Alleged Wikileaks‑linked operative funded Snowden’s Hong Kong escape with unclear money sources

107 phone for fear of being tracked by an intelligence service. When she travelled, she bought “burner” phones locally and disposed of them before any calls could be traced back to her. A precaution she took that June was not to meet Snowden face-to-face out of concern about the surveillance of American intelligence in Hong Kong. Instead, for her first 13 days in Hong Kong, she worked behind the scenes, through intermediaries. Her task was not only to arrange his escape route but also to create diversions to camouflage his real destination. Under Assange’s tutelage, she had made deceptive ploys an integral parts of her trade craft. “We were working very hard to lay as many false trails as possible,” she later told an interviewer in Berlin. According to Assange, she booked decoy flights for Snowden to Being, China and New Delhi, India. She also used Snowden’s credit card numbers to pay for the flight to India, She knew that since the card was blocked, there was a high probability that it would come to the attention of US intelligence. In all, according to Harrison, she booked no fewer than dozen such decoy tickets to confuse Snowden’s pursuers in US and British intelligence. The only actual tickets she bought for Snowden, according to an Aeroflot official, was a one-way ticket to Moscow. She paid for it at the last minute. She also bought a ticket for self on the same flight leaving on June 23, 2013. The source of the money for the Assange-Harrison operation was unclear. Subsequently, Harrison said she was setting up secret bank accounts to help organize escape, but in Hong Kong in 2013, Assange says she was using “Wikileaks’ resources.” Harrison said the “Wikileaks team” helped fund Snowden’s flight to Russia from Hong Kong, as well as her own flight there. But Wikileaks in June 2013 was not an organization with spare cash. Assange had forfeited his own bail by fleeing the embassy of Ecuador, offending many of his financial supporters in Britain. He also all but exhausted his bank account. Aside from money that dribbled in from Poitras’ five- month old Freedom of the Press Foundation, the only visible source of funds for Wikileaks was the previously-mentioned payments Assange received from RT Television. British intelligence officers who reportedly subsequently examined Wikileaks’ bank finances in London found no transfers to the “Wikileaks team” in Hong Kong. While Harrison was organizing Snowden’s escape, she remained in the deep background. Meanwhile, mounting pressure was brought on the Hong Kong government to take action by the U.S. On June 16th, the U.S. government informed the Hong Kong authorities that it had filed a criminal complaint against Snowden and would be seeking his extradition. Since Hong Kong had a vigorously enforced extradition agreement with the United States, the Hong Kong authority would be expected by the US to take Snowden into custody. But Hong Kong was not entirely independent in national security issues. China had the final say in any extradition decision. In fact, China had explicitly been given the right of vetoing any extraditions for any reason in the formal 1999 agreement between Hong Kong and the U.S. Since its President had just met with President Obama in California, China also had an interest in avoiding embarrassing public demonstrations on behalf of Snowden. After he had held his press event, it wanted him out of Hong Kong. According to a well-placed official in Hong Kong, it told the Hong Kong Authority HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020259