HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019528.jpg

40 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS cine,” he said. “When you have too much it can be fatal.” Like Paul, Snowden ardently opposed any form of gun control, as did Lindsay Mills in her online postings. Like other Libertarians, Snowden, a contractor for the government, saw the government as an adversary. “The [American] government,” he later said, “assumed upon itself, in secret, new executive powers without any public awareness or any public consent and used them against the citizenry of its own country to increase its own power, to increase its own awareness.” Most relevant to his future activities at the NSA, Snowden wholeheartedly agreed with Paul’s position on the dangers inherent in government surveillance of U.S. citizens. Paul described the CIA, the organization that had forced Snowden out, as nothing short of a “secret government” and said that “in a true Republic, there is no place for an organization like the CIA.” He also railed against NSA surveillance. As is clear from Snowden’s Internet postings, he, like Ron Paul, had doubts about the competence of the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government. Snowden’s own disillusionment about the govern- ) ment might have begun with his rejection and perceived mistreat- © ment by the Special Forces of the U.S. Army. It was almost certainly reinforced by his ouster from the CIA. He later told The Guardian that he was disillusioned as early as 2007 when he learned about the CIA’s methods in compromising Swiss citizens. His critical view of the U.S. government only hardened during the years he worked at the NSA. He described his NSA superiors as “grossly incompetent,” as he later explained to a journalist from Wired magazine in Mos- cow. At the NSA, he said employees were kept in line by “fear and a false image of patriotism.” He said that he saw his fellow workers cowed into “obedience to authority” and his superiors induced to break the law. He became particularly concerned with what he called the “secret powers” of the NSA. He saw them as “tremendously dangerous.” By this time, Snowden was fully aware that the NSA conducted domestic surveillance because he had used his privileges as a system administrator in 2012 to read the NSA inspector gen- eral’s report on a 2009 surveillance program. Nevertheless, Snowden continued to work at the NSA, where he was, as he put it, “making a ton of money.” Mills joined him in his | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 40 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019528