Snowden directs Laura Poitras to recruit journalists Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman for NSA leak disclosures

84 met and “everything else is done,” he said “The key will follow.” He was now pulling the strings. To get that key, she had to follow his instructions. One of his conditions was that she helps him recruit Greenwald and other outlets for his disclosures. “The material provided and the investigative effort required will be too much for any one person,” he wrote Poitras. He next directed her to contact Greenwald. “I recommend that at the very minimum you involve Greenwald. I believe you know him.” (Snowden apparently did not tell her that he had unsuccessfully attempted to reach out to Greenwald before he had contacted her.) His continued interest in Greenwald was understandable. Aside from Greenwald’s opposition to what he called the “Surveillance State,” he was a gateway to the Guardian. The Guardian had become an important player in the business of disclosing government by publishing a large part of the US documents supplied to Wikileaks. By breaking whistle-blowing stories about US intelligence, it had also greatly increased the circulation of its website. As an establishment newspaper, it also gave these Wikileaks stories credibility with the media. So despite Greenwald’s inability to create an encrypted channel, Snowden still needed him. He had no reason to believe that Greenwald would turn down the opportunity for a whistle-blowing scoop for the Guardian. After all, the classified documents Snowden would provide him would also give credence to both Greenwald’s book and his many blogs denouncing of US government surveillance. Aside from Greenwald and Poitras, Snowden sought an outlet inside the American establishment. So he had Poitras write Barton Gellman, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Washington Post. Born in 1960, Gellman graduated from Princeton in 1981, and became an award-winning investigative reporter from the Miami Herald, Washington Post and Time magazine. He was also the author of the 2008 book Angler: the Cheney Vice-Presidency, which been made into an HBO mini-series. If Gellman could be drawn into the enterprise, he could provide Snowden with a gateway to the Washington Post, the prestigious American paper credited with bringing down President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal. Poitras, as the go-between for Snowden, immediately contacted Gellman. She already knew him from meetings they both attended at NYU’s Center on Law and Security. After telling him she was involved in a story about NSA surveillance, she suggested that they meet in New York City. For their rendezvous, Poitras took a number of precautions to evade anyone attempting to follow her. She had Gellman first meet her in one coffee shop in lower Manhattan. When he arrived, she had him follow her on foot to another coffee shop following her anti-surveillance tradecraft. Once assured no one was watching them, she ordered coffee for herself and Gellman. Over coffee, she told Gellman about Snowden, who she described as her anonymous source. She said that he was willing to supply Gellman with documents that would expose domestic HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020236