MovieChat Forums > Citizenfour (2014) Discussion > Why did he trust Greenwald?

Why did he trust Greenwald?


Why did he trust Greenwald? I mean, how do you trust anyone?

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If it was not him, then there must have been someone else.

Even in life, you ultimately have to trust someone. Being betrayed or not is the next step. Even if betrayed, you get lessons for life. If not, then you get a good relationship.

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Great answers.

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Go to Wikipedia and read up on Greenwald's background. I had thought the same thing, which was why I started looking around. Greenwald was a civil rights and litigation attorney before getting involved in reporting. He had his own firm and even represented a neo-Nazi once (although he is a Jew himself) stating that, although he despises people such as the Nazi, that his desire to uphold the Constitution was more important than his personal feelings. When I read that, I realized exactly why Snowden chose this guy to stand behind him.

 The bad news is you have houseguests. There is no good news. 

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I thought this was tackled at the beginning of the documentary: Because Greenwald himself already had become a "target" of surveillance and had noticed it.

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Think that information was about the film maker (Petoiris??) as in the movie Snowden she talked about being under surveillance and being detained everytime she was in the USA.

It's strange that the reporter (Greenwald) wasn't interviewed or interrogated as soon as he put the story out because other reporters who have reported the REAL news have been thrown in jail and some are STILL in jail!!! But that's discussed in an earlier discussion about whether to trust Snowden and whether he's legit or not! Lol

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Another factor that may have played into his choice of Greenwald (though I don't recall it being mentioned) is that GG neither lived nor worked in the US, and he didn't have to travel through the USA with the leaked documents. I don't know whether Greenwald holds dual US/Brazilian citizenship, though he has become fluent in Portuguese and peripherally involved in Brazilian political affairs through his partner David Miranda, who successfully ran for a municipal office recently.

Greenwald was concerned about the possibility of being detained or arrested if he entered the USA and he postponed doing so for some months after the story broke.

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