The National Security Agency (NSA) knew that the Russian government hacked the email account of a prominent journalist the year before she was killed in Moscow, documents published by The Intercept show. The 2006 murder of longtime Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya -- who was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment complex -- is widely believed to have been a contract killing. Politkovskaya was a noted critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and it has long been suspected that the murder was carried out on his orders. From a report: The NSA compiled an internal file on Politkovskaya, which was exposed as part of the Edward Snowden leaks. Much of the document is unclassified and public, except for one top-secret segment: "Russian Federal Intelligence Services (probably FSB) are known to have targeted the webmail account of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya," the passage reads. "On 5 December 2005, RFIS initiated an attack against the account annapolitkovskaia@US Provider1, deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain. It is not known whether this attack is in any way associated with the death of the journalist."
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