Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author, and former lawyer.

Inspired by his grandfather's time on the then-Lauderdale Lakes City Council, Greenwald, still in high school, decided to run at the age of 17 for an at-large seat on the council in the 1985 elections.

He was unsuccessful, coming in fourth place with 7% of the total vote.

He received a B.A. in philosophy from George Washington University in 1990 and a J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1994.

His experiences on his college debate team influenced his career path.

"That developed, I think, a lot of the skills and interest that ended up guiding my future career," he said in an interview.

In 1991, Greenwald ran again, coming in third place with 18% of the vote.

After that, he stopped running for political office and instead focused on law school.

Greenwald practiced law in the litigation department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz from 1994 to 1995.

In 1996, Greenwald founded a law firm concentrating on First Amendment litigation.

In 1996, he co-founded his own litigation firm, Greenwald Christoph & Holland (later renamed Greenwald Christoph PC), where he litigated cases concerning issues of U.S. constitutional law and civil rights.

He worked pro bono much of the time, and his cases included representing white supremacist Matthew Hale in Illinois, who, Greenwald believed, was wrongly imprisoned, and the neo-nazi National Alliance.

Among the frequent topics of his Salon articles were the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks and the candidacy of former CIA official John O. Brennan for the jobs of either Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) or the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) after the election of Barack Obama.

Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for the post after opposition centered in liberal blogs and led by Greenwald.

He began blogging on national security issues in October 2005, when he was becoming increasingly concerned with what he viewed as attacks on civil liberties by the George W. Bush administration in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

He became a vocal critic of the Iraq War and has maintained a critical position of American foreign policy.

Later, according to Greenwald, "I decided voluntarily to wind down my practice in 2005 because I could, and because, after ten years, I was bored with litigating full-time and wanted to do other things which I thought were more engaging and could make more of an impact, including political writing."

In October 2005, he began his blog Unclaimed Territory focusing on the investigation pertaining to the Plame affair, the CIA leak grand jury investigation, the federal indictment of Scooter Libby and the NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07) controversy.

In April 2006, the blog received the 2005 Koufax Award for "Best New Blog".

According to Sean Wilentz in the New Statesman, Greenwald "seemed to take pride in attacking Republicans and Democrats alike".

Greenwald started contributing to Salon in 2007, and to The Guardian in 2012.

In February 2007, Greenwald became a contributing writer for the Salon website, and the new column and blog superseded Unclaimed Territory, although Salon featured hyperlinks to it in Greenwald's dedicated biographical section.

In a 2010 article for Salon, Greenwald described U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning as "a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives" and "a national hero similar to Daniel Ellsberg".

In an article for The Raw Story published in 2011, Greenwald criticized the prison conditions in which Manning was held after her arrest by military authorities.

Greenwald was described by Rachel Maddow during his period writing for Salon as "the American left’s most fearless political commentator."

In July 2012, Greenwald joined the American wing of Britain's Guardian newspaper, to contribute a weekly column and a daily blog.

Greenwald wrote on Salon that the move offered him "the opportunity to reach a new audience, to further internationalize my readership, and to be re-invigorated by a different environment" as reasons for the move.

Greenwald was initially contacted anonymously in late 2012 by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, who said he held "sensitive documents" that he wished to share.

In June 2013, while at The Guardian, he began publishing a series of reports detailing previously unknown information about American and British global surveillance programs based on classified documents provided by Edward Snowden.

About his work in First Amendment speech cases, Greenwald told Rolling Stone magazine in 2013, "to me, it's a heroic attribute to be so committed to a principle that you apply it not when it's easy ... not when it supports your position, not when it protects people you like, but when it defends and protects people that you hate".

His work contributed to The Guardian's 2014 Pulitzer Prize win and he was among a group of three reporters who won the 2013 George Polk Award.

In 2014, he cofounded The Intercept, of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020.

Greenwald subsequently started self-publishing on Substack.

The conversations appeared to show the investigative judge acting prejudicially towards Lula in the lead up to the 2018 elections.

Through The Intercept Brasil in June 2019, Greenwald published leaked conversations between senior officials involved in Operation Car Wash, a corruption case in Brazil.

Greenwald was charged with cybercrimes by Brazilian prosecutors over the leaks in January 2020, though the charges were dismissed by a federal judge a month later.

Greenwald was born in Queens in New York City to Arlene and Daniel Greenwald.

Greenwald's family moved to Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, when he was an infant; his parents separated when he was six.

His parents, who are Jewish, and his grandparents did try to introduce him to Judaism, but he grew up without practicing an organized religion, did not have a bar mitzvah, and has said his "moral precepts aren't informed in any way by religious doctrine".

Greenwald attended Nova Middle School and Nova High School in Davie, Florida.