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Nevertheless Snowden applied for the job. Since it handled higher level secret documents, Booz Allen had stricter requirements for applicants than Dell. To slip by them, Snowden engaged in a minor subterfuge. He wrote on his application that he was expecting a master’s degree from the online division of Liverpool University in England. In fact, he had not completed a single course at Liverpool, and would not be receiving any sort of a degree from it. Booz Allen, not fully taking into account the discrepancy in his application, agreed to hire him as a trainee-analyst (and it did not change that decision even after it found out about his subterfuge.). According to Admiral McConnell, Snowden never actually worked in the Booz Allen offices, which are housed in a skyscraper in downtown Honolulu. Instead, he was immediately assigned to work at the NSA’s highly-sensitive National Operations Threat Center in the tunnel at the Kunia base.

Before he could begin working there, however, he needed to fly to Maryland to take a mandatory orientation course at the NSA. The course was given in an 11 story building, with a sheer wall of black glass, on the NSA’s 350 acre campus at Fort Meade in Maryland. He arrived there from Hawaii on April 1, 2013. Like every other Booz Allen contractors who work at the NSA’s Center, Snowden was required to sign the “Sensitive Compartmented Information Non-Disclosure Agreement.” In this document, Snowden acknowledged that he had been granted access to sensitive compartmented information, called SCI, as part of his work and that he understood that any disclosure of that information to an unauthorized person would violate federal criminal law. He was also told, as were all new contract employees a Booz Allen that its disclosure could damage the interest of the United States and benefit its enemies. In signing it, he swore an oath not to divulge any of this information without first receiving written approval from US authorities. So less than two months before he downloaded Sensitive Compartmented Information, he was fully aware of what would be the consequences of divulging this information. By this time, as discussed in the previous chapter, he had agreed to deliver classified data to three journalists.

On April 5, 2013, while still in the training facility in Maryland, he apparently sought to establish a paper trail for himself. He wrote a letter to NSA’s General Counsel Office asking whether or not NSA directives take precedence over acts of Congress. A lawyer from the Office of General Counsel responded three days later, addressing Snowden as “Dear Ed.” The lawyer said, agreeing with Snowden, that acts of Congress take precedence over NSA directives. He also suggested that “Ed” phone him if he needed any further clarification. Presumably, Snowden had written the letter to elicit a response that he could later use to bolster his claim to be a whistle-blower. Instead, the “Dear Ed” response was of little use to Snowden, as it did not dispute his point that NSA directives must lawfully conform to the acts of Congress. The NSA lawyer did not ever hear back from “Ed.”

Snowden completed his orientation course at Fort Meade on Friday April 12, 2013. While he was in Maryland Snowden, he took time off to pay visits to both of his divorced parents. It would be the last time he would see either of them in the United States.

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