Two American journalists who reported on the National Security Agency documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden arrived back in the U.S. Friday for the first time since their reporting on those files was first published.
Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, who broke the Snowden story and met with the whistleblower in Hong Kong, are in New York City to receive the prestigious George Polk Award. Greenwald, formerly a columnist for The Guardian and now a partner in the upcoming First Look Media venture, and Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, will share the journalism award with Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, the Huffington Post reports.
Greenwald, who currently resides in Rio de Janeiro, told The Huffington Post that he wanted to return to the U.S. because “certain factions in the U.S. government have deliberately intensified the threatening climate for journalists.” He noted that language used by government officials suggested that reporters who investigated Snowden’s documents were complicit with him.
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Greenwald and Poitras, who lives in Berlin, expected to be detained immediately upon their arrival Friday, but they left John F. Kennedy International Airport without incident.
