NSA Leak Reveals Involvement In Al Qaeda Killing
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Just when the NSA leaks were crawling their way out of mainstream media, another one is rearing its head.
Documents that Edward Snowden leaked to the Washington Post reveal that the agency had "extensive involvement" in the killing of al-Qaeda operative Hassan Ghul in 2012.
SEE ALSO: Obama Announces NSA Surveillance Results
Ghul was a colleague of Osama bin Laden and a key figure in the hunt for the al Qaeda leader; he was captured and detained in 2004, when he gave valuable intelligence regarding bin Laden's courier network. He was later killed by a drone strike in 2012, although the
U.S. has not publicly acknowledged involvement in his death.
The files suggest widescale NSA involvement in the drone program that has killed more than 3,000 people, according to the Post.
This information comes as officials announced that the director and deputy of the NSA will depart soon. Army General Keith Alexander is expected to leave by next spring, and his deputy John Inglis expects to retire by the end of the year. Neither have confirmed that their departing is a result of the recent surveillanece scandal.
Despite recent criticism on the agency's surveillance methods in its counter-terrorism program, the revelation of the NSA's involvement in Ghul's killing may help to bolster the argument that the agency's programs "help us prevent terrorist attacks," as President Obama stated in June.
The Washington Post article does not reveal whether it received this information from Snowden back in June, or whether these leaks are somehow more recent. The former seems more likely, given that Glenn Greenwald, the journalist from The Guardian who broke the NSA surveillance story in June, has said that the most revealing leaks have yet to be published.
“There are a lot more stories,” he said on Monday in Rio de Janeiro, where he lives, according to Time. “The archives are so complex and so deep and so shocking, that I think the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish.”
Read the full Washington Post article here.
Read more of Neon Tommy's NSA coverage here.
Reach Executive Producer Raishad Hardnett at hardnett@usc.edu or follow him on Twitter.
