"Snowden & Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets"/Great Background from "Rolling Stone"

[KoKo]

Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets
How two alienated, angry geeks broke the story of the year"

For a man living in the middle of a John le Carré novel, Greenwald has a pretty good life. Based in Brazil since 2005, he lives about 10 minutes from the beach in the hills above Rio de Janeiro, in an airy, four-bedroom wood-and-glass house that backs directly into the jungle. There are monkeys, birds and a small waterfall, and with its sparse furnishing, the place has the feel of a treehouse. It also smells distinctly of dog – of which there are 10, rescued by Greenwald and his partner, David Miranda, whom Greenwald calls the "dog whisperer" for his Cesar Millan-like command over the pack. The dogs, which occupy every imaginable space there is, provide an ever-present backdrop to the couple's domesticity, following Greenwald and Miranda from room to room and, from time to time, breaking into exultant barks for no real reason (other than maybe just the fact that they live in paradise).

Contrary to his confrontational persona, Greenwald is actually quite sweet in person, apologizing for his car, a somewhat beat-up, doggy-smelling, red Kia with tennis clothes tossed in the back, and a Pink CD case on the dashboard that Greenwald, 46, is quick to explain belongs to Miranda, who is 28. "I still listen to all the stuff I liked in high school – Elton John, Queen," he says, shrugging, and then immediately wonders if it's weird that "music just never spoke to me all that much."

Politics, on the other hand, had a powerful hold on him from an early age. Originally from Queens, his family settled in South Florida, in the bland, cookie-cutter enclave of Lauderdale Lakes, then inhabited largely by ethnic, working-class families and wealthier Jewish retirees. The oldest of two, Greenwald was raised in a small house on the low-rent side of town, where his mother, "a typically 1960s-1970s housewife who married young and never went to college," as he says, ended up supporting her sons by working as a cashier at McDonald's, among other jobs.

Greenwald's childhood role model was his paternal grandfather, Louis "L.L." Greenwald, a local city councilman, and "sort of this standard 1930s Jewish socialist type," who crusaded on behalf of the poor against the voracious "condo bosses" who controlled the city. In high school, Greenwald ran a quixotic campaign for a city-council seat, which he lost, but not before scoring a "moral victory" by simply challenging his entrenched opponents. "The most important thing my grandfather taught me was that the most noble way to use your skills, intellect and energy is to defend the marginalized against those with the greatest power – and that the resulting animosity from those in power is a badge of honor."

This was useful advice for a gay teen growing up in the early 1980s, during the advent of AIDS, when "being gay was thought of, genuinely, as a disease, and so you just felt this condemnation and alienation and denunciation."

More at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/snowden-and-greenwald-the-men-who-leaked-the-secrets-20131204?page=1