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162 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS
it controlled in the NSA to expose himself by contacting journalists.
Snowden’s continued interactions with Poitras and Greenwald make
it implausible that he was under Russian control before he went to
Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Scenario
The most compelling support for the scenario that Snowden was
brought under Russian control while he was in Hong Kong comes, it
will be recalled, from Vladimir Putin. His disclosure about the case
leaves little doubt that Russian officials had engaged Snowden in
Hong Kong, that Putin had authorized his trip to Moscow, and that
the Russian government allowed him to fly to Moscow without a
Russian visa. We know that Putin’s version is supported by U.S. sur-
veillance of Snowden’s activities in Hong Kong. We also know that
the Russians went to some lengths not only to facilitate his trip to
Moscow but to arrange to keep him in Russia. This supports the
© possibility that the Russian intelligence service managed to bring ©
Snowden under its sway during his thirty-four days in Hong Kong.
The Russian intelligence service might even have been aware
of Snowden and his anti-NSA activities before his arrival on May
20. Snowden was anything but discreet in his contacts with strang-
ers in the anti-surveillance movement, including such well-known
activists as Runa Sandvik (to whom he revealed his true name and
address via e-mail), Micah Lee, Jacob Appelbaum, Parker Higgins,
and Laura Poitras. “It is not statistically improbable that members of
this circle were being watched by a hostile service,” a former NSA
counterintelligence officer told me in 2015. When I told him that
Poitras and others in her circle had used PGP encryption, aliases,
and Tor software in their exchanges with Snowden, he said, arching
his eyebrows, “That might work against amateurs, but it wouldn't
stop the Russians if they thought they might have a defector in the
NSA.” He explained that both the NSA and hostile services have the
“means” to bypass such safeguards.
I asked what the Russian intelligence service would have done if
it had indeed spotted Snowden in late 2012 or early 2013. “Maybe
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