The last document from the Snowden archive was published on 29 May 2019. Major news outlets like The Guardian stopped publishing documents in February 2014, Der Spiegel in January 2015, and The New York Times and ProPublica in August 2015. Subsequently, The Intercept was the primary publisher, with few exceptions, until it closed its archive in March 2019. Eleven weeks later, on 29 May 2019, it released the final batch of documents. Since then, no news outlet, journalist, or institution has published any document from the Snowden archive.
Edward Snowden began contacting journalists months before he had any material to share. In December 2012, he reached out to Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, asking him to set up a secure communication channel, though Greenwald lacked the knowledge to do so. After a failed attempt in January, Snowden contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who then collaborated with investigative journalist Barton Gellman.
Snowden gradually shared the archive. On 31 March 2013, he sent Poitras an encrypted file named astro_noise, which she downloaded but could not open without a key. On 10 May, Snowden mailed a package from Hawaii to a Brooklyn address provided by Poitras. The package went to journalist Jessica Bruder, who passed it unopened to Dale Maharidge, and then to Poitras on 15 May.
On 21 May 2013, Snowden provided Poitras and Gellman with the keys to an encrypted archive called Pandora, containing approximately 50,000 documents.
In late May, Snowden warned Poitras about a "single point of failure" and urged her to distribute copies. She sent three. One went to Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation with instructions to hold it and only give it to Greenwald if requested in person. Another went to an individual who wished to remain anonymous, and the third to an unknown recipient. Maharidge retained a copy himself. It remains unclear if recipients other than Poitras, Gellman, and Greenwald could access the documents, as the copies were likely encrypted and they may not have possessed the keys.
Greenwald received the Pandora copy from Poitras on 1 June 2013, reading it for the first time on his flight to Hong Kong. Guardian journalist Ewen MacAskill was handed GCHQ material in Hong Kong and brought it to the Guardian's London office. Der Spiegel obtained its archive from Poitras that summer, while The New York Times and ProPublica received theirs from The Guardian.
Greenwald stated on 13 March 2019 that he and Poitras "individually and independently, continue to possess full copies of the archive, as do other individuals and institutions." Poitras mentioned in 2022 that the archive "still exists, and there is still more to report," describing "a vast amount of information that hasn't been reported of enormous contemporary and historical significance." Greenwald stated in 2023 that the archive contains "hundreds of thousands of documents, if not more." However, neither has published anything from it in seven years, nor explained why.
The Guardian
Snowden provided a substantial portion of the archive, containing "tens of thousands of documents," to Scottish journalist Ewen MacAskill in Hong Kong. In the film Citizenfour, Snowden is shown giving GCHQ material to MacAskill in a Hong Kong hotel room, describing it as originating from the agency's internal wiki at a highly classified level. MacAskill brought his copy to The Guardian's London office. The Guardian later stated that its archive contained around 58,000 documents.
The Guardian published its first Snowden story on 6 June 2013. The following day, UK defence officials issued a confidential D notice to major British media outlets, attempting to censor coverage of surveillance tactics by intelligence agencies.
The DPBAC committee (Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee) managed the DA-Notice system, a voluntary arrangement dating back to 1912, where news organizations consulted the Ministry of Defence before publishing material related to national security. In 2013, the secretary was Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance.
Studies in 2018 by Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay from Bangor University noted that most British outlets privileged political sources defending security services and mass surveillance. Outlets like The Daily Mail, Mirror, Star, Telegraph, Sun, and Times were coded as pro-surveillance, while only the Independent, the i, and the People leaned the other way. The Guardian and the Express were balanced. This meant that citizens' privacy rights and surveillance regulation were minimally discussed, while mass surveillance was normalized as necessary for national security. Themes included social media companies needing to do more to fight terrorism, and increased surveillance of the public, while surveillance of politicians was deemed problematic.
The Daily Mail, which published numerous articles on Snowden, focused on his lifestyle and sexual appeal, tactics seen as designed to discredit him or divert attention from the GCHQ revelations.
Following pressure from Downing Street and Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, three Guardian executives destroyed the computers holding their London-based archive on 20 July 2013, six weeks after their first Snowden story. Two GCHQ technicians supervised the destruction. The paper kept this action secret, only making it public on 19 August.
Paul Johnson, then deputy editor of The Guardian and one of those who destroyed the computers, called it "purely a symbolic act," as the government knew the material had been shared with The New York Times, and reporting would continue.
The DPBAC committee's minutes from the same period indicate that The Guardian had initially avoided engaging with the DA-Notice system but later began seeking and accepting DA Notice advice not to publish certain sensitive details.
The Guardian's then editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger stated on 3 December 2013 that the paper had published 26 documents and did not expect to publish many more. He mentioned over 100 contacts with UK and US government agencies during the preceding six months and could not specify how many of the 58,000 documents had been read.
Rusbridger told the Home Affairs Committee that The Guardian had consulted authorities on all but one of its roughly 35 stories. He noted collaboration with Vallance, who had visited The Guardian to speak with reporters. Rusbridger's account suggests Vallance rarely objected to stories. Barton Gellman wrote that The Guardian "killed some of its stories for legal reasons and delayed others for months."
On 27 February 2014, The Guardian published its last Snowden documents, having released approximately 30 of the 58,000 documents it held (0.05%). Rusbridger later described this as the story with the biggest global impact in the paper's history.
Publication of documents ceased in February 2014, but reporting continued. For instance, in January 2015, The Guardian reported that GCHQ had intercepted emails of journalists at major international outlets. In June 2015, it published a joint investigation with The New York Times into GCHQ's role in US drone strikes, using documents provided by Snowden to The Guardian and shared with The New York Times. This indicates that even sixteen months after its last document publication, The Guardian was still analyzing the archive and collaborating with its US partner, but chose not to release further documents.
In May 2014, the DPBAC committee chair reported strengthened engagement with The Guardian, culminating in the appointment of Paul Johnson, The Guardian's deputy editor, as a DPBAC member.
Jacob Appelbaum, who worked on the archive and published extensively, sharply criticized The Guardian in March 2016 for consulting with the White House and GCHQ for line-by-line redactions, suggesting they ceded editorial control to the state and acted as "stenographers."
Rusbridger's 2018 book Breaking News details the Snowden era but concludes the reporting ended with the clause, "Once the Snowden coverage had died down," lacking explanation for the cessation. MacAskill attributed the end of publication to waning interest and declining readership for each story.
This contrasts with The Guardian's editor's account. The paper won a Pulitzer for its Snowden reporting and its website's traffic surged, with Rusbridger attributing this to fulfilling journalism's core purpose and a global appetite for serious news. He concluded there was a significant need for such reporting.
Der Spiegel continued publishing documents until 2015, and The Intercept until 2019. The cessation of publication by The Guardian in February 2014 was not due to a lack of material or readership.
Rusbridger and MacAskill stated that Snowden initially requested reporting focus on surveillance and privacy, not the wartime use of intelligence. MacAskill mentioned Rusbridger asking him to review material at The New York Times for stories if that restriction was lifted, but Rusbridger rejected them, deeming them less explosive than the original stories and adhering to the agreement with Snowden.
There is ambiguity regarding The Guardian's copies. Rusbridger stated the paper was "left with the dossier intact — in New York," referring to The Guardian's New York office. However, when MacAskill reviewed remaining material, he went to The New York Times, which still held the files. MacAskill currently mentions only the copy at The New York Times as being held responsibly by The Guardian.
The Guardian shared its archive with The New York Times and ProPublica under an agreement that prevented them from using the archive for stories unrelated to Snowden's primary focus on surveillance and civil liberties. Appelbaum claimed The Guardian held ProPublica under a gag order, preventing publication of documents related to Afghanistan and Iraq, including war crimes.
In August 2026, The Guardian's press office stated they had nothing new to share and did not routinely comment on editorial decision-making regarding issues from over a decade ago.
The Washington Post
Barton Gellman holds a significant portion of the full archive, having received a copy with Poitras from Snowden on 21 May 2013, containing over 50,000 documents. Gellman took a copy to The Washington Post's New York office in May 2013. After he left The Washington Post in 2014, the newspaper stopped publishing Snowden documents.
Gellman stated in 2020 that his "material is now in cold storage, as secure and inaccessible as I could devise." In 2022, he agreed with Poitras that the archive would be "really valuable for constructive research," but the operational security required for sharing it was too difficult.
Gellman described The Washington Post's security measures: dedicated computers with wiped, encrypted drives, physically isolated networking hardware, a windowless room with a high-security lock, a reinforced door, and a heavy safe. Access required four credentials held by different team members, with Gellman holding all four. The room had a high-security lock, a camera outside, and a four-hundred-pound safe. Gellman kept a second safe at his New York office.
Working with technologist Ashkan Soltani, they prepared laptops by removing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and batteries, ensuring instant shutdown and encryption if unplugged. USB ports were sealed, and keys were removed from the room. Gellman applied epoxy and glitter to laptop screws and tested ultraviolet powder on the safe's dial for tampering. He stored notes on encrypted volumes requiring five passphrases, losing access to some files due to forgetting one.
The Washington Post published its last Snowden documents in July 2014, releasing approximately 30 documents (0.06% of the archive).
By late autumn 2015, Gellman and Soltani had stopped writing articles for the newspaper. Soltani returned an encryption key fob and ended his involvement.
The New York Times and ProPublica
Both The New York Times and ProPublica received material from The Guardian in 2013 under specific conditions. Neither held the full archive, nor disclosed the amount received.
The New York Times and ProPublica published a few documents between 2014 and 2015. Their last joint investigation was published on 15 August 2015. Neither has published a Snowden document since, nor explained why. Both stopped immediately after a substantial joint investigation, ten weeks after Rusbridger left The Guardian.
There is an unconfirmed account that Jeff Larson, who contributed to ProPublica's 2014 piece on the Mumbai attacks, reported that partners who supplied files under conditions wanted the account steered to omit important parts. Larson was reportedly able to report freely only after obtaining original material directly from Poitras and Appelbaum.
ProPublica did not respond to inquiries about whether it still holds Snowden material, if it is subject to approval requirements, or why publication ceased.
Der Spiegel
German journalists Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark of Der Spiegel published a book, Der NSA-Komplex, in 2014 detailing how they obtained their material. They initially sought access via Greenwald, meeting him in Rio in mid-June 2013. Greenwald, visibly shaken by a recent house break-in, provided them with drives but indicated they would need to obtain documents concerning Germany through other means.
Returning to Berlin, Rosenbach and Stark approached Poitras, who had heard of their trip and knew them from previous WikiLeaks reporting. They proposed collaborating on stories for Der Spiegel, with Poitras as co-author. She was a byline on the paper's first Snowden cover story on 1 July and subsequent articles.
Der Spiegel engaged in weekly confrontations with the NSA, discussing reporting details via email and conference calls. They described withholding material, stating, "It cannot be the aim of critical journalism to play into the hands of the opponents and declared enemies of democracies, or to do the business of other intelligence services." They refrained from publishing sensitive information after extensive deliberation on the boundaries of public interest.
Der Spiegel published approximately 140 documents across eighteen stories between July 2013 and January 2015. Its final releases were in December 2014 and January 2015.
Der Spiegel has not explained why it stopped publishing documents.
The Intercept
In Hong Kong in 2013, Snowden advised journalists to distribute the material widely, ensuring it was never held by a single person, to avoid being targeted as the "weakest link." Greenwald, Poitras, and MacAskill were to ensure "people you can trust" held copies.
Within weeks, Greenwald and Poitras agreed that only they would have complete copies to protect the material, avoid legal entanglements, and maintain control over collaborating outlets. Others received partial copies. Greenwald stated in late August 2013 that only he and Poitras had access to the full set of documents provided to journalists. The New York Times and ProPublica received only GCHQ material, and Gellman received a substantial subset related to the NSA.
In October 2013, tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar founded First Look Media (FLM), a nonprofit, with Greenwald, Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill, promising $250 million in funding. FLM's publication, The Intercept, launched on 10 February 2014, with the stated purpose of reporting on the Snowden documents.
Critics, like Mark Ames in November 2013, argued that significant secrets had become dependent on a single billionaire's goodwill.
FLM hired Lynn Dombek as research director in April 2014, Morgan Marquis-Boire as director of security in June 2014, and Erinn Clark as lead security architect in September 2014. They established a SCIF (secure compartmented information facility) in Manhattan, featuring double doors requiring two keyholders, dual-operator computers, and strict protocols for accessing and burning archive material.
FLM's 2014 and 2015 tax returns did not list research or security activities, despite The Intercept publishing around 256 documents from the archive during 2014-15.
On 16 May 2016, The Intercept announced it would publish the NSA's internal newsletter and open the archive to outside journalists and researchers. Greenwald stated there were "still many documents of legitimate interest to the public that can and should be disclosed," encouraging others to find stories.
In 2016, FLM declared the Research and Security Group as a significant program service, comprising experts in research, security, engineering, and editorial roles, making documents available for inquiry and analysis in secure environments. In 2017, this group was a major program service, despite the organization's significant financial loss.
By the 2018 tax return, the Research and Security Group was described as part of The Intercept under the name Neptune.
The closure
On 4 March 2019, The Intercept's editor-in-chief Betsy Reed emailed Laura Poitras about restructuring and budget cuts. Two days later, Reed and Jeremy Scahill informed Poitras that four positions, including those maintaining the Snowden archive, were being eliminated, effectively closing the research department.
Poitras objected, arguing that eliminating the research department jeopardized the archive's security and breached the agreement under which FLM held the archive. She proposed solutions, including reducing her own salary to cover remaining staff costs.
On 10 March, Drew Wilson, FLM's CFO, informed Poitras that actions on the remaining two research staff positions would be paused pending a go-forward strategy. Poitras thanked him for pausing the elimination of positions impacting archive security.
On 12 March, Poitras was informed by Greenwald and Wilson that the archive would be shut down because it was no longer of value to The Intercept. Greenwald reportedly suggested the decision not be made public to avoid negative perception.
On 13 March, Poitras sent a memo to FLM's board urging intervention, noting she and the board had not been consulted. That day, CEO Michael Bloom emailed the company, citing the current business environment, painful decisions, and the need to focus on other editorial priorities. He mentioned that other major news outlets had ceased reporting on the archive years prior due to resource costs versus journalistic value of aging documents.
Poitras replied to Bloom, expressing dismay at the decision to eliminate the research team and shut down the archive without consultation. Her email leaked to the Daily Beast.
On 14 March, Poitras apologized to Snowden, who had not been informed. Greenwald issued a statement attributing the closure to financial constraints and his intent to seek other partners, particularly academic institutions, for continued publication. He also stated that other outlets had stopped reporting due to similar resource justifications as documents aged.
Five reasons were given for the closure over eleven days: budget cuts, lack of value to The Intercept, focus on other editorial priorities, financial constraints and seeking new partners, and later, a dispute between Betsy Reed and Laura Poitras regarding staff layoffs and archive security.
Laid-off staff were required to sign non-disclosure agreements.
The 2019 tax return showed FLM's net assets and program spending increased, with significant revenue and employee numbers. The Research and Security Group was no longer listed as a separate program service.
The Intercept continued publishing until 29 May 2019, releasing the final batch of SIDtoday documents and four related stories. This date marks the last publication of any Snowden document.
In February 2021, Greenwald stated that "nobody wanted to close the archive" and that the closure resulted from a dispute between Betsy Reed and Laura Poitras over archive security following staff layoffs. Jeremy Scahill, quoted in the same article, suggested Poitras placed unacceptable conditions on the archive's continued use.
Poitras countered that the conditions were part of an existing confidential agreement with FLM regarding archive security, and that cutting staff would breach it. FLM's general counsel stated that any suggestion of contract violation due to budgetary decisions was false.
Poitras updated her open letter, asserting her former colleagues made unsupported claims and that The Intercept's attempt to rewrite history was false. She argued that the closure, justified by shifting and conflicting reasons, occurred too quickly and without proper stakeholder consultation.
Micah Lee, The Intercept's director of information security, stated in 2021 that his team could have devised a plan to secure the archive and that a compromise was not seriously considered.
The arguments
The arguments presented for the closure—that remaining documents had lost journalistic value due to age and that other outlets had reached similar conclusions—warrant scrutiny as they form the accepted explanation for the archive's silence.
"The remaining documents have aged"
This argument posits that documents lose journalistic value over time, making continued publication unjustifiable by 2019. However, the most recent material dated from April 2013, meaning many documents were only six years old. Journalism often utilizes decades-old declassified documents for significant reporting, and the case for disclosure strengthens with time.
Greenwald and Poitras agreed the archive was no longer a "news" resource but a "historical asset." Greenwald described it as "far less of a news resource and far more of a historical asset." Poitras stated it "remains the most significant historical archive documenting the rise of the surveillance state in the twenty first century."
Greenwald and Bloom argued the archive lost journalistic value, implying it was no longer worth reporting on. The Intercept published documents until the end, with its final batch released on 29 May 2019, resulting in four stories. Similarly, The Guardian, The New York Times, and ProPublica stopped publishing documents after significant investigations.
Greenwald himself argued in May 2016 that "still many documents of legitimate interest to the public that can and should be disclosed," encouraging others to find stories. In June 2023, he described the archive as containing "hundreds of thousands of documents, if not more."
Estimates suggest only about 1% of the archive has been published, making the claim that the remaining 99% had lost journalistic value a confident assertion.
Appelbaum's 2022 doctoral thesis revealed previously unpublished findings, including the NSA listing chipmaker Cavium as a "SIGINT enabled" CPU vendor, NSA compromising Russia's SORM system, and NSA participation in IETF meetings to weaken protocol security. He explained that many documents remain unpublished because journalists fear legal repercussions or being perceived as disloyal, and that the archive should be opened to academic researchers.
"Other major media outlets stopped reporting as well"
This claim suggests The Intercept was merely the last to cease publication, following the lead of other outlets. Bloom noted that larger newsrooms "ceased reporting on it years ago," finding the resources unjustified by the journalistic value of aging documents. Greenwald echoed this, attributing the cessation to cost reasons.
This outcome is accurate: The Guardian stopped in February 2014, Der Spiegel in January 2015, and The New York Times and ProPublica in August 2015. The Intercept became the primary publisher thereafter.
However, as an explanation, it is insufficient. The Guardian's account, via MacAskill, cites waning interest and declining readership, not aging documents. The argument that other outlets stopped due to cost and aging documents is presented as fact by Bloom and Greenwald, but lacks substantiation from the outlets themselves.
