The Government Believes There's A New Edward Snowden

Today, the Intercept, Glenn Greenwald's journalism startup launched with the backing of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, published a major report on the composition of the U.S. government's terrorist watch list.

According to CNN, this has convinced the U.S. government that there is a new leaker within it ranks - a second Edward Snowden-type with access to closely-held national security secrets and the intention to make them public.

If the CNN report is true, the U.S. government is convinced that the leaks that appeared on The Intercept include information that post-dates whatever Snowden once had access to. It also validates earlier speculation that there is an additional well-positioned leaker of national security secrets.

As U.S. News and World Report recounted in early July, there was abundant evidence that NSA-related leaks appearing in two German newspapers did not seem to come from Snowden's cache of documents. Greenwald responded to the revelations by tweeting that it "seems clear" that there's a second leaker within the U.S.'s national security apparatus.

Now, that tweet looks like evidence that Greenwald is indeed sitting on documents totally independent of the Snowden leaks. The U.S. government reportedly believes this to be the case.

Unknown at the moment is who might be doing the leaking, and how much they've handed over.