NYT exec. says he feared for his life transferring Snowden files

The New York Times’s chief technology officer said he put his life at risk by sneaking documents leaked by Edward Snowden into the country.

Rajiv Pant directly oversaw the transfer of electronic files, which British newspaper The Guardian provided to the Times, CNN Money reports.

“We smuggled it into the country, basically,” Pant said about the ordeal at the AppSec USA cybersecurity conference recently, according to CNN’s report. 

He was referring to hard drives that stored highly classified U.S. government documents Snowden had stolen. Pant had to sneak them into The New York Times headquarters in New York, but didn’t indicate how it happened or when.

{mosads}”It can get scary,” Pant said. “I told myself: ‘I don’t want to see anything on those drives. I could be putting my life at risk.’ ” 

The paper set up a highly guarded room, CNN’s report said, and Pant was worried he’d catch a glance at the information.

Pant told the conference he was concerned about how far the government would go to hunt people down who had access to the information.

“You almost become paranoid,” Pant said.

Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, faces espionage charges in the United States for stealing and disclosing the top-secret documents. He’s been leaking them to journalists since June.