Glenn greenwald launches new website with fresh NSA revelations

A new website featuring journalist Glenn Greenwald and funded by the billionaire founder of eBay was unveiled Monday. The site is led by Greenwald and two other noted investigative journalists. In an initial post entitled "Welcome to The Intercept", Greenwald, Poitras and Scahill lay out the editorial vision for the site, Voice of Russia reported. In the short term, The Intercept will "provide a platform and an editorial structure in which to aggressively report on the disclosures provided to us by our source, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden," they wrote in a blog post on the site. The Intercept is part of a suite of planned sites to be published by First Look media, founded by eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar. Its editors are Greenwald and fellow journalists Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill. The Intercept will focus on reporting based on documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the site’s editors said in an introductory statement. “Our focus in this very initial stage will be overwhelmingly on the NSA story,” the statement said. The involvement of the NSA in the drone program was previously reported, based on information found in the Snowden documents. However, the Intercept story, written by Scahill and Greenwald, appears to add significant new sourcing from inside the drone program itself. The editors accelerated the launch of the site, their statement said, to fight intensifying attacks on journalists working on stories about government surveillance and other secret programs. “None of this will deter the journalism we are doing,” the editors’ statement said. “A primary function of the Intercept is to insist upon and defend our press freedoms from those who wish to infringe them.” Further plans for the site include a column by Greenwald. Greenwald left The Guardian in late 2013 to join the efforts of Omidyar, who founded eBay and has a net worth of $8.5 billion, according to Forbes.