Snowden’s 2009 Japan stint and social circle at Yokota base

oF countries. Like Snowden, she also deemed herself, tongue and cheek, a “super hero.” In this sense, her Internet avatar, was a match for Snowden’s “Wolfking Awesomefox,” In Japan, Mills and Snowden spent time with another American couple, Jennie and Joseph Chamberlin, who also worked at the Yokota base. Jennie, a sergeant in the public affairs section of the US Air force, had been at Art College with Mills, and called herself in her blog the “Little Red Ninja.” Her husband, Joseph Chamberlin was a decorated US Navy pilot who now flew highly-sensitive intelligence-gathering missions from the Yokota base. When Lindsay Mills arrived she made contact with Jennie, who in the next few weeks showed her many of the sights of Tokyo. Jennie described Lindsay in her blog as her “super-model friend.” The two couples also went on expeditions in Japan together. Joseph Chamberlin had a car and, as far as is known, he and his wife were the only Americans at the base with whom Snowden socialized. On August 17, 2009, the foursome attempted to walk up Mount Fuji, but they got lost en route to the tourist site. Giving up on Mount Fuji, they wound up in the Mount Fuji gift shop. Jennie described the misadventure in her Little Red Ninja blog: “Our adventure started off a little rocky with our attempts to find the interstate. Alas, our iconic mountain was obscured by cloud. A short stop at the Mt. Fuji combination soba noodle stand/gift shop was enough to whet our appetite for the further exploration that is to come.” The photographs that day show Snowden wearing Hawaiian shorts, and a black tank top emblazoned with an eagle and the letters USA. They also show Mills wearing safari shorts, a brown sweater and what appears to be an engagement ring (possibly to allay suspicions about her living with Snowden.) “Ed was looking rather rednecky,” Lindsay commented on one the photograph. Snowden described her, in turn, as “nerdy.” Finally, after posing for photographs, they found the Suyama-guchi path. But they never made it to the top. Back in Tokyo, Snowden was still seeking to advance himself. He attempted to get a college certificate by enrolling in a summer on-line course at the University of Maryland’s Asia program. But, according to the program’s record, he did not succeed in receiving any credit or a certificate from the on-line University. Finally, in October 2009, Dell assigned Snowden a job in which he had direct access to the NSA’s computers. His new position was a system administrator, which is essentially a tech-savvy repairman. Dell was working on backup system code-named EPIC SHELTER. For this contract, Dell was transferring large chunks of data from the NSA’s main computers in Maryland to back- up drives in Japan so if there was a communications interruption the system could be quickly restored. Since most of the classified data was in its encrypted form, it had little value to any outside party. Snowden’s job was to maintain the proper functioning of computers but, as a system administrator, he also had privileges to call up unencrypted files. He sat in front of a computer screen all day looking for any problems in the transferring files to back-up servers. The work was highly-repetitive and exceedingly dull. Snowden found time to search for anomalies in the system and he claimed to have spotted a major flaw in the security system in late 2009. The flaw was that a system administrator in Japan worked as a singleton and could steal secret data HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020209