Snowden's Resumé Raised Questions, but Booz Allen Hired Him Anyway
As the private firm that vetted Edward Snowden in 2011 for the U.S. faces a criminal investigation, it looks like Booz Allen Hamilton hired the PRISM leaker despite noticing some discrepancies in his resumé. That's according to a scoop by Reuters, citing anonymous sources. The development indicates that pretty much everyone responsible for screening the former employee of the NSA contractor is facing fine-toothed scrutiny after a series of disclosures revealing some of the depth of the government's data collection programs.
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Reuters has few details on what exactly raised questions about Snowden, and how those questions were answered, presumably by Snowden himself. He'd previously gotten security clearance after a USIS investigation — they're a private firm hired by the U.S. to do background checks. Snowden had top-secret clearance. As Reuters notes, Snowden was just one of 480,000 contractors with that clearance level, so the U.S. is probably looking for a way to avoid a repeat performance.
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Meanwhile, there's been a development in Snowden's plan to avoid extradition, maybe: An Icelandic businessman offered to fly the whistleblower to his country in a private jet, should Iceland guarantee Snowden asylum. Previously, Wikileaks had pledged nebulous help to help Snowden accomplish the same mission. According to Reuters, the private jet-sending businessman runs a company that processed payments for Wikileaks back when other institutions cut off their access to donations.
