Allegations that Chinese and Russian services accessed Snowden's stolen NSA laptops in Hong Kong

142 by others prior to his departure from Hong Kong. His files could have been copied without his knowledge, just as he had copied them without the NSA’s knowledge. As former U.S. intelligence officers pointed out to me, adversary services could not be expected to shirk from employing their full capabilities once they learned that an American “agent of special services,” as Putin called him, had brought stolen NSA documents to Hong Kong. The New York Times reported from Hong Kong that two sources, both of whom worked for major government intelligence agencies, “said they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong.” That China had the capability to obtain Snowden’s data was also the view of former CIA Deputy Director Morell. He said: “Both the Chinese and the Russians would have used everything in their tool kit—from human approaches to technical attacks—to get at Snowden’s stolen data.” Snowden would not have been a particularly difficult target for them, especially after he started disclosing secrets to journalists at the Mira hotel in Hong Kong. Not only could the Chinese service approach the security staff at the Mira Hotel but they could track him after he left the hotel and moved, along with his computers, in and out of several residences arranged by his “carer.” Snowden, after all, had put himself in the hands of people whom he had never met before including three Hong Kong lawyers, a “carer” and three Guardian journalists. Presumably, the efforts of these adversary intelligence services to find him, and the NSA data, would further intensify after Snowden revealed to the South China Morning Post on June 14, 2013 that he had access to NSA lists of computers in China and elsewhere that the NSA had penetrated. It wouldn’t be only the Chinese service on his trail. The Russian intelligence service would also likely be tasked to acquire these NSA documents after Snowden’s meeting with Russian officials in Hong Kong. And while he could get away with giving coy and elusive answers to journalists who asked him about the whereabouts of the NSA data, the Russian and Chinese officials in Hong Kong, who could offer him an escape route from prison, likely would demand more specific answers about the whereabouts of data they had no already obtained by technical means. The Post- Hong Kong Documents The NSA concern about who had access to its missing files deepened further when NSA documents continued to surface in the press after Snowden went to Moscow. If US intelligence needed any further evidence that someone had access to the documents, these additional revelations provided it. The most sensational of them was a purported document attributed to Snowden concerning the NSA hacking the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The story was published on October 23, 2013 on the Der Spiegel website. The co-author of the story was Jacob Appelbaum. Even though Snowden had by now been in Russia for four months, he was cited, along with unnamed “others” as the source for the NSA document. Nor did Snowden deny it. Indeed. He took a measure of credit for the revelation, saying on German TV “What I can say is we know Angela Merkel was monitored by the National Security Agency.” If Snowden’s HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020294