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Escape Artist | 83

I am naive.” He also added dramatically, “I have risked my life and
family.” Even so, Gellman declined coming to Hong Kong. (Accord-
ing to Greenwald, Gellman could not make the trip, because lawyers
for The Washington Post were uneasy with having a reporter receive
classified documents in a part of China.)

On May 24, 2013, Snowden attempted to apply more pressure on
Gellman by telling him that the story about the PRISM program
had to be published by the Post within seventy-two hours. Gellman
could not accede to such a condition, because the decision of when to
publish a story was made not by him but by the editors of the news-
paper. He told Snowden that the earliest the story could be published
was June 6, 2013, which was well past Snowden’s deadline.

Snowden next turned to Greenwald in Brazil. Both Poitras and
Micah Lee had made great efforts to tutor Greenwald on encryption
protocols, with Lee’s sending Greenwald a DVD by FedEx that would
allow him to receive both encrypted messages and encrypted phone
calls. Even then, Greenwald was unable to fully install it. As a result,
Greenwald still had not met Snowden’s requisites on encrypting his
computer.

With Gellman uncertain, Greenwald was now essential to Snow-
den’s plan. If he was to have any newspaper outlet, he needed to
persuade Greenwald to come to Hong Kong. At this point, he took
matters into his own hands. On May 25, Snowden somewhat aggres-
sively e-mailed Greenwald, saying, “I’ve been working on a major
project with a mutual friend of ours. You recently had to decline
short-term travel to meet with me.” Although he did not specify the
“short-term travel” to which he referred, he added pointedly, “You
need to be involved in this story.” He suggested that they imme-
diately speak on the phone via a website that encrypts conversa-
tions. Snowden began the call by complaining, “I don’t like how this
is developing.” He made it clear that he, not the journalist he had
selected, was pulling the strings. If Greenwald wanted the scoop, he
had to follow Snowden’s instructions, which included dividing the
scoops between The Guardian and The Washington Post. According
to his plan, Gellman would break the PRISM story in the Post, and
Greenwald would break the “mass domestic spying” story in The
Guardian. In addition, he insisted that The Guardian publish his per-

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