Glenn Greenwald's new links to the CIA and FBI

And the disappearance of Edward Snowden...

There are not many journalists I still respect these days. The mainstream press has been co-opted to some degree for most of its existence, but in recent decades that process seems to have accelerated to a point that it’s hard to think of more than a handful of journalists under the age of 60 who one can trust to follow and tell the unvarnished truth wherever it leads them. From older generations there are still a few around, like Seymour Hersh who recently exposed the most likely story behind the sabotage of the Nordstream gas pipeline.¹

One exception to the general gloom appeared to be Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald was the journalist who Edward Snowden trusted enough to contact when exposing the mass surveillance architecture that the United States had built: to surveil its own citizens and everyone else on the planet with the help of its ‘Five Eyes’ partners (the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). That revelation probably put Snowden on the top of any hitlist that US intelligence agencies have and would no doubt have made Greenwald a target (of a different kind) for those same agencies.

Snowden attempted to get asylum in South American countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, but ultimately was trapped in transit in Russia and that is where he decided to stay. As far as we know, Snowden has been in Russia since 2013 - during which time he has been fairly, though irregularly, active on Twitter.²

On the face of it, Greenwald appears to have remained the same straight-shooting, critic and investigator he always was. In Brazil, where he has lived for some time, he helped to expose a conspiracy in the judicial system to remove then-president Lula Da Silva before the 2018 elections. The FBI was implicated in that conspiracy, which in a previous post I argued was part of a broader (successful) effort to undermine BRICS. Greenwald later resigned from the supposedly independent investigative group The Intercept due to what he said was editorial interference in his critical reporting on Joe Biden.

This is as impressive a track record as you could want.

But in recent years, a few things have been troubling me about Greenwald. One of the obvious ones has been his gradual drift towards the political right. But that can be explained away by his long-standing defence of free speech rights even when it means defending offensive speech. His proximity to Tucker Carlson is another, since as I argued in a previous piece: there is good reason to believe Carlson is a long-standing CIA operative.

Nevertheless, I was still willing to give Greenwald the benefit of the doubt. Until earlier this year, when links emerged (or were created) between him, the CIA and the FBI. That these links have gone almost entirely unreported and unremarked, and Greenwald has stayed completely quiet about them, is itself a huge red flag. One would have expected Greenwald’s peers in the mainstream press, for instance, to be thrilled at the opportunity to have a go at him for hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, there has been no trace of Snowden online since February: when he met Glenn Greenwald in person…

Greenwald, Rumble and the deputy directors of the CIA and FBI

One area of Greenwald’s commentary that I have paid some attention to has been his endorsement or criticism of online platforms. In particular, Greenwald has focused on the degree to which such platforms resist interference and censorship - especially from the US government. That’s a crucial issue for those of us wanting to really understand, or explain, what’s going on. And for choosing where we write and read. Inevitably, it’s not given any serious attention by the mainstream media outlets.

Greenwald was on Substack for some time and built up a large following. But in 2023 he moved his primary activity to a new initiative called Rumble, which intends to be a rival to YouTube.

Greenwald was very outspoken about his reasons: he argued that Rumble was the platform most resistant to censorship. The battle between Rumble and a supreme court judge in Brazil that has been going on since 2023 appears to support Greenwald’s view. But on closer inspection there is some very worrying evidence that suggests Rumble is far more embedded in the deep state than even its worst rivals.

One obvious concern on which public information is easily available, is that Rumble’s seed funding came from the likes of Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy, JD Vance, and Trump Media. Thiel of course being one of the founders of perhaps the most evil company on earth:

[Update: in that previous article I mentioned that I had considered buying Palantir when it was between $10 and $15/share but could not bring myself to do it for ethical reasons: it’s now at a $180/share - evil pays]

But the really startling pieces of evidence that inspired this article are the connections between Rumble, the CIA and the FBI. In the space of two months, the chief legal counsel of Rumble (Michael Ellis) was appointed deputy director of the CIA and one of the main founding hosts (Dan Bongino) was appointed deputy director of the FBI. So two senior figures at Rumble have become senior figures in the US intelligence services.

For those who don’t know much about intelligence agencies: it’s almost always the case that if someone moves into a senior position like that it means they have been working for the agency, or a similar one, for some time. If there is no public indication of that, then it means they have been doing so covertly.

In the case of Ellis, his association with the intelligence services is actually public knowledge and preceded his time at Rumble - which if anything makes Greenwald’s endorsements even more suspect. Ellis was legal counsel for the National Security Counsel and then became Senior Director for Intelligence. The reporting of his move, and million dollar payout, seems to have been limited to the legal press.

That is suspicious because it is surely a story of major public interest: the only reason the mainstream press would ignore it is because it would undesirably expose links between social medial platforms and the intelligence services.

The move of Bongino has received a little more coverage, but in a context where the media has been keen to downplay any past links to the intelligence agencies.

However, having had a background as police officer and then Secret Service agent before venturing into politics and podcasting, it seems entirely possible that Bongino has been doing covert work for an agency like the FBI. Again, the case of Tucker Carlson is informative.

Where does this leave us in relation to Greenwald? In my understanding of these issues from quite extensive reading of historical cases, it’s highly implausible [I’d guess 10% chance] that Greenwald could be linked to such people without in some way having been compromised by the ‘deep state’. And that means, unfortunately, his commentary should now be treated with a significant amount of suspicion. That he has failed to provide any critical or substantive commentary on these moves is itself a red flag.

And that brings us to the disappearance of Edward Snowden.

The disappearance of Snowden

Given the power of the agencies who want him captured, dead or alive, it has been prudent of Snowden to be careful and irregular in his public appearances and posts. The result has been that sometimes his accounts have gone silent for months at a time. But as far as I can tell, his latest period of silence is the longest - and it is entirely unexplained. Snowden has not tweeted since 31 January 2025.

Except that shortly before he went quiet, on the 25th of February 2025, Snowden met in person with Glenn Greenwald…presumably somewhere in Russia.

To put this in context, Snowden has not overtly appeared in person in public, as far as I know, with anyone since he went into his effective exile in Russia. He has only appeared virtually to give talks and presentations. So we have two unusual events: Snowden actually meeting up with someone in person and his then not tweeting for almost 6 months. And the person he met up with is someone who had ties to the now-deputy directors of the two agencies that wanted Snowden’s head…

One can only hope that these concerns are misplaced and Snowden reappears soon as his usual, unyieldingly critical self. Either way, I would suggest that he would be well-advised not to meet Greenwald again until the latter has done some serious explaining about his new friends in the US intelligence services. For the rest of us: Greenwald’s commentary should be scrutinised and treated with far greater scepticism than in the past.

Note: this post was edited after publication to include a screenshot of Greenwald’s announcement of his move from Substack to Rumble and a link to that post.

I would be happy to give Greenwald a right of reply if he would like one: it will be published here immediately after the main article. On two occasions I asked Greenwald about the appointment of Mike Ellis to the CIA but did not receive a reply.

1. In saying this, I am not saying you should trust everything Hersh produces: he’s really in the belly of power and it’s hard to stay fully independent in that context.

2. He has a Substack but has not published there for years: https://substack.com/@edwardsnowden