Published on Sunday, September 29, 2013 by Common Dreams

'The connections between war and surveillance are clear.'

– Jon Queally, staff writer

Jeremy Scahill (r), a contributor to The Nation magazine and the New York Times best-selling author of "Dirty Wars," said he will be working with Glenn Greenwald (l), the Rio-based journalist who has written stories about U.S. surveillance programs based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. (Photo: AP)

Jeremy Scahill (r), a contributor to The Nation magazine and the New York Times best-selling author of “Dirty Wars,” said he will be working with Glenn Greenwald (l), the Rio-based journalist who has written stories about U.S. surveillance programs based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. (Photo: AP)

Though they refused to offer many details on the project, journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald on Saturday night announced that they are now working together on joint investigation on how the U.S. National Security Agency has been involved in the wider overseas "assassination program" run by the Obama administration.

As the Associated Press reports from Rio de Janeiro—where Greenwald and Scahill attended the South American premiere of Dirty Wars, a documentary film based on Scahill's book of the same name—the U.S. journalists "known for their investigations of the United States' government" have now "teamed up to report" on how the vast surveillance network of the NSA operates in conjunction with clandestine operations run by the U.S. military or CIA.

"The connections between war and surveillance are clear. I don't want to give too much away but Glenn and I are working on a project right now that has at its center how the National Security Agency plays a significant, central role in the U.S. assassination program," said Scahill, according to AP, while speaking at a roundtable discussion at the Rio Film Festival.

"There are so many stories that are yet to be published that we hope will produce 'actionable intelligence,' or information that ordinary citizens across the world can use to try to fight for change, to try to confront those in power," Scahill added.

Greenwald, who has been entrusted with a trove of top-secret NSA documents by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported extensively on their contents, has previously indicated that there is much more to come from the information contained in the files.

Scahill, well-known as an investigative journalist on U.S. foreign policy and the author of two best-selling books focused on the government's so-called "global war on terror," has reported extensively on the U.S. drone wars in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere and also focused on the work of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (or JSOC) the military force at the heart of the many controversial programs in recent years.

In a separate but related development, the other key journalist at the center of the NSA reporting since the revelations began surfacing in May of this year, filmmaker and muckraker Laura Poitras, this weekend teamed up with New York Times veteran reporter James Risen to reveal how the NSA has been utilizing its dragnet surveillance programs to create social profiles of American citizens based on their online and phone behavior.

Poitras  has co-written pieces with Greenwald as well as other Guardian reporters, and also with colleagues in Germany where she is currently based. Greenwald has written pieces in collaboration with journalists in the UK, Brazil, and India based on the documents.

Following Scahill and Greenwald on Twitter:

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