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A groundbreaking exposé that convincingly challenges the popular image of Edward Snowden as hacker turned avenging angel, while revealing how vulnerable our national security systems have become--as exciting as any political thriller, and far more important.

After details of American government surveillance were published in 2013, Edward Snowden, formerly a subcontracted IT analyst for the NSA, became the center of an international controversy: Was he a hero, traitor, whistle-blower, spy? Was his theft legitimized by the nature of the information he exposed? When is it necessary for governmental transparency to give way to subterfuge? Edward Jay Epstein brings a lifetime of journalistic and investigative acumen to bear on these and other questions, delving into both how our secrets were taken and the man who took them. He makes clear that by outsourcing parts of our security apparatus, the government has made classified information far more vulnerable; how Snowden sought employment precisely where he could most easily gain access to the most sensitive classified material; and how, though he claims to have acted to serve his country, Snowden is treated as a prized intelligence asset in Moscow, his new home.

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EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN is an investigative journalist who earned his PhD under James Q. Wilson and Edward Canfield at Harvard. He has taught political science at MIT and UCLA. He is the author of many books, including Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, News From Nowhere: Television and the News, and Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, and has written for publications including The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.

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