{"id":4981,"date":"2015-02-22T18:38:35","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T01:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=4981"},"modified":"2015-02-22T21:01:04","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T04:01:04","slug":"a-ticket-taker-limits-access-to-citizenfour-the-ground-breaking-documentary-on-nsa-whistle-blower-edward-snowden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=4981","title":{"rendered":"CITIZENFOUR, the doc a ticket taker predicted wouldn&#8217;t even be nominated, wins the Oscar"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"CITIZENFOUR%2C%20the%20doc%20a%20ticket%20taker%20predicted%20wouldn%27t%20even%20be%20nominated%2C%20wins%20the%20Oscar\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><strong>By Peter Lance Updated Feb. 22nd 2015.\u00a0<\/strong>On November 29th\u00a0<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>at The Plaza de Oro, the Metropolitan Theatre chain\u2019s Santa Barbara \u201cart house,\u201d I was initially denied entry to a screening of <strong><a title=\"CitFour site\" href=\"https:\/\/citizenfourfilm.com\">CitizenFour<\/a>,<\/strong> Laura Poitras\u2019 deeply troubling documentary on <a title=\"Snowden wiki\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_Snowden\">Edward Snowden<\/a>, the ex-CIA and DIA analyst who blew the cover off the NSA\u2019s<a title=\"WP NSA Illegal surveillance\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/independent-review-board-says-nsa-phone-data-program-is-illegal-and-should-end\/2014\/01\/22\/4cebd470-83dd-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html\"> illegal surveillance<\/a> of millions of Americans in the name of \u201cnational security.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-5.26.15-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-5030\" title=\"Screen Shot 2014-11-30 at 5.26.15 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-5.26.15-PM-300x197.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-5.26.15-PM-300x197.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-5.26.15-PM.png 634w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>As a member of The Writers Guild of America West I tried to screen the film pursuant to an agreement Metropolitan and most L.A. area theater chains have with the various Guilds during \u201cawards season\u201d allowing members to access important films in the course of the nomination process. Over the past two weeks I\u2019ve screened a half dozen films this way at other Metropolitan venues by presenting my WGA card and signing a form.<\/p>\n<p>But this time the ticket taker smugly told me that CitizenFour \u201cwas not on the list\u201d of films for awards consideration. When I protested politely that I\u2019d gone through this protocol at other Metropolitan theaters, she added her own personal review. <strong>\u201cIt\u2019s not likely that this film will even be nominated.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I beg to differ. CitizenFour proves that multiple Obama administration officials lied to congress about the depth and breadth of the NSA\u2019s epic collection of meta-data which allowed that agency to personally monitor every American with a cell phone who goes on line, not to mention 100\u2019s of millions of people worldwide. So after paying for my ticket and watching Ms. Poitras\u2019 devastating account of Snowden\u2019s data dump to her and <a title=\"Glenn in Guardian US\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/profile\/glenn-greenwald\"><strong><em>Guardian US<\/em><\/strong><\/a> reporter Glenn Greenwald, I felt compelled to talk to the theater\u2019s manager after the final credits had rolled.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Snowden-with-Greenwald-in-film1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-5033\" title=\"Snowden with Greenwald in film\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Snowden-with-Greenwald-in-film1-300x234.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Snowden-with-Greenwald-in-film1-300x234.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Snowden-with-Greenwald-in-film1.png 393w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Clearly if any documentary deserves to be seen (and nominated) this season it is this film which portrays Snowden as an articulate, and thoughtful advocate for government accountability vs. the callous traitor and spy he\u2019s been cast as by the Obama administration which was quick to indict him under <a title=\"Espionage Act\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Espionage_Act_of_1917\">The 1917 Espionage Act.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>BIG BROTHER TO THE POWER OF TEN<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To get some sense of how this doc unfolds as a real-life John Le Carr\u00e9 thriller, consider this warning from Snowden to Ms. Poitras in one of the emails that led to his disclosures:\u00a0\u201cI am a senior government employee in the intelligence community. I hope you understand that contacting you is extremely high risk. For now, know that every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial, every cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, site you visit and subject line you type is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not. In the end if you publish the source material I will likely be immediately implicated. I ask only that you insure that this information makes it home to the American public.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-4.53.05-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-4985\" title=\"Screen Shot 2014-11-30 at 4.53.05 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-4.53.05-PM-212x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-4.53.05-PM-212x300.png 212w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-30-at-4.53.05-PM.png 241w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 170px) 100vw, 170px\" \/><\/a>That revelation of the NSA\u2019s end-run around The Fourth Amendment and the system of FISA Courts in which the agency collects <em>every<\/em> bit of electronic data communicated by American citizens, then analyzes it in a way that allows them to track us and predict our behavior, should have qualified Snowden for The Nobel Peace Prize vs. the exile in Russia he was forced into when the U.S. revoked his passport in June of 2013.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s an irony in the act of a ticket-taker attempting to limit access to a film which celebrates full disclosure. But after seeing CitizenFour I was propelled to write this piece for reasons grounded in my own experience as an investigative reporter. First, I\u2019ve relied for decades on courageous whistleblowers who have risked their careers and their freedom to expose waste, malfeasance and corruption in government.<\/p>\n<p>Second, given what I know about how the federal government, at the highest levels, breaks the law with impunity to silence its critics, Snowden\u2019s heroic actions should have prompted me to speak out in his defense <em>sooner<\/em>. Now this extraordinary film has caused me to say what I should have 18 months ago when the 29-year old analyst went public.<\/p>\n<p>As a political Liberal who believed in Barack Obama\u2019s promises of transparency I was shocked that a former constitutional law professor like the President could treat Snowden in such a Draconian manner, particularly after his own <a title=\"NSA Review\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/docs\/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf\">NSA Review<\/a>\u00a0concluded that \u201cthe use of (Patriot Act) section 215 meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely matter\u201d via other less intrusive methods.<\/p>\n<p>And while we&#8217;re talking about irony, my own decade-long reporting on the intelligence failures of the FBI in four investigative books for HarperCollins has documented multiple \u201cacts of terror,\u201d missed by the Bureau since they first began monitoring an al Qaeda cell in Brooklyn in the summer of 1989.<\/p>\n<p>For the full story see this link to <a title=\"Triple Cross Timeline\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/Triple_Cross_2009_Timeline.pdf\"><strong>the 32 page timeline<\/strong><\/a> in my third book <a title=\"TC amazon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Triple-Cross-Ladens-Master-Penetrated\/dp\/0061189413\/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417397455&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=%22Triple+Cross%22\"><strong>\u201cTriple Cross: How bin Laden\u2019s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and The FBI.\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>HOW DID THEY MISS THESE TERRORISTS?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One has to ask: with America\u2019s $80 billion-a-year intelligence gathering apparatus and the massive interdiction of civil liberties documented in CitizenFour, permitting the government to penetrate our most intimate relationships,\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">how did they miss two of the most notorious homegrown terror threats since 9\/11<\/span>:\u00a0Faisal Shazhad the \u201cTimes Square Bomber,\u201d who parked a WMD in the New York theater district in May, 2010, only to have the plot thwarted by an alert bystander and the Tsarnaev brothers who succeeded in executing the deadly Boston Marathon bombing after the Bureau was warned about them two years earlier?<\/p>\n<p>This is what I reported in my latest book,<strong><a title=\"Deal Amazon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deal-Devil-Secret-Thirty-Year-Relationship\/dp\/0061455369\/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417397412&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=%22Deal+With+The+Devil%22\"> \u201cDeal With The Devil.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Shazhad-Tsarnaev2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-4988\" title=\"Shazhad Tsarnaev\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Shazhad-Tsarnaev2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"469\" height=\"226\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Shazhad-Tsarnaev2.png 521w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Shazhad-Tsarnaev2-300x144.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 469px) 100vw, 469px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Right after Shazhad\u2019s device failed to detonate, the NYPD did a remarkable job of bringing him to ground within 53 hours. But there was a shocking revelation in a <em>New York Times<\/em> story on Shazhad that was overlooked by the rest of the mainstream media.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant who purchased his condo in Norwalk Connecticut from Shazhad in 2004 told Times reporters that \u2018A few weeks after he moved in investigators from the Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>It turned out that Shazhad had received five months of training at a terrorist camp in Waziristan, Pakistan and he\u2019d returned just three months before parking his Nissan Pathfinder full of explosives adjacent to the Marriott Hotel in Times Square.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Times-Square-bomb.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-5011\" title=\"Times Square bomb\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Times-Square-bomb-300x229.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"206\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Times-Square-bomb-300x229.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Times-Square-bomb.png 586w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The fact that he was able to build such a weapon of mass destruction on his own and that he moved it into a location where an explosion would have produced mass casualties, gives one pause, particularly when we now know that six years earlier, agents from the JTTF had Shazhad on its radar and inexplicably no one within the Bureau connected the dots on the threat.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Boston-Marathon-bombing1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4990\" title=\"Boston Marathon bombing\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Boston-Marathon-bombing1-300x210.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Boston-Marathon-bombing1-300x210.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Boston-Marathon-bombing1.png 710w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><strong>And while local police in Boston interdicted the Tsarnaev brothers within four days of the deadly Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, it soon became known that 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been vetted and cleared by the FBI in 2011 after the Russian government had asked the Bureau to investigate his links to terrorism. That prompted calls by the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Peter King to ask, \u2018Did They move too quickly by letting this guy off the hook?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The answer of course, is that they did. But the Bureau escaped any serious scrutiny for that colossal act of negligence which led to the blowback in Boston.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CRITICS OF THE FILM<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nMost of the criticism of CitizenFour, in<a title=\"slate.com critic\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/war_stories\/2014\/10\/citizenfour_review_laura_poitras_edward_snowden_documentary.html\"> a <em>Slate.com<\/em> column<\/a> by Fred Kaplan and <a title=\"Daily Beast\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/10\/20\/citizenfour-is-mesmerizing-if-you-don-t-mind-the-omissions.html\">a <em>Daily Beas<\/em>t post<\/a> by Michael Cohen, focuses on the other irony in this story: that to connect with Poitras and Greenwald, Snowden chose Hong Kong &#8212; which lately, pro-democracy demonstrators have reminded us is the slightly-more-open \u201cAdministrative Region\u201d of the hugely repressive People\u2019s Republic of China &#8212; and that Snowden is now living with his girlfriend in a dacha provided by Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB hood who has sneered at international law in his invasion of Ukraine.\u00a0But the fact that the U.S. cast Snowden as a traitor\/spy as soon as he was outed, demonstrates that he had few options when it came to a point of rendezvous with the filmmaker and the reporter whom he rightly hoped would tell his side of the story.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most chilling scene in CitizenFour comes when an ACLU lawyer, one of several international attorneys seeking to help Snowden, describes the nature of The Espionage Act, a World War One-era statute for which there is virtually no defense.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Dan Ellsberg\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ellsberg.net\">Daniel Ellsberg<\/a> whose leaks exposed the calculated fraud behind America\u2019s escalation in Vietnam was spared Snowden\u2019s fate and exile because he dumped <a title=\"Pentagon Papers\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/us\/2011_PENTAGON_PAPERS.html\">\u201cThe Pentagon Papers\u201d<\/a> on <em>The New York Times<\/em>, which, then had the courage to publish them.\u00a0The fact that in 2013 Edward Snowden came to believe that his best refuge was with a documentary filmmaker and reporter based in Brazil who wrote for a U.K. owned newspaper speaks volumes about the options for today\u2019s whistleblowers.<\/p>\n<p>That said, CitizenFour ends with a particularly disturbing scene.<\/p>\n<p>After Snowden describes Britain\u2019s <a title=\"GCHQ\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gchq.gov.uk\/Pages\/homepage.aspx\">GCHQ<strong>,<\/strong><\/a> their equivalent to the NSA, as being even more invasive than the U.S. SIGINT spy agency, we see the two memory cards he gave to Greenwald containing his data dump being <a title=\"Guardian Snowden files destroyed\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/aug\/20\/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london\">destroyed<\/a> \u2013 literally drilled with holes after <em>The Guardian,<\/em> we\u2019re told, knuckled under to GCHQ pressure. A laptop, which also contained the data, was later taken apart under orders from the British government. The 21st Century equivalent of a book burning.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Laptop-destroyed1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-4993\" title=\"Laptop destroyed\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Laptop-destroyed1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"420\" height=\"284\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Laptop-destroyed1.png 649w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Laptop-destroyed1-300x202.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The series that Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill reported for <em>The Guardian US<\/em>\u00a0won the <a title=\"WP Pulitzer\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/washington-post-wins-pulitzer-prize-for-public-service-shared-with-guardian\/2014\/04\/14\/bc7c4cc6-c3fb-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html\">2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service<\/a>\u00a0and the award was shared with <em>The Washington Post,<\/em> where Laura Poitras and Barton Gellman published other Snowden disclosures. But it&#8217;s significant that neither <em>The WashPost,<\/em> <em>The New York Times <\/em>or any of the major U.S. dailies or broadcast networks were Edward Snowden\u2019s initial media outlets of choice.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to the free-exchange of information in cyber-space, the worst part of all this is the chilling effect it could have on the next intelligence insider, who feels compelled to risk all in pursuit of the truth. The message from the Obama administration is clear: go public and we&#8217;ll lock you away for life. But that&#8217;s what makes this film so important: the notion that there is still a place where a whistleblower can get to, even if the back-end consequence may be years in exile.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s another small irony that the lead storyline in the final season of Aaron Sorkin&#8217;s <a title=\"Newsroom\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hbo.com\/the-newsroom\">Newsroom<\/a> (now airing on HBO) focuses on the jeopardy that a major news organization can be in for even <em>covering<\/em> such a story. And it won&#8217;t be lost on viewers of this documentary that by merely <em>going to a screening<\/em>\u00a0of CitizenFour or blogging about it as I&#8217;m doing right now, they could easily end up on the NSA&#8217;s &#8220;hot list.&#8221; But that&#8217;s all the more reason for people to invest as many megabytes as possible in a global discussion of the film&#8217;s revelations.<\/p>\n<p>In a democracy the &#8220;offense&#8221; of full unbridled debate is the best &#8220;defense&#8221; against tyranny.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DEFYING THE TICKET-TAKER\u2019S PREDICTION<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Citizenfour is a ground-breaking film that every Guild member should screen and every American should watch. As I later learned, the ticket taker&#8217;s initial attempt to limit my access was the result of a dictum from a Metropolitan Theatres executive to &#8220;go easy&#8221; on the screen passes to Guild members. It certainly wasn&#8217;t the result of some nefarious NSA plot. But censorship often manifests itself in unusual ways.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, as to her prediction that CitizenFour probably wouldn&#8217;t be nominated, the woman at the ticket window appears to be wrong. The film has already shown up on two of the season&#8217;s \u201cbest film\u201d lists, ranking No. 18 on <a title=\"Sight &amp; Sound\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/best-films-2014\">Sight &amp; Sound\u2019s \u201cTop 20\u201d<\/a> and No. 3 on <a title=\"Hornaday's Top 10\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/style\/the-best-movies-of-2014-boyhood-force-majeure-selma-and-more\/2014\/11\/25\/c09403ae-70ed-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html\"><em>Washington Post<\/em> critic Ann Hornaday\u2019s<strong> <\/strong>\u201cTop Ten<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Hornady describes it, <strong>\u201c<\/strong>Citizenfour, Laura Poitras\u2019 taut, claustrophobically effective documentary, in which she puts viewers in the Hong Kong hotel room when former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden first shared his revelations about government surveillance, unspools like a real-time thriller that both humanized its subject, clarified his purpose and reminded viewers what\u2019s at stake in his disclosures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Copyright 2014 by Peter Lance<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"CITIZENFOUR%2C%20the%20doc%20a%20ticket%20taker%20predicted%20wouldn%27t%20even%20be%20nominated%2C%20wins%20the%20Oscar\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>By Peter Lance Updated Feb. 22nd 2015.\u00a0On November 29th\u00a0\u00a0at The Plaza de Oro, the Metropolitan Theatre chain\u2019s Santa Barbara \u201cart house,\u201d I was initially denied entry to a screening of CitizenFour, Laura Poitras\u2019 deeply troubling documentary on Edward Snowden, the ex-CIA and DIA analyst who blew the cover off the NSA\u2019s illegal surveillance of millions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[655,665,657,643,652,648,149,661,428,649,640,646,626,642,644,109,653,654,660,629,631,656,667,630,639,636,662,627,666,628,635,641,658,663,664,659,638,637,645,650,633,632,651,634,647,1214],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4981"}],"version-history":[{"count":91,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6088,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981\/revisions\/6088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}