How 9/11 created a spy state
On the morning of 11 September 2001, an 18-year-old was driving his white Honda Civic on the way to work as a freelance web designer. It was a beautiful day, and as he sped down Maryland’s Route 32 with the window down and radio blasting, the teenager was sure it was going to be a lucky day.
Soon after 8.46am the radio cut to news that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York City. At 9.03am, by now at his desk, he was stunned to hear that a second plane had crashed into the other tower, followed half an hour later by similar catastrophe at the Pentagon in Washington.
He leapt back into his car, only to find himself stuck in traffic sandwiched between hundreds of other vehicles. He was stuck outside the headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA), the US intelligence body that runs one of the largest surveillance operations in the world. The road was jammed with personnel streaming out of the NSA building following an order to evacuate.
The surreal spectacle of thousands of NSA intelligence agents abandoning their posts after the worst terrorist attack on the US, only to be bogged down in gridlock, made a deep impression on the teenager, Edward Snowden. As did 9/11 itself, which radically changed the course of
