Snowden archives memory-holed—are Omidyar/Greenwald DESTROYING 90% of the data?!

Introduction

Unlike certain editors here at VT I am not a trained intelligence professional. I have neither their sources, nor their brand of analytical insight, nor their (dare I say) paranoia. I have no use for operating in any other manner than “fully transparent”—the ideal of what should be the honorable professions of journalism and academia; whereas even ex-spooks, wedded to their inherently dishonorable profession, have a hard time overcoming their contempt for systematic honesty and openness. I like Assange’s publicly-expressed info-anarchist philosophy: leak ALL the shameful secrets of the powerful and let God and the people sort them out. And I suspect Assange is being persecuted not for any sins he may have committed, or dubious connections he has nurtured, but due to the good he has done—like exposing US government war crimes. That is, after all, what they are charging him with.

That said, I am suspicious of Assange, Snowden, and their various handlers and enablers,  for various reasons including their apparent complicity in the 9/11 cover-up. My VT colleagues, Daniel Estulin, and others may or may not be right that these folks are all total frauds. There are plenty of signs that they aren’t the purists they appear to be, but have instead chosen to compromise with dubious elements of the power structure. The article below draws attention to the disturbing gatekeeping of Greenwald, Scahill, Snowden, and their billionaire handler Omidyar.

-Kevin Barrett, VT Editor

Snowden archives at great risk—As alarming as Assange’s arrest

By Cathleen McGuire & Colleen McGuire

April 16, 2019

Billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the owner of the Snowden archives through his company, First Look Media, has shut down the analysis, release, and custodial care of the archives claiming lack of funds. Since 2013, only 10% of the documents have been published.

The decision was made just this past March, 2019, with the full participation of Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, star journalists with The Intercept, one of First Look Media’s various properties, as reported by MintPress News.

Laura Poitras (who with Glenn Greenwald was originally given custody of the documents by Edward Snowden in 2013 and works for Field of Vision, a First Look film company) was purposefully excluded from the decision, as was the company’s board of directors.

In 2014, Greenwald, Poitras, and Scahill launched The Intercept, an online publication whose initial raison d’etre was the reporting of the Snowden material. In short order, the effort of responsibly overseeing the security protocols and the analysis and release of the Snowden documents were turned over to a research group within First Look. (As planned, The Intercept went on to become the full news operation it is today.)

Aware of the historical significance of the Snowden cache, on March 13, Poitras went public informing the Daily Beast of the shutdown. On March 27, she released a series of emails which dramatically memorialized the play-by-play timeline. Poitras was basically screaming bloody murder as the research team investigating the valuable treasure trove was being eighty-sixed.

On March 14, Greenwaldreleased a statement embedded in a tweet in which he represented that he, Poitras, and “other individuals and institutions” possess “full copies” of the archives. Who else has “full copies”? Snowden? Booz Allen Hamilton (Snowden’s employer at the time)?  The CIA (Snowden’s one-time employer and NSA rival)?

Greenwald further represented that four media outlets—the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, and der Spiegel—“have possessed large parts” of the Snowden archives since 2013. He noted that these media companies have “budgets and newsrooms far larger” than The Intercept, implying that they are in a better position to take over the herculean effort of releasing and analyzing the remaining 90% of the unpublished documents.

However, it is disingenuous of Greenwald to insinuate that the four media companies who possess “large parts” of the archives have commensurate access to the archives as the alleged individuals and institutions who have “full” access. Furthermore, it is not clear if those “large parts” consist simply of the 10% of the archives already released.

With Omidyar in control of the goods, only a trickle of the Snowden archives has seen the light of day. Although technically the documents are not in danger of disappearing, now that the entire archives research staff has been eliminated, the risk of the archives being publicly memory-holed has significantly increased, as Poitras so urgently tried to publicize.

Greenwald claims he is looking for the right partnerwith ample funds to maintain and publish the archives. Yet, Columbia Journalism Review reports that Omidyar’s net worth is $11.2 billion. Poitras’ asserts that the alleged budget concerns are a smokescreen since only a mere 1.5% of The Intercept budget was allocated to the research team. Greenwald’s sob story about the company’s “financial constraints” rings hollow.

Recall that from June, 2013, when Snowden appeared on the world stage, through at least 2015, for weeks on end the Snowden docs were a viral topic both in the mainstream and alternative media. Major and prolonged public debates ensued between those denouncing publication of the docs as a threat to national security versus First Amendment advocates who championed a journalist’s right to publish a whistleblower’s assets.

So now that First Look has shuttered the priceless Snowden archives, why is this alarming debacle not a viral topic among critical thinkers, be they left, right, or center?  Why is Snowden—the man who risked his career, if not his life, and remains in exile in Russia—likewise strangely silent?

Since the very beginning, various alt-media analysts have raised serious questions about Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras, and Scahill, often to the ire of indignant supportersintolerant of criticism of their celebrated heroes. However, regarding the demise of the archives, at this juncture Pierre Omidyar is the strategic person of interest.

Omidyar is said to be one of the world’s most politically sophisticated data monarchs. In addition to proactively shaping the media landscape, Omidyar is also responsible for a legion of dubious activities that beg massive exposure, including:

• As a financial stakeholder in PayPal, Omidyar shut down WikiLeaks’ PayPal account, and in 2011 supported the criminal prosecution of 14 Anonymous defendants when they attacked PayPal’s servers in retaliation. See more on the PayPal 14 here.
• Omidyar attempted to steal Craigslist’s trade secrets for his company, eBay, in which, in an unusual decision against a corporate principal, a Delaware judge all but called Omidyar a thief in his effort to “learn the ‘secret sauce’ of Craigslist’s success.”  See more on Omidyar’s corporate spying scandal here.
• With the U.S. government, Omidyar co-invested in opposition NGOs in Ukraine. His substantial funding was pivotal to the country’s neo-Nazi coup d’etat in 2014.
• Omidyar engaged in preferential insider trading with eBay, resulting in the payment of a $3 million settlement to shareholders.

• After establishing The Intercept and poaching star reporters and staff (e.g., Ken Silverstein, Matt Taibbi, Marcy Wheeler, Betsy Reed), on Omidyar’s watch a virtual freeze on publishing took effect. See Silverstein’s Where Journalism Goes to Die.

The recent development of Omidyar’s shuttering of the Snowden docs is an unprecedented violation of the public trust. No matter how cunningly Omidyar purloined the Snowden documents, they belong to the American public.

Given his track record, Omidyar should be one of the last persons entrusted with the archives, particularly given the claim by former NSA whistleblowersthat the Snowden docs contain extensive documentation of PayPal’s partnership and cooperation with the NSA.

Glenn Greenwald’s reporting is by and large superb, often speaking out on unpopular issues. He voiced strong opposition to Julian Assange’s April 11 arrest in an email to The Intercept’s readers. Yet, demonstrating unseemly opportunism, Greenwald then asked readers to support free speech by donating—not to Assange’s legal defense—but rather to The Intercept, an already richly-endowed organization.

Worth noting further is Greenwald’s interview with NPR on April 11 in which he claims in a tweet that the interview “became contentious” when NPR characterized him as a “colleague of Julian Assange.”  Why on earth would being a colleague of Julian Assange offend Greenwald?

International outrage erupted over the kidnapping and rendition of Julian Assange.  Yet, why aren’t those who are enraged by this egregious violation of press freedom not up in arms that the Snowden archives are privatized, and that the preeminent owners, Pierre Omidyar and Glenn Greenwald, have conspired to withhold their contents from the public. The kidnapping and rendition of the Snowden cache demands a similar hue and cry!

BIOS

Cathleen and Colleen McGuire are twin sisters. Cathleen is a truth activist in New York. Colleen, a former New York lawyer, currently lives in Greece.

Kevin Barrett, Senior Editor

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.

He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN).

He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

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