The riff illustrates the balance between publishing secrets and protecting security. | AP Photo/Screengrab Gellman, Greenwald feud over NSA

The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald on Monday blasted investigative reporter Barton Gellman for making “false” claims about the man they shared as a source: Edward Snowden.

The public tiff between two journalists who have led the way on disclosing National Security Agency surveillance offers a rare window into high-stakes negotiations between reporters and their sources. It illustrates the balance between publishing secrets and protecting the nation’s security — and shows the risks that a source thought to be exclusive to one outlet might peddle his news scoop elsewhere.


Snowden came forward on Sunday afternoon in both The Guardian and the Post, where Gellman wrote his piece, to say he was the source of the revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.

( Also on POLITICO: 10 things to know about Edward Snowden)

On Sunday evening, the Post published a story by Gellman detailing his interactions with Snowden. Gellman wrote that Snowden asked for a guarantee that the Post would publish, within 72 hours, all the PowerPoint slides he provided on PRISM. When Gellman said he couldn’t promise that, Snowden went to Greenwald, according to Gellman’s account.

Greenwald fired back via Twitter on Monday morning.

“Bart Gellman’s claims about Snowden’s interactions with me - when, how and why - are all false,” Greenwald wrote on Twitter.

( Also on POLITICO: Glenn Greenwald says U.S. wants to destroy privacy worldwide)

On the issue of conditions for publishing the information from Snowden, Greenwald tweeted, “I have no idea whether he had any conditions for WP, but he had none for us: we didn’t post all the slides.” He also wrote he had been “working with” Snowden since February, “long before anyone spoke to Bart Gellman.”

In the back-to-back scoop, Greenwald struck first in The Guardian with his bombshell about sweeping NSA surveillance of phone calls, while Gellman followed up quickly in the Post with the revelation about PRISM.

The spat continued during the day on Monday, with Gellman writing on Twitter: “Snowden didn’t bolt when I refused guarantees, just quit going steady.”

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In his Post piece, Gellman described a series of “indirect contacts” he had with Snowden before their first “direct exchange” on May 16, Gellman wrote in an account for The Washington Post about his exchanges with his source. Snowden — who chose the name Verax, or “truth teller” in Latin for his code name, and called Gellman “Brassbanner” — “dropped a bombshell” on May 24 and asked Gellman for a guarantee that The Washington Post would publish, within 72 hours, all the PowerPoint slides he provided on PRISM.

Snowden told Gellman he wanted “to embolden others to step forward.”

( WATCH: NSA reactions in under 60 seconds)

Additionally, according to Gellman, Snowden requested that the Post publish online a “cryptographic key” so he could prove to a foreign embassy he was the source of the document leak.

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Gellman responded that he could make no guarantees about what The Post would publish or when — and according to his account, that’s when Snowden replied, “I regret that we weren’t able to keep this project unilateral.”

“Shortly afterward he made contact with Glenn Greenwald of the British newspaper the Guardian,” Gellman wrote.

Snowden, however, wrote that he still remained in contact with Gellman. And on Thursday, the Post published its PRISM story, with Gellman noting in his account that the paper “sought the views of government officials about the potential harm to national security prior to publication.” The Post ultimately decided to publish only four of the 41 slides.

( Also on POLITICO: Snowden leak exposes cracks in contractor system)

Early Monday morning, just after 1 a.m., Greenwald took to Twitter to briefly respond to Gellman’s play-by-play.

“Bart Gellman’s claims about Snowden’s interactions with me - when, how and why - are all false,” Greenwald wrote on Twitter.

Neither Gellman nor Greenwald has yet responded to respective requests for comment.

The Post just barely beat The Guardian in publishing the PRISM story on Thursday by about 20 minutes — with neither paper publishing the full set of slides — but in everything else, The Guardian has led the way. Greenwald broke the story about the NSA collecting Verizon phone records late Wednesday night. Then it was The Guardian who Snowden asked to reveal his identity to the public on Sunday after “several days of interviews,” according to a story with the bylines of Greenwald, The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief Ewan MacAskill and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who co-wrote The Post’s PRISM story with Gellman.

( WATCH: Who is Edward Snowden?)

Gellman told The Huffington Post last week that he “started to hear some footsteps, so I had to move” on the PRISM story. There’s no question it was a race to publish, and although Gellman said he “would have been happier to have had a day or two” longer on the story, the Post had to move to get that scoop online before The Guardian.

The Guardian, meanwhile, told The Huffington Post that on the PRISM story the paper “was working toward a 6pm deadline in order to allow the technology companies referenced in the training document to respond to our request for comment as we believed it was an important element of the story,” noting that “the Prism story is part of a narrative the Guardian has published along with the Verizon story.”

Gellman, meanwhile, noted on Twitter, “BTW the Guardian didn’t publish whole PRISM brief either; chose ~same slides the WP did. There are things in there that should stay secret.”

After The Post published his account of his exchanges with Snowden, Gellman also took to Twitter to “clarify a couple of points,” he wrote. “Snowden didn’t bolt when I refused guarantees, just quit going steady. And not because I consulted USG,” Gellman said.

As for Snowden, he doesn’t seem preoccupied with the “when, how and why” of his interactions with the press.

“I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in,” he told The Guardian. “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”