Assange’s view of the world was essentially self-regarding and Manichaean, with countries divided up into those that supported him (Russia, Ecuador, Latin America generally) and those that didn’t (the US, Sweden and the UK). As Jemima Khan, one of many demoralised former WikiLeaks supporters, put it: ‘The problem with Camp Assange is that, in the words of George W Bush, it sees the world as being “with us or against us”.’
On Sunday 23 June 2013, Snowden’s lanky figure, wearing a grey shirt and carrying a backpack, arrived at Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport. With him was the young WikiLeaks worker, Sarah Harrison. It was a hot and humid morning. The pair were nervous. They checked in at the Aeroflot counter for flight SU213 to Moscow, and made their way through normal departure channels. Snowden was holding the safe-conduct pass issued by Narvaez, Assange’s friend, and couriered to him by Harrison. Several plain-clothes Chinese officials observed them closely. For any CIA officers watching, this departure must have been exasperating.
In theory, Snowden’s audacious exit should have been impossible. The previous day US authorities had annulled Snowden’s US passport. They had also faxed over extradition papers to the Hong Kong authorities, demanding his immediate arrest. But Hong Kong claimed that there were ‘irregularities’ in the American paperwork, and they were powerless to halt Snowden’s departure until the errors were rectified.
Shortly afterwards, some 40,000 feet in the air, Snowden and his companion tucked into the first of their two airline hot meals. Aeroflot was working hard to overcome its past Soviet reputation for non-existent customer service. On the ground was a scene of international mayhem, as American officials discovered that Snowden had escaped the net and was en route to Moscow. The bastard had got away! For the world’s greatest superpower, Hong Kong’s not-very-plausible legalistic explanation was humiliating stuff. Not only had Snowden vamoosed, but he now appeared to be heading straight into the embrace of Washington’s adversaries – Russia, Cuba, Venezuela!
Capitol Hill made little secret of its rage. ‘Every one of those nations is hostile to the United States,’ Mike Rogers, chair of the House intelligence committee, fumed. ‘The US government must exhaust all legal options to get him back. When you think about what he says he wants and what his actions are, it defies logic.’ Democrat senator Charles Schumer was equally scathing: ‘Vladimir Putin always seems eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States, whether it is Syria, Iran and now, of course, with Snowden.’
General Keith Alexander, the NSA’s director and Snowden’s former boss, was no happier: ‘[Snowden] is clearly an individual who’s betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent.’
The Chinese, however, were unapologetic. By way of reply the official Xinhua news agency lambasted the US for its ‘hypocritical’ spying: ‘The United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber-attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain of our age.’
With Snowden safely on board the Airbus A330-300, Assange put out a statement. He claimed personal credit for the entire rescue operation. He said WikiLeaks had paid for Snowden’s ticket. While in Hong Kong, the organisation had also given Snowden legal advice. Assange would subsequently liken his role, in an interview with the South China Morning Post, to that of a ‘people smuggler’.
Proprietorially claiming Snowden as the latest star player for Team WikiLeaks, the statement said: ‘Mr Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower who exposed evidence of a global surveillance regime conducted by US and UK intelligence agencies, has left Hong Kong legally. He is bound for a democratic nation via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from WikiLeaks.’
Moscow journalists dumped their Sunday leisure plans and scrambled to Terminal F of Sheremetyevo International Airport, where Snowden was due to transit. The airport was named after Russia’s most celebrated aristocratic dynasty, the Sheremetevs. The Sheremetevs served numerous tsars, grew fabulously rich, and built two Moscow palaces, Ostankino and Kuskovo. Count Nikolai Sheremetev fell in love with and secretly married his former serf, Praskovya. The romance had spawned a thousand cultural histories.
A large scrum of Russian and international correspondents gathered in front of a small door. It was from here that arriving passengers would emerge; the cleverer reporters had brought pictures of Snowden to show his fellow travellers from Hong Kong.
Plain-clothes Russian agents also trawled the terminal, deflecting questions about which state agency they represented by pretending to be businessmen from Munich and journalists from state-run NTV. A Venezuelan contingent was also said to be there, fuelling speculation that Caracas could be Snowden’s eventual destination. Ecuador’s ambassador turned up, arriving at the airport in his 7-series BMW. He appeared lost as he wandered around the terminal, asking one group of journalists: ‘Do you know where he is? Is he coming here?’ A reporter replied: ‘We thought you did.’
When the plane landed in Moscow at 5pm local time, Russian security vehicles were waiting. From Vietnam, Ecuador’s foreign minister Ricardo Patino tweeted that Snowden had sought political asylum in his country. But where was he? The news agency Interfax announced that Snowden was booked on an Aeroflot flight to Cuba the following day. He appeared to be holed up in Moscow’s transit zone. An Aeroflot source claimed – wrongly, it would turn out – he was staying in a small overnight hotel ‘capsule’ room in Terminal E.
What did the Kremlin know of Snowden’s arrival? President Putin claimed that he was informed of Snowden’s presence on a Moscow-bound flight just two hours before he landed. He observed that by cancelling his passport the Americans had made an elementary mistake in tradecraft, making his onward flight options impossible.
In characteristic fashion, mixing sarcasm and scarcely sincere ruefulness, Putin labelled Snowden ‘an unwanted Christmas present’. The Russian authorities did seem to have been genuinely surprised by Snowden’s eventual stranding in Russia. The normally reliable Kommersant newspaper, however, would claim that Snowden had secretly spent two days at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong. Snowden himself vehemently denies this.
Putin’s own attitude towards whistleblowing activities was undoubtedly negative. He later described Snowden as a stranniy paren – a strange bloke. ‘In effect, he condemned himself to a rather difficult life. I do not have the faintest idea what he will do next,’ he said.
Putin was a KGB officer who served in communist East Germany in the 1980s, and was the former head of the KGB’s main successor agency, the Federal Security Service or FSB. He took a dim view of traitors. In 2006 the renegade FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko died in London after drinking radioactive polonium in what the British government believes was a Russian state plot. The KGB’s spy code of omerta was absolute.
After 13 years in power, Putin was paranoid, mistrustful, prone towards conspiratorial explanations at home and abroad, and more convinced than ever of his own unparalleled abilities. He viewed relations with the west, and the US especially, through the prism of Soviet xenophobia. Given his KGB academy training, he must have wondered whether Snowden was an American deception exercise, a classic cold war ploy.
But in reality, Snowden really was a gift. He presented a perfect opportunity for the Kremlin to highlight what it regarded as Washington’s double standards when it came to human rights, state snooping and extradition. Putin must also have enjoyed the frisson of superpower parity with the United States. The idea underlay his view of a resurgent Russia, an oppositional pole to the US in global affairs. The Americans would have to beg to get Snowden back!