| ® || 130 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS per answered that the NSA did not knowingly “collect any type of data” on millions of Americans. Clapper’s answer was clearly untrue, but it did not mislead Senator Wyden or any other members of the Senate Intelligence Committee; Clapper had truthfully testified in a classified session of the committee earlier that week that the NSA did collect Americans’ telephone records. It was the American people who were being misled. Yet none of the senators on the committee corrected this obviously false answer. When Clapper realized he had misspoken, he could not publicly correct the record of the public ses- sion, because to do so would be revealing classified information he had sworn to protect. No doubt other intelligence officers find them- selves in a similar bind in discussing secret matters. This suggests that there is a risk in accepting statements made by the intelligence chiefs at face value. But Snowden also has a credibility problem. He has told numerous untruths, including some calculated to help him insinuate himself into the key positions from which he stole secrets and some calcu- lated to cover up the nature of his theft. For example, Snowden got © access in the spring of 2013 to the NSA’s super-secret computers that re) stored these electronic files by working at Booz Allen Hamilton. On his application to Booz Allen in March 2013, as we’ve seen, Snowden claimed to be in the process of completing a master’s degree at the University of Liverpool in computer security sciences. Snowden had not completed a single course there and purposely lied to get access to classified documents and then to get safely away with them. He was also not entirely truthful with the journalists whose trust he sought when it suited his purpose of protecting himself. For example, as we have seen, in contacting Laura Poitras under the alias Citizen Four in January 2013, he told her that he was currently a “government employee,” although in fact