The company, which gave no reason for the dismissal, also postponed its annual shareholder meeting scheduled for later on Wednesday in order to renominate existing directors without Zimmer.

“The board expects to discuss with Mr. Zimmer the extent, if any, and terms of his ongoing relationship with the company,” Men’s Wearhouse said in a terse statement.

Company spokesman Ken Dennard said he had no comment beyond what was in the statement.

Efforts to reach Zimmer were unsuccessful. A query posted on the “Ask George” section of the company’s website, did not elicit an immediate response.

Zimmer, 64, has appeared in his own commercials since 1985 and is known for his line: “You’re going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.”

The retailer said in its annual report in March that Zimmer was central to its public image and advertising.

” … The extended loss of the services of Mr. Zimmer or other key personnel could have a material adverse effect on the securities markets’ view of our prospects and materially harm our business.”

However, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Richard Jaffe said Zimmer’s departure would probably not have a big impact on the company as it has the legal right to his image and 500 hours of footage.

“We believe he has been easing himself out of day to day work over the last year,” Jaffe wrote in a note. He speculated that Zimmer may have had difficulty letting go of leadership of the business, and that this had led to conflict with the board.

Men’s Wearhouse, founded in 1973, operates more than 1,100 stores under the Men’s Wearhouse, Moores and K&G banners.

It reported higher-than-expected results in its most recent quarter, with sales jumping more than 5 percent to $616.5 million. The company had sales of $2.38 billion in 2012.

“I founded this company 40 years ago on the belief that employees should enjoy coming to work every day,” Zimmer said in a January 17 statement after Fortune magazine included the company on its list of “100 best companies to work for.”

Zimmer was the company’s single-largest individual shareholder as of March 31 with a stake of 3.52 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The bearded, raspy-voiced Zimmer was president from 1974 to 1997 and chief executive from 1991 until June 2011 when he became executive chairman.

A well-known proponent of legalizing marijuana, Zimmer was also an independent director at for-profit education provider Apollo Group Inc. from 2006 until March 21 this year.

Shares of the company, based in Fremont, California, were down about 2 percent at $36.77 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) led the debate for the Republican majority as woman after woman spoke in favor of the bill.

The lineup contradicted claims by Democrats in the House that the bill is driven by “men in blue suits and red ties” in order to “endanger women,” in the words of Reps. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.) and Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.).

The bill, which passed 228-196, would outlaw abortion 20 weeks after conception, except when the mother’s life is in danger or in reported cases of rape or incest. It claims that unborn babies can feel pain after 20 weeks and potentially sooner.

“We are taking an action that will enable so many children to enjoy that first guarantee, that guarantee to life,” Blackburn said in her opening remarks.

Blackburn noted that public opinion surveys show widespread public support for this kind of bill.

Sixty-four percent of women support legislation protecting babies that can feel pain, while 60 percent of all Americans support restricting abortion in the second trimester and 80 percent in the third, she said. Federal law currently permits abortion up to birth, although some states have outlawed abortion earlier in the pregnancy.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) noted the sheer scope of abortion in the United States. Since 1973 there have been 52 million abortions, she said. The current population of the United States is about 320 million.

“It is unconscionable that in America, where we fight for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we tolerate the systemic extermination of an entire generation of the most vulnerable among us,” Foxx said.

The proposed 20-week ban originally only covered the District of Columbia. However, following the conviction of the Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell on three counts of first-degree murder for killing newborn babies, Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) pledged to expand the bill to cover the entire country.

Pro-abortion groups immediately condemned Franks’ announcement.

NARAL Pro-Choice America has been using the bill in its fundraising pitches, while Planned Parenthood has denounced the bill.

House Democrats also strongly denounced the bill. Pelosi claimed that it would outlaw all abortions, which is false.

Pelosi was not the only one to mix up her facts in the debate over the bill.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.) stumbled over the fraught issue of rape in her comments on the floor. She said on the House floor that no man will ever experience rape, and she incorrectly cited Franks as arguing, like former Rep. Todd Akin (R., Mo.), that rape does not result in pregnancy.

“You can’t get pregnant, they say, if you get raped,” Slaughter said about the Republicans.

Slaughter was alluding to a comment by Franks during the House Judiciary Committee’s consideration of the bill. Franks, who was the sponsor of the bill, said “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.”

Franks later clarified his comment, but not before pro-abortion advocates jumped on it as evidence that the GOP is out of touch on women’s issues.

The Republican leadership inserted language in the bill that would allow an abortion in the case of reported rape and incest after 20 weeks over the weekend, and Blackburn took on what would traditionally be Franks’ job in handling the bill on the floor.

The Democrats tried to derail the bill’s passage from the very beginning of its introduction on the House floor.

A repeated refrain from the Democrats was that the Republicans were taking on an issue that did not matter while neglecting weightier matters like the budget, jobs, and student loans.

“Just another day in the Republican Congress: more extremism, more dead-end bills,” Pelosi said.

Republicans were undeterred, however.

“I believe as a lawmaker I have a duty to protect those that are the most vulnerable,” said Rep. Kristi Noem (R., S.D.).

The bill passed with bipartisan support. Six Democrats joined 222 Republicans voting in favor of the bill, while six Republicans voted against it.

President Barack Obama has threatened a veto of the bill, but it is not expected to clear the Senate and reach the president’s desk.

Rowhani, a cleric and intellectual, has been described as a “moderate reformer” in the media despite his long relationship with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his past harsh rhetoric against student protesters, and his claim that he deceived the West into allowing Iran’s nuclear program to progress surreptitiously during his tenure as nuclear negotiator with Europe.

“Which Hassan Rowhani’s going to show up as president? He’s said a lot of things, has a long paper trail,” said the Eurasia Group’s Middle East director Cliff Kupchan. “He has very explicitly supported, been an ardent supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, in some of his previous statements. And he had a famous quote where he pretty much says ‘We snookered the West, man.’ So will the real Mr. Rowhani please stand up?”

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former reformist Iranian official who has advocated for a softening of Iran sanctions, said “hope and excitement is in the air” after the election, and that she believes Rowhani could forge a “national consensus” in Iran on the nuclear issue.

“The West, particularly the United States, must grab this opportunity,” said Haghighatjoo. “Rowhani has the ability to have cooperation with the West.”

Still, she added that Rowhani is “not a reformist” and said reformers supported him in order to ensure a more hard-line candidate was not elected.

Kupchan said the United States may see some modest but promising changes under Rowhani, including the potential for better cooperation between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency and “kinder words” on the international stage.

“The bad news is that the same guy makes nuclear policy decisions and that’s Khamenei, it’s not Mr. Rowhani,” he said.

Kupchan also said the election results showed that sanctions are having an impact.

“Contrary to the naysayers that the sanctions didn’t work, it was very clear from the Iranian public here that sanctions have made their lives worse and they don’t want that,” said Kupchan. “So I think a lot of the current grumbling in this country about sanctions was belied, was falsified by this election.”

Hosein Ghazian, an Iranian election analyst at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, said the election was engineered to include only candidates who were “trusted by the system.”

“[The regime] wanted to avoid the high cost of the post-election outcome,” said Ghazian, such as the massive street protests that were sparked by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in 2009.

He said Iranian hardliners did not rally behind any one particular candidate, and even the office of the supreme leader was divided over whom to support, making it more difficult for this election to be rigged.

“The reformist camp was able to seize the initiative,” said Ghazian.

Kyle’s legend was founded in his being one of the greatest Navy SEAL snipers ever. Mooney tells this aspect of the story splendidly. The story of Kyle shooting potential car-hijackers may sound like a television drama, but it’s cold fact.

The most lasting part of Kyle’s legend is his work with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, helping them adjust to life after war. After dodging countless bullets in conflict, the one with his name on it was fired by one of the very vets he sought to help recover.

The kid born in West Texas appeared to be destined to be the “Devil of Ramadi.” Kyle was a chivalrous gunslinger who, even as an adolescent, followed his strong convictions and sense of blunt honesty. Mooney portrays Kyle as being ready-made for the SEALS from the second he appeared out of the womb. The only career that would combine his fearlessness with his love for country was as a special operator.

The U.S. military embraced Kyle’s brashness. He was one of the most disciplined warriors on the battlefield but knew how to relax while off the clock. This most lethal killer unwound by playing video games with his brothers. Kyle would enter kill zones without his issued Kevlar helmet, wearing his worn-out Texas Longhorn ball cap.

Mooney also trumpets Kyle’s values as a father and husband. Kyle’s widow, Taya, is mentioned throughout as the anchor settling the restless hero. However, the couple ran into difficulty once he had no more battles left to fight.

Mooney merely hints at the discord the Kyles endured as the warrior returned to civilian life. It’s comforting to know Kyle found his place in society as a contractor post-combat, but not all warriors are as fortunate.

Ask veterans and they’ll agree the return to civilian life is among the their greatest challenges. They’ll brush past their time in combat and instead laud their family. Mooney skips over Kyle’s post-war progress in order to show how Taya grounded Kyle. Surely there were complications on the way, complications that would give us a better understanding of this amazing man.

The reader can’t help thinking that if Kyle still was here, he would say this book was a little too simple. We’re still waiting for a portrait of Chris Kyle that shows him in all of his complexity.

The Left Forum is the preeminent socialist confab in the United States, bringing together leftists of all stripes since 1981 for three days of panels, lectures, and more panels. So many panels.

I arrived at Pace University in lower Manhattan on Saturday morning, June 7, and, after convincing the coordinator that I was a Very Serious Reporter, was given a press pass and set free to roam.

Inside the university, I saw all of the familiar stereotypes: grey-haired baby boomers still fighting The Man; college radicals with “legalize it” patches on their canvas field jackets; young girls with tattoos and combat boots.

The radical left as an organized, visible force in America has all but disappeared during Barack Obama’s presidency. Obama having secured a second term, Democrats have little need for the noisemakers. Occupy Wall Street briefly raised the prospect of a reinvigorated left, but that, too, faded away.

Down in the press area, I ran into Medea Benjamin, the Code Pink activist who made the news recently for interrupting President Obama’s speech on closing GITMO. Short, blond, 60-years-old and dressed in a pink shirt, she didn’t look like a powerhouse protester. As we talked, people walked up to congratulate her.

“It was easier to mobilize people under Bush,” Benjamin said. “It was really hard in Obama’s first term to mobilize, to move in a more radical direction.”

Obama’s critics painted him as a socialist, effectively making the president the left goalpost of the political spectrum, she complained. What’s a real socialist to do?

***

In the Pace student union, vendors hawked Ché and Trotsky t-shirts. Not to mention magnets, posters, and all sorts of other revolutionary kitsch.

The Workers World Party handed out literature at a nearby table. The group is notable for its full-throated support of “anti-imperialist” leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong Il. It also called the Tiananmen Square massacre “a myth.”

Overwhelmed by the cognitive dissonance, I decided to start attending the numerous panels.

There were dozens to choose from at any given moment; managing time at the Left Forum was an exercise fraught with opportunity cost calculations. For example, if I attended the talk on “ecocide” and smashing capitalism, I would miss “Pussy Riot: The Ongoing Struggle.”

In the end, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see Michael Moore, who was participating in a panel discussion titled “Harnessing Humor to Turbo Charge Engagement.”

“Yes, Michael Moore!” a woman in front of me said as we caught sight of a sign directing us to the classroom where the panel discussion was to take place.

We took our seats in a medium-sized lecture hall on one of the upper floors of Pace. Julianna Forlano, host of a YouTube show called Absurdity Today, led the panel.

John Hlinko, the head of Left Action, was also there. Hlinko said he used humorous Facebook pages to recruit liberals into his activist network. Some examples of his Facebook work: “Republicans are morons” and “Can this horse’s ass get more fans than Mitch McConnell?”

John Fugelsang, the host of a political talk show on Al Jazeera-owned Current TV, was another panelist.

And of course, Michael Moore, director of Canadian Bacon, wearing his signature baseball cap.

The panelists said humor is an effective tool for making a point, as opposed to the grating seriousness that pervades much of the left.

It was by far the most entertaining event I saw at the Left Forum, but the one thing the panelists were totally serious about is how unfunny conservatives are.

Moore said the reason “we don’t have conservative comedians generally” is because conservatives are behind the times on social issues.

“They have a hard time with this,” Moore said. “They’re dinosaurs.”

“Conservatives can’t do comedy for two reasons,” Fugelsang declared. “One, they’re usually defending the status quo in some way. You’re defending the upper two percent.”

“And also, if there’s no element of truth in the point you making, it won’t be funny,” Fugelsang continued.

Fugelsang may be an expert on humor after all. There was something funny about a liberal comedian who is so self-serious he believes his political tribe has a monopoly on truth.

***

Outside Pace, the standby line stretched around the corner with people waiting to see leftist intellectual and Gilmore Girls guest star Noam Chomsky.

Activists took advantage of the captive audience, handing out flyers in support of Bolivian miners, flyers opposing the Koch Brothers, flyers for every conceivable liberal cause.

“Well, I’d like to say a couple things about tendencies in American society and what they portend for us and the world in the light of U.S. power,” Chomsky began. “It’s diminishing as it has been since 1945, but it’s still incomparable in its danger.”

Chomsky stood on stage in blue jeans and a cable-knit sweater, speaking in a soft, gravelly voice so constant in its temperament, tempo, and volume that the words melted into one soothing stream of sound punctuated by his stock phrases.

“Violent neoliberal assault on the population … lethal grip of imperial domination … lockstep service to the rich and corporate sector.”

The thrust of Chomsky’s speech was to counter what he called the “received doctrine about American society” with the truth of “Really Existing Capitalist Democracy,” or RECD, as he called it.

“Kennedy was carrying out a huge terror campaign against Cuba,” Chomsky said. Coupled with the U.S. military advantage, it’s no wonder the poor Russians put missiles there.

“We’ll soon be celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta,” Chomsky said. “More like interring it after Bush and Obama have torn off all the flesh.”

Iran’s nuclear program is “a Western obsession, primarily the United States’.”

The Federalist Papers? Mostly propaganda.

“The late Weimar Republic comes to mind.”

Many, many more things came to Chomsky’s mind, as well. After about a hour, he finished with a paraphrase of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “moral arc of the universe” quote, and the audience broke into rapturous applause.

***

“And this is what happens when you try and present Bolshevik politics at the Left Forum,” the Marxist said bitterly as the crowd shouted him down.

The panel, “Occupy and the Future of the Left,” had proceeded just fine until the moderator opened up the floor to questions.

Panelists from radical magazines like Jacobin and Dissent had opined on what Occupy meant and where it was going. They talked in the occu-language prevalent among the movement’s organizers—a mix of academic “isms” and metaphysical poetics about the infinite possibilities of the Occupy experiment.

“When we say Occupy theory we do not mean the theory of something called Occupy,” said Yates McKee, one of the editors of Tidal, a journal of “Occupy theory.” “We mean Occupy as a body of action, Occupy as a space, where people discover their common power of refusal and invention.”

Once the mic was open, though, the Marxists discovered their common power of refusal and invention to slam those democratic socialist sellouts.

Shortly after the first Marxist approached the mic, a woman arrived and began yelling at McKee for excluding non-“horizontalist” (don’t ask) opinions from his magazine.

After that, another Marxist began berating the panelists for their subservience to the running dogs of capitalism.

“When the police cleaned out the parks, those were YOUR police!” the man shouted with all the venom he could muster, leaning into the mic and pointing an accusatory Leninist finger at the panelists.

“Please, stop,” the moderator interrupted. “No. You’re being rude.”

“Excuse me, why isn’t this movement working?” someone in the audience asked sarcastically. “That’s my question.”

***

The park that became the heart of a national protest movement is small and unremarkable—a sloped, concrete plaza dotted with young trees. There were no signs of the original Occupy Wall Street encampment left at Zucotti Park.

I was hoping to catch a march in support of the public protests in Turkey led by Occupy elements, but the marchers had already left. Instead, I found Bill Johnson, a member of OccuEvolve.

OccuEvolve sprung up as an umbrella group for Occupy elements after the general dissolution of the movement.

Johnson, a middle-aged man in a button-down shirt and slacks, said he walks every day through the parts of Staten Island hit worst by Hurricane Sandy wearing a sandwich board that reads, “Seven months later, no acceptance, no justice.”

“We haven’t reached out to the poor neighborhoods, the powerless, outside this little park,” Johnson said. “That’s where the voice of Occupy needs to grow. The Left Forum is not going to reach out to them, brilliant as Chomsky is. They talk for three days and don’t produce anything that gets us to the root of our problem.”

My interview with Johnson was interrupted by another member of OccuEvolve, a lady who wanted to tell me about the health dangers of electromagnetic radiation, such as the kind emitted by WiFi.

“She’s one of the few people talking about this issue,” Johnson told me.

***

“America has always had a strong fascist lean,” Oscar winner Oliver Stone said to nods of approval from the audience.

As with Chomsky, the auditorium was filled to capacity for an interview with Stone and a screening of his 10-part documentary series, “The Untold History of the United States.”

Stone said he wanted to make the documentary to counter the lies his children were taught about American history in school.

He recruited his friend, American University history professor Peter Kuznick, to help, and the two banged out a 10-hour documentary and 700-page tome.

The film was financed, Stone said, through private sources in South America. Stone said his film about George W. Bush was backed by Hong Kong money. Clearly globalization is working for somebody.

There is nothing really “untold” about the whole production. Michael C. Moynihan called the series “ideological drivel” and “a marvel of historical illiteracy” in a Daily Beast review. A Princeton historian in the New York Review of Books said the documentary’s accompanying book was “less a work of history than a skewed political document.”

The folks at the Left Forum ate it up.

When Henry Kissinger or the Koch brothers appeared on screen, the audience hissed. They clapped and cheered when Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald and imprisoned leaker Bradley Manning were shown.

It was somewhat weird and refreshing, though, to see Kuznick, Stone, and the audience shower invective on Democratic liberals such as Harry Truman, Madeleine Albright, and Hillary Clinton.

“These are the people that are creating the United Stasi of America,” Kuznick said.

***

I was at a gauche Irish pub later that night when I heard the familiar patter of revolutionary flapdoodle.

The two girls sitting next to me were talking revolutionary strategy and boys.

An old Occupy friend spotted them, and they began talking about every occupiers favorite subject: drama.

“Oh, I saw you guys making out on May Day and thought you were together.”

They recalled a mutual acquaintance who had a penchant for oversharing his poetry about ejaculation.

“I mean, poetry has its place, and sex has a place in poetry and the revolution, but jeez!”

There were dozens more sessions the next morning, but I couldn’t imagine anyone had much left to say.

The president had previously said the use of chemical weapons such as sarin was a “red line” that would prompt the United States to act.

White House National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes confirmed the aid to Syrian rebels “includes military support” in a conference call with reporters but repeatedly declined to say it that aid would include lethal support such as firearms and ammunition.

He also said that no decision has been made on a no-fly zone despite acknowledging that the Assad regime had crossed the president’s “red line.”

That reticence sparked comment from Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), a supporter of increased U.S. involvement in Syria.

The rebels “need a lot more than military assistance. We need to establish a no-fly zone. We need a safe zone within Syria,” McCain said on CNN.

A U.S. military proposal currently under consideration by the White House does include a limited no fly zone, but Rhodes repeatedly stressed that no decision on that policy has been made.

McCain said it would be necessary to secure the war-torn nation.

“You have to change the equation on the ground and you can’t do it with half measures, you can’t do it with just supplying weapons,” McCain said. “Assad is far too successful for that to be effective now.”

The statements from McCain and Rhoades came minutes after the White House confirmed that the Syrian regime used sarin gas, a lethal nerve agent, “on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.”

Intelligence reports estimate that 100 to 150 people have been killed by the attacks, but Rhodes said that that tally is “likely incomplete.”

The regime’s use of chemical weapons, the White House statement said, “crosses clear red lines.”

McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) immediately called on the administration to include weapons and ammunition in its aid packages.

“A decision to provide lethal assistance, especially ammunition and heavy weapons, to opposition forces in Syria is long overdue, and we hope the President will take this urgently needed step,” the two senators said in a joint press release.

Rhodes said the White House would not “lay out an inventory of what falls under the scope of … assistance” to the rebels.

There will be no U.S. military action beyond increased aid shipments, Rhodes said.

“Nobody has suggested” sending U.S. troops to the country, he said.

JIMMY WILLIAMS: I left the Republican Party, because I felt like an outsider as a gay man. Imagine if you are a Latino in this country today, and you see what’s happening. I mean, I doubt very seriously many Latinos are actually paying attention to what’s happening on the Senate floor, but for those who are, they’re probably looking at this going, “Oh my God, they don’t want me.” If you’re a woman, what’s happening with Trent Franks in the House? If you are, I don’t know, let’s say a black American and you think back about what happened on Nov. 7 with these crazy voting restrictions. Listen, the Republican Party knows what the problem with itself is. The question becomes, and Ron can address this, will they step up to the plate? Here’s a great example of that, immigration reform, and actually do something to fix the problem. I don’t think their base will let them, but again, I don’t know the answer to that, that’s the problem.

Contrary to Williams’ assertion, a June 6 America’s Voice/Latino Decisions poll revealed Latinos are in fact paying very close attention to the current immigration debate.

According to the poll, 80 percent of respondents have heard or read something about immigration reform, while a majority see the issue as the most important legislation facing Congress and the president.

O’Donnell’s guest Mavanee Anderson, a friend of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, said Snowden may have been motivated by patriotism to join the Army in 2004.

O’Donnell replied he does not know what the word “patriot” means in almost any context:

MAVANEE ANDERSON: I don’t think he was questioning whether or not you are trying to kill people when you join the military. I’ll say I was surprised that — when he told me that he had joined the Army and why. And his reasons for it. But I don’t know, perhaps he is naive, or perhaps he is just a patriot who wants to do his part for the country.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well, on the patriot question or the general motivation question, because the word patriot to me, I’m not sure what it means in almost any context, but especially not this one. [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. government investigators began an urgent search for Edward Snowden several days before the first media reports were published on the government’s secret surveillance programs, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Snowden, who has admitted to providing details of the top-secret programs, had worked on assignment at a Hawaii facility run by the National Security Agency for about four weeks before he said he was ill and requested leave without pay, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

When Snowden failed to return, that prompted a hunt for the contractor, first by his employer Booz Allen Hamilton and then by the U.S. government, they said.

Snowden, 29, was known among colleagues as a very gifted “geek,” according to one of the sources, who added, “This guy’s really good with his fingers on the keyboard. He’s really good.”

His job as a systems administrator would have afforded Snowden very wide access to servers containing classified information at the NSA, and possibly other U.S. intelligence agencies, the same source said, without giving specifics.

U.S. officials do not yet know the extent to which Snowden was able to access intelligence databases, nor have they identified all the secret material he might have downloaded before leaving for Hong Kong, according to three sources.

Several sources said that as a systems administrator, Snowden would have been unable to actively spy on people, even though he told the Guardian newspaper, “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President.”

Snowden already had a Top Secret clearance before he joined Booz Allen in April, two sources said, adding that he likely obtained that clearance – which involves passing a polygraph exam – when he previously worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

For his first week or two with Booz Allen, Snowden attended training sessions near Fort Meade, the Maryland military installation where NSA headquarters is located and where numerous agency contractors have offices.

After that, Snowden moved to take up his assignment with a company team based at the NSA installation in Hawaii. He was only on the job for around four weeks when he told his employers he was ill and requested leave without pay, the sources said.

When Booz Allen checked in with him, Snowden said he was suffering from epilepsy and needed more time off. When he failed to return after a longer period, and the company could not find him, it notified intelligence officials because of Snowden’s high-level security clearance, one of the sources said.

Government agents spent several days in the field trying to find Snowden, according to the source, but they were unable to do so before the first news story based on Snowden’s revelations appeared in the Guardian and then in the Washington Post.

The government did not know Snowden was the source for the stories until he admitted it on Sunday, the sources said.

A spokesman for Booz Allen Hamilton said the company had no comment beyond its earlier statements. Booz had previously said it fired Snowden for violating its “code of ethics and firm policy.”