Are you serious? The only "cleared" (using your term) people were NSA higher-ups - the very same people who spied on their own citizens. Snowden sent the docs

Are you serious? The only "cleared" (using your term) people were NSA higher-ups - the very same people who spied on their own citizens. Snowden sent the docs not to any/all journalists, but to a carefully selected group of the most reputable ones: NYT, WP, Guardian. He had followed Poitras/Greenwald for a long time before to make sure the docs end up in responsible hands. Also, the journalists asked the US government to cooperate/redact out some national-security sensitive details, they refused. So they had to use their own judgement.