The CIA officer, he claimed, passed the banker’s car information to the Geneva police, who arrested him for drink driving.

Snowden describes how one evening Cal got the Saudi drunk, then pressured him to drive home instead of taking a taxi. He later passed the potential source on to “Cal”, a CIA case officer, who failed to ensnare him despite “regular forays to strip clubs and bars”. Snowden recounts how he met a banker, who managed Saudi accounts, at a party at a smart lakeside cafe. Snowden describes his most memorable operation – a failed attempt to recruit a Saudi banker in Geneva, which he had previously talked about - as an “unfortunately visceral and sad experience”. The Saudi banker episode End of insertionįield intelligence gathering was still crucial despite the fast-expanding world of “digital network intelligence”. In the book, Snowden lists some of these “sophisticated targets”, such as the office of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which “promotes nuclear technology and safety standards worldwide, including those that relate to nuclear weaponry”, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which “through its influence for technical standards for everything from the radio spectrum to satellite orbits – determines what can be communicated and how” and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which, via regulations of the trade of goods, services and intellectual property between states “determines what can be sold and how”.

The international city External link is also home to the UN’s European headquarters and dozens of specialized international organisations and hundreds of NGOs. Snowden says he was based at the US Mission in Geneva, a city which was “a refined Old World capital of family banking” at the intersection of EU and international fibre-optic networks and “within the shadow of key communications satellites”. Geneva had “the world’s richest environment of sophisticated targets” End of insertion

Snowdens book