these two phones connected at this time for so long, not necessarily what was said in that phone call.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
But it allows the idea for the NSA and then the FBI to kind of carry out searches on it to look for terrorists or other suspects. The point being, though, that this looks like domestic surveillance by the NSA. And that was stunning partly because the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper,
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
just a few months before, had been asked in Congress by a senator, almost a question which suggests that the senator knew about this program because the senator said, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? And Clapper's reply was no.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
I think what's interesting, if it had just been that one story, it would have been big, but actually it's really an American story. It's about the American Constitution and legal protections. But, and I think you can imagine US officials going, okay, well, you know, that's bad.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
But then the Guardian tells US officials who they're in contact with, that they've got another story coming down the line. And I think that's important because it makes clear that it's not just a single document that's been leaked, but there's more and it's coming from what looks like the inside the NSA.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
So the next day, there's a little race, but the Guardian publishes a story on something called PRISM. Now, this is another biggie in terms of a reveal. And I think for a lot of people, this is perhaps, particularly around the world. This is the more famous one. This is about the content of emails and communications, which are coming from big US tech firms.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
So this is about basically the idea that the NSA had access to directly to companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, to things like Gmail, Outlook, Photos, all the data that people are sending around the world. This is, in some ways, a more stunning revelation because everyone around the world uses American tech companies.
The Rest Is History
564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
You know, those were basically the only companies you used for email and for everything else. And suddenly this program is being revealed saying the NSA appears to have access to it and is able to target and get particular accounts and details of it.
The Rest Is History
564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
But if you go back to that time, I mean, if you then talk to people now about what it was like in GCHQ, Britain's intelligence agency, I mean, there is blind panic. Ian Lobben, who was then the director, later said, when I heard the news, I lay awake saying to myself, I hope this isn't a Brit. Because they've realised they've got a leak. Some of it looks like it relates to Britain.
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564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
He's reported to have gone around colleagues asking, is anyone in your teams at GCHQ taking a long holiday? And I think meanwhile, in NSA as well, there's this kind of desperate panic as they realize their secrets are being unfurled. But what's interesting is that they are kind of narrowing it down and they're certainly kind of heading towards Snowden if they don't know it already at this point.
The Rest Is History
564. The Great Northern War: The Battle of the Baltic (Part 1)
Typically, someone who'd done this would keep themselves secret. But luckily, he's a massive narcissist with a... Massive ego. And if you want to hear the full episode, listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Pigeons, Tom. It all comes back to pigeons, the superheroes of history. I think if I hadn't appeared on The Rest is History doing pigeons, I don't think I'd have understood the power of podcasting, not least, and enjoyed it so much. And it's fascinating. After a career, 20-odd years broadcasting at the BBC, I appear on The Rest is History to talk about pigeons.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
And that is all anyone wants to talk to me about. They go, I heard you... I heard you on The Rest is History. So I suddenly realised, I think the power of podcasting came to life at that moment, brought to life through the superheroes of pigeons. And I think that was one of the foundational reasons for The Rest is Classified coming into being.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
There are a few others as well, which is people do love stories about spies and secrets. And me and David enjoy a good spy story as well.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Well, we've got a rich array from history right up to the present. So we started off with a coup in Iran in 1953, engineered by Britain and America and the MI6 and the CIA to overthrow Mossadegh in Iran. We've also looked at the first chief of MI6, a wonderful character called Mansfield Cumming, who was founding MI6, the British Secret Service, around the time of the First World War.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Famously, he had a wooden leg and he wouldn't tell new recruits that he had a wooden leg. And they'd come into his office and he would stab himself with a penknife in the wooden leg to test whether or not they'd flinch. And if they flinched, he knew they weren't good enough for the British Secret Service.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So it's a bit of a character there. You've got a brilliant series on North Korean espionage, haven't you? Yep. More recently, we've done North Korean espionage, done a bit about Syria. Got a series going out around now about Anna Chapman, who was a rather famous female agent from Russia who infiltrated both London and New York society on behalf of the Russian security services in around 2010.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So we've got a kind of rich array, I think, of different stories for people who just love spy stories.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So you're going to do those at some point? Absolutely. Vassal is a fascinating story about a honey trap in Moscow, actually, you know, and he gets trapped there while he's serving with a British embassy. And Gordievsky is one of the great spy stories. I've met Gordievsky a few times and he's an amazing character, still alive, living in kind of semi-hiding in Britain.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
But he's a great example where you've got all the excitement of a spy story, of his exfiltration from Moscow under the kind of watching eyes of the KGB and the drama of it. But you've also got a figure who is quite consequential.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
in history, because the intelligence he provided helped, especially Thatcher and Reagan, kind of inform them how to deal with the Soviet Union, how to deal with Gorbachev, and how to manage the end of the Cold War. And I think that's really interesting, when you get a spy story, which isn't just an exciting story, but actually tells you something about history.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
And that's right. I think that's one of the things we want to answer is as well as the kind of human side of things. But when did it matter? And I think Gordievsky is an example. Philby is another figure who mattered enormously in terms of the early Cold War, but also shaping, you know, I think Dominic knows, you know, shaping British institutions and British culture. actually, for many decades.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
That one person's betrayal and what it did, I think, is really interesting. So I do think spies matter. And you can look at that right up to the recent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by Russia and the way in which Western intelligence was declassifying information about what Russia was up to, to try and disrupt that invasion. So you can see the way intelligence is often used in the public domain.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Think about the justification of the war in Iraq, using intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. All of that shows that it does matter.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Alistair and Rory may want to comment on some of these matters. They may have knowledge about these affairs, given their backgrounds in the diplomatic and governmental world. So yeah, I think there's plenty of room.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Since our podcast a while back, I have been asking that high and low in the British state. And I had some assurances from security officials that they were looking at it. But I fear... That's meaningless. But that's what I fear, Dominic. I fear you're right. I feel they're fobbing me off. And so, you know, I'd hope that perhaps collectively we could make another push on the pigeon gap.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
If Churchill, you know, in the 30s could campaign on the gap with, you know, Nazi rearmament, I think, you know, if he was alive today, I'd like to think Churchill might have a podcast and he'd be, you know, podcasting about that. So perhaps we can do our bit to close that pigeon gap.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting way of seeing it because rather than thinking she is someone who is trained as a spy and recruited, put through a year or two of training and then sent to do this, she's someone who they go, you've got access, you've got influence, you've proved that in London. Let's start using you and training you up as you go to become a spy.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
I think it's worth reflecting here about the way Russia spies, which is slightly different as well. One of the things that they do is use these people under what they call illegal cover, which is kind of an odd phrase. But the contrast is they think of someone who's under diplomatic cover. So a spy who's working at the embassy, they have legal cover because they've got diplomatic immunity.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
And if they get arrested, they can't be arrested. They just get expelled. But an illegal is someone who doesn't have, if you like, diplomatic cover, but is blending into a society. and who is moving around with it, kind of swimming in the waters, hopefully unseen. And it's a particular type of spy which the Russians specialise in.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Exactly. I think the Russians were famous and the Soviets for using these deep cover illegals who they trained for years. They trained them to actually pose as being another nationality. You take a Russian and you'd make them into being a Canadian or a Briton or an American.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
insert them with the identity of a real, maybe a Briton or an American who died and have them kind of embed themselves deep in society. The idea was that they could then do things which a Russian couldn't do. They could move in circles and not be as suspicious. And so that was your classic deep cover illegal.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
But what I think we're seeing here in the 90s and 2000s is a recognition by Russia that times have changed. for two reasons. I think one is that it's harder to do that kind of deep cover stuff. One of the reasons is biometrics because you've got kind of passports, you've got databases.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
It's harder to kind of create a fake identity and then sustain it whether it's fingerprints or DNA or facial recognition to use different names and different types of cover. But also, one of the reasons that they needed to do this in the kind of 20s and 30s and in the Cold War onwards and use these illegals was because
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Russians couldn't move easily in Western society, where suddenly you've got this period where, as we said, from the 90s to the 2000s, Russians can come into London. They can move around London. That's not suspicious. There's not a kind of barrier to it.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So Anna, I think, is emblematic of this new type of spying that Russia can do, which is no need to do the deep training for some illegal spy, but take someone who's already moving in between the two societies or has got links in London or somewhere and just train them up, use them, make the most of them because they're there.
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Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
They've got the ability to kind of meet people and talk to people and move in interesting circles.