95 Poitras and Gellman were not the only journalists involved in the news event. Poitras also asked the hacktavist Jacob Appelbaum to help her interview Snowden about the NSA’s operations. She later said that she needed someone with technical expertise in government surveillance to test the bona fides of Citizen 4. She believed that Appelbaum, who had participated in her anti-NSA presentations in 2012, qualified for the position. As it turns out, Appelbaum was already known to Snowden. Appelbaum had communicated with Snowden under his Oahu Crypto party alias about an obscure piece of software just a few after Snowden had met with Runa Sandvik in Hawaii in 2012. Appelbaum, after all, was Sandvik’s long-time ally in developing the use of TOR software. However he learned about him, Snowden allowed Appelbaum to put to him detailed questions to concerning the secret operations of the NSA before he met with Poitras and Greenwald in Hong Kong. Indeed, Poitras joined him in asking Snowden via encrypted emails, such questions as: “What are some of the big surveillance programs that are active today and how do international partners aid the NSA?” “Does the NSA partner with other nations, like Israel?” and “Do private companies help the NSA?” Snowden answered them all to the satisfaction of Appelbaum and Poitras. (The interview was published on June16, 2013 with Snowden’s approval on the website of Der Spiegel, the German weekly, which had also published the Wikileaks documents.) Even though the days were ticking away while Snowden was waiting for him in Hong Kong, Greenwald still had to overcome a final hurdle at the Guardian. He needed to get a green light to go to Hong Kong from Janine Gibson, the editor of the Guardian website, who was based in New York. Under Gibson’s leadership, the Guardian's website effectively “gone into the business of publishing government secrets,” as Guardian columnist Michael Wolff pointed out. Most of these secrets had been supplied by Mannin