When he was working in the intelligence community in 2009, Edward Snowden, the U.S. National Security Agency contractor who passed top-secret documents to journalists, appears to have had nothing but disdain for those who leaked classified information, the newspapers that printed their revelations and his current ally, the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, newly disclosed chat logs show.
Snowden, who used the online handle "TheTrueHOOHA," was particularly upset by a January 2009 New York Times article that reported on a covert program to subvert Iran's nuclear infrastructure, according to the logs, which were published Wednesday by Ars Technica, a technology news website.
"They're reporting classified (expletive)," Snowden wrote. "You don't put that (expletive) in the NEWSPAPER." At the time of the posting, in January 2009, Snowden was 25 and stationed in Geneva by the CIA.