The NYT Now Admits the Biden Laptop -- Falsely Called "Russian Disinformation" -- is Authentic

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

The NYT Now Admits the Biden Laptop -- Falsely Called "Russian Disinformation" -- is Authentic

The media outlets which spread this lie from ex-CIA officials never retracted their pre-election falsehoods, ones used by Big Tech to censor reporting on the front-runner.

Glenn Greenwald

One of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern American electoral history occurred in the weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election. On October 14, 2020 — less than three weeks before Americans were set to vote — the nation's oldest newspaper, The New York Post, began publishing a series of reports about the business dealings of the Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in countries in which Biden, as Vice President, wielded considerable influence (including Ukraine and China) and would again if elected president. The backlash against this reporting was immediate and intense, leading to suppression of the story by U.S. corporate media outlets and censorship of the story by leading Silicon Valley monopolies. The disinformation campaign against this reporting was led by the CIA's all-but-official spokesperson Natasha Bertrand (then of Politico, now with CNN), whose article on October 19 appeared under this headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” These "former intel officials" did not actually say that the “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo." Indeed, they stressed in their letter the opposite: namely, that they had no evidence to suggest the emails were falsified or that Russia had anything to do them, but, instead, they had merely intuited this "suspicion" based on their experience: We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case. But a media that was overwhelmingly desperate to ensure Trump's defeat had no time for facts or annoying details such as what these former officials actually said or whether it was in fact true. They had an election to manipulate. As a result, that these emails were "Russian disinformation” — meaning that they were fake and that Russia manufactured them — became an article of faith among the U.S.'s justifiably despised class of media employees. Very few even included the crucial caveat that the intelligence officials themselves stressed: namely, that they had no evidence at all to corroborate this claim. Instead, as I noted last September, “virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.” The Huffington Post even published a must-be-seen-to-be-believed campaign ad for Joe Biden, masquerading as “reporting,” that spread this lie that the emails were "Russian disinformation.”   This disinformation campaign about the Biden emails was then used by Big Tech to justify brute censorship of any reporting on or discussion of this story: easily the most severe case of pre-election censorship in modern American political history. Twitter locked The New York Post's Twitter account for close to two weeks due to its refusal to obey Twitter's orders to delete any reference to its reporting. The social media site also blocked any and all references to the reporting by all users; Twitter users were barred even from linking to the story in private chats with one another. Facebook, through its spokesman, the life-long DNC operative Andy Stone, announced that they would algorithmically suppress discussion of the reporting to ensure it did not spread, pending a “fact check[] by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners” which, needless to say, never came — precisely because the archive was indisputably authentic. The archive's authenticity, as I documented in a video report from September, was clear from the start. Indeed, as I described in that report, I staked my career on its authenticity when I demanded that The Intercept publish my analysis of these revelations, and then resigned when its vehemently anti-Trump editors censored any discussion of those emails precisely because it was indisputable that the archive was authentic (The Intercept's former New York Times reporter James Risen was given the green light by these same editors to spread and endorse the CIA's lie, as he insisted that laptop should be ignored because “a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.") I knew the archive was real because all the relevant journalistic metrics that one evaluates to verify large archives of this type — including the Snowden archive and the Brazil archive which I used to report a series of investigative exposés — left no doubt that it was genuine (that includes documented verification from third parties who were included in the email chains and who showed that the emails they had in their possession matched the ones in the archive word-for-word). Any residual doubts that the Biden archive was genuine — and there should have been none — were shattered when a reporter from Politico, Ben Schreckinger, published a book last September, entitled "The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power," in which his new reporting proved that the key emails on which The New York Post relied were entirely authentic. Among other things, Schreckinger interviewed several people included in the email chains who provided confirmation that the emails in their possession matched the ones in the Post's archive word for word. He also obtained documents from the Swedish government that were identical to key documents in the archive. His own outlet, Politico, was one of the few to even acknowledge his book. While ignoring the fact that they were the first to spread the lie that the emails were "Russian disinformation,” Politico editors — under the headline “Double Trouble for Biden”— admitted that the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.” The vital revelations in Schreckinger's book were almost completely ignored by the very same corporate media outlets that published the CIA's now-debunked lies. They just pretended it never happened. Grappling with it would have forced them to acknowledge a fact quite devastating to whatever remaining credibility they have: namely, that they all ratified and spread a coordinated disinformation campaign in order to elect Joe Biden and defeat Donald Trump. With strength in numbers, and knowing that they speak only to and for liberals who are happy if they lie to help Democrats, they all joined hands in an implicit vow of silence and simply ignored the new proof in Schreckinger's book that, in the days leading up to the 2020 election, they all endorsed a disinformation campaign. It will now be much harder to avoid confronting the reality of what they did, though it is highly likely that they will continue to do so. This morning, The New York Times published an article about the broad, ongoing FBI criminal investigation into Hunter Biden's international business and tax activities. Prior to the election, the Times, to their credit, was one of the few to apply skepticism to the CIA's pre-election lie, noting on October 22 that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation.” Because the activities of Hunter Biden now under FBI investigation directly pertain to the emails first revealed by The Post, the reporters needed to rely upon the laptop's archive to amplify and inform their reporting. That, in turn, required The New York Times to verify the authenticity of this laptop and its origins — exactly what, according to their reporters, they successfully did: People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation. That this cache of emails was authentic was clear from the start. Any doubts were obliterated by publication of Schreckinger's book six months ago. Now the Paper of Record itself explicitly states not only that the emails “were authenticated” but also that the original story from The Post about how they obtained these materials — they “come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop” — “appears” to be true. What this means is that, in the crucial days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, most of the corporate media spread an absolute lie about The New York Post's reporting in order to mislead and manipulate the American electorate. It means that Big Tech monopolies, along with Twitter, censored this story based on a lie from “the intelligence community.” It means that Facebook's promise from its DNC operative that it would suppress discussion of the reporting in order to conduct a "fact-check” of these documents was a fraud because if an honest one had been conducted, it would have proven that Facebook’s censorship decree was based on a lie. It means that millions of Americans were denied the ability to hear about reporting on the candidate leading all polls to become the next president, and instead were subjected to a barrage of lies about the provenance (Russia did it) and authenticity (disinformation!) of these documents. The objections to noting all of this today are drearily predictable. Reporting on Hunter Biden is irrelevant since he was not himself a candidate (what made the reporting relevant was what it revealed about the involvement of Joe Biden in these deals). Given the war in Ukraine, now is not the time to discuss all of this (despite the fact that they are usually ignored, there are always horrific wars being waged even if the victims are not as sympathetic as European Ukrainians and the perpetrators are the film's Good Guys and not the Bad Guys). The real reason most liberals and their media allies do not want to hear about any of this is because they believe that the means they used (deliberately lying to the public with CIA disinformation) are justified by their noble ends (defeating Trump). Whatever else is true, both the CIA/media disinformation campaign in the weeks before the 2020 election and the resulting regime of brute censorship imposed by Big Tech are of historic significance. Democrats and their new allies in the establishment wing of the Republican Party may be more excited by war in Ukraine than the subversion of their own election by the unholy trinity of the intelligence community, the corporate press, and Big Tech. But today's admission by The New York Times that this archive and the emails in it were real all along proves that a gigantic fraud was perpetrated by the country's most powerful institutions. What matters far more than the interest level of various partisan factions is the core truths about U.S. democracy revealed by this tawdry spectacle.   https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-biden-laptop?s=w

[DKW 86 7,175]

Here, let me do the honors.

Greenwald-Highly Awarded Journalist with great credentials said something that embarrassed a Democrat = Dismissal

RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS!!!! 

Party narrative!!!!

Treason, Sedition, Collusion!!! 

DDDEEEMMMOOOCCCRRRAAACCCYYY!!!

[icanthearyou 4,409]

8 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Here, let me do the honors.

Greenwald-Highly Awarded Journalist with great credentials said something that embarrassed a Democrat = Dismissal

RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS!!!! 

Party narrative!!!!

Treason, Sedition, Collusion!!! 

DDDEEEMMMOOOCCCRRRAAACCCYYY!!!

Just for fun, why not post something informative.  The emotional stuff is great but, it is simply emotional.  Please, put that big brain to work and stop being lazy.

[DKW 86 7,175]

4 minutes ago, icanthearyou said:

Just for fun, why not post something informative.  The emotional stuff is great but, it is simply emotional.  Please, put that big brain to work and stop being lazy.

It aint funny if it aint true...

[TexasTiger 11,651]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Here, let me do the honors.

Greenwald-Highly Awarded Journalist with great credentials said something that embarrassed a Democrat = Dismissal

RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS, RUSSIANS!!!! 

Party narrative!!!!

Treason, Sedition, Collusion!!! 

DDDEEEMMMOOOCCCRRRAAACCCYYY!!!

Greenwald’s a Putin hack. Thus your admiration, I suppose.

[icanthearyou 4,409]

54 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Greenwald’s a Putin hack. Thus your admiration, I suppose.

That's a bit of a stretch.  He does love the rhetoric.  Doesn't mean he loves Putin.  Come on.

[TexasTiger 11,651]

59 minutes ago, icanthearyou said:

That's a bit of a stretch.  He does love the rhetoric.  Doesn't mean he loves Putin.  Come on.

Not what I said.

[CoffeeTiger 4,702]

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-glenn-greenwald-the-new-master-of-right-wing-media

 

[I_M4_AU 7,063]

16 hours ago, icanthearyou said:

Just for fun, why not post something informative.  The emotional stuff is great but, it is simply emotional.  Please, put that big brain to work and stop being lazy.

How about this; right before the 2020 election, NY Post comes out with a story about Hunter’s laptop, but it was dismissed as *Russian disinformation*.  There was an interview on CNN where James Clapper said the leaked laptop story was classic *Russian Disinformation*.

 

The emotions were running high as Democrats believed the only reason Trump won in 2016 was *Russian Disinformation*.   The Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself, took on a campaign of disinformation for themselves to squash this story before it even began.  The NY Post was censored from social media and a person could not retweet or post anything about it without being banned.  This was believed by a majority of Americans and the propaganda worked.  The election could have hinged on this one issue that was not allowed to be viewed by the general public.

This I call *Democrat Disinformation* similar to what we saw with anything that involved disagreeing with Fauci, the man who would be king.

[jj3jordan 1,906]

16 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

Greenwald’s a Putin hack. Thus your admiration, I suppose.

Why you talking about Putin?  This is about Hunters laptop. Wait does Hunter have naked pictures of Putin on this laptop?

[TexasTiger 11,651]

19 minutes ago, jj3jordan said:

Why you talking about Putin?  This is about Hunters laptop. Wait does Hunter have naked pictures of Putin on this laptop?

Getting excited?

[jj3jordan 1,906]

56 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Getting excited?

You brought up Putin. Just checking if you had an answer. No as usual.

Edited March 18, 2022 by jj3jordan

[TexasTiger 11,651]

44 minutes ago, jj3jordan said:

You grouchy up Putin. Just checking if you had an answer. No as usual.

I was responding to a post praising Greenwald. Context eludes you as always.

[jj3jordan 1,906]

So just an attack on Greenwald but not relevant to the topic. What would your assessment of Greenwald’s relationship to Putin have to do with the topic or the article? Does it change anything?

Edited March 18, 2022 by jj3jordan

[TexasTiger 11,651]

20 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Greenwald-Highly Awarded Journalist with great credentials said something that embarrassed a Democrat = Dismissal

 

36 minutes ago, jj3jordan said:

So just an attack on Greenwald but not relevant to the topic. What would your assessment of Greenwald’s relationship to Putin have to do with the topic or the article? Does it change anything?

Context, as I said. David elevated Greenwald to unquestionably lofty heights. I took issue with his characterization of him as a journalist.

The story? I largely agree with this assessment:

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/03/18/the-laptop-is-the-functional-equivalent-of-the-steele-dossier-1-rudy-is-the-real-scandal/
 

Funny how the folks so bent out of shape on the Steele dossier obsess over this laptop. If there’s evidence of crimes there, I’m sure the prosecutor the previous administration assigned to turning over every rock on Hunter Biden will deal with it. If Hunter’s guilty of something, I hope he gets what similarly situated folks get. To my knowledge, the current administration has not done anything to interfere with the investigation, despite that being recent tradition with your blessing.

 

[DKW 86 7,175]

On 3/17/2022 at 8:23 PM, TexasTiger said:

Greenwald’s a Putin hack. Thus your admiration, I suppose.

Damn, I actually got it right on the first call...lmao!

Edited March 20, 2022 by DKW 86

[jj3jordan 1,906]

2 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

 

Context, as I said. David elevated Greenwald to unquestionably lofty heights. I took issue with his characterization of him as a journalist.

The story? I largely agree with this assessment:

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/03/18/the-laptop-is-the-functional-equivalent-of-the-steele-dossier-1-rudy-is-the-real-scandal/
 

Funny how the folks so bent out of shape on the Steele dossier obsess over this laptop. If there’s evidence of crimes there, I’m sure the prosecutor the previous administration assigned to turning over every rock on Hunter Biden will deal with it. If Hunter’s guilty of something, I hope he gets what similarly situated folks get. To my knowledge, the current administration has not done anything to interfere with the investigation, despite that being recent tradition with your blessing.

 

Can we at least defraud a fisa court and get a special prosecutor? It’s only fair if this is the equivalent of the steel dossier.

[DKW 86 7,175]

7 hours ago, CoffeeTiger said:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-glenn-greenwald-the-new-master-of-right-wing-media

You just lost 50 IQ points..

Unclaimed Territory and Salon

In October 2005, he began his blog Unclaimed Territory focusing on the investigation pertaining to the Plame affair, the CIA leak grand jury investigation, the federal indictment of Scooter Libby and the NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07) controversy. In April 2006, the blog received the 2005 Koufax Award for "Best New Blog".^[6] According to Sean Wilentz in the New Statesman, Greenwald "seemed to take pride in attacking Republicans and Democrats alike".^[15]

In February 2007, Greenwald became a contributing writer for the Salon website, and the new column and blog superseded Unclaimed Territory, although Salon featured hyperlinks to it in Greenwald's dedicated biographical section.^[17][18]

 

Greenwald, Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman in April 2011

Among the frequent topics of his Salon articles were the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks and the candidacy of former CIA official John O. Brennan for the jobs of either Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) or the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) after the election of Barack Obama. Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for the post after opposition centered in liberal blogs and led by Greenwald.^{[19][20][21][22][23][24]}

In a 2010 article for Salon, Greenwald described U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning as "a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives" and "a national hero similar to Daniel Ellsberg".^[25] In an article for The Raw Story published in 2011, Greenwald criticized the prison conditions in which Manning was held after her arrest by military authorities.^[26]

Greenwald was described by Rachel Maddow during his period writing for Salon as "the American left’s most fearless political commentator."^[15]

The Guardian

It was announced in July 2012 that Greenwald was joining the American wing of Britain's Guardian newspaper, to contribute a weekly column and a daily blog.^[27][28] Greenwald wrote on Salon that the move offered him "the opportunity to reach a new audience, to further internationalize my readership, and to be re-invigorated by a different environment" as reasons for the move.^[27][29]

On June 5, 2013, Greenwald reported on the top-secret United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order requiring Verizon to provide the National Security Agency with telephone metadata for all calls between the U.S. and abroad, as well as all domestic calls.^[30][31][32]

On October 15, 2013, Greenwald announced, and The Guardian confirmed, that he was leaving the newspaper to pursue a "once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline".^[33][34]

First Look Media and The Intercept

Financial backing for The Intercept was provided by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.^[35][36] Omidyar told media critic Jay Rosen that the decision was fueled by his "rising concern about press freedoms in the United States and around the world". Greenwald, along with his colleagues Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, initially were working on creating a platform online to support independent journalism, when they were approached by Omidyar who was hoping to establish his own media organization. That news organization, First Look Media, launched its first online publication, The Intercept, on February 10, 2014.^[37] Greenwald initially served as editor, alongside Poitras and Scahill. The organization is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable entity.^[38][39]

The Intercept was in contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with Guccifer 2.0, who relayed some of the material about Hillary Clinton, gathered via a data breach, to Greenwald. The Grugq, a counterintelligence specialist, reported in October 2016: "The Intercept was both aware that the e-mails were from Guccifer 2.0, that Guccifer 2.0 has been attributed to Russian intelligence services, and that there is significant public evidence supporting this attribution."^[40]

By 2019, he was serving as an Intercept columnist without any control over the site's news reporting.^[41] On October 29, 2020, Greenwald resigned from The Intercept, giving his reasons as political censorship and contractual breaches by the editors, who he said had prevented him from reporting on allegations concerning Joe Biden's conduct with regard to China and Ukraine and had demanded that he not publish the article in any other publication.^[42] Betsy Reed, the editor-in-chief, disputed Greenwald's accusations and claims of censorship, and accused him of presenting dubious claims by the Trump campaign as journalism.^[42][43][44] Greenwald said he would begin publishing his work on Substack, and had begun "exploring the possibility of creating a new media outlet."^[45][46] After resigning from The Intercept, Greenwald published his article about Biden and his correspondence with the editors of The Intercept on his Substack page.^[42]

As of mid-2021, according to The Daily Beast and The Washington Post, Greenwald's feud with former colleagues was continuing.^[47][48]

Appearances on conservative media

According to Simon van Zuylen-Wood writing for New York magazine in early 2018, Greenwald has "repositioned himself as a bomb-throwing media critic" since the Snowden revelations.^[49] Greenwald has become a frequent guest on Fox News,^[50] particularly on Tucker Carlson Tonight.^[51] Greenwald, in conversation with Glenn Beck, acknowledged the frequency of his appearances on Carlson's show.^[52]

The Daily Beast's analysis of transcripts in June 2021 established Greenwald had appeared on Fox News 72 times since December 2017, including 40 times on Carlson's program and 14 appearances with host Laura Ingraham.^[47]

Books

Greenwald's first book, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok was published by Working Assets in 2006. It was a New York Times bestseller,^[53] and ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com, both before its publication (due to orders based on attention from 'UT' readers and other bloggers) and for several days after its release, ending its first week at #293.^[54]

A Tragic Legacy, his next book, examined the presidency of George W. Bush. Published in hardback by Crown (a division of Random House) on June 26, 2007, and reprinted in a paperback edition by Three Rivers Press on April 8, 2008, it was a New York Times Best Seller. Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, was also first published by Random House in April 2008.^[55][56] With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, was released by Metropolitan Books in October 2011 and No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, was released in May 2014.^[57] The latter work spent six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list,^[58] and was named one of the ten Best Non-Fiction Books of 2014 by The Christian Science Monitor.^[59]

Greenwald wrote the book Securing Democracy: My Fight for Press Freedom and Justice in Brazil as a follow up to No Place to Hide. It was published by Haymarket Books in April 2021. It describes his publication in 2019 of leaked telephone calls, audio and text messages related to Operation Car Wash and the retaliation he received from the Bolsonaro government.^[60][61]

Global surveillance disclosure

Main article: 2013 Global surveillance disclosure

Contact with Edward Snowden

 

Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald were the recipients of the 2014 Carl von Ossietzky medal.

Greenwald was initially contacted anonymously in late 2012 by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency,^[62] who said he held "sensitive documents" that he wished to share.^[63] Greenwald found the measures that Snowden asked him to take to secure their communications too annoying to employ.^[62] Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras about a month later in January 2013.^[64]

According to The Guardian, Snowden was attracted to Greenwald and Poitras by a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras' films had made her a "target of the government".^[63][65] Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February^[66] or in April, after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City, at which point Snowden began providing documents to them both.^[62]

As part of the global surveillance disclosure, the first of Snowden's documents were published on June 5, 2013, in The Guardian in an article by Greenwald. Greenwald said that Snowden's documents exposed the "scale of domestic surveillance under Obama".^[67] In September 2021, Yahoo! News reported that in 2017, after the publication of the Vault 7 files by WikiLeaks, "top intelligence officials lobbied the White House" to designate Glenn Greenwald as an "information broker" to allow for more investigative tools against him, "potentially paving the way" for his prosecution. However, the White House rejected this idea. "I am not the least bit surprised," Greenwald told Yahoo! News, "that the CIA, a longtime authoritarian and antidemocratic institution, plotted to find a way to criminalize journalism and spy on and commit other acts of aggression against journalists."^[68]

The series on which Greenwald worked contributed to The Guardian (alongside The Washington Post) winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2014.^[69][70]

Greenwald's work on the Snowden story was featured in the documentary Citizenfour, which won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Greenwald appeared on-stage with director Laura Poitras and Snowden's girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, when the Oscar was given.^[71] In the 2016 Oliver Stone feature film Snowden, Greenwald was played by actor Zachary Quinto.^[72]

Testimony

In a statement delivered before the National Congress of Brazil in early August 2013, Greenwald testified that the U.S. government had used counter-terrorism as a pretext for clandestine surveillance in order to compete with other countries in the "business, industrial and economic fields".^[73][74][75]

On December 18, 2013, Greenwald told the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament that "most governments around the world are not only turning their backs on Edward Snowden but also on their ethical responsibilities".^[76] Speaking via a video link, Greenwald said that, "It is the UK through their interception of underwater fibre optic cables, that is a primary threat to the privacy of European citizens when it comes to their telephone and emails". In a statement given to the European Parliament, Greenwald said:

The ultimate goal of the NSA, along with its most loyal, one might say subservient junior partner the British agency GCHQ – when it comes to the reason why the system of suspicion of surveillance is being built and the objective of this system – is nothing less than the elimination of individual privacy worldwide

— Glenn Greenwald^[77]

2019 Operation Car Wash Telegram chat leaks in Brazil

Main article: Vaza Jato

Vaza Jato
Scandal
hide Vaza Jato Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Sérgio Moro Deltan Dallagnol Glenn Greenwald Rodrigo Janot Alberto Youssef Eike Batista Marcelo Odebrecht
hide Companies Petrobras Odebrecht
hide News media The Intercept Veja Folha de S.Paulo Le Figaro El País The Washington Post
hide Judges Gilmar Ferreira Mendes Enrique Ricardo Lewandowski Kássio Nunes Marques José Antonio Dias Toffoli Luiz Fux Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha Luiz Edson Fachin
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On June 9, 2019, Greenwald and journalists from investigative journalism magazine The Intercept Brasil where he was an editor, released several messages exchanged via Telegram between members of the investigation team of Operation Car Wash. The messages implicated members of Brazil's judiciary system and of the Operação Lava-Jato taskforce, including former judge and Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro, and lead prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, in the violation of legal and ethical procedures during the investigation, trial and arrest of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the alleged objective of preventing him from running for a third term in the 2018 Brazilian general election, among other crimes. Following the leak, Folha de São Paulo and Veja confirmed the authenticity of the messages and worked in partnership with The Intercept Brasil to sort the remaining material in their possession before releasing it.^[78]

On July 23, Brazilian Federal Police announced that they had arrested and were investigating Araraquara hacker Walter Delgatti Neto for breaking into the authorities' Telegram accounts. Neto confessed to the hack and to having given copies of the chat logs to Greenwald. Police said the attack had been accomplished by abusing Telegram's phone number verification and exploiting vulnerabilities in voicemail technology in use in Brazil by using a spoofed phone number. The Intercept neither confirmed nor denied Neto being their source, citing freedom of the press provisions of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.^[79]

Greenwald faced death threats and homophobic harassment from Bolsonaro supporters due to his reporting on the Telegram messages.^[80] A New York Times profile by Ernesto Londoño about Greenwald and his husband David Miranda, a left-wing congressman, described how the couple became targets of homophobia from Bolsonaro supporters as a result of the reporting.^[81][82] The Washington Post reported that Greenwald had been targeted with fiscal investigations by the Bolsonaro government, allegedly as retaliation for the reporting,^[83] and AP called Greenwald's reporting "the first test case for a free press" under Bolsonaro.^[84]

In reporting on retaliation against Greenwald from the Bolsonaro government and its supporters, The Guardian said the articles published by Greenwald and The Intercept "have had an explosive impact on Brazilian politics and dominated headlines for weeks", adding that the exposés "appeared to show prosecutors in the sweeping Operation Car Wash corruption inquiry colluding with Sérgio Moro, the judge who became a hero in Brazil for jailing powerful businessmen, middlemen and politicians."^[85]

On August 9, after President Bolsonaro threatened to imprison Greenwald for this reporting,^[86] Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes ruled that any investigation of Greenwald in connection with the reporting would be illegal under the Brazilian constitution, citing press freedom as a "pillar of democracy".^[87]

In November 2019, Brazilian columnist Augusto Nunes physically attacked Greenwald during a joint appearance on a Brazilian radio program. Immediately prior to the attack, Nunes had argued that a family judge ought to take away Greenwald's adopted children, prompting Greenwald to call him a "coward." Two of Jair Bolsonaro's sons praised Nunes' actions, while former presidential candidate Ciro Gomes defended Greenwald.^[88]

In January 2020, Greenwald was charged by Brazilian prosecutors with cybercrimes,^[89] in a move that Trevor Timm in The Guardian described as retaliation for his reporting.^[90] The Canary website described the charges as "ominously similar to the indictment of Julian Assange" and quoted Max Blumenthal and Jen Robinson as remarking on the similarity of the two sets of charges.^[91] Greenwald received support from The New York Times which published an editorial stating "Mr. Greenwald's articles did what a free press is supposed to do: They revealed a painful truth about those in power". The Freedom of the Press Foundation made a statement asking the Brazilian government to "halt its persecution of Greenwald".^[92] In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Greenwald, citing a ruling from Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes that shielded him.^[93]

Political views

United States

George W. Bush and Barack Obama eras

 

Miranda and Greenwald speak at the National Congress of Brazil in the wake of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures.

In his 2006 book How Would a Patriot Act?, Greenwald wrote that he was politically apathetic at the time of the Iraq War and accepted the Bush administration's judgement that "American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country". Greenwald is critical of actions jointly supported by Democrats and Republicans, writing in 2010: "The worst and most tyrannical government actions in Washington are equally supported on a fully bipartisan basis."^[94] In How Would a Patriot Act?, Greenwald described his 'pre-political' self as neither liberal nor conservative as a whole, voting neither for George W. Bush nor for any of his rivals (indeed, not voting at all).^[95]

He criticized the policies of the Bush administration and those who supported it, arguing that most of the American "Corporate News Media" excused Bush's policies and echoed the administration's positions rather than asking hard questions.^[96][97] Greenwald accused mainstream U.S. media of "spreading patriotic state propaganda".^[98]

Donald Trump and Russian election interference

Greenwald has criticized some of the policies of the Trump administration, saying, "I think the Trump White House lies more often. I think it lies more readily. I think it lies more blatantly."^[99]

During the Trump administration Greenwald was a critic of the Democratic Party, alleging a double standard in their foreign policy.: "Democrats didn't care when Obama hugged Saudi despots, and now they pretend to care when Trump embraces Saudi despots or Egyptian ones."^[99]

Greenwald expressed skepticism of the James Clapper-led US intelligence community's assessment that Russia's government interfered in the 2016 presidential election.^[49][99] Regardless of the accuracy of the assessment, he: doubted its significance,^[49] stating "This is stuff we do to them, and have done to them for decades, and still continue to do."^[99]

Susan Hennessey, an NSA lawyer at the time of Snowden's NSA revelations, told Marcy Wheeler writing for The New Republic in January 2018, that Greenwald was only relaying "surface commentary" rather than evidence for or against Russian interference in the 2016 election.^[100] Tamsin Shaw wrote in The New York Review of Books in September 2018: "Greenwald has repeatedly, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, decried as Russophobia the findings that Putin ordered interference in the 2016 US presidential election".^[101]

Greenwald remained doubtful of assertions that the Trump presidential campaign worked with the Russians after the release of the letter about the Mueller's findings from attorney general William Barr in late March 2019. He called the investigation "a scam and a fraud from the beginning" in an appearance on Democracy Now!.^[102] Greenwald told Tucker Carlson on Fox News: "Let me just say, [MSNBC] should have their top host on primetime go before the cameras and hang their head in shame and apologize for lying to people for three straight years, exploiting their fears to great profit".^[103] He said he is formally banned from appearing on MSNBC, citing confirmations from two unnamed producers for the network, for his criticisms of its coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. MSNBC stated it has not barred Greenwald from appearing on its programs.^[104]

After the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, on April 22 he wrote that the press continued to report that Trump's campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.^[105] In January 2020, Greenwald described the various assertions regarding Russian influence on American politics as "At the very best, ... wildly exaggerated hysteria and the kind of jingoistic fear-mongering that’s plagued U.S. Politics since the end of WWII".^[106]

Later comments

In conversation around 2021 with Glenn Beck, Greenwald said:

The Democratic Party is a party that I view as completely repressive and not just the Democratic Party but the liberal movement that supports it. By liberal, just to be clear, I don’t mean the far left, the kind of left-wing movement that supported Bernie Sanders—a lot of them hate Democrats at least as much as people on the right. I mean establishment liberals of the Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton strain.^[52]

On Twitter, he wrote in May 2021:

The cultural left (meaning the part of the left focused on cultural issues rather than imperialism or corporatism) [...] has become increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating".^[107]

In an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight in summer 2021, he said:

We know that the Democratic party and journalism in general has aligned with the CIA, NSA, and the FBI, and has aligned and merged with the security state.^[51]

In a conversation with Laura Ingraham on Fox News in November 2021, he said of the 2021 United States Capitol attack:

What happened here, Laura, is that [congressional investigators] know the Justice Department is not going to deliver on this narrative that they peddled for eight months, which was that this was an insurrection, these people are traitors, that they engaged in sedition.^[108]

Israel and accusations of antisemitism

 

Greenwald is a strong critic of both Benjamin Netanyahu and Jair Bolsonaro

Greenwald has criticized the Israeli government, including its foreign policy, influence on U.S. politics and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.^[109][110] In May 2016, Greenwald accused The New York Times of "abject cowardice" in its use of scare quotes for the occupation of Gaza (which were removed) and alleged "journalistic malfeasance" in the incident "out of fear of the negative reaction by influential factions".^[111][112]

In an exchange with Greenwald in February 2019, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., tweeted, "It's all about the Benjamins baby", suggesting that money rather than principle motivated US politicians' support for Israel, including payments from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to US politicians. Many Democrats and Republicans, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, condemned the tweet arguing it perpetuated an antisemitic stereotype of Jewish money and influence fueling American politicians' support of Israel.^[113] Greenwald defended Omar: "we’re not allowed to talk about an equally potent well-organized and well-financed lobby that ensures a bipartisan consensus in support of U.S. defense of Israel, that the minute that you mention that lobby, you get attacked as being anti-Semitic."^[114]

Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic in January 2012 said Greenwald "evinces toward Israel a disdain that is quite breathtaking. He holds Israel to a standard he doesn't hold any other country, except the U.S."^[115] Greenwald was accused of antisemitism by The Algemeiner in July 2013.^[116] Liel Leibovitz in Tablet magazine in 2013 considered it "largely inaccurate" to match Greenwald's "obsessive focus on Israel’s supposed role in evil global conspiracies to simple anti-Semitism. Instead, the ideology that drives [his] tendency to see the NSA and Israel as two heads of the same Satanic beast is more complex and ideologically-driven—an attack on the doctrines of exceptionalism that fueled the rise of both America and Israel."^[117]

Following the Charlie Hebdo murders in January 2015, David Bernstein in The Washington Post wrote Greenwald (in an Intercept article) "certainly appears to believe that Der Sturmer-like anti-Semitic cartoons are the moral and logical equivalent of making fun of Moses or Muhammed."^[118] In his Intercept article, Greenwald contrasted anti-Muslim cartoons with "some not-remotely-blasphemous-or-bigoted yet very pointed and relevant cartoons by the brilliantly provocative Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff", a cartoonist, Petra Marquandt-Bigman wrote in The Jerusalem Post, who has been accused of producing antisemitic images.^[119]

Julian Assange

In a November 2018 Guardian article Luke Harding and Dan Collyns cited anonymous sources which stated that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2013, 2015, and 2016.^[120] Greenwald said that if Manafort had entered the Ecuadorian consulate there would be evidence from the surrounding cameras.^[121] Greenwald, a former contributor to The Guardian, stated that the paper "has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him."^[122]

Greenwald criticized the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 for his role in the 2010 publication of the Iraq War documents leak. Greenwald wrote in The Washington Post: "The Trump administration has undoubtedly calculated that Assange’s uniquely unpopular status across the political spectrum [in the United States] makes him the ideal test case for creating a precedent that criminalizes the defining attributes of investigative journalism."^[123]

Jair Bolsonaro

In October 2018, Greenwald said that Bolsonaro was "often depicted wrongly in the Western media as being Brazil's Trump, and he's actually much closer to say Filipino President Duterte or even the Egyptian dictator General el-Sisi in terms of what he believes and what he's probably capable of carrying out."^[124]

Greenwald said that Bolsonaro could be a "good partner" for President Trump "If you think that the U.S. should go back to kind of the Monroe Doctrine as [National Security Adviser] John Bolton talked openly about, and ruling Latin America, and U.S. interests".^[125]

Greenwald has faced death threats and homophobic harassment from Bolsonaro supporters due to his reporting on leaked Telegram messages about Brazil's Operation Car Wash and Bolsonaro's justice minister Sérgio Moro.^[80] President Bolsonaro threatened Greenwald with possible imprisonment. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism condemned Bolsonaro's threats.^[126]

In January 2020, Brazilian federal prosecutors charged Greenwald with cybercrimes, alleging he was part of a "criminal organization" that hacked into the cellphones of prosecutors and other public officials in 2019. Prosecutors said he played a "clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime" by, for example, encouraging hackers to delete archives in order to cover their tracks. Greenwald, who was not detained, called the charges "an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro and the Bolsonaro government."^[127] In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Greenwald, citing a ruling from Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes that shielded him.^[93]

Immigration

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2021)

In 2005, Greenwald criticized illegal immigration, saying that it would result in a "parade of evils". He subsequently disavowed that belief.^[128][129]

Reception

Greenwald has been placed on numerous "top 50" and "top 25" lists of columnists in the United States.^[139] In June 2012, Newsweek magazine named him one of America's Top Ten Opinionists, saying that "a righteous, controlled, and razor-sharp fury runs through a great deal" of his writing, and: "His independent persuasion can make him a danger or an asset to both sides of the aisle."^[140]

 

Greenwald in Auckland, New Zealand, September 2014

Josh Voorhees, writing for Slate, reported that in 2013 congressman Peter King (R-NY) suggested Greenwald should be arrested for his reporting on the NSA PRISM program and NSA leaker Edward Snowden.^[141] Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin said "I would arrest [Snowden] and now I'd almost arrest Glenn Greenwald",^[142] but later made an apology for his statement, which Greenwald accepted.

 

Standing ovation for Greenwald, Germany, December 2014

In a February 2014 interview, Greenwald said he risked detention if he reentered the U.S., but insisted that he would "force the issue" on principle, and return for the "many reasons" he had to visit, including if he won a prestigious award of which he was rumoured to be the winner.^[143] Later that month, it was announced that he was, in fact, among the recipients of the 2013 Polk Awards, to be conferred April 11, 2014 in Manhattan.^[144] In a subsequent interview, Greenwald stated he would attend the ceremony.^[145] On April 11, Greenwald and Laura Poitras accepted the Polk Award in Manhattan. Their entry into the United States was trouble-free and they traveled with an ACLU attorney and a German journalist "to document any unpleasant surprises". Accepting the award, Greenwald said he was "happy to see a table full of Guardian editors and journalists, whose role in this story is much more integral than the publicity generally recognizes".^[146] On April 14, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded jointly to The Guardian and The Washington Post for revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the NSA. Greenwald, along with Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, had contributed to The Guardian′s reporting.^[147]

In 2014, Sean Wilentz in The New Republic, commented that some of Greenwald's opinions are where both meet, the far-left and far-right.^[148] In a 2017 article in The Independent, Brian Dean wrote: "Greenwald has been critical of Trump, but is perceived by many as someone who spends far more time criticising 'Dems' and 'liberals' (analysis of his Twitter account tends to give this impression)."^[149] Simon van Zuylen-Wood in a 2018 piece for New York magazine entitled "Does Glenn Greenwald Know More Than Robert Mueller?" described "a new-seeming category of Russia-skeptic firebrands sometimes called the alt-left."^[150] In February 2019, Max Boot wrote in The Washington Post: "Indeed, it’s often hard to tell the extremists apart. Anti-vaccine activists come from both the far left and the far right — and while most of those who defend President Trump's dealings with Russia are on the right, some, such as Glenn Greenwald and Stephen F. Cohen, are on the left."^[151] In a May 2019 Haaretz article, Alexander Reid Ross described Tucker Carlson's and Glenn Greenwald's positions as being a "crossover between leftists and the far-right in defense of Syria's Bashar Assad, to dismiss charges of Russian interference in U.S. elections and to boost Russian geopolitics".^[152]

Personal life

In 2005, a 37-year old Greenwald left his law practice in New York and took a long vacation to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he met 19-year old David Miranda, an orphan who lived in a slum.^[153] Days after they met, the couple decided to move in together, and wed shortly thereafter.^[154] Miranda now serves as a Congressman with the left-wing PSOL party.^[153] The couple live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.^[155][154] They formally adopted two sons in Brazil in 2018.^[156] In 2017, Greenwald and Miranda announced that they had gained legal guardianship of the brothers, who are from Maceió, a city in Northeastern Brazil.^{[157][better source needed][158]}

Greenwald is a vegan and an advocate for animal rights.^{[159][160][161]} He and Miranda have 24 rescue dogs.^[49][162] In March 2017, Greenwald announced plans to build a shelter with Miranda for stray pets in Brazil that would be staffed by homeless people.^[163] In March 2018, Greenwald tweeted videos showing the shelter operating.^[164]

Greenwald and Miranda were close personal friends of Brazilian human rights advocate and politician Marielle Franco, known for criticism of police tactics and corruption, who was fatally shot by unknown assailants.^[165][166] A New York Times profile described how Greenwald's reporting on high-level Bolsonaro officials and Miranda's outspoken opposition in Congress turned them into primary targets of Bolsonaro's administration.^[81]

While Greenwald does not participate in any organized religion, he has said he believes in "the spiritual and mystical part of the world" and that yoga is "like a bridge into that, like a window into it."^[167] Greenwald has been critical of the New Atheist movement, in particular, Sam Harris and other critics of Islam.^[168]

Awards

 

Geschwister-Scholl-Award for Greenwald, University of Munich, December 2014

Greenwald received, together with Amy Goodman, the first Izzy Award for special achievement in independent media, in 2009,^[169] and the 2010 Online Journalism Award for Best Commentary for his investigative work on the conditions of Chelsea Manning.^[170]

His reporting on the National Security Agency (NSA) won numerous other awards around the world, including top investigative journalism prizes from the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting,^[171] the 2013 Online Journalism Awards,^[172] the Esso Award for Excellence in Reporting in Brazil for his articles in O Globo on NSA mass surveillance of Brazilians (becoming the first foreigner to win the award),^[173] the 2013 Libertad de Expresion Internacional award from Argentinian magazine Perfil,^[174] and the 2013 Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[175] The team that Greenwald led at The Guardian was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their reporting on the NSA.^[176] Foreign Policy Magazine then named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013.^[177]

In 2014 Greenwald received the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, an annual German literary award, for the German edition of No Place to Hide.^[178] Greenwald was also named the 2014 recipient of the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of Georgia.^[179]

Books

.

[TexasTiger 11,651]

21 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

You just lost 50 IQ points..

Unclaimed Territory and Salon

In October 2005, he began his blog Unclaimed Territory focusing on the investigation pertaining to the Plame affair, the CIA leak grand jury investigation, the federal indictment of Scooter Libby and the NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07) controversy. In April 2006, the blog received the 2005 Koufax Award for "Best New Blog".^[6] According to Sean Wilentz in the New Statesman, Greenwald "seemed to take pride in attacking Republicans and Democrats alike".^[15]

In February 2007, Greenwald became a contributing writer for the Salon website, and the new column and blog superseded Unclaimed Territory, although Salon featured hyperlinks to it in Greenwald's dedicated biographical section.^[17][18]

 

Greenwald, Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman in April 2011

Among the frequent topics of his Salon articles were the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks and the candidacy of former CIA official John O. Brennan for the jobs of either Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) or the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) after the election of Barack Obama. Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for the post after opposition centered in liberal blogs and led by Greenwald.^{[19][20][21][22][23][24]}

In a 2010 article for Salon, Greenwald described U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning as "a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives" and "a national hero similar to Daniel Ellsberg".^[25] In an article for The Raw Story published in 2011, Greenwald criticized the prison conditions in which Manning was held after her arrest by military authorities.^[26]

Greenwald was described by Rachel Maddow during his period writing for Salon as "the American left’s most fearless political commentator."^[15]

The Guardian

It was announced in July 2012 that Greenwald was joining the American wing of Britain's Guardian newspaper, to contribute a weekly column and a daily blog.^[27][28] Greenwald wrote on Salon that the move offered him "the opportunity to reach a new audience, to further internationalize my readership, and to be re-invigorated by a different environment" as reasons for the move.^[27][29]

On June 5, 2013, Greenwald reported on the top-secret United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order requiring Verizon to provide the National Security Agency with telephone metadata for all calls between the U.S. and abroad, as well as all domestic calls.^[30][31][32]

On October 15, 2013, Greenwald announced, and The Guardian confirmed, that he was leaving the newspaper to pursue a "once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline".^[33][34]

First Look Media and The Intercept

Financial backing for The Intercept was provided by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.^[35][36] Omidyar told media critic Jay Rosen that the decision was fueled by his "rising concern about press freedoms in the United States and around the world". Greenwald, along with his colleagues Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, initially were working on creating a platform online to support independent journalism, when they were approached by Omidyar who was hoping to establish his own media organization. That news organization, First Look Media, launched its first online publication, The Intercept, on February 10, 2014.^[37] Greenwald initially served as editor, alongside Poitras and Scahill. The organization is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable entity.^[38][39]

The Intercept was in contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with Guccifer 2.0, who relayed some of the material about Hillary Clinton, gathered via a data breach, to Greenwald. The Grugq, a counterintelligence specialist, reported in October 2016: "The Intercept was both aware that the e-mails were from Guccifer 2.0, that Guccifer 2.0 has been attributed to Russian intelligence services, and that there is significant public evidence supporting this attribution."^[40]

By 2019, he was serving as an Intercept columnist without any control over the site's news reporting.^[41] On October 29, 2020, Greenwald resigned from The Intercept, giving his reasons as political censorship and contractual breaches by the editors, who he said had prevented him from reporting on allegations concerning Joe Biden's conduct with regard to China and Ukraine and had demanded that he not publish the article in any other publication.^[42] Betsy Reed, the editor-in-chief, disputed Greenwald's accusations and claims of censorship, and accused him of presenting dubious claims by the Trump campaign as journalism.^[42][43][44] Greenwald said he would begin publishing his work on Substack, and had begun "exploring the possibility of creating a new media outlet."^[45][46] After resigning from The Intercept, Greenwald published his article about Biden and his correspondence with the editors of The Intercept on his Substack page.^[42]

As of mid-2021, according to The Daily Beast and The Washington Post, Greenwald's feud with former colleagues was continuing.^[47][48]

Appearances on conservative media

According to Simon van Zuylen-Wood writing for New York magazine in early 2018, Greenwald has "repositioned himself as a bomb-throwing media critic" since the Snowden revelations.^[49] Greenwald has become a frequent guest on Fox News,^[50] particularly on Tucker Carlson Tonight.^[51] Greenwald, in conversation with Glenn Beck, acknowledged the frequency of his appearances on Carlson's show.^[52]

The Daily Beast's analysis of transcripts in June 2021 established Greenwald had appeared on Fox News 72 times since December 2017, including 40 times on Carlson's program and 14 appearances with host Laura Ingraham.^[47]

Books

Greenwald's first book, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok was published by Working Assets in 2006. It was a New York Times bestseller,^[53] and ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com, both before its publication (due to orders based on attention from 'UT' readers and other bloggers) and for several days after its release, ending its first week at #293.^[54]

A Tragic Legacy, his next book, examined the presidency of George W. Bush. Published in hardback by Crown (a division of Random House) on June 26, 2007, and reprinted in a paperback edition by Three Rivers Press on April 8, 2008, it was a New York Times Best Seller. Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, was also first published by Random House in April 2008.^[55][56] With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, was released by Metropolitan Books in October 2011 and No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, was released in May 2014.^[57] The latter work spent six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list,^[58] and was named one of the ten Best Non-Fiction Books of 2014 by The Christian Science Monitor.^[59]

Greenwald wrote the book Securing Democracy: My Fight for Press Freedom and Justice in Brazil as a follow up to No Place to Hide. It was published by Haymarket Books in April 2021. It describes his publication in 2019 of leaked telephone calls, audio and text messages related to Operation Car Wash and the retaliation he received from the Bolsonaro government.^[60][61]

Global surveillance disclosure

Main article: 2013 Global surveillance disclosure

Contact with Edward Snowden

 

Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald were the recipients of the 2014 Carl von Ossietzky medal.

Greenwald was initially contacted anonymously in late 2012 by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency,^[62] who said he held "sensitive documents" that he wished to share.^[63] Greenwald found the measures that Snowden asked him to take to secure their communications too annoying to employ.^[62] Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras about a month later in January 2013.^[64]

According to The Guardian, Snowden was attracted to Greenwald and Poitras by a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras' films had made her a "target of the government".^[63][65] Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February^[66] or in April, after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City, at which point Snowden began providing documents to them both.^[62]

As part of the global surveillance disclosure, the first of Snowden's documents were published on June 5, 2013, in The Guardian in an article by Greenwald. Greenwald said that Snowden's documents exposed the "scale of domestic surveillance under Obama".^[67] In September 2021, Yahoo! News reported that in 2017, after the publication of the Vault 7 files by WikiLeaks, "top intelligence officials lobbied the White House" to designate Glenn Greenwald as an "information broker" to allow for more investigative tools against him, "potentially paving the way" for his prosecution. However, the White House rejected this idea. "I am not the least bit surprised," Greenwald told Yahoo! News, "that the CIA, a longtime authoritarian and antidemocratic institution, plotted to find a way to criminalize journalism and spy on and commit other acts of aggression against journalists."^[68]

The series on which Greenwald worked contributed to The Guardian (alongside The Washington Post) winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2014.^[69][70]

Greenwald's work on the Snowden story was featured in the documentary Citizenfour, which won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Greenwald appeared on-stage with director Laura Poitras and Snowden's girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, when the Oscar was given.^[71] In the 2016 Oliver Stone feature film Snowden, Greenwald was played by actor Zachary Quinto.^[72]

Testimony

In a statement delivered before the National Congress of Brazil in early August 2013, Greenwald testified that the U.S. government had used counter-terrorism as a pretext for clandestine surveillance in order to compete with other countries in the "business, industrial and economic fields".^[73][74][75]

On December 18, 2013, Greenwald told the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament that "most governments around the world are not only turning their backs on Edward Snowden but also on their ethical responsibilities".^[76] Speaking via a video link, Greenwald said that, "It is the UK through their interception of underwater fibre optic cables, that is a primary threat to the privacy of European citizens when it comes to their telephone and emails". In a statement given to the European Parliament, Greenwald said:

The ultimate goal of the NSA, along with its most loyal, one might say subservient junior partner the British agency GCHQ – when it comes to the reason why the system of suspicion of surveillance is being built and the objective of this system – is nothing less than the elimination of individual privacy worldwide

— Glenn Greenwald^[77]

2019 Operation Car Wash Telegram chat leaks in Brazil

Main article: Vaza Jato

Vaza Jato
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On June 9, 2019, Greenwald and journalists from investigative journalism magazine The Intercept Brasil where he was an editor, released several messages exchanged via Telegram between members of the investigation team of Operation Car Wash. The messages implicated members of Brazil's judiciary system and of the Operação Lava-Jato taskforce, including former judge and Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro, and lead prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, in the violation of legal and ethical procedures during the investigation, trial and arrest of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the alleged objective of preventing him from running for a third term in the 2018 Brazilian general election, among other crimes. Following the leak, Folha de São Paulo and Veja confirmed the authenticity of the messages and worked in partnership with The Intercept Brasil to sort the remaining material in their possession before releasing it.^[78]

On July 23, Brazilian Federal Police announced that they had arrested and were investigating Araraquara hacker Walter Delgatti Neto for breaking into the authorities' Telegram accounts. Neto confessed to the hack and to having given copies of the chat logs to Greenwald. Police said the attack had been accomplished by abusing Telegram's phone number verification and exploiting vulnerabilities in voicemail technology in use in Brazil by using a spoofed phone number. The Intercept neither confirmed nor denied Neto being their source, citing freedom of the press provisions of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.^[79]

Greenwald faced death threats and homophobic harassment from Bolsonaro supporters due to his reporting on the Telegram messages.^[80] A New York Times profile by Ernesto Londoño about Greenwald and his husband David Miranda, a left-wing congressman, described how the couple became targets of homophobia from Bolsonaro supporters as a result of the reporting.^[81][82] The Washington Post reported that Greenwald had been targeted with fiscal investigations by the Bolsonaro government, allegedly as retaliation for the reporting,^[83] and AP called Greenwald's reporting "the first test case for a free press" under Bolsonaro.^[84]

In reporting on retaliation against Greenwald from the Bolsonaro government and its supporters, The Guardian said the articles published by Greenwald and The Intercept "have had an explosive impact on Brazilian politics and dominated headlines for weeks", adding that the exposés "appeared to show prosecutors in the sweeping Operation Car Wash corruption inquiry colluding with Sérgio Moro, the judge who became a hero in Brazil for jailing powerful businessmen, middlemen and politicians."^[85]

On August 9, after President Bolsonaro threatened to imprison Greenwald for this reporting,^[86] Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes ruled that any investigation of Greenwald in connection with the reporting would be illegal under the Brazilian constitution, citing press freedom as a "pillar of democracy".^[87]

In November 2019, Brazilian columnist Augusto Nunes physically attacked Greenwald during a joint appearance on a Brazilian radio program. Immediately prior to the attack, Nunes had argued that a family judge ought to take away Greenwald's adopted children, prompting Greenwald to call him a "coward." Two of Jair Bolsonaro's sons praised Nunes' actions, while former presidential candidate Ciro Gomes defended Greenwald.^[88]

In January 2020, Greenwald was charged by Brazilian prosecutors with cybercrimes,^[89] in a move that Trevor Timm in The Guardian described as retaliation for his reporting.^[90] The Canary website described the charges as "ominously similar to the indictment of Julian Assange" and quoted Max Blumenthal and Jen Robinson as remarking on the similarity of the two sets of charges.^[91] Greenwald received support from The New York Times which published an editorial stating "Mr. Greenwald's articles did what a free press is supposed to do: They revealed a painful truth about those in power". The Freedom of the Press Foundation made a statement asking the Brazilian government to "halt its persecution of Greenwald".^[92] In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Greenwald, citing a ruling from Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes that shielded him.^[93]

Political views

United States

George W. Bush and Barack Obama eras

 

Miranda and Greenwald speak at the National Congress of Brazil in the wake of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures.

In his 2006 book How Would a Patriot Act?, Greenwald wrote that he was politically apathetic at the time of the Iraq War and accepted the Bush administration's judgement that "American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country". Greenwald is critical of actions jointly supported by Democrats and Republicans, writing in 2010: "The worst and most tyrannical government actions in Washington are equally supported on a fully bipartisan basis."^[94] In How Would a Patriot Act?, Greenwald described his 'pre-political' self as neither liberal nor conservative as a whole, voting neither for George W. Bush nor for any of his rivals (indeed, not voting at all).^[95]

He criticized the policies of the Bush administration and those who supported it, arguing that most of the American "Corporate News Media" excused Bush's policies and echoed the administration's positions rather than asking hard questions.^[96][97] Greenwald accused mainstream U.S. media of "spreading patriotic state propaganda".^[98]

Donald Trump and Russian election interference

Greenwald has criticized some of the policies of the Trump administration, saying, "I think the Trump White House lies more often. I think it lies more readily. I think it lies more blatantly."^[99]

During the Trump administration Greenwald was a critic of the Democratic Party, alleging a double standard in their foreign policy.: "Democrats didn't care when Obama hugged Saudi despots, and now they pretend to care when Trump embraces Saudi despots or Egyptian ones."^[99]

Greenwald expressed skepticism of the James Clapper-led US intelligence community's assessment that Russia's government interfered in the 2016 presidential election.^[49][99] Regardless of the accuracy of the assessment, he: doubted its significance,^[49] stating "This is stuff we do to them, and have done to them for decades, and still continue to do."^[99]

Susan Hennessey, an NSA lawyer at the time of Snowden's NSA revelations, told Marcy Wheeler writing for The New Republic in January 2018, that Greenwald was only relaying "surface commentary" rather than evidence for or against Russian interference in the 2016 election.^[100] Tamsin Shaw wrote in The New York Review of Books in September 2018: "Greenwald has repeatedly, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, decried as Russophobia the findings that Putin ordered interference in the 2016 US presidential election".^[101]

Greenwald remained doubtful of assertions that the Trump presidential campaign worked with the Russians after the release of the letter about the Mueller's findings from attorney general William Barr in late March 2019. He called the investigation "a scam and a fraud from the beginning" in an appearance on Democracy Now!.^[102] Greenwald told Tucker Carlson on Fox News: "Let me just say, [MSNBC] should have their top host on primetime go before the cameras and hang their head in shame and apologize for lying to people for three straight years, exploiting their fears to great profit".^[103] He said he is formally banned from appearing on MSNBC, citing confirmations from two unnamed producers for the network, for his criticisms of its coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. MSNBC stated it has not barred Greenwald from appearing on its programs.^[104]

After the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, on April 22 he wrote that the press continued to report that Trump's campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.^[105] In January 2020, Greenwald described the various assertions regarding Russian influence on American politics as "At the very best, ... wildly exaggerated hysteria and the kind of jingoistic fear-mongering that’s plagued U.S. Politics since the end of WWII".^[106]

Later comments

In conversation around 2021 with Glenn Beck, Greenwald said:

The Democratic Party is a party that I view as completely repressive and not just the Democratic Party but the liberal movement that supports it. By liberal, just to be clear, I don’t mean the far left, the kind of left-wing movement that supported Bernie Sanders—a lot of them hate Democrats at least as much as people on the right. I mean establishment liberals of the Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton strain.^[52]

On Twitter, he wrote in May 2021:

The cultural left (meaning the part of the left focused on cultural issues rather than imperialism or corporatism) [...] has become increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating".^[107]

In an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight in summer 2021, he said:

We know that the Democratic party and journalism in general has aligned with the CIA, NSA, and the FBI, and has aligned and merged with the security state.^[51]

In a conversation with Laura Ingraham on Fox News in November 2021, he said of the 2021 United States Capitol attack:

What happened here, Laura, is that [congressional investigators] know the Justice Department is not going to deliver on this narrative that they peddled for eight months, which was that this was an insurrection, these people are traitors, that they engaged in sedition.^[108]

Israel and accusations of antisemitism

 

Greenwald is a strong critic of both Benjamin Netanyahu and Jair Bolsonaro

Greenwald has criticized the Israeli government, including its foreign policy, influence on U.S. politics and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.^[109][110] In May 2016, Greenwald accused The New York Times of "abject cowardice" in its use of scare quotes for the occupation of Gaza (which were removed) and alleged "journalistic malfeasance" in the incident "out of fear of the negative reaction by influential factions".^[111][112]

In an exchange with Greenwald in February 2019, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., tweeted, "It's all about the Benjamins baby", suggesting that money rather than principle motivated US politicians' support for Israel, including payments from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to US politicians. Many Democrats and Republicans, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, condemned the tweet arguing it perpetuated an antisemitic stereotype of Jewish money and influence fueling American politicians' support of Israel.^[113] Greenwald defended Omar: "we’re not allowed to talk about an equally potent well-organized and well-financed lobby that ensures a bipartisan consensus in support of U.S. defense of Israel, that the minute that you mention that lobby, you get attacked as being anti-Semitic."^[114]

Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic in January 2012 said Greenwald "evinces toward Israel a disdain that is quite breathtaking. He holds Israel to a standard he doesn't hold any other country, except the U.S."^[115] Greenwald was accused of antisemitism by The Algemeiner in July 2013.^[116] Liel Leibovitz in Tablet magazine in 2013 considered it "largely inaccurate" to match Greenwald's "obsessive focus on Israel’s supposed role in evil global conspiracies to simple anti-Semitism. Instead, the ideology that drives [his] tendency to see the NSA and Israel as two heads of the same Satanic beast is more complex and ideologically-driven—an attack on the doctrines of exceptionalism that fueled the rise of both America and Israel."^[117]

Following the Charlie Hebdo murders in January 2015, David Bernstein in The Washington Post wrote Greenwald (in an Intercept article) "certainly appears to believe that Der Sturmer-like anti-Semitic cartoons are the moral and logical equivalent of making fun of Moses or Muhammed."^[118] In his Intercept article, Greenwald contrasted anti-Muslim cartoons with "some not-remotely-blasphemous-or-bigoted yet very pointed and relevant cartoons by the brilliantly provocative Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff", a cartoonist, Petra Marquandt-Bigman wrote in The Jerusalem Post, who has been accused of producing antisemitic images.^[119]

Julian Assange

In a November 2018 Guardian article Luke Harding and Dan Collyns cited anonymous sources which stated that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2013, 2015, and 2016.^[120] Greenwald said that if Manafort had entered the Ecuadorian consulate there would be evidence from the surrounding cameras.^[121] Greenwald, a former contributor to The Guardian, stated that the paper "has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him."^[122]

Greenwald criticized the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 for his role in the 2010 publication of the Iraq War documents leak. Greenwald wrote in The Washington Post: "The Trump administration has undoubtedly calculated that Assange’s uniquely unpopular status across the political spectrum [in the United States] makes him the ideal test case for creating a precedent that criminalizes the defining attributes of investigative journalism."^[123]

Jair Bolsonaro

In October 2018, Greenwald said that Bolsonaro was "often depicted wrongly in the Western media as being Brazil's Trump, and he's actually much closer to say Filipino President Duterte or even the Egyptian dictator General el-Sisi in terms of what he believes and what he's probably capable of carrying out."^[124]

Greenwald said that Bolsonaro could be a "good partner" for President Trump "If you think that the U.S. should go back to kind of the Monroe Doctrine as [National Security Adviser] John Bolton talked openly about, and ruling Latin America, and U.S. interests".^[125]

Greenwald has faced death threats and homophobic harassment from Bolsonaro supporters due to his reporting on leaked Telegram messages about Brazil's Operation Car Wash and Bolsonaro's justice minister Sérgio Moro.^[80] President Bolsonaro threatened Greenwald with possible imprisonment. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism condemned Bolsonaro's threats.^[126]

In January 2020, Brazilian federal prosecutors charged Greenwald with cybercrimes, alleging he was part of a "criminal organization" that hacked into the cellphones of prosecutors and other public officials in 2019. Prosecutors said he played a "clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime" by, for example, encouraging hackers to delete archives in order to cover their tracks. Greenwald, who was not detained, called the charges "an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro and the Bolsonaro government."^[127] In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Greenwald, citing a ruling from Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes that shielded him.^[93]

Immigration

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2021)

In 2005, Greenwald criticized illegal immigration, saying that it would result in a "parade of evils". He subsequently disavowed that belief.^[128][129]

Reception

Greenwald has been placed on numerous "top 50" and "top 25" lists of columnists in the United States.^[139] In June 2012, Newsweek magazine named him one of America's Top Ten Opinionists, saying that "a righteous, controlled, and razor-sharp fury runs through a great deal" of his writing, and: "His independent persuasion can make him a danger or an asset to both sides of the aisle."^[140]

 

Greenwald in Auckland, New Zealand, September 2014

Josh Voorhees, writing for Slate, reported that in 2013 congressman Peter King (R-NY) suggested Greenwald should be arrested for his reporting on the NSA PRISM program and NSA leaker Edward Snowden.^[141] Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin said "I would arrest [Snowden] and now I'd almost arrest Glenn Greenwald",^[142] but later made an apology for his statement, which Greenwald accepted.

 

Standing ovation for Greenwald, Germany, December 2014

In a February 2014 interview, Greenwald said he risked detention if he reentered the U.S., but insisted that he would "force the issue" on principle, and return for the "many reasons" he had to visit, including if he won a prestigious award of which he was rumoured to be the winner.^[143] Later that month, it was announced that he was, in fact, among the recipients of the 2013 Polk Awards, to be conferred April 11, 2014 in Manhattan.^[144] In a subsequent interview, Greenwald stated he would attend the ceremony.^[145] On April 11, Greenwald and Laura Poitras accepted the Polk Award in Manhattan. Their entry into the United States was trouble-free and they traveled with an ACLU attorney and a German journalist "to document any unpleasant surprises". Accepting the award, Greenwald said he was "happy to see a table full of Guardian editors and journalists, whose role in this story is much more integral than the publicity generally recognizes".^[146] On April 14, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded jointly to The Guardian and The Washington Post for revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the NSA. Greenwald, along with Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, had contributed to The Guardian′s reporting.^[147]

In 2014, Sean Wilentz in The New Republic, commented that some of Greenwald's opinions are where both meet, the far-left and far-right.^[148] In a 2017 article in The Independent, Brian Dean wrote: "Greenwald has been critical of Trump, but is perceived by many as someone who spends far more time criticising 'Dems' and 'liberals' (analysis of his Twitter account tends to give this impression)."^[149] Simon van Zuylen-Wood in a 2018 piece for New York magazine entitled "Does Glenn Greenwald Know More Than Robert Mueller?" described "a new-seeming category of Russia-skeptic firebrands sometimes called the alt-left."^[150] In February 2019, Max Boot wrote in The Washington Post: "Indeed, it’s often hard to tell the extremists apart. Anti-vaccine activists come from both the far left and the far right — and while most of those who defend President Trump's dealings with Russia are on the right, some, such as Glenn Greenwald and Stephen F. Cohen, are on the left."^[151] In a May 2019 Haaretz article, Alexander Reid Ross described Tucker Carlson's and Glenn Greenwald's positions as being a "crossover between leftists and the far-right in defense of Syria's Bashar Assad, to dismiss charges of Russian interference in U.S. elections and to boost Russian geopolitics".^[152]

Personal life

In 2005, a 37-year old Greenwald left his law practice in New York and took a long vacation to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he met 19-year old David Miranda, an orphan who lived in a slum.^[153] Days after they met, the couple decided to move in together, and wed shortly thereafter.^[154] Miranda now serves as a Congressman with the left-wing PSOL party.^[153] The couple live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.^[155][154] They formally adopted two sons in Brazil in 2018.^[156] In 2017, Greenwald and Miranda announced that they had gained legal guardianship of the brothers, who are from Maceió, a city in Northeastern Brazil.^{[157][better source needed][158]}

Greenwald is a vegan and an advocate for animal rights.^{[159][160][161]} He and Miranda have 24 rescue dogs.^[49][162] In March 2017, Greenwald announced plans to build a shelter with Miranda for stray pets in Brazil that would be staffed by homeless people.^[163] In March 2018, Greenwald tweeted videos showing the shelter operating.^[164]

Greenwald and Miranda were close personal friends of Brazilian human rights advocate and politician Marielle Franco, known for criticism of police tactics and corruption, who was fatally shot by unknown assailants.^[165][166] A New York Times profile described how Greenwald's reporting on high-level Bolsonaro officials and Miranda's outspoken opposition in Congress turned them into primary targets of Bolsonaro's administration.^[81]

While Greenwald does not participate in any organized religion, he has said he believes in "the spiritual and mystical part of the world" and that yoga is "like a bridge into that, like a window into it."^[167] Greenwald has been critical of the New Atheist movement, in particular, Sam Harris and other critics of Islam.^[168]

Awards

 

Geschwister-Scholl-Award for Greenwald, University of Munich, December 2014

Greenwald received, together with Amy Goodman, the first Izzy Award for special achievement in independent media, in 2009,^[169] and the 2010 Online Journalism Award for Best Commentary for his investigative work on the conditions of Chelsea Manning.^[170]

His reporting on the National Security Agency (NSA) won numerous other awards around the world, including top investigative journalism prizes from the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting,^[171] the 2013 Online Journalism Awards,^[172] the Esso Award for Excellence in Reporting in Brazil for his articles in O Globo on NSA mass surveillance of Brazilians (becoming the first foreigner to win the award),^[173] the 2013 Libertad de Expresion Internacional award from Argentinian magazine Perfil,^[174] and the 2013 Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[175] The team that Greenwald led at The Guardian was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their reporting on the NSA.^[176] Foreign Policy Magazine then named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013.^[177]

In 2014 Greenwald received the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, an annual German literary award, for the German edition of No Place to Hide.^[178] Greenwald was also named the 2014 recipient of the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of Georgia.^[179]

Books

.

You may necessitate a total word limit per post.

[CoffeeTiger 4,702]

14 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

You just lost 50 IQ points..

Unclaimed Territory and Salon

In October 2005, he began his blog Unclaimed Territory focusing on the investigation pertaining to the Plame affair, the CIA leak grand jury investigation, the federal indictment of Scooter Libby and the NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07) controversy. In April 2006, the blog received the 2005 Koufax Award for "Best New Blog".^[6] According to Sean Wilentz in the New Statesman, Greenwald "seemed to take pride in attacking Republicans and Democrats alike".^[15]

In February 2007, Greenwald became a contributing writer for the Salon website, and the new column and blog superseded Unclaimed Territory, although Salon featured hyperlinks to it in Greenwald's dedicated biographical section.^[17][18]

 

Greenwald, Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman in April 2011

Among the frequent topics of his Salon articles were the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks and the candidacy of former CIA official John O. Brennan for the jobs of either Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) or the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) after the election of Barack Obama. Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for the post after opposition centered in liberal blogs and led by Greenwald.^{[19][20][21][22][23][24]}

In a 2010 article for Salon, Greenwald described U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning as "a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives" and "a national hero similar to Daniel Ellsberg".^[25] In an article for The Raw Story published in 2011, Greenwald criticized the prison conditions in which Manning was held after her arrest by military authorities.^[26]

Greenwald was described by Rachel Maddow during his period writing for Salon as "the American left’s most fearless political commentator."^[15]

The Guardian

It was announced in July 2012 that Greenwald was joining the American wing of Britain's Guardian newspaper, to contribute a weekly column and a daily blog.^[27][28] Greenwald wrote on Salon that the move offered him "the opportunity to reach a new audience, to further internationalize my readership, and to be re-invigorated by a different environment" as reasons for the move.^[27][29]

On June 5, 2013, Greenwald reported on the top-secret United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order requiring Verizon to provide the National Security Agency with telephone metadata for all calls between the U.S. and abroad, as well as all domestic calls.^[30][31][32]

On October 15, 2013, Greenwald announced, and The Guardian confirmed, that he was leaving the newspaper to pursue a "once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline".^[33][34]

First Look Media and The Intercept

Financial backing for The Intercept was provided by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.^[35][36] Omidyar told media critic Jay Rosen that the decision was fueled by his "rising concern about press freedoms in the United States and around the world". Greenwald, along with his colleagues Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, initially were working on creating a platform online to support independent journalism, when they were approached by Omidyar who was hoping to establish his own media organization. That news organization, First Look Media, launched its first online publication, The Intercept, on February 10, 2014.^[37] Greenwald initially served as editor, alongside Poitras and Scahill. The organization is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable entity.^[38][39]

The Intercept was in contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with Guccifer 2.0, who relayed some of the material about Hillary Clinton, gathered via a data breach, to Greenwald. The Grugq, a counterintelligence specialist, reported in October 2016: "The Intercept was both aware that the e-mails were from Guccifer 2.0, that Guccifer 2.0 has been attributed to Russian intelligence services, and that there is significant public evidence supporting this attribution."^[40]

By 2019, he was serving as an Intercept columnist without any control over the site's news reporting.^[41] On October 29, 2020, Greenwald resigned from The Intercept, giving his reasons as political censorship and contractual breaches by the editors, who he said had prevented him from reporting on allegations concerning Joe Biden's conduct with regard to China and Ukraine and had demanded that he not publish the article in any other publication.^[42] Betsy Reed, the editor-in-chief, disputed Greenwald's accusations and claims of censorship, and accused him of presenting dubious claims by the Trump campaign as journalism.^[42][43][44] Greenwald said he would begin publishing his work on Substack, and had begun "exploring the possibility of creating a new media outlet."^[45][46] After resigning from The Intercept, Greenwald published his article about Biden and his correspondence with the editors of The Intercept on his Substack page.^[42]

As of mid-2021, according to The Daily Beast and The Washington Post, Greenwald's feud with former colleagues was continuing.^[47][48]

Appearances on conservative media

According to Simon van Zuylen-Wood writing for New York magazine in early 2018, Greenwald has "repositioned himself as a bomb-throwing media critic" since the Snowden revelations.^[49] Greenwald has become a frequent guest on Fox News,^[50] particularly on Tucker Carlson Tonight.^[51] Greenwald, in conversation with Glenn Beck, acknowledged the frequency of his appearances on Carlson's show.^[52]

The Daily Beast's analysis of transcripts in June 2021 established Greenwald had appeared on Fox News 72 times since December 2017, including 40 times on Carlson's program and 14 appearances with host Laura Ingraham.^[47]

Books

Greenwald's first book, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok was published by Working Assets in 2006. It was a New York Times bestseller,^[53] and ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com, both before its publication (due to orders based on attention from 'UT' readers and other bloggers) and for several days after its release, ending its first week at #293.^[54]

A Tragic Legacy, his next book, examined the presidency of George W. Bush. Published in hardback by Crown (a division of Random House) on June 26, 2007, and reprinted in a paperback edition by Three Rivers Press on April 8, 2008, it was a New York Times Best Seller. Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, was also first published by Random House in April 2008.^[55][56] With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, was released by Metropolitan Books in October 2011 and No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, was released in May 2014.^[57] The latter work spent six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list,^[58] and was named one of the ten Best Non-Fiction Books of 2014 by The Christian Science Monitor.^[59]

Greenwald wrote the book Securing Democracy: My Fight for Press Freedom and Justice in Brazil as a follow up to No Place to Hide. It was published by Haymarket Books in April 2021. It describes his publication in 2019 of leaked telephone calls, audio and text messages related to Operation Car Wash and the retaliation he received from the Bolsonaro government.^[60][61]

Global surveillance disclosure

Main article: 2013 Global surveillance disclosure

Contact with Edward Snowden

 

Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald were the recipients of the 2014 Carl von Ossietzky medal.

Greenwald was initially contacted anonymously in late 2012 by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency,^[62] who said he held "sensitive documents" that he wished to share.^[63] Greenwald found the measures that Snowden asked him to take to secure their communications too annoying to employ.^[62] Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras about a month later in January 2013.^[64]

According to The Guardian, Snowden was attracted to Greenwald and Poitras by a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras' films had made her a "target of the government".^[63][65] Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February^[66] or in April, after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City, at which point Snowden began providing documents to them both.^[62]

As part of the global surveillance disclosure, the first of Snowden's documents were published on June 5, 2013, in The Guardian in an article by Greenwald. Greenwald said that Snowden's documents exposed the "scale of domestic surveillance under Obama".^[67] In September 2021, Yahoo! News reported that in 2017, after the publication of the Vault 7 files by WikiLeaks, "top intelligence officials lobbied the White House" to designate Glenn Greenwald as an "information broker" to allow for more investigative tools against him, "potentially paving the way" for his prosecution. However, the White House rejected this idea. "I am not the least bit surprised," Greenwald told Yahoo! News, "that the CIA, a longtime authoritarian and antidemocratic institution, plotted to find a way to criminalize journalism and spy on and commit other acts of aggression against journalists."^[68]

The series on which Greenwald worked contributed to The Guardian (alongside The Washington Post) winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2014.^[69][70]

Greenwald's work on the Snowden story was featured in the documentary Citizenfour, which won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Greenwald appeared on-stage with director Laura Poitras and Snowden's girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, when the Oscar was given.^[71] In the 2016 Oliver Stone feature film Snowden, Greenwald was played by actor Zachary Quinto.^[72]

Testimony

In a statement delivered before the National Congress of Brazil in early August 2013, Greenwald testified that the U.S. government had used counter-terrorism as a pretext for clandestine surveillance in order to compete with other countries in the "business, industrial and economic fields".^[73][74][75]

On December 18, 2013, Greenwald told the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament that "most governments around the world are not only turning their backs on Edward Snowden but also on their ethical responsibilities".^[76] Speaking via a video link, Greenwald said that, "It is the UK through their interception of underwater fibre optic cables, that is a primary threat to the privacy of European citizens when it comes to their telephone and emails". In a statement given to the European Parliament, Greenwald said:

The ultimate goal of the NSA, along with its most loyal, one might say subservient junior partner the British agency GCHQ – when it comes to the reason why the system of suspicion of surveillance is being built and the objective of this system – is nothing less than the elimination of individual privacy worldwide

— Glenn Greenwald^[77]

2019 Operation Car Wash Telegram chat leaks in Brazil

Main article: Vaza Jato

Vaza Jato
Scandal
hide Vaza Jato Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Sérgio Moro Deltan Dallagnol Glenn Greenwald Rodrigo Janot Alberto Youssef Eike Batista Marcelo Odebrecht
hide Companies Petrobras Odebrecht
hide News media The Intercept Veja Folha de S.Paulo Le Figaro El País The Washington Post
hide Judges Gilmar Ferreira Mendes Enrique Ricardo Lewandowski Kássio Nunes Marques José Antonio Dias Toffoli Luiz Fux Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha Luiz Edson Fachin
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On June 9, 2019, Greenwald and journalists from investigative journalism magazine The Intercept Brasil where he was an editor, released several messages exchanged via Telegram between members of the investigation team of Operation Car Wash. The messages implicated members of Brazil's judiciary system and of the Operação Lava-Jato taskforce, including former judge and Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro, and lead prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, in the violation of legal and ethical procedures during the investigation, trial and arrest of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the alleged objective of preventing him from running for a third term in the 2018 Brazilian general election, among other crimes. Following the leak, Folha de São Paulo and Veja confirmed the authenticity of the messages and worked in partnership with The Intercept Brasil to sort the remaining material in their possession before releasing it.^[78]

On July 23, Brazilian Federal Police announced that they had arrested and were investigating Araraquara hacker Walter Delgatti Neto for breaking into the authorities' Telegram accounts. Neto confessed to the hack and to having given copies of the chat logs to Greenwald. Police said the attack had been accomplished by abusing Telegram's phone number verification and exploiting vulnerabilities in voicemail technology in use in Brazil by using a spoofed phone number. The Intercept neither confirmed nor denied Neto being their source, citing freedom of the press provisions of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.^[79]

Greenwald faced death threats and homophobic harassment from Bolsonaro supporters due to his reporting on the Telegram messages.^[80] A New York Times profile by Ernesto Londoño about Greenwald and his husband David Miranda, a left-wing congressman, described how the couple became targets of homophobia from Bolsonaro supporters as a result of the reporting.^[81][82] The Washington Post reported that Greenwald had been targeted with fiscal investigations by the Bolsonaro government, allegedly as retaliation for the reporting,^[83] and AP called Greenwald's reporting "the first test case for a free press" under Bolsonaro.^[84]

In reporting on retaliation against Greenwald from the Bolsonaro government and its supporters, The Guardian said the articles published by Greenwald and The Intercept "have had an explosive impact on Brazilian politics and dominated headlines for weeks", adding that the exposés "appeared to show prosecutors in the sweeping Operation Car Wash corruption inquiry colluding with Sérgio Moro, the judge who became a hero in Brazil for jailing powerful businessmen, middlemen and politicians."^[85]

On August 9, after President Bolsonaro threatened to imprison Greenwald for this reporting,^[86] Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes ruled that any investigation of Greenwald in connection with the reporting would be illegal under the Brazilian constitution, citing press freedom as a "pillar of democracy".^[87]

In November 2019, Brazilian columnist Augusto Nunes physically attacked Greenwald during a joint appearance on a Brazilian radio program. Immediately prior to the attack, Nunes had argued that a family judge ought to take away Greenwald's adopted children, prompting Greenwald to call him a "coward." Two of Jair Bolsonaro's sons praised Nunes' actions, while former presidential candidate Ciro Gomes defended Greenwald.^[88]

In January 2020, Greenwald was charged by Brazilian prosecutors with cybercrimes,^[89] in a move that Trevor Timm in The Guardian described as retaliation for his reporting.^[90] The Canary website described the charges as "ominously similar to the indictment of Julian Assange" and quoted Max Blumenthal and Jen Robinson as remarking on the similarity of the two sets of charges.^[91] Greenwald received support from The New York Times which published an editorial stating "Mr. Greenwald's articles did what a free press is supposed to do: They revealed a painful truth about those in power". The Freedom of the Press Foundation made a statement asking the Brazilian government to "halt its persecution of Greenwald".^[92] In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Greenwald, citing a ruling from Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes that shielded him.^[93]

Political views

United States

George W. Bush and Barack Obama eras

 

Miranda and Greenwald speak at the National Congress of Brazil in the wake of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures.

In his 2006 book How Would a Patriot Act?, Greenwald wrote that he was politically apathetic at the time of the Iraq War and accepted the Bush administration's judgement that "American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country". Greenwald is critical of actions jointly supported by Democrats and Republicans, writing in 2010: "The worst and most tyrannical government actions in Washington are equally supported on a fully bipartisan basis."^[94] In How Would a Patriot Act?, Greenwald described his 'pre-political' self as neither liberal nor conservative as a whole, voting neither for George W. Bush nor for any of his rivals (indeed, not voting at all).^[95]

He criticized the policies of the Bush administration and those who supported it, arguing that most of the American "Corporate News Media" excused Bush's policies and echoed the administration's positions rather than asking hard questions.^[96][97] Greenwald accused mainstream U.S. media of "spreading patriotic state propaganda".^[98]

Donald Trump and Russian election interference

Greenwald has criticized some of the policies of the Trump administration, saying, "I think the Trump White House lies more often. I think it lies more readily. I think it lies more blatantly."^[99]

During the Trump administration Greenwald was a critic of the Democratic Party, alleging a double standard in their foreign policy.: "Democrats didn't care when Obama hugged Saudi despots, and now they pretend to care when Trump embraces Saudi despots or Egyptian ones."^[99]

Greenwald expressed skepticism of the James Clapper-led US intelligence community's assessment that Russia's government interfered in the 2016 presidential election.^[49][99] Regardless of the accuracy of the assessment, he: doubted its significance,^[49] stating "This is stuff we do to them, and have done to them for decades, and still continue to do."^[99]

Susan Hennessey, an NSA lawyer at the time of Snowden's NSA revelations, told Marcy Wheeler writing for The New Republic in January 2018, that Greenwald was only relaying "surface commentary" rather than evidence for or against Russian interference in the 2016 election.^[100] Tamsin Shaw wrote in The New York Review of Books in September 2018: "Greenwald has repeatedly, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, decried as Russophobia the findings that Putin ordered interference in the 2016 US presidential election".^[101]

Greenwald remained doubtful of assertions that the Trump presidential campaign worked with the Russians after the release of the letter about the Mueller's findings from attorney general William Barr in late March 2019. He called the investigation "a scam and a fraud from the beginning" in an appearance on Democracy Now!.^[102] Greenwald told Tucker Carlson on Fox News: "Let me just say, [MSNBC] should have their top host on primetime go before the cameras and hang their head in shame and apologize for lying to people for three straight years, exploiting their fears to great profit".^[103] He said he is formally banned from appearing on MSNBC, citing confirmations from two unnamed producers for the network, for his criticisms of its coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. MSNBC stated it has not barred Greenwald from appearing on its programs.^[104]

After the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, on April 22 he wrote that the press continued to report that Trump's campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.^[105] In January 2020, Greenwald described the various assertions regarding Russian influence on American politics as "At the very best, ... wildly exaggerated hysteria and the kind of jingoistic fear-mongering that’s plagued U.S. Politics since the end of WWII".^[106]

Later comments

In conversation around 2021 with Glenn Beck, Greenwald said:

The Democratic Party is a party that I view as completely repressive and not just the Democratic Party but the liberal movement that supports it. By liberal, just to be clear, I don’t mean the far left, the kind of left-wing movement that supported Bernie Sanders—a lot of them hate Democrats at least as much as people on the right. I mean establishment liberals of the Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton strain.^[52]

On Twitter, he wrote in May 2021:

The cultural left (meaning the part of the left focused on cultural issues rather than imperialism or corporatism) [...] has become increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating".^[107]

In an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight in summer 2021, he said:

We know that the Democratic party and journalism in general has aligned with the CIA, NSA, and the FBI, and has aligned and merged with the security state.^[51]

In a conversation with Laura Ingraham on Fox News in November 2021, he said of the 2021 United States Capitol attack:

What happened here, Laura, is that [congressional investigators] know the Justice Department is not going to deliver on this narrative that they peddled for eight months, which was that this was an insurrection, these people are traitors, that they engaged in sedition.^[108]

Israel and accusations of antisemitism

 

Greenwald is a strong critic of both Benjamin Netanyahu and Jair Bolsonaro

Greenwald has criticized the Israeli government, including its foreign policy, influence on U.S. politics and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.^[109][110] In May 2016, Greenwald accused The New York Times of "abject cowardice" in its use of scare quotes for the occupation of Gaza (which were removed) and alleged "journalistic malfeasance" in the incident "out of fear of the negative reaction by influential factions".^[111][112]

In an exchange with Greenwald in February 2019, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., tweeted, "It's all about the Benjamins baby", suggesting that money rather than principle motivated US politicians' support for Israel, including payments from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to US politicians. Many Democrats and Republicans, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, condemned the tweet arguing it perpetuated an antisemitic stereotype of Jewish money and influence fueling American politicians' support of Israel.^[113] Greenwald defended Omar: "we’re not allowed to talk about an equally potent well-organized and well-financed lobby that ensures a bipartisan consensus in support of U.S. defense of Israel, that the minute that you mention that lobby, you get attacked as being anti-Semitic."^[114]

Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic in January 2012 said Greenwald "evinces toward Israel a disdain that is quite breathtaking. He holds Israel to a standard he doesn't hold any other country, except the U.S."^[115] Greenwald was accused of antisemitism by The Algemeiner in July 2013.^[116] Liel Leibovitz in Tablet magazine in 2013 considered it "largely inaccurate" to match Greenwald's "obsessive focus on Israel’s supposed role in evil global conspiracies to simple anti-Semitism. Instead, the ideology that drives [his] tendency to see the NSA and Israel as two heads of the same Satanic beast is more complex and ideologically-driven—an attack on the doctrines of exceptionalism that fueled the rise of both America and Israel."^[117]

Following the Charlie Hebdo murders in January 2015, David Bernstein in The Washington Post wrote Greenwald (in an Intercept article) "certainly appears to believe that Der Sturmer-like anti-Semitic cartoons are the moral and logical equivalent of making fun of Moses or Muhammed."^[118] In his Intercept article, Greenwald contrasted anti-Muslim cartoons with "some not-remotely-blasphemous-or-bigoted yet very pointed and relevant cartoons by the brilliantly provocative Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff", a cartoonist, Petra Marquandt-Bigman wrote in The Jerusalem Post, who has been accused of producing antisemitic images.^[119]

Julian Assange

In a November 2018 Guardian article Luke Harding and Dan Collyns cited anonymous sources which stated that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2013, 2015, and 2016.^[120] Greenwald said that if Manafort had entered the Ecuadorian consulate there would be evidence from the surrounding cameras.^[121] Greenwald, a former contributor to The Guardian, stated that the paper "has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him."^[122]

Greenwald criticized the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 for his role in the 2010 publication of the Iraq War documents leak. Greenwald wrote in The Washington Post: "The Trump administration has undoubtedly calculated that Assange’s uniquely unpopular status across the political spectrum [in the United States] makes him the ideal test case for creating a precedent that criminalizes the defining attributes of investigative journalism."^[123]

Jair Bolsonaro

In October 2018, Greenwald said that Bolsonaro was "often depicted wrongly in the Western media as being Brazil's Trump, and he's actually much closer to say Filipino President Duterte or even the Egyptian dictator General el-Sisi in terms of what he believes and what he's probably capable of carrying out."^[124]

Greenwald said that Bolsonaro could be a "good partner" for President Trump "If you think that the U.S. should go back to kind of the Monroe Doctrine as [National Security Adviser] John Bolton talked openly about, and ruling Latin America, and U.S. interests".^[125]

Greenwald has faced death threats and homophobic harassment from Bolsonaro supporters due to his reporting on leaked Telegram messages about Brazil's Operation Car Wash and Bolsonaro's justice minister Sérgio Moro.^[80] President Bolsonaro threatened Greenwald with possible imprisonment. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism condemned Bolsonaro's threats.^[126]

In January 2020, Brazilian federal prosecutors charged Greenwald with cybercrimes, alleging he was part of a "criminal organization" that hacked into the cellphones of prosecutors and other public officials in 2019. Prosecutors said he played a "clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime" by, for example, encouraging hackers to delete archives in order to cover their tracks. Greenwald, who was not detained, called the charges "an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro and the Bolsonaro government."^[127] In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the charges against Greenwald, citing a ruling from Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes that shielded him.^[93]

Immigration

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2021)

In 2005, Greenwald criticized illegal immigration, saying that it would result in a "parade of evils". He subsequently disavowed that belief.^[128][129]

Reception

Greenwald has been placed on numerous "top 50" and "top 25" lists of columnists in the United States.^[139] In June 2012, Newsweek magazine named him one of America's Top Ten Opinionists, saying that "a righteous, controlled, and razor-sharp fury runs through a great deal" of his writing, and: "His independent persuasion can make him a danger or an asset to both sides of the aisle."^[140]

 

Greenwald in Auckland, New Zealand, September 2014

Josh Voorhees, writing for Slate, reported that in 2013 congressman Peter King (R-NY) suggested Greenwald should be arrested for his reporting on the NSA PRISM program and NSA leaker Edward Snowden.^[141] Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin said "I would arrest [Snowden] and now I'd almost arrest Glenn Greenwald",^[142] but later made an apology for his statement, which Greenwald accepted.

 

Standing ovation for Greenwald, Germany, December 2014

In a February 2014 interview, Greenwald said he risked detention if he reentered the U.S., but insisted that he would "force the issue" on principle, and return for the "many reasons" he had to visit, including if he won a prestigious award of which he was rumoured to be the winner.^[143] Later that month, it was announced that he was, in fact, among the recipients of the 2013 Polk Awards, to be conferred April 11, 2014 in Manhattan.^[144] In a subsequent interview, Greenwald stated he would attend the ceremony.^[145] On April 11, Greenwald and Laura Poitras accepted the Polk Award in Manhattan. Their entry into the United States was trouble-free and they traveled with an ACLU attorney and a German journalist "to document any unpleasant surprises". Accepting the award, Greenwald said he was "happy to see a table full of Guardian editors and journalists, whose role in this story is much more integral than the publicity generally recognizes".^[146] On April 14, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded jointly to The Guardian and The Washington Post for revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the NSA. Greenwald, along with Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, had contributed to The Guardian′s reporting.^[147]

In 2014, Sean Wilentz in The New Republic, commented that some of Greenwald's opinions are where both meet, the far-left and far-right.^[148] In a 2017 article in The Independent, Brian Dean wrote: "Greenwald has been critical of Trump, but is perceived by many as someone who spends far more time criticising 'Dems' and 'liberals' (analysis of his Twitter account tends to give this impression)."^[149] Simon van Zuylen-Wood in a 2018 piece for New York magazine entitled "Does Glenn Greenwald Know More Than Robert Mueller?" described "a new-seeming category of Russia-skeptic firebrands sometimes called the alt-left."^[150] In February 2019, Max Boot wrote in The Washington Post: "Indeed, it’s often hard to tell the extremists apart. Anti-vaccine activists come from both the far left and the far right — and while most of those who defend President Trump's dealings with Russia are on the right, some, such as Glenn Greenwald and Stephen F. Cohen, are on the left."^[151] In a May 2019 Haaretz article, Alexander Reid Ross described Tucker Carlson's and Glenn Greenwald's positions as being a "crossover between leftists and the far-right in defense of Syria's Bashar Assad, to dismiss charges of Russian interference in U.S. elections and to boost Russian geopolitics".^[152]

Personal life

In 2005, a 37-year old Greenwald left his law practice in New York and took a long vacation to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he met 19-year old David Miranda, an orphan who lived in a slum.^[153] Days after they met, the couple decided to move in together, and wed shortly thereafter.^[154] Miranda now serves as a Congressman with the left-wing PSOL party.^[153] The couple live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.^[155][154] They formally adopted two sons in Brazil in 2018.^[156] In 2017, Greenwald and Miranda announced that they had gained legal guardianship of the brothers, who are from Maceió, a city in Northeastern Brazil.^{[157][better source needed][158]}

Greenwald is a vegan and an advocate for animal rights.^{[159][160][161]} He and Miranda have 24 rescue dogs.^[49][162] In March 2017, Greenwald announced plans to build a shelter with Miranda for stray pets in Brazil that would be staffed by homeless people.^[163] In March 2018, Greenwald tweeted videos showing the shelter operating.^[164]

Greenwald and Miranda were close personal friends of Brazilian human rights advocate and politician Marielle Franco, known for criticism of police tactics and corruption, who was fatally shot by unknown assailants.^[165][166] A New York Times profile described how Greenwald's reporting on high-level Bolsonaro officials and Miranda's outspoken opposition in Congress turned them into primary targets of Bolsonaro's administration.^[81]

While Greenwald does not participate in any organized religion, he has said he believes in "the spiritual and mystical part of the world" and that yoga is "like a bridge into that, like a window into it."^[167] Greenwald has been critical of the New Atheist movement, in particular, Sam Harris and other critics of Islam.^[168]

Awards

 

Geschwister-Scholl-Award for Greenwald, University of Munich, December 2014

Greenwald received, together with Amy Goodman, the first Izzy Award for special achievement in independent media, in 2009,^[169] and the 2010 Online Journalism Award for Best Commentary for his investigative work on the conditions of Chelsea Manning.^[170]

His reporting on the National Security Agency (NSA) won numerous other awards around the world, including top investigative journalism prizes from the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting,^[171] the 2013 Online Journalism Awards,^[172] the Esso Award for Excellence in Reporting in Brazil for his articles in O Globo on NSA mass surveillance of Brazilians (becoming the first foreigner to win the award),^[173] the 2013 Libertad de Expresion Internacional award from Argentinian magazine Perfil,^[174] and the 2013 Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[175] The team that Greenwald led at The Guardian was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their reporting on the NSA.^[176] Foreign Policy Magazine then named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013.^[177]

In 2014 Greenwald received the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, an annual German literary award, for the German edition of No Place to Hide.^[178] Greenwald was also named the 2014 recipient of the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of Georgia.^[179]

Books

.

Did you just quote me the dudes Wikipedia article? 
 

look, I know Glens always been a ‘contrarian’ and received journalism awards 10+ years ago, and that you personally think the guys one of the best journalists of our age, but none of that changes the fact that the dudes just gone kind of nuts now, and hasn’t been relevant for a number of years. He writes trumped up, exaggerated fan fiction for his audience of right wing grifters and disillusioned Bernie bros that would rather see the Democratic Party die than to see progressives succeed. 
 

He’s mostly given up his journalistic roots and learned he can make a killing by being the ‘progressive voice’ that tells the MAGA folks everything they want to hear. He’s one of Fox News’ greatest assets. Every subtack article he writes gets its own Foxnews.com article, he’s on weekly with scumbag blowhard Tucker Carlson because everything he writes or commentates on these days just so happens to completely follow the Right wing, nationalist narrative.

 

 He’s sold out..he’s a has been. 

[AUFAN78 3,780]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Damn, I actually go it right on the first call...lmao!

Edited March 19, 2022 by AUFAN78