Revision as of 02:38, 31 May 2007

Glenn Greenwald (born 1967 in New York City) is an American attorney, best-selling author of How Would a Patriot Act?, and popular political and legal blogger, and columnist at Salon Magazine. Greenwald describes himself as neither liberal nor conservative, however many of his critics disagree, often discribing him as a liberal blogger. Greenwald contends that "Bush followers are not conservatives," and frequently criticizes some of the policies of the Bush Administration.

Background

Greenwald is a graduate of George Washington University and received a J.D. from New York University Law School. He worked at the large New York law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz both before and briefly after he joined the New York bar in 1995. He left to co-found the law firm of Greenwald Christoph & Holland, now Greenwald Christoph. He litigated several cases with constitutional issues.

One of Greenwald's more notable clients was neo-Nazi Matthew Hale. Hale was eventually jailed and tried for solicitation of murder against Joan Lefkow, who had been the federal judge in the trademark case. Although Greenwald was not involved in his criminal defense, between Hale's conviction and sentencing, Hale attempted to use Greenwald to convey a coded message, but Greenwald refused. At the time, Hale was suspected of complicity in the recent double murder of Lefkow's husband and mother, but he was eventually cleared. He remains jailed for the earlier conviction.

Greenwald is openly gay and splits his time between Brazil and New York City. He explains that this is because Brazil recognizes his same-sex relationship with his Brazilian partner, while the United States does not.

Unclaimed Territory and Salon.com

Greenwald started a blog, "Unclaimed Territory", in October 2005, focusing initially on the Valerie Plame affair and the investigation of Scooter Libby. When the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy became known two months later, he shifted primary attention to that. He quickly became known as a prominent legal critic of the George W. Bush administration. He has written in American Conservative magazine and appeared as a guest on C-Span's Washington Journal, Air America's Majority Report and Public Radio International's To the Point. His reporting and analysis have been cited in the The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and Salon. In April 2006, he was given a 2005 Koufax Award for Best New Blog.

Greenwald attracted national media attention in January 2006 when he announced on his blog his finding that U.S. Senator Mike DeWine had proposed an easier standard for domestic eavesdropping by federal agents in 2002, but the administration had declined any interest in the legislation and advised him that it would probably be unconstitutional, a direct contradiction of much of the later rationale for the NSA warrantless domestic spying program once it was known. This discovery became widely covered by the national media, which often credited Greenwald for breaking the story. For example, The Washington Post reported:

The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard. ...

Democrats and national security law experts who oppose the NSA program say the Justice Department's opposition to the DeWine legislation seriously undermines arguments by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, who have said the NSA spying is constitutional and that surveillance warrants are often too cumbersome to obtain.

"It's entirely inconsistent with their current position," said Philip B. Heymann, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who teaches law at Harvard University. "The only reason to do what they've been doing is because they wanted a lower standard than 'probable cause.' A member of Congress offered that to them, but they turned it down." ...

The DeWine amendment — first highlighted this week by Internet blogger Glenn Greenwald and widely publicized yesterday by the Project on Government Secrecy, an arm of the Federation of American Scientists — is the latest point of contention in a fierce political and legal battle over the NSA monitoring program.'

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold quoted Greenwald's blog on the floor of the Senate when he introduced Senate Resolution 398, to censure President Bush.

On February 1, 2007, Greenwald announced that he was moving his blog to Salon Magazine, where he would also be a contributing writer. In his last post at Unclaimed Territory dated February 12, 2007, Greenwald directed his readers to Salon Magazine.

Books

Greenwald wrote the New York Times best selling book, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok.. Pre-orders placed the book at #1 on Amazon.com in less than 24 hours, where it stayed for several days.

Greenwald is currently working on his second book A Tragic Legacy, which is "an examination of Bush's presidency with an emphasis on his personality traits and beliefs that drove the presidency (along with an emphasis on how and why those personality traits have led to a presidency that has failed to historic proportions)". A Tragic Legacy is due to be released on June 26, 2007.

Use of Anonymous Aliases, or "Sockpuppets", to Attack Critics

Greenwald has been accused of using anonymous pseudonyms, or "sockpuppets", as they are called on the internet, purporting to be other people while posting comments on other blogs defending his own posts or character. Greenwald shared an IP address with sock puppets named “Ryan” (posting at ), “Ellison” (posting at ), and “Thomas Ellers” (posting at ]).

Greenwald shared a second IP address with a sock puppet named “Wilson” (posting at ).

IP address 201.37.43.117

Three comments from a “Rick Ellensburg” at a originate from the same service provider that Greenwald was using at the end of 2005 and in January 2006. All of the IP addresses are based in Brazil, where Greenwald spends much of the year with his boyfriend.

No actual people have come forward claiming to be Ellers, or Ellensburg, or Ellison, or Ryan, or Wilson. And in addition to IP address evidence, other factors point to the sock-puppets being Greenwald, including similarities between the style and content of the sock-puppet comments and Greenwald’s style and content, personality, writing style and verbal tics, plus showing a strong interest in (and encyclopedic knowledge of) Greenwald's writing, posts, updates, and Greenwald’s enemies and commenters on the internet.

The posts from IP address 201.37.43.117 began on July 13. Blogger Ace of Spades wrote a post about Glenn Greenwald, followed by many derogatory comments on Greenwald by commenters At 6:14 a.m. Pacific time (10:14 a.m. Brazil time), someone named Ellison (a name similar to suspected sock-puppets “Rick Ellensburg” and “Thomas Ellers”) left a comment on Ace’s site . At 6:31 a.m. Pacific time, seventeen minutes after Ellison’s comment at Ace’s site, Greenwald left four seperate comments on Pontifications under his own name, using the same IP address as the Ellison comment. . He left another at 7:19 a.m. that same day

Later that same day, Greenwald left two comments under his own name, from that same IP address, at 11:13 a.m. Pacific and 12:15 p.m. Pacific.

Four days later, on July 17, someone using the same IP address used it to leave three comments under the name “Ryan” on , again defending Greenwald.

The second “Ryan” comment, also from the same IP address as Greenwald's previous posts, was left on the same day, at 6:42 a.m.Pacific. “Ryan” claimed to e-mail Greenwald, who responded in an e-mail that Ryan could then post in comment threads (apparently Greenwald using the device to post his own thoughts, purported posted by another person).At almost the same time, the same IP address was used numerous times by a Thomas Ellers in comments to a Q&O post . (Note that the name “Thomas Ellers” is similar to “Ellison” and “Rick Ellensburg.”) On July 4 Greenwald used the same IP address in question to post on Wizbang blog .

Comments showing that “Ellers”, “Ellison” and “Ryan” have encyclopedic knowledge of Greenwald’s site, including Greenwald’s arguments, his commenters, and the content of his posts and updates, yet none of these names has ever appeared on Glenn Greenwald's actual blog in the comments, only in other blogs defending him

IP address 201.17.101.161

Greenwald used IP address 201.17.101.161 to leave a comment at Wizbang on July 4

On July 8, Greenwald posted at Confederate Yankee under his own name using the same IP address. The same IP address was in evidence on July 12, when Greenwald left three comments on Patterico's Pontifications 5:01 a.m. Pacific.

Greenwald left two more comments there using this IP address on July 12, 5:10 a.m. Pacific and 6:54 a.m.

Later that night, someone calling themself “Wilson,” posted from the same IP address on Jeff Goldstein’s site.

Someone purporting to be "Rick Ellensburg", shared an address space with Greenwald on the Brazilian Telemar Norte ISP in late 2005 and early 2006. This is based on Greenwald’s having posted comments under that address space on numerous blogs in early 2006, including Protein Wisdom in January 2006. Ellensburg’s comments were posted in February 2006. The name “Rick Ellensburg” is, of course, similar to “Thomas Ellers” and “Ellison" and the writing style and content is remarkably similar to that of Greenwald. , and he quotes Greenwald's posts at length, yet there is no evidence that "Rick Ellison" ever posted on Greenwald's blog Despite Ellensburg’s extensive knowledge of Greenwald’s posts and arguments, Ellensburg has appeared on the Internet only once, to defend Greenwald in this one situation.

References

1. Bush followers are not conservatives, Unclaimed Territory blog posting, January 16, 2006.
2. Attorney: Hale Tried To Deliver Encoded Message From Jail, NBC5.com news, March 9, 2005
3. http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/response-to-right-wing-personal.html
4. White House Dismissed '02 Surveillance Proposal, Dan Eggen, Washington Post, Thursday, January 26, 2006 (page A04).
5. http://www.fednews.com/transcript.htm?id=20060328t3970 Fednews.com (subscription required)
6. Greenwald, Glenn (1 February 2007). "Blog News". Unclaimed Territory. Retrieved 2007-02-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. Good book news, Unclaimed Territory blog posting, June 1, 2006
8. http://www.haloscan.com/comments/glenngreenwald/116307161281500794/#54519

External links

• Glenn Greenwald Column at Salon
• Unclaimed Territory Greenwald's blog
• Video - Greenwald debates University of Virginia law professor Robert Turner on C-SPAN, February 2006

• 1967 births
• Living people
• American bloggers
• American political writers
• LGBT people from the United States
• New York lawyers
• George Washington University alumni