exclusive alternatives. The point is to assure that any alternative that

150 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS exclusive alternatives. The point is to assure that any alternative that fits the relevant facts, no matter how implausible it may initially seem to be, is not neglected. One of the most vexing problems that had to be explained by these scenarios is how Snowden got the passwords to up to twenty-four of these vaults. He could not have obtained these passwords during his previous employment at Dell, because Dell technicians did not have access to the Level 3 documents stored in these compartments. Nor, as noted earlier, was he given access to them when he transferred to Booz Allen, because he had not completed the requisite training. Snowden had also, it will be recalled, relinquished his privileges as a system administrator when he transferred to Booz Allen, so he did not have the privilege to override password protection. In short, his new position as an infrastructure analyst did not give him the ability to enter compartments that he had not yet been read into. As I've said, there are two possible ways he could have gotten these passwords: either he had assistance from a party who had access to them, or he found flaws in the NSA’s security procedures © that left the supposedly closed vaults effectively unlocked. ® The Unwitting Accomplice Possibility It is possible that if Snowden received assistance, it was entirely unwitting. He might have obtained some passwords through decep- tion, such as tricking co-workers into typing their passwords into a device that captured them. As the NSA informed Congress in 2014, three of his fellow workers told the FBI that Snowden might have deceived them to gain access to their passwords. He could have simply asked other analysts at the center who had been read into compartments for their passwords. Such an approach would be extremely risky for the analyst, who could lose his job and security clearance by cooperating. It could also be risky for Snowden because any analyst he approached was supposed to report any request for a password to a security officer. Making such requests even more suspicious, Snowden had been working at the Threat Operations Center for just a few weeks as a trainee and was not well known to | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 150 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019638