It makes complete sense if other countries got the files from the journalists. Snowden deleted everything before the first articles were published, and he's als

It makes complete sense if other countries got the files from the journalists. Snowden deleted everything before the first articles were published, and he's also a more difficult target than the journalists. The journalists that were initially in contact with Snowden are neither intelligence nor technology experts, and they had never even used PGP email. They had to get an infosec crash course from Snowden, so their systems could probably be breached with relative comfort by intelligence agencies like Russia's or China's.