washington_post_snowden_story_20131223.diff

--- earlier_version
+++ later_version
@@ -1,36 +1,42 @@
-http://www.smh.com.au/world/mission-accomplished-says-edward-snowden-20131224-hv6t0.html
+http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html
 
-MOSCOW: Edward Joseph Snowden emerged at the appointed hour, alone, blending
+MOSCOW — The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.
+
+"What time does your clock say, exactly?" he asked.
+
+He checked the reply against his watch and described a place to meet.
+
+"I'll see you there," he said.
+
+Edward Joseph Snowden emerged at the appointed hour, alone, blending
 into a light crowd of locals and tourists. He cocked his arm for a handshake,
 then turned his shoulder to indicate a path. Before long he had guided his
 visitor to a secure space out of public view.
 
 During more than 14 hours of interviews, the first he has conducted in person
 since arriving here in June, Snowden did not part the curtains or step outside.
-Russia granted him temporary asylum on August 1, but Snowden remains a target
+Russia granted him temporary asylum on Aug. 1, but Snowden remains a target
 of surpassing interest to the intelligence services whose secrets he spilled on
 an epic scale.
 
-Earlier this year, Snowden supplied three journalists, including this one, with
+Late this spring, Snowden supplied three journalists, including this one, with
 caches of top-secret documents from the National Security Agency, where he
 worked as a contractor.
-
-Dozens of revelations followed, and then hundreds, as news organisations around
+Dozens of revelations followed, and then hundreds, as news organizations around
 the world picked up the story. Congress pressed for explanations, new evidence
 revived old lawsuits and the Obama administration was obliged to declassify
 thousands of pages it had fought for years to conceal.
 
 Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance
-system that cast off many of its historic restraints after the attacks of
-September 11, 2001.
-
-Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, internet
+system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of
+Sept. 11, 2001.
+Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet
 and location records of whole populations. One of the leaked presentation
 slides described the agency's "collection philosophy" as "Order one of
 everything off the menu."
 
 Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and
-The Guardian, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots
+Britain's Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots
 and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of
 nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian
 pastry.
@@ -49,13 +55,13 @@
 governed," he said. "That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now,
 all we are looking at are stretch goals."
 
-Weighing the risks
+'Going in blind'
 
 Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer's approach to problem-solving.
-He had come to believe a dangerous machine of mass surveillance was
-growing unchecked. Closed-door oversight in Congress and the Foreign
+He had come to believe that a dangerous machine of mass surveillance was
+growing unchecked. Closed-door oversight by Congress and the Foreign
 Intelligence Surveillance Court was a "graveyard of judgment," he said,
-manipulated by the agency it was supposed to supervise. Classification
+manipulated by the agency it was supposed to keep in check. Classification
 rules erected walls to prevent public debate.
 
 Toppling those walls would be a spectacular act of transgression against the
@@ -66,74 +72,72 @@
 The NSA's business is "information dominance," the use of other people's
 secrets to shape events. At 29, Snowden upended the agency on its own turf.
 
-"You recognise that you're going in blind, that there's no model," Snowden
+"You recognize that you're going in blind, that there's no model," Snowden
 said, acknowledging that he had no way to know whether the public would share
 his views.
 
 "But when you weigh that against the alternative, which is not to act," he
-said, "you realise that some analysis is better than no analysis. Because even
+said, "you realize that some analysis is better than no analysis. Because even
 if your analysis proves to be wrong, the marketplace of ideas will bear that
 out. If you look at it from an engineering perspective, an iterative
 perspective, it's clear that you have to try something rather than do nothing."
 
 By his own terms, Snowden succeeded beyond plausible ambition.
-Accustomed to watching without being watched, the NSA faces scrutiny it has
+The NSA, accustomed to watching without being watched, faces scrutiny it has
 not endured since the 1970s, or perhaps ever.
 
 The cascading effects have made themselves felt in Congress, the courts,
 popular culture, Silicon Valley and world capitals.
-
-The basic structure of the internet itself is now in question, as Brazil and
+The basic structure of the Internet itself is now in question, as Brazil and
 members of the European Union consider measures to keep their data away from
-US territory and US technology giants including Google, Microsoft and
-Yahoo take extraordinary step to block the collection of data by their
+U.S. territory and U.S. technology giants including Google, Microsoft and
+Yahoo take extraordinary steps to block the collection of data by their
 government.
 
 For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said
 the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.
 
-On December 16, in a lawsuit that could not have gone forward without the
-disclosures made possible by Snowden, US District Judge Richard Leon
+On Dec. 16, in a lawsuit that could not have gone forward without the
+disclosures made possible by Snowden, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon
 described the NSA's capabilities as "almost Orwellian" and said its bulk
-collection of US domestic telephone records was probably unconstitutional.
+collection of U.S. domestic telephone records was probably unconstitutional.
 
-The next day, in the White House, an unusual delegation of executives from
-old telephone companies and young internet firms told President Barack Obama
-that the NSA's intrusion into their networks was a threat to the US
+The next day, in the Roosevelt Room, an unusual delegation of executives from
+old telephone companies and young Internet firms told President Obama
+that the NSA's intrusion into their networks was a threat to the U.S.
 information economy.
-
 The following day, an advisory panel appointed by Obama recommended substantial
 new restrictions on the NSA, including an end to the domestic call-records
 program.
 
-"This week is a turning point," said Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project,
+"This week is a turning point," said the Government Accountability Project's Jesselyn Radack,
 who is one of Snowden's legal advisers. "It has been just a cascade."
 
+'They elected me'
+
 On June 22, the Justice Department unsealed a criminal complaint charging
 Snowden with espionage and felony theft of government property. It was a dry
 enumeration of statutes, without a trace of the anger pulsing through Snowden's
 former precincts.
 
-Public enemy No. 1
-
 In the intelligence and national security establishments, Snowden is widely
 viewed as a reckless saboteur, and journalists abetting him little less so.
 
 At the Aspen Security Forum in July, a four-star military officer known for his
 even keel seethed through one meeting alongside a reporter he knew to be in
-contact with Snowden. Before walking away he turned and pointed a finger.
+contact with Snowden. Before walking away, he turned and pointed a finger.
 
 "We didn't have another 9/11," he said angrily, because intelligence enabled
 warfighters to find the enemy first. "Until you've got to pull the trigger,
 until you've had to bury your people, you don't have a clue."
 
 It is commonly said of Snowden that he broke an oath of secrecy, a turn of
-phrase that captures a sense of betrayal. NSA Director Keith Alexander and
-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, among many others, have
+phrase that captures a sense of betrayal. NSA Director Keith B. Alexander and
+Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., among many others, have
 used that formula.
 
 In his interview with The Post, Snowden noted matter-of-factly that Standard
-Form 312, the classified-information non-disclosure agreement, is a civil
+Form 312, the classified-information nondisclosure agreement, is a civil
 contract. He signed it, but he pledged his fealty elsewhere.
 
 "The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy," he said. "That is an oath
@@ -144,34 +148,56 @@
 
 "I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA," he
 said. "I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who
-don't realise it."
+don't realize it."
+
+What entitled Snowden, now 30, to take on that responsibility?
+
+"That whole question — who elected you? — inverts the model," he said. "They
+elected me. The overseers."
+
+He named the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
+
+"Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions" in committee
+hearings, he said. "Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden.
+. . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench
+on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended
+to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each
+level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their
+responsibility."
+
+"It wasn't that they put it on me as an individual — that I'm uniquely
+qualified, an angel descending from the heavens — as that they put it on
+someone, somewhere," he said. "You have the capability, and you realize every
+other [person] sitting around the table has the same capability but they don't
+do it. So somebody has to be the first."
+
+'Front-page test'
 
 Snowden grants that NSA employees by and large believe in their mission and
-trust the agency to handle the secrets it takes from ordinary people -
+trust the agency to handle the secrets it takes from ordinary people —
 deliberately, in the case of bulk records collection, and "incidentally," when
-the content of American phone calls and emails are swept into NSA systems
+the content of American phone calls and e-mails are swept into NSA systems
 along with foreign targets.
 
-But Snowden also said he believed acceptance of the agency's operations was not universal.
+But Snowden also said acceptance of the agency's operations was not universal.
 He began to test that proposition more than a year ago, he said, in periodic
 conversations with co-workers and superiors that foreshadowed his emerging
 plan.
 
 Beginning in October 2012, he said, he brought his misgivings to two superiors
 in the NSA's Technology Directorate and two more in the NSA Threat Operations
-Centre's regional base in Hawaii.
-
+Center's regional base in Hawaii.
 For each of them, and 15 other co-workers, Snowden said he opened a data query
-tool called BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, which used colour-coded "heat maps" to depict
+tool called BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, which used color-coded "heat maps" to depict
 the volume of data ingested by NSA taps.
 
 His colleagues were often "astonished to learn we are collecting more in the
-United States on Americans then we are on Russians in Russia," he said. Many of
+United States on Americans than we are on Russians in Russia," he said. Many of
 them were troubled, he said, and several said they did not want to know any
 more.
 
 "I asked these people, 'What do you think the public would do if this was on
-the front page?' " he said. He noted that critics have accused him of bypassing
+the front page?' " he said. He noted that critics have accused him of bypassing
 internal channels of dissent. "How is that not reporting it? How is that not
 raising it?" he said.
 
@@ -182,14 +208,34 @@
 Asked about those conversations, NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines sent a prepared
 statement to The Post: "After extensive investigation, including interviews
 with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence
-to support Mr Snowden's contention that he brought these matters to anyone's
+to support Mr. Snowden's contention that he brought these matters to anyone's
 attention."
 
+Snowden recounted another set of conversations that he said took place three
+years earlier, when he was sent by the NSA's Technology Directorate to support
+operations at a listening post in Japan. As a system administrator, he had full
+access to security and auditing controls. He said he saw serious flaws with
+information security.
+
+"I actually recommended they move to two-man control for administrative access
+back in 2009," he said, first to his supervisor in Japan and then to the
+directorate's chief of operations in the Pacific. "Sure, a whistleblower could
+use these things, but so could a spy."
+
+That precaution, which requires a second set of credentials to perform risky
+operations such as copying files onto a removable drive, has been among the
+principal security responses to the Snowden affair.
+
+Vines, the NSA spokeswoman, said there was no record of those conversations,
+either.
+
+U.S. 'would cease to exist'
+
 Just before releasing the documents this spring, Snowden made a final review of
 the risks. He had overcome what he described at the time as a "selfish fear" of
 the consequences for himself.
 
-"I said to you the only fear [left] is apathy - that people won't care, that
+"I said to you the only fear [left] is apathy — that people won't care, that
 they won't want change," he recalled this month.
 
 The documents leaked by Snowden compelled attention because they revealed to
@@ -200,16 +246,15 @@
 of the agency's prowess.
 
 With assistance from private communications firms, the NSA had learned to
-capture enormous flows of data at the speed of light from fibre-optic cables
-that carried internet and telephone traffic over continents and under seas.
-
+capture enormous flows of data at the speed of light from fiber-optic cables
+that carried Internet and telephone traffic over continents and under seas.
 According to one document in Snowden's cache, the agency's Special Source
 Operations group, which as early as 2006 was said to be ingesting "one Library
 of Congress every 14.4 seconds," had an official seal that might have been
 parody: an eagle with all the world's cables in its grasp.
 
-Each year, NSA systems collected hundreds of millions of email address books,
-hundreds of billions of mobile phone location records and trillions of domestic
+Each year, NSA systems collected hundreds of millions of e-mail address books,
+hundreds of billions of cellphone location records and trillions of domestic
 call logs.
 
 Most of that data, by definition and intent, belonged to ordinary people
@@ -222,68 +267,63 @@
 a matter of life and death, "without which America would cease to exist as we
 know it," according to an internal presentation in the first week of October
 2001 as the agency ramped up its response to the al-Qaeda attacks on
-New York and Washington.
+the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
 
 With stakes such as those, there was no capability the NSA believed it should
 leave on the table. The agency followed orders from President George W. Bush to
 begin domestic collection without authority from Congress and the courts.
-
-Widening the net
-
 When the NSA won those authorities later, some of them under secret
 interpretations of laws passed by Congress between 2007 and 2012, the Obama
 administration went further still.
 
 Using PRISM, the cover name for collection of user data from Google, Yahoo,
-Microsoft, Apple and five other US-based companies, the NSA could obtain all
-communications to, from or "about" any specified target. The companies had no
+Microsoft, Apple and five other U.S.-based companies, the NSA could obtain all
+communications to or from any specified target. The companies had no
 choice but to comply with the government's request for data.
 
 But the NSA could not use PRISM, which was overseen once a year by the
 surveillance court, for the collection of virtually all data handled by those
 companies.
-
 To widen its access, it teamed up with its British counterpart, Government
-Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, to break into the private fibre-optic
-links that connected Google and Yahoo data centres around the world.
-
-That operation, which used the cover name MUSCULAR, tapped into US company data
-from outside US territory.
+Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, to break into the private fiber-optic
+links that connected Google and Yahoo data centers around the world.
 
-The NSA therefore believed it did not need permission from Congress or judicial
-oversight. Data from hundreds of millions of US accounts flowed over those
+That operation, which used the cover name MUSCULAR, tapped into U.S. company data
+from outside U.S. territory.
+The NSA, therefore, believed it did not need permission from Congress or judicial
+oversight. Data from hundreds of millions of U.S. accounts flowed over those
 Google and Yahoo links, but classified rules allowed the NSA to presume that
 data ingested overseas belonged to foreigners.
 
-Disclosure of the MUSCULAR project enraged and galvanised US technology
-executives. They believed the NSA had lawful access to their front doors - and
+'Persistent threat'
+
+Disclosure of the MUSCULAR project enraged and galvanized U.S. technology
+executives. They believed the NSA had lawful access to their front doors — and
 had broken down the back doors anyway.
 
 Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith took to his company's blog and called the
-NSA an "advanced persistent threat" - the worst of all fighting words in US
+NSA an "advanced persistent threat" — the worst of all fighting words in U.S.
 cybersecurity circles, generally reserved for Chinese state-sponsored hackers
 and sophisticated criminal enterprises.
 
 "For the industry as a whole, it caused everyone to ask whether we knew as much
 as we thought," Smith recalled in an interview. "It underscored the fact that
-while people were confident that the US government was complying with US
-laws for activity within US territory, perhaps there were things going on
-outside the United States . . . that made this bigger and more complicated and
+while people were confident that the U.S. government was complying with U.S.
+laws for activity within U.S. territory, perhaps there were things going on
+outside the United States . . . that made this bigger and more complicated and
 more disconcerting than we knew."
 
-They wondered, he said, if the NSA was "collecting proprietary information
+They wondered, he said, whether the NSA was "collecting proprietary information
 from the companies themselves."
 
 Led by Google and then Yahoo, one company after another announced expensive
 plans to encrypt its data traffic over tens of thousands of miles of cable. It
-was a direct - in some cases, explicit - blow to NSA collection of user data in
+was a direct — in some cases, explicit — blow to NSA collection of user data in
 bulk. If the NSA wanted the information, it would have to request it or
 circumvent the encryption one target at a time.
 
-Making life harder for the NSA
-
-As these projects are completed, the internet will become a less friendly place
-for the NSA to work. The agency can still collect data from virtually any one,
+As these projects are completed, the Internet will become a less friendly place
+for the NSA to work. The agency can still collect data from virtually anyone,
 but collecting from everyone will be harder.
 
 The industry's response, Smith acknowledged, was driven by a business threat.
@@ -292,11 +332,13 @@
 about ensuring that customer data is turned over to governments pursuant to
 valid legal orders and in accordance with constitutional principles."
 
+'Warheads on foreheads'
+
 Snowden has focused on much the same point from the beginning: Individual
 targeting would cure most of what he believes is wrong with the NSA.
 
-Six months ago, a reporter asked him by encrypted email why Americans would
-want the NSA to give up bulk collection if that would limit a useful
+Six months ago, a reporter asked him by encrypted e-mail why Americans would
+want the NSA to give up bulk data collection if that would limit a useful
 intelligence tool.
 
 "I believe the cost of frank public debate about the powers of our government
@@ -308,8 +350,8 @@
 that something we should be allowing?"
 
 Snowden likened the NSA's powers to those used by British authorities in
-Colonial America, when "general warrants" allowed anyone to be searched.
-The FISA court, Snowden said, "is authorising general warrants for the entire
+Colonial America, when "general warrants" allowed for anyone to be searched.
+The FISA court, Snowden said, "is authorizing general warrants for the entire
 country's metadata."
 
 "The last time that happened, we fought a war over it," he said.
@@ -326,98 +368,151 @@
 foreign surveillance alike.
 
 "I don't care whether you're the pope or Osama bin Laden," he said. "As long as
-there's an individualised, articulable, probable cause for targeting these
+there's an individualized, articulable, probable cause for targeting these
 people as legitimate foreign intelligence, that's fine. I don't think it's
 imposing a ridiculous burden by asking for probable cause. Because, you have to
 understand, when you have access to the tools the NSA does, probable cause
 falls out of trees."
 
+'Everybody knows'
+
+On June 29, Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union's counter­terrorism
+coordinator, awoke to a report in Der Spiegel that U.S. intelligence had broken
+into E.U. offices, including his, to implant surveillance devices.
+
+The 56-year-old Belgian, whose work is often classified, did not consider
+himself naive. But he took the news personally, and more so when he heard
+unofficial explanations from Washington.
+
+" 'Everybody knows. Everybody does' — Keith Alexander said that," de Kerchove
+said in an interview. "I don't like the idea that the NSA will put bugs in my
+office. No. I don't like it. No. Between allies? No. I'm surprised that people
+find that noble."
+
+Comparable reactions, expressed less politely in private, accompanied
+revelations that the NSA had tapped the cellphones of German Chancellor Angela
+Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The blowback roiled relations
+with both allies, among others. Rousseff canceled a state dinner with Obama in
+September.
+
 When it comes to spying on allies, by Snowden's lights, the news is not always
 about the target.
 
 "It's the deception of the government that's revealed," Snowden said, noting
-that the Obama administration offered false public assurances following the
-initial reports about NSA surveillance in Germany "The US government said:
+that the Obama administration offered false public assurances after the
+initial reports about NSA surveillance in Germany "The U.S. government said:
 'We follow German laws in Germany. We never target German citizens.' And then
 the story comes out and it's: 'What are you talking about? You're spying on the
 chancellor.' You just lied to the entire country, in front of Congress."
 
-In private, US intelligence officials still maintain that spying among friends
+In private, U.S. intelligence officials still maintain that spying among friends
 is routine for all concerned, but they are giving greater weight to the risk of
 getting caught.
 
-US officials say it is obvious that Snowden's disclosures will do grave harm
+"There are many things we do in intelligence that, if revealed, would have the
+potential for all kinds of blowback," Clapper told a House panel in October.
+
+'They will make mistakes'
+
+U.S. officials say it is obvious that Snowden's disclosures will do grave harm
 to intelligence gathering, exposing methods that adversaries will learn to
 avoid.
 
 "We're seeing al-Qaeda and related groups start to look for ways to adjust how
 they communicate," said Matthew Olsen, director of the National
-Counterterrorism Centre and a former general counsel at the NSA.
+Counterterrorism Center and a former general counsel at the NSA.
 
 Other officials, who declined to speak on the record about particulars, said
 they had watched some of their surveillance targets, in effect, changing
 channels. That evidence can be read another way, they acknowledged, given that
 the NSA managed to monitor the shift.
 
-The missing files
+Clapper has said repeatedly in public that the leaks did great damage, but in
+private he has taken a more nuanced stance. A review of early damage
+assessments in previous espionage cases, he said in one closed-door briefing
+this fall, found that dire forecasts of harm were seldom borne out.
+
+"People must communicate," he said, according to one participant who described
+the confidential meeting on the condition of anonymity. "They will make
+mistakes, and we will exploit them."
 
 According to senior intelligence officials, two uncertainties feed their
 greatest concerns. One is whether Russia or China managed to take the Snowden
 archive from his computer, a worst-case assumption for which three officials
 acknowledged there is no evidence.
 
-In a previous assignment, Snowden taught US intelligence personnel how to
+In a previous assignment, Snowden taught U.S. intelligence personnel how to
 operate securely in a "high-threat digital environment," using a training
 scenario in which China was the designated threat. He declined to discuss the
-whereabouts the files now, but he said he is confident he did not expose
-them to Chinese intelligence in Hong Kong and did not bring them to
-Russia at all.
+whereabouts of the files, but he said that he is confident he did not expose
+them to Chinese intelligence in Hong Kong. And he said he did not bring them to
+Russia.
 
 "There's nothing on it," he said, turning his laptop screen toward his visitor.
 "My hard drive is completely blank."
 
 The other big question is how many documents Snowden took. The NSA's incoming
-deputy director, Rick Ledgett, said on CBS's 60 Minutes recently that the
+deputy director, Rick Ledgett, said on CBS's "60 Minutes" recently that the
 number may approach 1.7 million, a huge and unexplained spike over previous
-estimates. Ledgett said he would favour trying to negotiate an amnesty with
+estimates. Ledgett said he would favor trying to negotiate an amnesty with
 Snowden in exchange for "assurances that the remainder of the data could be
 secured."
 
-Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, later dismissed the
+Obama's national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, later dismissed the
 possibility.
 
 "The government knows where to find us if they want to have a productive
 conversation about resolutions that don't involve Edward Snowden behind bars,"
-said Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union, the central figure on
+said the American Civil Liberties Union's Ben Wizner, the central figure on
 Snowden's legal team.
 
-Some news accounts have quoted US government officials as saying Snowden has
+Some news accounts have quoted U.S. government officials as saying Snowden has
 arranged for the automated release of sensitive documents if he is arrested or
 harmed. There are strong reasons to doubt that, beginning with Snowden's
 insistence, to this reporter and others, that he does not want the documents
 published in bulk.
 
-If Snowden were fool enough to rig a "dead man's switch", confidants said, he
+If Snowden were fool enough to rig a "dead man's switch," confidants said, he
 would be inviting anyone who wants the documents to kill him.
 
 Asked about such a mechanism in the Moscow interview, Snowden made a face and
 declined to reply. Later, he sent an encrypted message. "That sounds more like
 a suicide switch," he wrote. "It wouldn't make sense."
 
-Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden predicted that Snowden will waste
+'It's not about me'
+
+By temperament and circumstance, Snowden is a reticent man, reluctant to
+discuss details about his personal life.
+
+Over two days his guard never dropped, but he allowed a few fragments to
+emerge. He is an "ascetic," he said. He lives off ramen noodles and chips. He
+has visitors, and many of them bring books. The books pile up, unread. The
+Internet is an endless library and a window on the progress of his cause.
+
+"It has always been really difficult to get me to leave the house," he said. "I
+just don't have a lot of needs. . . . Occasionally there's things to go do,
+things to go see, people to meet, tasks to accomplish. But it's really got to
+be goal-oriented, you know. Otherwise, as long as I can sit down and think and
+write and talk to somebody, that's more meaningful to me than going out and
+looking at landmarks."
+
+In hope of keeping focus on the NSA, Snowden has ignored attacks on himself.
+
+"Let them say what they want," he said. "It's not about me."
+
+Former NSA and CIA director Michael V. Hayden predicted that Snowden will waste
 away in Moscow as an alcoholic, like other "defectors." To this, Snowden
 shrugged. He does not drink at all. Never has.
 
 But Snowden knows his presence here is easy ammunition for critics. He did not
-choose refuge in Moscow as a final destination. He said that once the US
+choose refuge in Moscow as a final destination. He said that once the U.S.
 government voided his passport as he tried to change planes en route to Latin
 America, he had no other choice.
 
 It would be odd if Russian authorities did not keep an eye on him, but no
 retinue accompanied Snowden and his visitor saw no one else nearby.
-
-Snowden neither tried to communicate furtively nor asked that a visitor do
-so. He has had continuous internet access and talked to his lawyers and
+Snowden neither tried to communicate furtively nor asked that his visitor do
+so. He has had continuous Internet access and has talked to his attorneys and to
 journalists daily, from his first day in the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo
 airport.