Snowden Drops Latest Bombshell: NSA Targeted Journalists Critical Of Government After 9/11

From:  Before Its News 

In a new Edward Snowden interview released Tuesday by the New York Times, Edward Snowden drops another bombshell by revealing that after the attacks on 9/11, the NSA began targeting all journalists who were critical of the US government. Why would the NSA and the US government do that? At that point in time, wouldn’t the NSA had much better things to worry about, such as tracking down Al-Qaeda terrorists and those intending to harm Americans, not those attending to do their jobs and get ‘truth’ out to Americans? 

Leaker Edward Snowden accused the National Security Agency of targeting reporters who wrote critically about the government after the 9/11 attacks and warned it was “unforgivably reckless” for journalists to use unencrypted email messages when discussing sensitive matters.

Snowden said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine published Tuesday that he came to trust Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker who, along with Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, helped report his disclosure of secret surveillance programs, because she herself had been targeted by the NSA.

“I was surprised to realize that there were people in news organizations who didn’t recognize any unencrypted message sent over the Internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world,” he said. “In the wake of this year’s disclosures, it should be clear that unencrypted journalist-source communication is unforgivably reckless.” More below.

Then Snowden told us about the obvious; after 9/11, major news organizations around the country and the world dropped the ball by failing to report truth and taking up the ‘nationalism’ that the government had strived for. In doing so, the mainstream media has also lost countless readers and viewers while alternative news continues to thrive as shared in the rest of this story. 

“After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in American abdicated their role as a check to power – the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government – for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism,” he said.

“From a business perspective, this was the obvious strategy,” he continued. “But what benefitted the institutions ended up costing the public dearly. The major outlets are still only beginning to recover from this cold period. Laura and Glenn are among the few who reported fearlessly on controversial topics.”

Earlier this month, the Russian government granted Snowden temporary asylum. The U.S. government wants the NSA leaker sent back to face trial on espionage charges.