For years, Washington had complained bitterly about Beijing’s industrial-scale stealing and spying in cyberspace. In numerous documents GCHQ and NSA identify China and Russia as the two nations responsible for most cyber-espionage. Now it appeared the NSA did the same thing, only worse.
Snowden must have hoped that in the wake of his leaks the Hong Kong government would treat his case sympathetically. After Ho’s approach to the authorities, an intermediary contacted Snowden. The intermediary delivered a message. The message was that Hong Kong’s judiciary was independent. And, yes, it was possible he would spend time in jail. But – and this was the crucial bit – it also said the government would welcome his departure.
Ho sought further assurances. He told the Guardian’s Beijing correspondent Tania Branigan, who had flown to Hong Kong: ‘I talked to government officials seeking verification of whether they really wanted him to go, and in case they really wanted him to go, whether he would be given safe passage.’
On Friday 21 June the US government formally indicted Snowden with espionage. It sent an urgent official extradition request. ‘If Hong Kong doesn’t act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong’s commitment to the rule of law,’ a senior Obama administration official said.
With his legal options shrinking by the hour, Snowden made a fateful decision. He would leave.
Six thousand miles away, someone else in hiding had been taking a close interest in these developments. Julian Assange had been frantically trying to make contact with the fugitive NSA contractor. Assange is the self-styled editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. He had been holed up in the tiny Ecuadorean embassy in London for over a year.
Assange had taken refuge inside the apartment building – Flat 3b, 3 Hans Crescent – after his own legal options ran out. In summer 2012, Britain’s supreme court ruled that an extradition warrant served by authorities in Sweden was valid. Assange should be extradited to answer complaints from August 2010 that he sexually assaulted two Swedish women, the court said.
Assange promptly walked into the embassy and was granted political asylum by Ecuador’s leftist government. The tactic seemed extravagant to some. During the cold war, Hungary’s dissident Cardinal Mindszenty spent 15 years in the US embassy. But this was 2012, not 1956. There were few signs of state brutality amid the penthouses of London’s Knightsbridge; instead of Soviet tanks there were Bentleys and Ferraris. Thanks to his going to ground in this way, WikiLeaks had released little of significance for some time. Assange, as the New York Times’s David Carr put it, ‘looked like a forgotten man’.
Now, Assange barged his way into Snowden’s drama. Much is mysterious. But it is known his approaches came via intermediaries and through his Hong Kong lawyers. These pre-dated Snowden’s video confession, and they grew more intense after it.
From Assange’s perspective the approach was logical. Snowden was another anti-US whistleblower in trouble, apparently just like him. In 2010, Assange had leaked the thousands of classified documents obtained from the US private Chelsea Manning. Their publication, in collaboration with the Guardian and other newspapers, had caused a global furore. Manning was jailed and a grand jury reportedly investigated Assange over the leaks. Assange’s woes with Swedish women were a separate matter, though the former hacker would frequently – and some would say cynically – confuse the two. But Assange did have some claim to specialised expertise in asylum issues. And the Snowden story also opened up a chance for him to step back into the limelight.
Ideologically, the two had much in common: a passionate commitment to the internet and transparency, a libertarian philosophy when it came to information, and strong digital defence skills. Snowden had at one point considered leaking his NSA files to Assange. He later reconsidered on the grounds of risk. Assange’s confined situation at the embassy in London, right under the nose of the British authorities and their NSA allies, meant inevitably that he was bugged and constantly monitored.
In terms of temperament, Snowden was nothing like Assange. He was shy, allergic to cameras, and reluctant to become the focus of media attention. He never sought celebrity. The world of journalism was utterly alien to him. Assange was the polar opposite. He liked the public gaze. Charming, he was capable of deadpan humour and wit, but could also be waspish, flying into recrimination and anger. Assange’s mercurial temperament spawned both groupies and ill-wishers: his supporters saw him as a radical paladin fighting state secrecy, his enemies as an insufferable narcissist.
Assange hatched a plan with two key elements. The first was to secure the same sort of asylum for Snowden as he had himself, from Ecuador’s populist president Rafael Correa, one of a string of leftist Latin American leaders unfriendly to US power. The second was to help get Snowden physically from Hong Kong to Quito. This was no easy thing, given that the CIA and practically every other intelligence agency on the planet were on his trail.
Assange began personal discussions with his friend Fidel Narvaez, Ecuador’s London consul. The two had become close. The goal was to secure Snowden some kind of official paper – a temporary travel document, or better still a diplomatic passport, that would speed him to the cool and grey Andes. Eventually, Assange dispatched his sometime girlfriend Sarah Harrison to Hong Kong, carrying safe-conduct papers for Ecuador signed by Narvaez. A 31-year-old would-be journalist and WikiLeaks activist, Harrison was thoroughly loyal.
Snowden’s first choice for exile had always been Iceland. He believed the island had some of the most progressive media laws in the world. But reaching Reykjavik from Hong Kong would require passage through the US, or through European states which might arrest him on the US warrant. Ecuador, on the other hand, could safely be reached via Cuba and Venezuela, who were unlikely to obey US instructions.
Unfortunately, the trip also apparently required transit through Russia.
Whose idea was it for Snowden to go to Moscow? This is the million-rouble question. Tibbo, Snowden’s lawyer, won’t answer. He says merely that the situation was ‘complicated’. Harrison says she and Snowden wanted to avoid flying over western Europe. Most connections also involved changing planes in the US, clearly not an option. Snowden’s itinerary does, however, seem to bear the fingerprints of Julian Assange.
Assange was often quick to criticise the US and other western nations when they abused human rights. But he was reluctant to speak out against governments that supported his personal efforts to avoid extradition. This was especially true of Russia. US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks paint a dismal portrait of Russia under Vladimir Putin. They suggest that the Kremlin, its powerful spy agencies and organised crime have grown practically indistinguishable, with Russia in effect a ‘virtual mafia state’.
And yet in 2011 Assange signed a lucrative TV deal with Russia Today (RT), Putin’s English-language global propaganda channel. The channel’s mission is to accuse the west of hypocrisy while staying mute about Russia’s own failings. The fate of Russia’s own whistleblowers was grimly evident. The list of Russian opposition journalists killed in murky circumstances is a long one. It includes the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya (shot dead in 2006) and the human rights activist Natalia Estemirova (abducted in Grozny in 2009 and murdered).