The controversial new movie “Snowden,” which is provocative director Oliver Stone’s take on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, was released in the United States on Friday. The release of the film, along with his recent departure from Booz Allen Hamilton, prompted Snowden’s former boss to speak out for the first time about his former employee. In an exclusive to The Cipher Brief, Steven Bay tells the story of his experience with Snowden, when they both worked as NSA contractors for Booz Allen Hamilton, just prior to Snowden fleeing the country.
The world’s attention was grabbed as a new hero to some, a villain to others, emerged on the morning of 9 June 2013 when Edward Snowden revealed himself as the individual who leaked information about highly classified National Security Agency (NSA) programs to the media. This revelation shook the intelligence apparatus of the United States, opened Americans’ eyes to the fact that they should be concerned about their privacy, and taught enemies and terrorists how to defeat U.S. intelligence capabilities. In the three years since, much has been written on these topics, but to date, little to nothing has been written about the impact Ed’s actions had on those who knew him and worked with him. Nor has there been an inside perspective of those involved with Ed just prior to his flight to Hong Kong or the search thereafter. What follows is my account of the search for Ed and my response to his unveiling on that June Sunday.
Ed was an employee of mine for only a month and half when he flew to Hong Kong. I knew Ed about as well as a boss could know an employee for that period of time. Long enough to know he was smart, technically expert, a few of his personality traits, and any health issues that would affect his performance. Leading up to his departure, Ed had told me he had epilepsy. Not the kind that caused seizures, but rather he would just kind of blackout. He started being late for work for “doctor’s appointments” or other health related issues.
At the conclusion of the week prior to his disappearance, he told me he had two full days of medical tests on the next Monday and Tuesday. If they went bad he would not be able to work and would need to take time off. Naturally, they went bad. He emailed me that Tuesday and said as much. I asked him to contact HR and get short-term disability in place. The next day he emailed me and said he would. That was the last I ever heard from him.
At the time I certainly did not suspect anything sinister; even through the next 18 or so days while we were looking for him, the thought that he was anything other than sick never crossed my mind.
I started getting worried as the end of May approached. Time sheets were due, and I had not heard from him in a week, despite multiple emails and phone calls. He was completely unresponsive. The day I submitted time sheets I contacted my boss in Georgia and explained to him the situation. He was concerned both about Ed’s well-being and the fact we had an employee with a Top Secret security clearance missing. He contacted NSA security that weekend and reported it.
The NSA security rep at the Hawaii facility contacted me that next Monday morning and informed me that while typically NSA security does not get involved when someone is on medical leave, they were going to help me look for him, because we are close-knit family in Hawaii, and they too were concerned about his well-being. I suspect, though I have zero evidence of it, that they knew far more than they let on.
And so the hunt began. I did not spend every minute of every day looking for him but spent a few hours a day calling him, emailing, driving by his house, asking people who knew him if they had seen him, etc. I was worried that while driving around the island, he had an epileptic episode and drove off of a cliff and was dead somewhere.
While I was doing my own search, I was in contact with NSA security officers a few times each day. They too were searching the island with far more resources than I had at my disposal. From what I could gather, they were taking a more methodical, almost investigative approach to the search. Of course, nothing we did bore any fruit that I could tell.
On Wednesday of that week, the Guardian released its story about NSA’s Prism program. Despite this leak and others, the idea that Ed could be the one releasing this information was preposterous to me. Even on Saturday, the day before he revealed himself, I was discussing the hunt with a close friend. He suggested the idea of Ed’s involvement when he essentially said, “wouldn’t it be crazy if it was Ed leaking all of this?” To which I scoffed and said along the lines of, “that would be my worst nightmare, but no way. Not a chance. Ed would never do anything like that.” Little did I know that the next morning would change the course of my life and put everything I worked for and ever loved in jeopardy.
I woke up early to attend a leadership meeting at Church. My attention in the meeting was frequently distracted with the events of the week. When the meeting ended, I turned on my phone and everything changed. My phone had blown up with missed calls and text messages. The first text I read was from my friend that I chatted with the previous day. It simply read, “Looks like your worst nightmare came true. Wasn’t Ed your employee?” I knew immediately what he meant. I hopped on the Internet, and there was Ed’s face staring at me. I was filled with a flood of emotions. I found an empty room in the Church and melted down; I just knelt there and cried and prayed.
I gathered my composure enough to drive home, though still in a panic. I pulled my wife into our bedroom and broke down again. I cried on her shoulder, and all I remember saying was, “It’s him,” over and over. She just held me and comforted me as my thoughts were increasingly more radical. Initially, I was just shocked. I was in disbelief. How could this be? Is this even real? Then a spiral of panic ensued. I convinced myself that I was going to be the fall guy, that I was going to go jail, lose my family, lose my job. Somehow, someone who needed a scapegoat would conger up some “evidence” tying me to this, and so on. I thought about my other employees; would they be blamed too? About my company and how it would affect them. About the Agency and the impact these revelations would have on them and wondered if lives would be lost because of it. I blamed myself and put all of that on my shoulders in that first hour after learning the truth.
Shortly thereafter, cooler heads prevailed, and I dove into responding. There were many meetings with Booz Allen leadership, FBI, NSA security, clients at work, etc. I believe my team, my company, and I responded as best we could, and we made the most out of a terrible situation. I also learned of other people who were affected by this at the agency. There were others who had known Ed personally and had taken the news equally as hard. The reality is, there was no one that I knew at NSA-Hawaii who was not somehow personally affected, even if they had never met Ed.
For me, I was a central, though anonymous figure in one of the biggest national security crises in U.S. history. It changed the course of my life. I went through periods of immense stress and hardship. I lost my access to the NSA, was nearly laid-off at Booz Allen, and faced unemployment without any prospect of a future job. I did not know how I was going to support my wife and kids or even where we would live. All of this caused incredible strain on my family that has proved to be nearly destructive.
At the same time, with significant challenges come new opportunities. I was saved from being laid-off as I moved to Booz Allen’s commercial cybersecurity consulting team. This opened new doors in the private-sector that may never have come to pass otherwise. Today, the future is an open-book; fraught with risk but lined with opportunity. The Snowden incident is one from which I will forever experience some level of repercussion.
Steven Bay left Booz Allen Hamilton earlier this year after nine years with the management consulting firm. He joined BAH in 2007 to work on a contract for the National Security Agency, and in 2011, was transferred to Hawaii to run its local NSA team. Bay started his career in the Air Force as a Persian Farsi linguist. He was stationed at Ft Meade, Maryland where he translated Persian documents and later became a digital network intelligence analyst. He currently works in private industry.
