At least five Muslim-Americans, including prominent lawyers, a civil rights leader and academics, were targeted for years-long surveillance by the FBI and the National Security Agency. This is according to new revelations contained in documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Among the targets were the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations—the top Muslim-American civil rights organization in the United States—and a former Bush Administration official who worked for the Department of Homeland Security and held a top-secret security clearance during the time he was under surveillance.

The startling revelations were published Tuesday night by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussein at The Intercept in a long-awaited article that Greenwald planned to publish at least twice before but delayed. The most recent delay occurred after a media partner working with The Intercept obtained information from government officials that appeared to contradict previous government statements, according to Greenwald, who spoke with WIRED before publication of his story.

Greenwald says the revelations offer a more detailed look at who the government is targeting. Although there are some Americans on the list who have been accused of terrorism, the five highlighted in The Intercept piece have all led what appear to be law-abiding lives.

“This is the first time that there’s a human face on who the targets are of their most intrusive type of surveillance,…” he says. “[H]ere you really get to see who these people are who are the people worthy of their most invasive scrutiny. I think it’s important for people to judge—are these really terrorists or are these people who seem to be targeted for their political dissidence and their political activism?”

The new revelations provide confirmation for the first time that the government targeted U.S. attorneys—possibly, in some cases, without warrants. Crucially, the revelations also give targets of the domestic surveillance legal standing to sue.

Snowden indicated to Greenwald last year that he included the target list in the cache of leaked documents because he wanted people who had been under such surveillance to have evidence to challenge the spying in court. Although a number of journalists and attorneys have tried in the past to challenge the constitutionality of the government’s dragnet surveillance activities, the cases have failed because the defendants did not have proof that they in particular had been targeted, therefore courts ruled that they did not have standing. The spreadsheet, however, provides evidence of targeted surveillance for those who have now been identified.

“This report confirms the worst fears of American Muslims”

Civil liberties groups have expressed anger that the five appear to have been targeted largely for having Muslim backgrounds.

“This report confirms the worst fears of American Muslims: the federal government has targeted Americans, even those who have served their country in the military and government, simply because of their faith or religious heritage,” the group Muslim Advocates said in a statement shortly after the story published. “Muslim Advocates calls on the President and Congress to take steps immediately to reform the NSA surveillance program to uphold basic privacy rights and civil liberties that the Constitution guarantees to every American, regardless of faith.”

The new revelations differ from ones disclosed in a Washington Post article last week, which focused on the incidental collection of people, including Americans, who are not targeted for surveillance but whose communications get caught up in the government’s bulk collection of other data.

Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism official in both the Bush and Clinton administrations who served on a recent task force examining the government’s surveillance, told Greenwald that had he seen the list of targeted Americans months ago, he would have scrutinized the surveillance programs more stringently and demanded the Justice Department provide a counting of how many Americans are targeted. He also says his five-member task force would have asked to review some of the applications the FBI submitted to the FISA Court to obtain authorization for the surveillance.

Although the task force had recommended that the government’s bulk collection program for phone records be altered—so that the records are retained by the phone companies instead of the NSA collecting and storing them—the task force was criticized by civil liberties groups for not recommending the program be halted altogether.

The five Americans who were targeted appeared on a lengthy spreadsheet leaked to Greenwald last year by Snowden, which identifies 7,485 email addresses that were targeted for surveillance between 2002 and 2008. Although the targets are not listed by name, The Intercept was able to identify some of the targets based on their email addresses.

Most of the email addresses on the list appear to belong to foreigners, but under a column with the heading “Nationality,” the government tagged 202 of the addresses as belonging to U.S. persons. Another 5,501 were designated as nationality “unknown” or were left blank.

It’s unknown in some cases how long the surveillance of the targets continued, since the spreadsheet only covers surveillance conducted on them until 2008. But in some cases the document indicates that the surveillance had been approved to continue after that time.

The five identified Americans—all with Muslim-American backgrounds—include: Faisal Gill, who served as a top advisor for the Department of Homeland Security in the Bush Administration; Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney for al-Haramain and other clients involved in national security cases; Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Hooshang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers University professor; and Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University and champion of Muslim-American civil liberties.

At least two of these targets are remarkable for their involvement in the U.S. government.

At least two of these targets are remarkable for their involvement in the U.S. government. Gill, who immigrated from Pakistan with his parents at the age of eight, served as a JAG officer in the U.S. military after obtaining his law degree. He later worked for the White House Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Homeland Security. It was during this time that he held a top-secret security clearance.

It was his association with the American Muslim Council, however, that put him on the radar. After the founder of the Council was arrested for his role in a plot to assassinate a Saudi prince, DHS investigated Gill. But he was cleared of both this and another investigation into whether he had hidden his connection to the Council in his application for a security clearance. In 2005 he opened a legal practice with Ghafoor, after which the secret surveillance began. It continued even during Gill’s run for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates—a race he lost.

Ghafoor had also spent time in government. He worked as a legislative assistant to a lawmaker on Capitol Hill in the late 90s and later became a lobbyist for the Muslim community. He was hired by the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Saudi charity group, in 2003.

Confirmation that Ghafoor was directly targeted by the government for surveillance brings his case and the issue of government surveillance full circle. As noted, Ghafoor first learned in 2004 that his phone calls with clients were under surveillance only by mistake after the Treasury Department—in the midst of litigation with al-Haramain—unintentionally mailed one of the foundation’s lawyers a call log listing communications that Ghafoor and another attorney had with their clients. The attorneys were forced to return the classified document to the government without ever knowing if they themselves had been under surveillance or if they simply had been caught up in surveillance of their clients.

After the New York Times published a story the following year indicating that the government had been conducting warrantless wiretapping, the two attorneys sued the government, and a court found they had enough evidence to indicate that they likely had been subjected to the warrantless wiretapping. They were awarded a judgment and attorney fees in the first case to successfully challenge the surveillance. But the judgment was later overturned on appeal. The Snowden document appears to finally confirm that Ghafoor was targeted.

“This is the first confirmation that he himself has been put on a list, and it is amazing,” Greenwald says, “because not only was he a lawyer, he was litigating against the U.S. as well.” Greenwald is referring to the fact that while he was under surveillance, Ghafoor was representing clients in litigation against the U.S. government.

The government has insisted in public statements that it doesn’t target lawyers for surveillance.

That claim may well be true in the case of most lawyers who aren’t Muslim. Gill and Ghafoor believe their surveillance was a case of ethnic and religious profiling.

Greenwald notes that they took on clients that on the surface might have brought them scrutiny—such as the Sudanese government in cases involving 9/11 victims. But many non-Muslim attorneys also represented Sudan in similar cases around the same time or represented terrorist suspects, and they do not appear to have been targeted for surveillance.

The surveillance of Nihad Awad is also startling, given his prominence working with the U.S. government to improve relations with the Muslim-American community. Although he served on a civil liberties panel for Vice President Al Gore, met with Presidents Clinton and Bush and other officials on behalf of the Muslim-American community and participated in a press conference with Bush after the 9/11 attacks, the government began monitoring his email communication in 2005 for reasons that, as The Intercept lays them out, appear to be convoluted and tenuous.

It’s hard to imagine the government placing the head of the American Civil Liberties Union—a group that also defends the interests of Muslim Americans—under similar surveillance.

Awad told Greenwald that he thinks all Americans should be outraged and concerned by the surveillance. “Because if it is Muslim Americans today, it is going to be them next,” he said.

In a statement, the government denied targeting anyone for their religious or political beliefs or affiliation.

“It is entirely false that U.S. intelligence agencies conduct electronic surveillance of political, religious or activist figures solely because they disagree with public policies or criticize the government, or for exercising constitutional rights,” the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a written statement released after the publication of Greenwald’s story. “Unlike some other nations, the United States does not monitor anyone’s communications in order to suppress criticism or to put people at a disadvantage based on their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.”

It’s hard to imagine the government placing the head of the American Civil Liberties Union under similar surveillance.

It’s unclear what authority the government used to conduct the surveillance or whether the FBI obtained warrants to do it.

The government can conduct such electronic surveillance of U.S. persons under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act only after obtaining a warrant from the FISA Court. To obtain the court order, the government must show that there is probable cause to believe the individual being targeted is a foreign power or an agent, officer or employee of a foreign power and that the individual is or may be engaged in espionage, sabotage or terrorism. The government is supposed to renew that authorization with the court every 90 days.

The FBI, which is responsible for conducting domestic foreign intelligence surveillance, did not respond to The Intercept’s calls for comments. But the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence insisted that surveillance targeting Americans is always conducted with a warrant “except in exceptional circumstances.”

Greenwald told WIRED that he thinks that four of the five Muslim-American targets they identified in their story probably were surveilled with a warrant. But a government official told a media partner that was working with Greenwald on the story that in the case of Awad no warrant was obtained.

Greenwald thinks that the exception exists for Awad because he was traveling out of the country a lot during the period he was under surveillance and that this probably allowed the government to conduct surveillance of him using different authorities that do not require a warrant.

Update 8am PST: To add comment from the Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.