| ® || 84 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS sonal manifesto alongside its story. As he envisioned it, the media event would also include a video component in which Greenwald would interview him. Greenwald agreed to this micromanaging, So Snowden said he would send him what he called a “welcome package” of documents to demonstrate his good faith. His plan also required a face-to-face meeting. Snowden told him, “The first order of business is to get you to Hong Kong.” The whole conversation lasted two hours, according to Greenwald. Snowden sent him twenty classified NSA documents labeled “Top Secret.” He also included in the package his personal manifesto, which asserted that the NSA was part of an international conspiracy of intelligence agencies that were working to “inflict upon the world a system of secret, pervasive surveillance from which there is no refuge.” Meanwhile, Snowden told Poitras he was sending her a number of NSA documents, including a FISA warrant that had been issued less than a month earlier. He wanted that FISA warrant to serve as the © basis of Greenwald’s scoop. It was perfect whistle-blowing material re) for The Guardian because it ordered Verizon to turn over all its bill- ing records for ninety days to the NSA. It was as close to a smoking gun as anything he had copied at the NSA. It would also get atten- tion because James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, had stated before Congress just two months earlier that the NSA did not collect phone data in America. This warrant would allow The Guard- ian, in the best tradition of gotcha journalism, to catch Clapper in an apparent lie. Continuing his string pulling, Snowden instructed Poitras not to show the FISA warrant to Greenwald until they were safely aboard a plane to Hong Kong. That would prevent Greenwald from releas- ing the story previously. He also sent Poitras an entire encrypted file of NSA documents, saying it would “include my true name and details for the record, though it