That was about six months ago. Today, Greenwald believes he miscalculated. In an exclusive interview Wednesday he said that the ominous rhetoric directed at him has actually escalated. It's discouraged him from visiting the United States, where he still has strong family and professional ties. And though he intends to reenter the country sooner rather than later, he'll do so despite the fact that he believes he faces a much greater risk of detention than most of the other journalists who have access to some or all of Snowden's files.

"As the story kind of went on I thought the prospect of something happening to the journalists would dissipate to zero. I actually think that the risk is higher than it's ever been," Greenwald told me. "My parents are getting older, my nieces [live there] -- none of that is something I'm going to go home for now ... I had a foundation that wanted to sponsor and pay for and market aggressively a six-city speaking tour to talk about the NSA story and the revelations. I would have completely loved to have done it … on the assurance that nothing would happen. And because we couldn't get it from the U.S. government, I had to cancel."

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Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and also a writer for Newsweek, had a feature story published by Newsweek recently that was specifically intended to present Snowden as a former intelligence agency employee who had become a Chinese spy.

The feature story did not explicitly call Snowden a “spy,” but that was implied throughout. Eichenwald presented Snowden’s release of secret documents revealing the true nature of the U.S. surveillance state as aiding China’s “voracious theft of corporate, government and military secrets.” Eichenwald accused Snowden of being responsible for China escalating cyberwar.

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