Curator’s Corner: Dark Mirror with Barton Gellman

Edward Snowden touched off a global debate in 2013 when he gave Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras, and Glenn Greenwald each a vast and explosive archive of highly classified files revealing the extent of the American government’s access to our every communication. They shared the Pulitzer Prize that year for public service. For Gellman, who never stopped reporting, that was only the beginning. He jumped off from what Snowden gave him to track the reach and methodology of the US surveillance state and bring it to light with astonishing new clarity. Along the way, he interrogated Snowden’s own history and found important ways in which myth and reality do not line up.  

Join International Spy Museum Historian and Curator Andrew Hammond in conversation with Barton Gellman for a look at a true-life spy tale about the surveillance-industrial revolution and its discontents. Gellman told the story of his investigative reporting in the acclaimed 2020 book Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State which went far beyond the unique access he had to Snowden. Find out how the award-winning reporter pursued this story of a government leak unrivaled in drama since Watergate. It became so intense that Gellman’s life began to resemble a spy novel as he dealt with foreign intelligence agencies intent on stealing his files, visited top secret intelligence facilities, held clandestine meetings in Moscow hotel rooms, and received encrypted messages from anonymous accounts. 

Following their discussion, you’ll be able to ask questions via our online platform.

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