Code name Verax,he used encrypted chat,secret meet to plan US surveillance leak

The source had instructed his media contacts to come to Hong Kong,visit a particular out-of-the-way corner of a certain hotel,and ask loudly for directions to another part of the hotel. If all seemed well,the source would walk past holding a Rubiks Cube.

The source had instructed his media contacts to come to Hong Kong,visit a particular out-of-the-way corner of a certain hotel,and ask loudly for directions to another part of the hotel. If all seemed well,the source would walk past holding a Rubiks Cube.

So three people Glenn Greenwald,Laura Poitras,a documentary filmmaker specialising in surveillance; and Ewen MacAskill,a Guardian reporter flew to Hong Kong about 12 days ago. They followed the directions and a man appeared.

It was Snowden,who looked even younger than his 29 years an appearance,Greenwald recalled Monday,that shocked him as he had been expecting,given the classified programmes the man had access to,someone far more senior. Snowden has now turned over archives of thousandsof documents,Greenwald said.

He has no regret of any kind, Greenwald said of Snowden. He is so convinced he did the right thing.

It is still not clear how he extracted the documents.

Snowden bounced between jobs inside the government and as a contractor for CIA in Switzerland and NSA in Japan,Maryland and Hawaii. Working for about 200,000 a year in classified facilities as a computer administrator,he had access to enormous information.

Snowden,Greenwald said,had first reached out to Poitras in January. He is said to have told Poitras that he had a major story about the NSA that required both technical and legal expertise,proposing that they work together with Greenwald.

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Poitras,who did not respond to an interview request,told Salon Monday she had contacted Barton Gellman,a former Washington Post reporter,for his opinion of whether the purported source seemed legitimate.

In early March,Greenwald said Poitras called and said she needed to meet. She said Snowden had come to see the surveillance state as out of control and an abuse,and he felt ready to risk his own life and liberty to expose it. At that point,neither knew his name yet.

In late April-early May,Snowden sent Greenwald a sample of about 20 documents,including slides for a presentation about Prism,under which the NSA was collecting information about foreigners overseas from Internet companies like Google. Then,about two weeks ago, Snowden indicated he was ready to meet.

Separately,in mid-May,Snowden reached out to Gellman. In an account of his involvement,Gellman said Snowden had called himself Verax truth teller in Latin a pseudonym used by both a 17th- and a 19th-century British writer,one of whom died in the Tower of London,and the other much honoured.

CHARLIE SAVAGE amp; MARK MAZZETTI