decided to publish the story as fast as possible. they called the white house and gave them four hours to comment. >> i remember well getting the phone call. and it was one of these situations where it almost took us a few minutes to get our minds around how big of a leak this was and how comprehensive the set of revelations were. we had very little time to react. >> narrator: they sounded the alarm and reached out to an nsa official, john delong. >> i have two computers on my desk-- a classified computer and an unclassified computer. and i'm used to seeing that document on the classified computer. and i did a real double take. i remember just sitting there for 30 seconds checking and rechecking to see what computer this classified document appeared on. the gravity of it was quite palpable, and i thought, "this is going to be a really tough story as it comes out." >> narrator: at tguardian, editor-in-chief janine gibson took a return call from the white house. >> she has the deputy...

for the nsa. but i was in my late 50s and i didn't want to lose my job. so i was stuck. and i was afraid. >> narrator: klein was afraid to speak out for several years. >> the new york times broke the story about the national security agency spying inside... >> narrator: but went public after reading a front page new york timstory about nsa spying in 2005. >> when mark klein came out and said, "i work at at&t and the nsa is tapping into our network," that was the first time that the american public realized how far things had gone since 9/11. how much domestic surveillance there was. he raised this allegation. no one ever acknowledged that it was actually happening. it still remains an open question. but no one has ever denied it either. >> do you remember the incident in san francisco where the technician mark klein had found the room with the splitter?

directly contradicted what director of national intelligence general james clapper had said before congress just a few months earlier. >> does the nsa collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans? >> no, sir. >> it does not? >> not wittingly. there are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly. >> i think for snowden, the clapper testimony was the final nail in the coffin. watching president obama's top national security official go before the senate intelligence committee and outright lie about what the nsa was doing convinced him, i think, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the only hope for public discussion and reform was for him to do what he was going to do.

called prism. documents showed how beginning in 2007, nine internet companies were cooperating with the nsa. gellman wanted to make sure his reporting wouldn't damage national security. >> we very much did want to know what they thought would do concrete harm, and how, and why. and the u.s. government asked me not to publish the names of the nine companies that were supplying information to the government in the prism program. and i said, "why?" their argument was that if we publish the names, then the companies would be less inclined to cooperate. and i guess we agreed to disagree on that one. >> the washington post is reporting that the... >> narrator: the post went ahead. >> narrator: the prism revelations reached beyond the collection of phone records. this was about the acquisition of content from tens of

one. it directed verizon business services to turn customer phone records over to the nsa. the journalists were stunned. >> what this document revealed is that the nsa surveillance system is not directed at very bad people or about terrorists. it's directed at the american citizenry and other citizenries around the world, indiscriminately, in bulk. >> narrator: the document directly contradicted what director of national

>> in hong kong, snowden was sitting with three people under contract with the guardian. they were sitting there on the bed watching the reaction on cnn. >> they are not looking at people's names and they're not looking at content. >> obama was saying the nsa isn't listening to the telephone calls or reading the emails of americans, which is absolutely wrong. there were documents that we had that proved president obama's claims in that regard were false. and we just could tell, as well, that he at that moment didn't have any idea of the true magnitude of what was coming, given how dismissive and casual his tone was. >> thank you very much, guys. >> narrator: snowden now decided to make a bold move. he would reveal his identity,

a regular court order. >> it was not a warrant. it was not stamped or signed by a court or a judge. it was this letter demanding this information from me, and it also told me that i could never tell anyone that i had gotten the letter. it said that i could tell "no person." >> narrator: nick merrill ran a small web hosting company in new york named calyx. >> it was a company that i started in 1994. we hosted mitsubishi motors, ikea, snapple, tanqueray-- you know, blue chip clients. and we hosted a lot of independent media and non-profit organizations that seemed like good people that i wanted to help, and that was really where my passion was. >> narrator: the letter merrill received was a national security letter, or nsl. after 9/11, the patriot act allowed any fbi office in the country to issue nsls without a court's review and with a gag order. >> it said he couldn't tell

revelations reached beyond the collection of phone records. this was about the acquisition of content from tens of thousands of nsa targets. >> did you check your account on gmail? >> secret spying program is... >> the prism program is not about metadata. it's about content. it's the photos and videos you send. it's the words of your emails. it's the sounds of your voice on a skype call. it's all the files you have stored on a cloud drive service. it's content, it's everything. >> narrator: the president was on a fundraising trip in silicon valley.