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The Crime Scene Investigation | 141 had to consider the possibility that his whistle-blowing was, partly if not wholly, a cover for another enterprise. Snowden told journalists he had access to “millions of records that [he] could walk out the door with at any time with no account- ability, no oversight, no auditing, the government didn’t even know they were gone.” However, he was not among the limited number of individuals at the center who had access to these documents. Both the NSA’s and Booz Allen’s employment records showed that Snowden had not yet completed his requisite on-the-job training when he carried out the theft. Consequently, he had not yet been provided with the passwords he needed to get the documents. Even if he had remained at the NSA long enough to finish his training, he would only have been provided with the password to the particu- lar compartment relevant to his work, not to all compartments. The tight control over these passwords was, according to a former top NSA official, a critical part of the NSA‘s security framework. He told me that Snowden, at least during the period of the thefts in April and May 2013, had no more legitimate access to the compartments ) than the cleaning personnel. Somehow, though, Snowden converted © his proximity to access. Ifa hundred top-quality diamonds were stolen from locked vaults at Tiffany by a recently hired trainee who, it turned out, did not have the combination to open these vaults, the police would be expected to consider that the trainee might have had help from a current or for- mer insider at the company who knew the combinations. Snowden, who had accomplished a similarly inexplicable feat, said in his video confession that he was solely responsible. However, it is perfectly logical to assume, given the circumstances, that he might have had help, unwitting or witting. The FBI could assume either that the NSA’s security regime was so badly flawed that Snowden could trick his fellow workers into providing him with access or that there was another individual at the center who might have assisted or directed Snowden. When the investigation came to this fork in the road in the summer of 2013, according to a source on the House Intelligence Comittee, it chose the former route. Finally, there was the question of whether Snowden had gone to | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 141 ® 9/30/16 11:09 AM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019629