For the past 16 months, the Edward Snowden story has been all over the media. Greenwald has occasionally shared some details about how he met the NSA employee, but it seems his associate Laura Poitras has gone one step further. Last Friday, a documentary was released. It contains excerpts from several hours of private videos of Snowden and Greenwald.
The film is called CitizenFour, and on Friday it had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival. It begins with Poitras's narration describing one of Snowden's first messages: “At this stage I cannot offer anything more than my words,” she says. “I am a senior government employee in the intel community.” She signs with the pseudonym, CitizenFour.
What follows is a close look at how the leaks started, at the first meeting of Snowden and Greenwald. The film does not deal with the news that was being published, but it provides a new picture of Snowden's situation during the leaks and his decision to leave the NSA in such a way.
The most exciting material comes from the eight days that the trio spent in a Hong Kong hotel, and they were processing the material for the first stories that Snowden revealed to the world. While working with Greenwald, Snowden also struggles with personal problems caused by his decision to leave the US so abruptly. He had kept it secret from everyone in his life, his friend says, and he said it was “for a work trip.”
The rules of operational security are constantly in play. They had started talking about leaks when Snowden realized that the VOIP phone in his hotel room had been connected since they began. “They can watch us” he says to Greenwald nervously. They disconnected the phone, and when they heard the sound of an unrelated fire alarm in the hallway a few minutes later, paranoia began. A few days later, Snowden's face was revealed in the first famous video, and we see real fear on his face as he prepares to leave his hotel room.
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