The National Security Agency’s internal police immediately identified Edward Snowden as the leading suspect behind an intelligence leak after The Guardian published the first in a series of bombshell reports on sweeping surveillance programs, The Daily Beast reported Monday.
Citing “intelligence sources,” the report indicated that the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence — also known as “the Q group” — immediately recognized Snowden’s disappearance when he departed for Hong Kong in late-May. When The Guardian first published a top secret court order that requires Verizon to hand over phone records of millions of its customers, the 29-year-old NSA contractor was pegged as the likely source of the leak.
