Glenn Greenwald: the outsider: the anti-establishment journalist who midwifed the Edward Snowden revelations talks about surveillance, reporting, and new fault lines in American politics.

• Author: Krainin, Todd
• Position: Interview

GLENN GREENWALD might be the single most polarizing figure in American journalism. In the 12 months between May 2013 and May 2014, the self-made blogger, civil libertarian, and investigative journalist was called "treasonous" by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), given a prestigious Polk Award for national security reporting, accused of "paranoid libertarianism" by The New Republic, and awarded a Pulitzer Prize for public service. Along the way, the itinerant one-man shop left his job at The Guardian, wrote a book called No Place to Hide, and helped launch an intriguing if vaguely defined new digital magazine called The Intercept, backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and featuring fellow left-of-center muckrakers Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras.

Greenwald, 47, is the man most responsible for bringing the surveillance revelations of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden to light, in an ongoing series of articles buttressed by additional investigative corroboration. Snowden initiated the contact with Greenwald after reading his staunch, criticize-all-sides civil-liberties blogging at outlets such as Salon. To admirers, the two share an adherence to constitutional liberties so strong that they're willing to take on their own ideological bunkmates and live in exile from their homeland. (Greenwald resides in Brazil.) To detractors, they are part of a transnational movement to sabotage U.S. hegemony.

Central to Greenwald's ethos is his status as an outsider. A civil rights litigator by training, Greenwald switched careers to political commentary in the mid-'00s. He started a self-published blog called Unclaimed Territory, which leveled an acerbic critique at the Bush administration's civil liberties record and the Washington press corps that enabled it. In 2006 he wrote a book--published by the activist phone company Working Assets--called How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok. Improbably, it made The New York Times bestseller list and shot to No. 1 on Amazon.

In November, the Senate narrowly defeated the Snowden-inspired USA FREEDOM Act, which would have provided the first check in generations on the NSA's power to collect blanket information about American citizens. While criticized by some civil libertarians for not going far enough, the bill demonstrated that a few dedicated outsiders can influence the culture enough to at least make Washington sweat. For his unique contribution to American media and discourse, the Reason Foundation, which publishes reason, in November awarded Greenwald its second annual Lanny Friedlander Prize, which honors an individual or group who has created a publication, medium, distribution platform, or way of doing media that vastly expands human freedom by increasing people's ability to express themselves and engage in debate.

In September, Greenwald sat down with Reason TV producer Todd Krainin in Montreal to talk about surveillance, privacy, journalism, and the emerging left-right coalition on civil liberties. For the full video interview, go to reason.com.

reason: No Place to Hide reads in many ways like an All the President's Men for the 21st century, with you and Laura Poitras playing the role of Woodward and Bernstein. Where they differ is what really interests me. Even though it's a timeless tale, at the end of All the President's Men you have a president who resigns, you have people who go to jail, you have some measure of accountability. I don't quite know if we're at the end game with [your] scenario, but do you see that ever happening? Do you see some measure of accountability? Or today have things changed to such a degree that the government just acts with impunity?

Glenn Greenwald: I do. Even in Watergate, that took a relatively long time from the original disclosures to the point where Washington, the political class, took it seriously enough so that there was accountability. In fact, if you look at the first year and a half to two years of Watergate reporting, overwhelmingly the polling broke down on partisan lines, where Republicans were rather dismissive of the seriousness of what was being reported and Democrats were trying to exploit it for political gain. It was only once it reached a tipping point and prominent Republicans came out and said this is really wrong, and then the battle for the tapes, it all sort of unfolded the way we now remember it. But it took a good while. The nature of politically powerful people is that they have a lot of defenses and a lot of strength--by definition--and you don't deflate them or bring them down or hold them accountable easily. It's always a battle.

I do think there have been some very significant changes as a result of [our] reporting. There hasn't been a lot of legislation passed. But I never...