That'll Be in the Movie

From a Vanity Fair article about Edward Snowden:

That was the first indication to the White House that there was a leak, but at this stage it seemed to be just a single document. Ackerman told her the paper intended to publish a story based on a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court order. Their deadline was 4:30 P.M. Hayden scrambled to assemble a conference call among Janine Gibson, the deputy directors of the N.S.A. and the F.B.I., and the general counsel for the Director of National Intelligence.

When the call finally happened, at 5:15, Gibson described the document and the paper’s intention to publish that night. The government players on the line listened, astonished, according to one person on the call. The document, dated April 25, 2013, and stamped TOP SECRET, outlined the bulk collection of all of Verizon’s customers’ phone records for a period of 90 days. It was a renewal notice—that is, the renewal of a standing court order from the FISA court.

It was a circular conversation, in which the government men were unable to discuss the document, and The Guardian was unwilling to budge unless they outlined a specific security threat that would result from the document’s publication. Gibson pressed; she thought it was possible the government could have done this as a one-off to investigate the Boston Marathon bombing. But for anyone from the intelligence community to even acknowledge the existence of a classified document may be a crime. One man on the line said tersely, “I’m not in the habit of committing felonies.” Gibson, who had practiced her talking points and was steady, stood her ground. “I think you’ll find, madam,” he replied, “that we are much better positioned than you are to say what is a national-security risk.”

“No serious news organization would do this,” said another government voice on the call. To which Gibson replied, “I think you’ll find, sir, that we are much better positioned than you are to say what is a story.”

  Vanity Fair