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254 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS
vious meetings with Bamford. So I sent Kucherena, via Zamir, ten
questions that I wanted to ask Snowden.
I next obtained a multi-entry Russian visa from the Russian con-
sulate in New York and booked myself a room in the Hotel National.
My night flight from New York to Moscow took just less than
eight hours and landed at Terminal D of Sheremetyevo Interna-
tional Airport at 7:40 a.m. on October 29, 2015. I did not immedi-
ately proceed through passport control, in part because I wanted to
explore the transit zone in which Snowden was supposedly trapped
for six weeks.
Sheremetyevo Two, where all international flights land, was built
in the waning days of the Cold War for international passengers
arriving for the Moscow 1980 Summer Olympics. It was modern-
ized in 2010, including opening a walkway that connects Terminals
D, E, and F for transit passengers.
Snowden had vanished, at least from public view, in this com-
plex of terminals for nearly six weeks in the summer of 2013. His
explanation to journalists, as will be recalled, was two part. First, he
© said he had planned to board the next fight to Cuba and from there ©
proceed to Ecuador. He said that he was unable to board this flight
because his passport had been invalidated by the U.S. government
while he was flying to Russia. Second, after discovering his passport
had been revoked, he stayed in a capsule hotel in the transit zone for
the next thirty-nine days. To better understand the plausibility of
his version of those events, I proceeded through the transit passage
to Terminal F, where Snowden’s plane from Hong Kong had landed
at 5:15 p.m. Moscow time on June 23, 2013.
Snowden did not go through passport control upon arrival.
Before any of the other passengers were allowed to disembark from
the plane, Russian plainclothes officers from the special services
boarded the plane and asked both Snowden and Sarah Harrison, his
WikiLeaks-supplied “ninja,” to accompany them to a waiting car
that whisked them away. According to the account in Izvestia, “A
special operation was conducted for his reception and evacuation.” It
further said, “Snowden’s flight to Moscow was coordinated with the
Russian authorities and intelligence services.”
If not for the “special operation,” he could have easily gone by foot
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