The government’s investigation failed. [It] didn’t know what was taken.
—EDWARD SNOWDEN, Moscow, 2014
IN MOSCOW, I had learned that Russian intelligence services use the broad, umbrella term “espionage source” to describe moles, volunteers, and anyone else who delivers another state’s secrets to it. It applies not only to documents but to the secret knowledge that such a source is able to recall and includes both controlled and uncontrolled bearers of secrets. It is also a job description that fit Edward Snowden in June 2013.
Unless one is willing to believe that the Putin regime acted out of purely altruistic motives in exfiltrating this American intelligence worker to Moscow, the only plausible explanation for its actions in Hong Kong was that it recognized Snowden’s potential as an espionage source. Snowden’s open disillusionment with the NSA presented the very situation that the Russian intelligence services specialized in exploiting. He had also revealed to reporters in Hong Kong that he had deliberately gained access to the NSA’s sources and methods and that he had taken highly classified documents to Hong Kong. He further disclosed that before leaving the NSA, he had gained access to the lists of computers that the NSA had penetrated in foreign countries. He even went so far as to describe to these journalists the secrets that he had taken as a “single point of failure” for the NSA. And aside from the documents he had copied, he claimed that the secret knowledge in his head, if he disclosed it, would wreak havoc on U.S. intelligence. “If I were providing information that I know, that’s in my head, to some foreign government, the US intelligence community would…see sources go dark that were previously productive,” he told the editor of The Guardian in Moscow.
In short, he advertised possessing priceless data that the Russian intelligence services had been seeking, with little success, for the past six decades. These electronic files could provide it with the keys to unlock the NSA’s entire kingdom of electronic spying. Could any world-class intelligence service ignore such a prize? To miss the opportunity to get its hands on such a potential espionage source would be nothing short of gross negligence.
In fact, this golden opportunity was not missed in Hong Kong. Even if the Russian intelligence service had not previously had him in its sights—which, as discussed earlier, appears to me to be extremely unlikely—he made contact with Russian officials in Hong Kong, and Putin personally approved allowing Snowden to come to Russia.
This decision made it possible for Snowden, without an entry visa to Russia, or, for that matter, any other country, to check in and board an Aeroflot flight to Moscow. We also know that a special operation was mounted to take Snowden off the plane once it landed in Moscow. Such an operation could not have been executed without advance planning. Nor would he be removed from the plane without a plan for his stay in Russia. Once Putin approved it, there is little reason to doubt that the plans to get Snowden to Moscow, and whatever cover stories were deemed necessary to obscure them, had been carried out professionally by Russia’s special services.
When an intelligence service makes such elaborate preparations for extracting a foreign intelligence worker, it presumably also expects to debrief him or her on arrival. Pelton, for example, who had access to far less valuable information than had Snowden, was held incommunicado in Vienna for two weeks during his debriefing. It would be inconceivable for an intelligence service to bring a potential espionage source such as Snowden to Russia and allow him to catch the next plane to Latin America. The false report provided to the press that Snowden was flying there was likely nothing more than a smoke screen to confuse foreign observers while he was receiving his initial debriefing and evaluation.
When it comes to the esoteric enterprise of reconstructing the work of U.S. communications intelligence, military as well as civilian experts in cryptology, computer sciences, and communications are necessary. Snowden had secret material in his possession. That he brought part of this material to Moscow is confirmed in recorded interviews by two Kremlin insiders, Kucherena and Klintsevich. The House Select Committee on Intelligence also reached that conclusion based on still-secret U.S. intelligence. Snowden’s interpretation of the material would be part of the debriefing because intelligence data needs to be put in context.
“This debriefing could not be done overnight,” according to a former high-ranking officer in the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service. “There is no way that Snowden would not be fully debriefed,” he said. He also said GRU specialists in signals intelligence would be called in.
Putin’s approval of the Snowden operation was not without consequences. Not only did Obama make good on his threat to cancel the pre-Olympics summit with Putin, but also, as it turned out, the Snowden exfiltration proved a turning point in the “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations. Having to accept the onus of declining relations with the Obama administration, Putin, it seems safe to assume, attempted to get the bonus of the NSA’s communications intelligence from Snowden. The GRU, the SVR, and other Russian intelligence services would not stop questioning Snowden, even if it took years, until they had squeezed out of him whatever state secrets he had. Because Snowden was rewarded with sanctuary, a residence, and bodyguards, there is no reason to doubt that he refused to accommodate his hosts. While he might continue to see himself as a whistle-blower on a supranational scale, as far as Russian intelligence was concerned, he was an espionage source.
For an intelligence service, the game is not over when it obtains state secrets. It still needs to fog over the extent of its coup, as said earlier, to prolong the value of the espionage. Hence it is likely that the story that Snowden had thoroughly destroyed all the stolen data in the month prior to departing for Russia, as well as the story that he had turned down all requests to be questioned by the FSB and other Russian intelligence officials, was part of the legend constructed for him. The repetitions of these uncorroborated claims in his press interviews might also have enhanced his public image for the ACLU effort to get clemency for him. Even so, in view of the importance of such communications intelligence to Russia, it would be the height of naïveté for U.S. or British intelligence to accept such claims as anything more than camouflage.
As for Snowden’s motive, I see no reason to doubt his explanation that he stole NSA documents to expose its surveillance because he believed that it was an illicit intrusion into the privacy of individuals. Such disaffection is not a unique situation in the intelligence business. Many of Russia’s worldwide espionage sources before Snowden were also dissatisfied employees who had access to classified secrets. Like some of them, Snowden used his privileged access to reveal what he considered the improper activities of the organization for which he worked. In that sense, I fully accept that he began as a whistle-blower, not as a spy. It was also as a whistle-blower that he contacted Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Barton Gellman, who published the scoops he provided in Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.
Snowden’s penetration went beyond whistle-blowing, however. In the vast number of files he copied were documents that contained the NSA’s most sensitive sources and methods that had little if anything to do with domestic surveillance or whistle-blowing.
Snowden could not have acted entirely alone. It will be recalled that the deepest part of his penetration was during the five weeks he worked at the National Threat Operations Center in Hawaii as a contract employee of Booz Allen Hamilton. It was there that he copied Level 3 files, including the so-called road map to the gaps in American intelligence. During this period, Snowden had neither the passwords nor the system administrator’s privileges that would allow him to copy, transfer, and steal the electronic files. He therefore must have obtained that assistance from someone who had the passwords and privileges. Other workers there might have shared his sensibilities and antipathy toward NSA surveillance. It therefore seems entirely plausible that he found a co-worker willing to cooperate or, vice versa, a co-worker found him. Snowden might not have been aware of his new accomplice’s true motives or affiliations, but without some co-worker’s providing him with entry to the sealed-off computers, he could not have carried out the penetration. To our knowledge, whoever helped him evidently did not want to expose himself to prosecution or defect from the NSA. That was Snowden’s role. By accepting the sole blame in the video that Poitras made about him in Hong Kong, Snowden shielded anyone else from suspicion, which was, as he told Poitras, his purpose. Whoever helped him may still be working at the NSA.
To be sure, there remains that other glaring gap in the chain of events that led Snowden to Moscow: his whereabouts and activities during his first eleven days in Hong Kong. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, even suggested, without any evidence, that Snowden might have been taken to mainland China during this period. What drove his speculation was the admission of U.S. intelligence that despite its vast global resources for searching credit card charges, banking transactions, hotel registrations, e-mails, police records, and even CCTV cameras, neither it nor its allies were able to find a trace of Snowden during that time. It was, in a phrase made famous by the former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, “a known unknown.” Just as likely he could have been staying in a well-prepared safe house anywhere in Hong Kong or even at the home of an unknown associate. All that is really known is that soon after he emerged from this venue, moved to the Mira hotel, and gave his celebrated interview to journalists, he was safely settled in Russia.
Snowden’s actions appear squarely at odds with his assertions of serving his country’s interests. Even accepting that he began with a sincere desire to be a world-class whistle-blower, his mission evolved, deliberately or not, into one that led him to disclose key communications intelligence secrets to a foreign power with an agenda that is hardly aligned with his country’s interests. A defector is defined in the Cambridge English Dictionary as “a person who leaves his or her own country or group to join an opposing one.” Snowden’s actions fit that description. In the end, it is Snowden’s actions, not his words, that matter.