Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, was the “Mastermind’ behind the Edward Snowden leaks, leading Snowden into an alliance between Wikileaks and Russia, according to a lengthy profile piece in the New York Times. Edward Snowden approached Laura Poitras because he was skeptical of approaching the mainstream media.

Laura Poitras helped Snowden leak the details of the National Security Agency's global surveillance apparatus. Laura Poitras helped Snowden release thousands of classified documents. Laura Poitras let Snowden provide the documents but because she as a filmmaker, Snowden had to be identified.

The documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras had a larger role in the NSA leaks than was previously known. Glenn Greenwald, who has been the name most associated with Edward Snowden told Peter Maass, “I keep calling [Poitras] the Keyser Soze of the story, because she’s at once completely invisible and yet ubiquitous.” Keyser Soze was the mastermind who masqueraded as a nobody in the film “The Usual Suspects.” Keyser Soze was played by Kevin Spacey.

Greenwald said the he started communications with Snowden in April. Greenwald had met with Laura Poitras in New York when she istalled encryption software on his computer. Laura Poitras started her conversations with Snowden in January. Edward Snowden got the NSA contractor job for Booz Allen in March. Maass said that the work "was organized like an intelligence operation, with Poitras as the mastermind." Greenwald told the NY Times "None of this would have happened with anything near the efficacy and impact it did, had she not been working with me in every sense and really taking the lead in coordinating most of it.”

Laura Poitras never told Greenwald when Snowden started sending her documents, but she got more of them than Greenwald did. Greenwald only who received about 20 documents.

Edward "Snowden sent encrypted messages telling the two of them to go to Hong Kong" in May and said he wanted to go public with his identity. Glenn Greenwald discovered the top secret order that compelled Verizon to give the data to the government during a flight to Hong Kong. Between June 9, when Snowden was in Hong Kong, and early July Greenwald and Laura Poitras didn’t speak with Snowden. Snowden came forward as the leaker on June 9. He went to Moscow on June 23 with documents he got through WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Snowden has since been granted temporary asylum. Snowden has been establishing a new life in Russia. Snowden was interviewed by Maass over encrypted chat, but for the most part let his Russian lawyer speak for him. The significance of the Russian connection is still unknown.