-broke the Snowden papers. He’s been reporting on corruption in Brazil. His resume is a mile long.
Let me be clear: I don’t agree with him on much. But he does have a certain bloody-mindedness on certain topics that reminds me of Mattis.
He just quit The Intercept citing editorial censorship. The Intercept’s editors replied. He responded.
Basically, Greenwald wanted to report critically on Biden, and The Intercept wouldn’t let him. That reminds me a lot of Mattis too.
Mattis leaving the White House was a pretty serious indictment of the Trump administration. Greenwald doing the same to The Intercept is a similar indictment of them. One of the reasons I connect these two individuals, ones who would probably not enjoy the comparison nor appreciate it, is that I don’t agree much with either of them. And I think the institutions they departed from are more similar than those institutions would appreciate either.
If you go through the emails posted in that third link, these, Greenwald goes off. He is primed and ready to start swinging. There’s a bit of justification within The Intercept as Greenwald comes across as a prickly and self-absorbed individual, one consumed with his own virtue. Fanatics display such attributes. But between Maas’s initial letter and Reed’s clarification, it is quite clear that he was censored, and that Reed was trying to stop publication of the article elsewhere. I haven’t seen Greenwald’s contract, so his accusations of contract violation are unknown. The Intercept’s editorial policies are here.
The New York Times had a similar experience in July, and it has had many more. These incidents happen often at the Trump White House.
There isn’t a thesis or punchline to this story. It’s just what I think about.