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You are here: Home / Politics / Media / The Un-Greenwald

The Un-Greenwald

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Interesting piece in the NYT about the documentary filmmaker who has played a pivotal role in the Snowden saga, Laura Poitras:

poitras

Never heard of her? That’s by design: She’s as publicity shy as her colleague Glenn Greenwald is publicity seeking, but she was the person who actually answered Snowden’s anonymous leak offer initially and was the woman behind the camera when Greenwald interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong.

The article is too long to effectively excerpt, and I don’t think there’s anything all that new to be gleaned from it, but it is an interesting study in contrasts on a debate that has been driven (occasionally to its detriment) by personalities.

One interesting factoid: To set up their initial meeting, Snowden instructed Greenwald and Poitras to stand in front of a restaurant in Kowloon, look for a man carrying a Rubik’s Cube and ask a coded question. Real spy vs. spy stuff, yo.

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    Napoleon

    . . . look for a man carrying a Rubik’s Cube and ask a coded question.

    I say we make a game out of guessing what that question may have been.

  4. 4.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    Wait, a Snowden-related article without any strawman characterizations of your imagined opponents? WTF?

  6. 6.

    Arclite

    One interesting factoid: To set up their initial meeting, Snowden instructed Greenwald and Poitras to stand in front of a restaurant in Kowloon, look for a man carrying a Rubik’s Cube and ask a coded question. Real spy vs. spy stuff, yo.

    Kind of foolish to be revealing their methods unless Snowden isn’t planning on granting any more interviews.

  12. 12.

    Napoleon

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I think also Italian and some language whose name excapes me that is entirely w/i the border of the country but spoken by very few people. Kind of like in Belgium you have that language related to English which is spoken by a few tens of thousands.

  13. 13.

    Alexandra

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t want to click the link, but I hope someone over there is reaming him out. There is no such language as Swiss. May the FSM preserve us from ignorant, loud-mouthed and bloviating white men.

    Edit: a little late.

  16. 16.

    Comrade Dread

    Never heard of her? That’s by design: She’s as publicity shy as her colleague Glenn Greenwald is publicity seeking, but she was the person who actually answered Snowden’s anonymous leak offer initially and was the woman behind the camera when Greenwald interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong.

    You mean you can break important news without being a grandstanding, self-important jackass? The hell you say.

  18. 18.

    joes527

    To set up their initial meeting, Snowden instructed Greenwald and Poitras to stand in front of a restaurant in Kowloon, look for a man carrying a Rubik’s Cube and ask a coded question.

    Oh great. Indiscriminately spill operational intelligence all over the internet. There’s no telling how many people will die because this information was leaked.

  22. 22.

    Chris

    One interesting factoid: To set up their initial meeting, Snowden instructed Greenwald and Poitras to stand in front of a restaurant in Kowloon, look for a man carrying a Rubik’s Cube and ask a coded question. Real spy vs. spy stuff, yo.

    Mostly unrelated, but you just reminded me of seeing interview a few years ago by Bill Whittle on PJMedia of someone that he claimed was a senior member of the FBI coming on the air to reveal how “political correctness” was ruining the intelligence community and Obama was allowing Muslim groups tied to terrorists access to all the secrets of the U.S. government.

    The interview was conducted with the “whistleblower” sitting in the dark with a light shining behind him in order to give the whole thing a “chilling” “spy stuff” Deep Throat feel to it (all for his protection so the nasty feds couldn’t identify him). The whole thing becomes pathetically laughable when you consider that, if the “whistleblower” had been real, any investigation worth its salt could have identified him from his voice, maybe even his silhouette. There’s a reason why good journalists heavily edit and rewrite what their sources have to say to make it as difficult as possible for them to be identified (and why Woodward and Bernstein never gave us voice recordings, let alone TV interviews, of the actual Deep Throat).

  23. 23.

    The Other Chuck

    look for a man carrying a Rubik’s Cube and ask a coded question

    That explains the rubiks cube they mentioned he had in his luggage.

  25. 25.

    Roy G.

    Great, yet another personality profile to distract the masses. I guess it’s too much to ask to talk about the fact that DNI Liar in Chief James Clapper is heading Obama’s ‘independent’ NSA watchdog investigation. Btw, that was some great 11th dimensional chess he pulled off on Friday afternoon, wasn’t it? I’m surprised there wasn’t a Mission Accomplished banner behind him.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Taranto’s commenters are as dumb as he is:

    Liberals ignore that Switzerland has three official languages, German, French and Italian. Any one of those would have sufficed. Oprah seems to think she’s Global.

    LOLWUT? Anyhoo, I’ll admit the most appalling fact that came out of the Oprah-Swiss kerfluffle for me was the knowledge that stores actually sell $38,000 handbags. Christ.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    @Roy G.: I’ll never be your Amy Goodman. But there is, in fact, a discussion about the Clapper issue right here at Balloon Juice in another thread. Yay!

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    Per Wikipedia, Zürich (with an umlauted u) is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. It’s an international banking centre, and I suspect that people who live and work there speak better English than the typical American.

  29. 29.

    Warren Terra

    @Betty Cracker: Is it worth pointing out that Switzerland has four official languages, and it’s profoundly unlikely that “any one of those would have sufficed”, as the clerk is far more likely to speak English fluently (as a second or third language) than they are to speak any three of Switzerland’s official languages fluently?

  30. 30.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Roy G.: I’m surprised there wasn’t a Mission Accomplished banner behind him.

    Oh, Firebaggers. “I’m flinging poo as hard as I can. Why won’t anyone take me seriously!”

    @Betty Cracker: Taranto must be getting scorched. And an American tourist, shopping while monolingual! I’m sure this person is fluent in all three, or four!, Swisses. And yeah, the whole concept of a $40,000 purse kinda fries my brain.

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    @Betty Cracker:
    I suppose I can imagine someone charging forty grand for a handbag, and someone with money like Oprah’s being willing to pay it. But for the life of me, I cannot imagine forty grand worth of handbag.

  35. 35.

    yellowdogupdater

    Misleading headline. Here I thought unGreenwald would be someone who is interested in presenting facts rather than hyperbolic bu11sheit click bait and book selling bait.

    She is as much a part of the Greewald bullshit factory catering to people addicted to feined outrage as anyone.

  37. 37.

    Long Tooth

    Anyone that has aided and/or even affiliated with Snowden during this time has earned my gratitude.

    I hope he evades ever being jailed, although I fully expect to be chipping in to his legal defense fund somewhere down the road.

  39. 39.

    scav

    Apparently those CHers are only slowly weaning themselves off latin in certain contexts: CONFOEDERATIO HELVETICA!

  45. 45.

    Heliopause

    Never heard of her? That’s by design: She’s as publicity shy as her colleague Glenn Greenwald is publicity seeking

    Greenwald has been promoting her for a long time. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and presumably she’s done quite a bit of promotional work for her movies. Here are some photos of her keeping a low profile at Sundance and other awards ceremonies. Here are some photos she took on the Oscars’ Red Carpet.

  47. 47.

    Betty Cracker

    @Heliopause: Well, I didn’t mean to imply she was in the witness protection program — just that she works at staying out of the spotlight. At least, that’s what the article linked above claims. For example:

    As dusk fell one evening, I followed Poitras and Greenwald to the newsroom of O Globo, one of the largest newspapers in Brazil. Greenwald had just published an article there detailing how the N.S.A. was spying on Brazilian phone calls and e-mails. The article caused a huge scandal in Brazil, as similar articles have done in other countries around the world, and Greenwald was a celebrity in the newsroom. The editor in chief pumped his hand and asked him to write a regular column; reporters took souvenir pictures with their cellphones. Poitras filmed some of this, then put her camera down and looked on. I noted that nobody was paying attention to her, that all eyes were on Greenwald, and she smiled. “That’s right,” she said. “That’s perfect.”

    I bet you not one person in 20 who read that article had a clue who she was when they started reading it, even though they all know about Greenwald.

  53. 53.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Betty Cracker:

    Well, wasn’t one of the Palin spawn sporting a slightly overpriced handbag placed on the credit card of some GOP schmuck? Not to mention Todd’s silk boxers…

  54. 54.

    flukebucket

    @ranchandsyrup: The Ron Paul Channel. That is fantastic. I had no idea there was such a thing in the works much less in existence. Alex Jones had better be very, very nervous. I wonder when Ron will schedule Lew Rockwell?

  55. 55.

    Betty Cracker

    @Heliopause: You’re right. I don’t know why the NYT quotes Greenwald comparing Ms. Poitras to obscure mastermind Kaiser Soze, when everyone knows who world-famous journo-lebrity Laura Pointras is. Why, she was on the red carpet!

  58. 58.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Amir Khalid:

    It’s an international banking centre, and I suspect that people who live and work there speak better English than the typical American.

    No doubt, but that is an awfully low bar. In my youth, I was regularly told that I spoke both German and French with “a Swiss accent” (my minimal command of each). WTF? By Europeans, of course, who spoke both and English at a minimum.

  59. 59.

    The Other Chuck

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Alexander McQueen’s Studded skull clutch

    You cannot get any more awesomely goth/punk-sounding than “studded skull clutch”, so imagine my disappointment when I clicked and saw. If you’re going to call something “studded skull clutch”, it should cause PAIN to look at.

  60. 60.

    The Moar You Know

    The Ron Paul Channel. That is fantastic. I had no idea there was such a thing in the works much less in existence. Alex Jones had better be very, very nervous. I wonder when Ron will schedule Lew Rockwell?

    @flukebucket: The shut-in gun-hoarding retirees and unemployable gun-hoarding schizophrenics who make up Alex Jones’ audience have plenty of time on their hands to watch the Ron Paul Comedy Hour as well. Plenty of crazytime to go around.

  63. 63.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Alexandra:

    I don’t want to click the link, but I hope someone over there is reaming him out. There is no such language as Swiss.

    From what I’ve seen here at Goof-Off Central, a substantial percentage of the Internet seems to be reaming him out.

  66. 66.

    ericblair

    From what I’ve seen here at Goof-Off Central, a substantial percentage of the Internet seems to be reaming him out.

    Swiss German is a distinct dialect (or group of dialects, actually), although I’ve only heard it called Schweizerdeutsch or Swiss German, not just Swiss. So it’s kind of a bum rap, but Taranto’s an asshole so fuck him.

  67. 67.

    Ted & Hellen

    but it is an interesting study in contrasts on a debate that has been driven (occasionally to its detriment) by personalities.

    This endless Botsplainer horse shit trope.

    Bots make the overall conversation about personalities by whining about personalities as a diversion, then whine about how the conversation is about personalities which oh so sadly forces them to whine about personalities when what they really, really want to do is focus like a laser on the ISSUES.

    The issues being, of course, that those unpopular boys Ed and Glenn are just so conceited and publicity seeking while their hero Barack the quarterback and most popular got elected president by being humble and not at all self seeking.

    And oh dammit, here they are discussing personalities again, but they really don’t want to oh no…

    …or something.

    Something.

  70. 70.

    Carolinus

    I’ve definitely heard of Laura Poitras. She’s been on the byline of a great number of Snowden-leak stories, about purely foreign intelligence operations, including stories Greenwald wasn’t a part of (implying she has the Snowden classified document trove too, and is doling them out about the world, personally deciding which US secrets to share with foreign papers).

    Along with Greenwald, and a number of other prominent Snowden backers in the media, she’s on the board of Press Freedom Foundation, a Manning-supporting, pro-uber-leakers org that directly funds Wikileaks. This is never disclosed in any of their media interviews or articles, but it’s important since they’re all anti-government-secrecy ideologues and most critically Wikileaks has been supporting their source (they’ve had a staffer traveling and living with Snowden since Hong Kong, helping him organize and plan, etc).

    From Wikileaks’ Aug 1st statement:
    http://wikileaks.org/Statement-on-Snowden-s-Successful.html

    Today, Thursday 1st August at 15:50 MSK, Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia. He left Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow with WikiLeaks staffer and legal advisor Sarah Harrison who has accompanied him during his 39 day stay in the transit zone and continues to do so. Ms Harrison has remained with Mr Snowden at all times to protect his safety and security, including during his exit from Hong Kong. They departed from the airport together in a taxi and are headed to a secure, confidential place.

    …

    WikiLeaks, whilst being a publishing organisation, also fights for the rights and protections of journalistic sources, and so has taken a leading role in assisting Mr Snowden secure his safety.

    …

    WikiLeaks would also like to extend their gratitude to the airport staff who have assisted in making the extended stay of Mr Snowden and Ms Harrison as comfortable and secure as possible, despite the difficult conditions.

    Mr Snowden and Ms Harrison have been staying in the airport for almost six weeks, having landed on an Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong on the 23rd June. They had been booked on a connecting flight the following day. Mr Snowden intended to request asylum in Latin America. However, after Mr Snowden’s departure was made public, the United States government canceled his passport, which rendered onward travel impossible.

    From within the transit zone of the airport, Mr Snowden and Ms Harrison spent a number of weeks prior to his Russian application assessing the options available to him to ensure his future safety.

  71. 71.

    Betty Cracker

    @Carolinus: I’ve always thought it was a mistake for Snowden to associate himself with the Assange Traveling Circus. Not only from a credibility standpoint but from a practical, competence point of view. Oh, and John Cusack is on the Press Freedom Foundation board? Well, I can hardly blame Ms. Poitras for jumping on that opportunity then…

  75. 75.

    handsmile

    Posted at the Guardian’s website a half-hour ago:

    “White House insists James Clapper will not lead NSA surveillance review”

    “The White House has moved to dampen controversy over the role of the director of national intelligence James Clapper in a panel reviewing NSA surveillance, insisting that he would neither lead it nor choose the members.

    Statements by Barack Obama and Clapper on Monday night were widely interpreted as the director of national intelligence being placed in charge of the inquiry, which the president had announced on Friday would be “independent”.

    The apparent involvement of Clapper, who has admitted lying to Congress over NSA surveillance of US citizens, provoked a backlash….But the White House national security council insisted on Tuesday that Clapper’s role would be more limited.

    “The panel members are being selected by the White House, in consultation with the intelligence community,” national security council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. The DNI had to be involved for administrative reasons, because the panel would need security clearance and access to classified material, she added.”

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/white-house-james-clapper-nsa-surveillance-review

    Oopsy. This could have been handled rather a bit better.

  77. 77.

    chopper

    @handsmile:

    lol. tho to be fair, even if the original reporting had this particular detail the kos kids would still have managed a full-bore freakout.

  78. 78.

    handsmile

    @ chopper:

    Well, I’m no kid – kos or otherwise, and while I didn’t freak out exactly, this initial announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not inspire confidence in the independence or integrity of the surveillance review panel.

    http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/909-dni-clapper-announces-review-group-on-intelligence-and-communications-technologies

    On quite a different matter, my age-addled memory seems to recall that the chopper family was moving away from the urban hellhole. If so, I hope the new life and location are melding nicely.

  79. 79.

    ruemara

    I did know who she was, what board she sits on and her role in this, but I did not know the odd spy movie trope of the Rubik’s Cube. No offense to Poitras, but they all seem quite odd. People say, “The camera never lies”. As a photographer, videographer and editor, it lies constantly and depends on the viewpoint of the person in charge. It’s why some documentaries step into propaganda and some are bare except for facts and reactions. We’ll see how it all shakes out.

  80. 80.

    Susan K of the tech support

    The Poitras profile is fascinating for all kinds of reasons. One thing that strikes me from the profile is the theme of Establishment vs. the Independent. In the profile, it’s Establishment Journalistic Org vs the Independent (blogger/documentarian).

    The backdrop for the NSA situation, post-9/11 is “terrorism” — on the one hand, terrorism is the use of or threat of violence to cause widespread fear and/or to change the behaviors or a large group of people, etc. (insert your better-articulated definition of what terrorism is). “Terrorism” and or “Terrorists” are individuals or small groups that exist outside of the nation-state. Independent.

    So you’ve got a backdrop of Independent vs the Nation State (i.e, Al Qaeda vs. USA) — and that’s the backdrop in which we have experienced this growth of a Government Entity inside a Government — the NSA inside the United States Government. A non-democratically-controlled entity (who the hell calls the shots re: all this surveillance, really? No, really) inside a Democracy.

    Then you’ve got the (accompanying) Snowden interview and his statement about the way news orgs operated (or didn’t) post 9-11

    After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America 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. From a business perspective, this was the obvious strategy, but what benefited the institutions ended up costing the public dearly. [source]

    So here’s Poitras, an independent documentarian, being on the receiving end of US Gov’t sponsored airport-travel-harrassment in response to her acts of documentary film journalism.

    …and then, later on, in the description of how Greenwald and Poitras operate (independents, in Rio, and Berlin)…. The dog noises, what’s in the fridge, what Greenwald wears, the way they operate.

    I don’t know where I’m going with this. No conclusions to draw, beyond highlighting an astonishing set of contrasts between individuals/independents vs Orgs/States…
    small groups vs govts (war, “terrorism”)
    Independent journalists vs. Large Journo Orgs (note that the set of documents handed over by Snowden exists in hands of individuals who decide how and in what circumstances to hand those over to Large Journo Orgs)
    Indivs vs Govts. How to stay off the grid/secure in the surveillance state.

    All sets of contrasts inside the major issue of the thorough and pervasive manner in which the United States Government intrudes upon the lives of individuals.

    I think I want to go back to whatever statement POTUS Obama made about how Govt employees “should” go through established channels for whistleblowing in light of this. (oh, and the computers taken away from the other NSA employee whistleblower. uh Huh).

  81. 81.

    Heliopause

    @Betty Cracker:

    Instead of saying these silly things why don’t you simply be honest; you could care less about Laura Poitras, you just see this as another cheap opportunity to take a very thinly-veiled swipe at Greenwald while appearing to be on about something else. It’s okay to admit it, nobody will change their mind about you as a result.

  82. 82.

    AxelFoley

    @Long Tooth:

    Anyone that has aided and/or even affiliated with Snowden during this time has earned my gratitude.

    I hope he evades ever being jailed, although I fully expect to be chipping in to his legal defense fund somewhere down the road.

    A fool and his money…

    I hope that fucker gets caught soon and brought to justice.

  83. 83.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    “To set up their initial meeting, Snowden instructed Greenwald and Poitras to stand in front of a restaurant in Kowloon, look for a man carrying a Rubik’s Cube and ask a coded question.”

    Q: “Who is our Savior?”

    A: “Ron Paul.”

  84. 84.

    keestadoll

    @flukebucket: Poor RP. I really like some of his “stuff,” but just cannot abide the rest. And now this. Jesus, he’s like the experimental cheese log at the Thanksgiving party where you like the ends, but the middle has something you’d rather not have had in your mouth.

  86. 86.

    Another Holocene Human

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): IDK about french, but speaking German with a Swiss accent is no compliment.

    Günter Grass (a Danziger) once said that after many years of marriage to a Schweizerin he thought he understood Swiss German, only to learn that he only understood Swiss people attempting to speak Hochdeutsch for his benefit.

    As for your command of French, I will posit that it is preferable to be told you sound Swiss to being told that you sound like a Texan. I’ve heard stories.

  87. 87.

    Another Holocene Human

    @The Other Chuck:

    You cannot get any more awesomely goth/punk-sounding than “studded skull clutch”, so imagine my disappointment when I clicked and saw. If you’re going to call something “studded skull clutch”, it should cause PAIN to look at.

    Amen. That clutch was weak.

  88. 88.

    Betty Cracker

    @Heliopause: Uh, because I’m actually NOT taking a thinly veiled swipe at Greenwald, and I DO find Poitras interesting? No — really; it’s true. I don’t see Greenwald as a horrid villain, and I do find Poitras’ role in this fascinating.

    I know that might not comport 100% with whatever narrative you’re constructing in your pointy little head. But it’s true.

    PS: When you want to indicate that someone really, really doesn’t care about something, you want to say they “couldn’t care less” about XYZ rather than they “could care less,” which means the opposite of what you intended. Sorry to be a pedant, but you WERE being a dick with your unfounded assumptions. Which makes me less charitably disposed to your advice. Sorry!

  90. 90.

    Carolinus

    @Betty Cracker:

    @Carolinus: I’ve always thought it was a mistake for Snowden to associate himself with the Assange Traveling Circus.

    From the NYT article:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?pagewanted=10&_r=1

    Greenwald said that the government would be unwise to arrest them, because of the bad publicity it would create. It also wouldn’t stop the flow of information.

    …

    Greenwald said, half-jokingly, that if he was arrested, WikiLeaks would become the new traffic cop for publishing N.S.A. documents. “I would just say: ‘O.K., let me introduce you to my friend Julian Assange, who’s going to take my place. Have fun dealing with him.’ “

    …

    He laughed and pointed out that unfortunately, the government does not always take the smartest course of action. “If they were smart,” he said, “I would do it.”

    This part is also unintentionally amusing. It’s where Greenwald realizes he’s no longer going to be a fringe blogger and becomes intoxicated with his new found power:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?pagewanted=6&_r=0

    “We couldn’t believe just how momentous this occasion was,” Greenwald said. “When you read these documents, you get a sense of the breadth of them. It was a rush of adrenaline and ecstasy and elation. You feel you are empowered for the first time because there’s this mammoth system that you try and undermine and subvert and shine a light on — but you usually can’t make any headway, because you don’t have any instruments to do it — [and now] the instruments were suddenly in our lap.”

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