Before Edward Snowden became the source of the NSA leaks he was living “in paradise.”
He worked for a major U.S. government contractor in Hawaii, earning a six-figure salary and enjoying the scenic state with his girlfriend.
He told The Guardian newspaper he never received a high school diploma, and didn’t complete his computer studies at a community college. Instead, he joined the Army in 2003 but was discharged after breaking both legs in an accident.
Snowden said he later worked as a security guard for the NSA and then took a computer security job with the CIA. He left that job in 2009 and moved on to Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked as a contractor for the government in Hawaii and somehow worked his way into the most secretive computers in U.S. intelligence as a defense contractor — only to blow those secrets wide open by spilling details of classified surveillance programs.
