From the moment Laura’s video of me was posted on the Guardian website on June 9, I was marked. There was a target on my back. I knew that the institutions I’d shamed would not relent until my head was bagged and my limbs were shackled. And until then—and perhaps even after then—they would harass my loved ones and disparage my character. I was familiar enough with how this process went, both from having read classified examples of it within the IC and from having studied the cases of other whistleblowers and leakers.
As sure as I was of my government’s indignation, I was just as sure of the support of my family, and of Lindsay, who I was certain would understand—perhaps not forgive, but understand—the context of my recent behavior. I took comfort from recalling their love: It helped me cope with the fact that there was nothing left for me to do, no further plans in play. I could only hope that my fellow citizens, once they’d been made aware of the full scope of American mass surveillance, would mobilize and call for justice. They’d be empowered to seek that justice for themselves, and, in the process, my own destiny would be decided. This was the ultimate leap of faith: I could hardly trust anyone, so I had to trust everyone.
Within hours after my Guardian video ran, one of Glenn’s regular readers in Hong Kong contacted him and offered to put me in touch with Robert Tibbo and Jonathan Man, two local attorneys who then volunteered to take on my case. These were the men who helped get me out of the Mira when the press finally located me and besieged the hotel. As a diversion, Glenn went out the front lobby door, where he was immediately thronged by the cameras and mics. Meanwhile, I was bundled out of one of the Mira’s myriad other exits, which connected via a sky bridge to a mall.
I like Robert—to have been his client is to be his friend for life. He’s an idealist and a crusader, a tireless champion of lost causes. Even more impressive than his lawyering, however, was his creativity in finding safe houses. While journalists were scouring every five-star hotel in Hong Kong, he took me to one of the poorest neighborhoods of the city and introduced me to some of his other clients, a few of the nearly twelve thousand forgotten refugees in Hong Kong. I wouldn’t usually name them, but since they have bravely identified themselves to the press, I wilclass="underline" Vanessa Mae Bondalian Rodel from the Philippines, and Ajith Pushpakumara, Supun Thilina Kellapatha, and Nadeeka Dilrukshi Nonis, all from Sri Lanka.
These unfailingly kind and generous people came through with charitable grace. The solidarity they showed me was not political. It was human, and I will be forever in their debt. They didn’t care who I was, or what dangers they might face by helping me, only that there was a person in need. They knew all too well what it meant to be forced into a mad escape from mortal threat, having survived ordeals far in excess of anything I’d dealt with and hopefully ever will. They let an exhausted stranger into their homes—and when they saw my face on TV, they didn’t falter. Instead, they smiled and took the opportunity to reassure me of their hospitality.
Though their resources were limited—Supun, Nadeeka, Vanessa, and two little girls lived in a crumbling, cramped apartment smaller than my room at the Mira—they shared everything they had with me, and they shared it unstintingly, refusing my offers to reimburse them for the cost of taking me in so emphatically that I had to hide money in the room to get them to accept it. They fed me, they let me bathe, they let me sleep, and they protected me. I will never be able to explain what it meant to be given so much by those with so little, to be accepted by them without judgment as I perched in corners like a stray street cat, skimming the Wi-Fi of distant hotels with a special antenna that delighted the children.
Their welcome and friendship was a gift, for the world to even have such people is a gift, and so it pains me that, all these years later, the cases of Ajith, Supun, Nadeeka, and Nadeeka’s daughter are still pending. The admiration I feel for these folks is matched only by the resentment I feel toward the bureaucrats in Hong Kong, who continue to deny them the basic dignity of asylum. What gives me hope, however, is that Vanessa and her daughter received asylum in Canada. I look forward to the day when I can visit all of my old Hong Kong friends in their new homes, wherever those may be, and we can make happier memories together in freedom.
On June 14, the US government charged me under the Espionage Act in a sealed complaint, and on June 21 they formally requested my extradition, which, under international law, means the US asked Hong Kong to return me to the States so that I could be put on trial. It was my thirtieth birthday.
Just as the US State Department sent its request, my lawyers received a reply to my appeal for assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees: There was nothing that could be done for me. The Hong Kong government would not provide me international protection on its territory. In other words, Hong Kong was telling me to go home and deal with the UN from prison. I wasn’t just on my own—I was unwelcome. If I was going to leave freely, I had to leave now. I wiped my four laptops completely clean and destroyed the cryptographic key, which meant that I could no longer access any of the documents even if compelled. Then I packed the few clothes I had and headed out.
TWENTY-FIVE
Moscow
For a coastal country at the northwestern edge of South America, half a globe away from Hong Kong, Ecuador is in the middle of everything. Most of my fellow North Americans would correctly say that it’s a small country. Ecuador, at least in 2013, had a hard-earned belief in the institution of political asylum—the right of a person to live in a foreign country if they have had to leave their own country for political reasons. My Hong Kong lawyers agreed that, given the circumstances, Ecuador seemed to be the most likely country to defend my right to political asylum.
With my government having decided to charge me under the Espionage Act, I stood accused of a political crime, meaning a crime whose victim is the state itself rather than a person. Under international humanitarian law, whistleblowers should be protected against extradition—from being forcibly sent back to the country accusing them of a crime—almost everywhere. In practice, though, this is rarely the case. The most common advice my team received was for me to avoid any route that crossed the airspace of any countries with a record of cooperation with the US military.
The moment the news broke that an American had unmasked a global system of mass surveillance, Sarah Harrison, a journalist and editor for WikiLeaks, had immediately flown to Hong Kong. WikiLeaks is a nonprofit organization that publishes classified information, including news leaks, from anonymous sources on its website. Through Sarah’s experience with WikiLeaks, she was poised to offer me the world’s best asylum advice. It didn’t hurt that she also had family connections with the legal community in Hong Kong.
Laura informed me of Sarah’s presence in Hong Kong only a day or so before she communicated with me on an encrypted channel, which itself was only a day or two before I actually met her in person. Sarah managed to procure a document that would provide me safe passage to Ecuador—it was a UN-recognized one-way travel document typically issued to refugees crossing borders. It had been issued on an emergency basis, and the moment it was in hand, Sarah hired a van to take us to the airport.