Greenwald: Approve or Disapprove?

[muriel_volestrangler]

55. No, I wonder if *you* read the article properly

Point one: that article doesn't mention Greenwald by name (though it's only 'highlights' of the audio; but he's not in the transcript either). But he is clearly the the third journalist. Gellman does not, despite what you think, say that the third journalist was brought in after Poitras and Gellman.

Point two: Snowden contacted Greenwald before Poitras - but because Greenwald didn't show enough interest, he turned to Poitras instead (who knew Greenwald). From the NYT article about Poitras:

Poitras was not Snowden’s first choice as the person to whom he wanted to leak thousands of N.S.A. documents. In fact, a month before contacting her, he reached out to Greenwald, who had written extensively and critically about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of 9/11. Snowden anonymously sent him an e-mail saying he had documents he wanted to share, and followed that up with a step-by-step guide on how to encrypt communications, which Greenwald ignored. Snowden then sent a link to an encryption video, also to no avail.

“It’s really annoying and complicated, the encryption software,” Greenwald said as we sat on his porch during a tropical drizzle. “He kept harassing me, but at some point he just got frustrated, so he went to Laura.”

Snowden had read Greenwald’s article about Poitras’s troubles at U.S. airports and knew she was making a film about the government’s surveillance programs; he had also seen a short documentary about the N.S.A. that she made for The New York Times Op-Docs. He figured that she would understand the programs he wanted to leak about and would know how to communicate in a secure way.

By late winter, Poitras decided that the stranger with whom she was communicating was credible. There were none of the provocations that she would expect from a government agent — no requests for information about the people she was in touch with, no questions about what she was working on. Snowden told her early on that she would need to work with someone else, and that she should reach out to Greenwald. She was unaware that Snowden had already tried to contact Greenwald, and Greenwald would not realize until he met Snowden in Hong Kong that this was the person who had contacted him more than six months earlier.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?pagewanted=5&_r=0

So now you know why Snowden chose Greenwald; because he admired the work he'd done. Poitras was more receptive, but it was Snowden who suggested she work with Greenwald - whom she already knew well. Despite what you claim in the thread you started, Snowden did not choose Gellman - Poitras brought him in.

he had already leaked material that was widely distributed long before he "came out" publicly with GG. Greenwald did not "break" the story, only the identity.

No. This is completely wrong. Greenwald went, with Poitras, to Hong Kong (and with a Guardian staff journalist) and conducted the face-to-face interviews with Snowden, before anything was published by anybody. Shortly after that, Greenwald also published the story naming Snowden.

But if you think Greenwald is a distraction, then I think you should talk to those on DU who have engaged in protracted character assassination of him (eg saying that him writing a book shows that he can't be trusted as a reporter). It is they who made thread after thread trying to make the story about Greenwald.