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Raider of the Inner Sanctum | 77 word access, at least during the two-month-long training period, to the computers that he had not been specifically “read into,” which did not include those computers that stored the Level 3 lists. Access to these tightly controlled compartments was limited to only a hand- ful of analysts at the center who had a need to know. Because the new job entailed handling higher-level secret docu- ments, Booz Allen had stricter requirements for applicants than Dell. To slip by them, Snowden had 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 did not verify this and had agreed to hire him as a trainee-analyst. 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 Threat Operations Center at ) the Kunia base, the same location where he had worked for Dell. © 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 eleven-story building, with a sheer wall of black glass, on the NSA’s 350-acre campus at Fort Meade. He arrived there from Hawaii on April 1, 2013. Like every other Booz Allen contractor who worked at the NSA’s center, Snowden was required to sign the “Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure 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 fed- eral criminal law. He was also told, as were all new contract employ- ees at Booz Allen, that its disclosure could damage the interests of the United States and benefit its enemies. In signing the document, he swore an oath not to divulge any of this information without first receiving written approval from U.S. authorities. So less than two months before he downloaded sensitive compartmented infor- | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 77 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019565