Glenn Greenwald

Journalist

b. March 6, 1967, New York, New York

“Gay issues are about the same fundamental issues as other civil liberties questions—the rights of the individual.”

Glenn Greenwald was born in New York and raised in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, where his grandfather was a city councilman. Greenwald’s youthful ambition was politics. He became the first teenager on the county parks and recreation board.

Greenwald studied law at New York University. His debate skills helped secure him a job at a prominent law firm that represented rich and powerful clients. Dissatisfied with the work, he came out as a gay man and began his own law firm. Greenwald believed that as social outcasts, gay people tend to be more willing to challenge authority.

In 2005 Greenwald launched a blog, Unclaimed Territory. He focused on unbridled government surveillance versus first-amendment rights. In 2006 he published “How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok,” which became a New York Times best seller. Greenwald gained notoriety for providing the international media with classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents illegally obtained by Edward Snowden. The disclosure exposed controversial U.S. government surveillance activities.

When the United States soldier formerly known as Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning) was arrested for stealing secret government documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and disseminating them to WikiLeaks, Greenwald came to Manning’s defense. Greenwald characterized Manning’s intentions as “politically insightful, astute and thoughtful.”

Greenwald published an article praising President Obama for his support of same-sex marriage. For Greenwald the matter was personal. In 2005 he left the United States to pursue a relationship with a Brazilian man, David Miranda. Of Obama’s endorsement Greenwald stated, “It is a powerful message to gay youth that their sexual orientation is neither a flaw nor an abnormality.”