Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the NSA's Secrets | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Excellent and in-depth article about Snowden and Greenwald from Rolling Stone. Very thorough portrait of Snowden's background, his journey from hacker to NSA contractor to whistleblower and vilified spy. Very good investigative journalism and writing.

Like Bradley Manning, whose case he would later study, Snowden had an idealized view of the United States and its role in the world. He also had a gamer's sense of his own ability to beat the odds – he'd later tell Greenwald that his moral outlook had been shaped by the video games he played as a kid, in which an everyman-type battles tremendous and seemingly invulnerable forces of injustice, and prevails. Following that ethos, and deeply affected by 9/11, Snowden enlisted in the Army in 2004, hoping to join the Special Forces and fight in Iraq. "I believed in the goodness of what we were doing," he said. "I believed in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people overseas." But he was quickly disabused of this idea – "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said – and months into his Special Forces training course at Fort Benning, Snowden later said, he broke both his legs and was discharged.