It is possible that he was simply muddled and panicked. But for someone who had years to hatch his plan, it seems odd that he would botch something as important as the escape. Another (to me more plausible) explanation was that he was bounced into seeking asylum in Moscow.
The first article based on Snowden’s material (by Greenwald) appears on June 9th. Directly after that, Snowden disappears—apparently to stay with friends in Hong Kong. But on June 11th, Putin offered him political asylum, confirmed by the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov. On June 13th America opened a criminal case against Snowden, on charges of espionage, and warned other countries not to accept him. The net rapidly began to close: Iceland, a country which had been considered a likely destination, since its leftist government is sympathetic to whistleblowers and transparency causes, said it could consider asylum only if he actually arrived in the country.
America seems to have moved with deplorable slowness. It was not until June 20th that it issued an extradition request (though Hong Kong said on June 16th that it would entertain one). Snowden promptly went to the Russian consulate. On June 21st, America revoked Snowden’s passport. He flew to Russia with another travel document—apparently one issued by the government of Ecuador via its embassy in London, where the fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ekes out a claustrophobic existence.
One way of interpreting this chain of events is as the result of pure muddle. Snowden had no idea what to do. Neither did his friends. He ended up in Moscow simply by chance, because events precluded any other option. It is also possible to imagine that the Russian authorities might want him under their supervision. One reason would be to get closer access to his secrets (or to the cryptographic keys with which access to the secrets is controlled, if they are indeed not in Russia). With his public utterances controlled, it would also be easier to prevent him blurting out facts that would undermine the story of an innocent whistleblower acting purely on his own initiative.
Certainly his arrival and stay in Moscow (with a year’s temporary residence granted speedily by the authorities) did not allay suspicions. Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, is a notable public figure, and founder of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, a pro-Kremlin think-tank which aims to counter Western propaganda on human rights. He is on the ‘Public Council’ (a kind of advisory board) of the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service.
Snowden’s life in Moscow is shrouded with secrecy. He has a job, but nobody knows where. Barring a brief, staged meeting with journalists and activists at Moscow airport, he sees only his supporters. He has not given a proper press conference or opened himself to any form of scrutiny (odd behaviour, some might think, for an apostle of transparency). Nobody knows where he lives. None of this inspires confidence in the idea that he is a free agent. It supports the theory that he is a Russian one. Fitzpatrick has identified the background to one of the rare photos issued of Snowden in Moscow: on the basis of the distinctive striped pavements, the logo on a supermarket trolley he is pushing, and other visual clues it is, she believes, a shopping centre in Yasenevo, near Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service headquarters.[91]
Conclusion
I have spent the past months watching many of my media colleagues canonise Edward Snowden. The picture of a lone campaigner fighting for freedom and exposing abuses was initially captivating. But it didn’t square with my own knowledge of our security and intelligence services. He has damaged them hugely, without exposing abuses that justify the damage. The story also didn’t fit my experience of Russia. From the available clues, and based on 30 years of looking at Soviet and then Russian intelligence and propaganda operations, my conclusion is that this affair has Kremlin fingerprints on it. They may be faint and smudged, but they are there.
The operation would have one of the most prized virtues in espionage—deniability. There is no smoking gun. Snowden is Snowden, Greenwald is Greenwald, Appelbaum is Appelbaum and the Guardian is the Guardian. All the components of the operation exist in authentic form in the West. All it required were some gentle nudges to put them together. How that happened may never be told. Perhaps a thorough and truthful account of events from Snowden himself might give some clues: who were his friends in those years between Geneva and Hawaii? What was he doing in India? How did he really first come in contact with Appelbaum and Poitras? How exactly did he end up in Moscow? Who has been looking after him there and under what conditions? How did he choose what to steal and why? And what control does he have over the selection of documents to be released? Such an account is unlikely to be available soon, if ever.
I freely admit that it is possible that Snowden conceived his plan on his own, and with honourable if mistaken motives. It may well be that his allies are without exception enthusiastic and careless but not actually malevolent. It may be that Russia has watched the whole affair with bemusement, was reluctant to offer asylum, and is eager for him to leave. It is possible that Vladimir Putin is entirely sincere, if ineffective, when he says he wants no damage to be done to America as a result of Snowden’s sojourn. It is all possible. But unlikely. At any rate I find it scandalous that Snowden’s defenders are so blithe about his arrival and stay in Moscow. People who are so highly (and I would say unreasonably) suspicious of Western governments become bizarrely trusting where the interests and abilities of Vladimir Putin’s regime are concerned.
Even if Russian intelligence is not involved, I cannot see the heroic virtues in the Snowden affair which others have celebrated. Nobody has proved that the NSA or GCHQ committed grave and deliberate breaches of the law. In the big scandals of the 1960s, the FBI illegally bugged American citizens and tried to blackmail the government’s political opponents. For example, it wanted to make Martin Luther King commit suicide, by threatening him with the exposure of his adultery. No comparable examples have been produced now, and I do not believe any will be. Nobody has produced individual victims of illegal NSA activity. There is no evidence of wilful, systematic breaches of the law by the NSA, or of contempt within its ranks, at any level, for judicial and legislative oversight. There is no modern counterpart of J Edgar Hoover, the brooding madman who brought the FBI to its darkest hour.
Without such evidence of wrongdoing, Snowden and his allies have no moral authority for their actions. These include colossal breaches of secrecy and trying to paralyse or destroy one of the most important limbs of national security: tantamount to sabotage. Nobody elected them. Their decisions are irreversible and not subject to appeal. Nobody will sack them if they make a mistake. What right do they have to determine who is, as they put it, ‘innocent’? What rights do the accused have in this public show trial, and how can they defend themselves?
The charge sheet I have listed is long. How can a mere media outlet have the expertise to know if stolen secrets can be safely published? Even if it chooses not to publish them, how can it have the expertise to store them safely? Why do they take official guidance seriously in the case of how to prevent the gravest damage, but ignore the general principle that state secrets should be kept, not stolen?