ment in the theft of state secrets in the first week of June. The FBI

136 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS ment in the theft of state secrets in the first week of June. The FBI is in charge of criminal investigations of civilian U.S. intelligence workers, even if the alleged crime occurs on an NSA base. The FBI immediately dispatched a task force of agents to investigate a poten- tial espionage case in Hawaii. When questioned, Lindsay Mills said Snowden was away on a business trip. After determining from airline and hotel data that he was in Hong Kong, the FBI realized Snowden was a possible intelligence defector. It froze his credit and bank cards. It also notified the passport office in the State Depart- ment and the legal attachés at the Hong Kong consulate. The legal attachés, who were actually FBI field agents posted in Hong Kong, located Snowden at the Mira hotel on June 8. On the evening of June 9, Snowden revealed in his twelve-minute video posted on the Guardian website that he was the source of the stolen NSA docu- ments. Because Hong Kong is part of China, U.S. law enforcement did not have the means to recover them. At that point, determining the magnitude of the theft of docu- ments became a critical concern of the investigation. Aside from the © few dozen documents published by The Guardian and The Washing- ® ton Post, what else had Snowden stolen? Within the next few days, a small army of forensic investigators from the FBI, the Defense Department, and the “Q” counterintel- ligence division of the NSA swarmed onto the NSA base in Hawaii. The proximate crime scene for their investigation was the National Threat Operations Center. They examined the cubicle where Snowden had last worked and then began retracing all his activi- ties at the NSA from 2009 to 2013. To begin with, they needed to find out how many documents from the center had been copied and taken by Snowden. Meanwhile, the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon’s own intelligence service) was kept partially in the dark. Although the NSA is officially part of the Department of Defense, it operated with a high degree of autonomy with its own inspector general, inves- tigative staff, and reporting channels. The DIA did not learn from the NSA that Snowden had stolen military documents concerning the joint Cyber Command until July 10. The number of stolen mili- tary documents from the Department of Defense was staggering. | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 136 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019624