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Snowden, in Russia, Said to Seek Asylum in Ecuador
Snowden, in Russia, Is Said to Seek Asylum in Ecuador
(about 2 hours later)
MOSCOW — Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for leaking classified documents, foiled his American pursuers on Sunday by fleeing a Hong Kong hide-out for Moscow aboard a commercial Russian jetliner, in what appeared to be the first step in an odyssey to seek political asylum in Ecuador.
WASHINGTON — The American authorities scrambled Sunday to figure out how to catch Edward J. Snowden, the former national security contractor accused of espionage, as he led them on an international chase, frustrating the Obama administration and threatening to strain relations on three continents.
It was a day of frustrated scrambling by American officials, who have been seeking Mr. Snowden’s extradition and had annulled his passport a day before he left Hong Kong as part of an effort to thwart his escape. The authorities in Hong Kong said they lacked complete information to prevent his departure.
Diplomats and law enforcement officials from the United States warned countries in Latin America not to harbor Mr. Snowden or allow him to pass through to other destinations after he fled Hong Kong for Moscow, possibly en route to Ecuador or another nation where he could seek asylum.
Mr. Snowden boarded an Aeroflot jetliner that reached Moscow on Sunday afternoon. Russian news agencies said Mr. Snowden was in a transit area, and Ecuador embassy officials, including the ambassador, were seen at the airport into the early hours of Monday.
Mr. Snowden managed to elude capture just as American officials were asking the Hong Kong authorities to detain and send him to the United States on charges that he illegally disclosed classified documents about global American surveillance programs. He was aided in his escape by WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization, whose founder said he helped arrange special refugee travel documents from Ecuador.
Ecuador’s government and WikiLeaks, the organization that exposes government secrets and has come to the assistance of Mr. Snowden, appeared to have played a critical role in helping spirit him away from Hong Kong.
The foreign minister of Ecuador confirmed receiving an asylum request from Mr. Snowden. As of early Monday morning in Russia, Mr. Snowden was believed to be staying the night inside the transit zone of a Moscow airport where he was visited by an Ecuadorean diplomat. It was not clear whether he would be allowed to travel further or, if he were, whether Ecuador would indeed be his final destination.
Ecuador’s foreign minister said that Mr. Snowden had submitted a request for asylum. In a statement on its Web site, WikiLeaks said, “he is bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.”
Russian news services reported that Mr. Snowden would take a Monday afternoon flight to Cuba, prompting a late rush for tickets from the horde of journalists gathered at the airport. But others dismissed it as a ruse to put the news media and others off Mr. Snowden’s trail.
The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, who has resided in Ecuador’s London embassy for a year because of his own fugitive status, said in an interview that his group had arranged for Mr. Snowden to travel via a “special refugee travel document” issued by Ecuador last Monday — days before the United States announced the criminal charges against him and revoked his passport.
The turn of events opened a startling new chapter in a case that had already captivated many in the United States and around the world. Mr. Snowden’s transcontinental escape was seen as a fresh embarrassment for the Obama administration and raised questions about its tactics in the case, like its failure to immediately revoke Mr. Snowden’s passport.
Mr. Assange said he believed Ecuador was still considering Mr. Snowden’s asylum application.
It also further complicated Washington’s ties with Russia and China, where at least some officials take delight in tweaking what they call American double standards.
An official at Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry in Quito declined to comment on Mr. Snowden. But the official said the foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño Aroca, who was on a trip to Asia, was expected to talk about the Snowden case if asked at a news conference later on Monday in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said in an interview from his own refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London that he had raised Mr. Snowden’s case with Ecuador’s government and that his group had helped arrange the travel documents. Baltasar Garzón, the renowned Spanish jurist who advises WikiLeaks, said in a statement that “what is being done to Mr. Snowden and to Mr. Julian Assange — for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest — is an assault against the people.”
Mr. Snowden’s disclosures of far-reaching American government snooping into Internet and telephone records around the world has set off a major debate in the United States over government invasion of privacy. Mr. Snowden and his allies, including WikiLeaks, have called him a whistle-blower. American officials, who call the surveillance necessary to thwart terrorist plots, have called his actions criminal and last week announced they had charged him with violations of espionage laws.
Obama administration officials privately expressed frustration that Hong Kong allowed Mr. Snowden to board an Aeroflot plane bound for Moscow on Sunday despite the American request for his detention. But they did not revoke Mr. Snowden’s passport until Saturday and did not ask Interpol to issue a “red notice” seeking his arrest.
The Obama administration was clearly flustered by Mr. Snowden’s successful escape. The Justice Department said in a statement, “The U.S. is disappointed and disagrees with the determination by Hong Kong authorities not to honor the U.S. request for the arrest of the fugitive, Edward J. Snowden.” The statement said assertions by Hong Kong that it lacked sufficient information to carry out an arrest were “particularly troubling.”
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no red notice was requested because they are “most valuable when the whereabouts of a fugitive are unknown.” Mr. Snowden was known to be in Hong Kong, so his provisional arrest was sought under an existing American agreement with Hong Kong.
A State Department official said it had taken steps to remind countries on Mr. Snowden’s potential transit path to Ecuador that he was a fugitive.
On Sunday, the Hong Kong authorities said that the American arrest request “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law,” and therefore they could not legally stop Mr. Snowden from leaving. The Justice Department rejected this explanation and provided a timeline of interactions suggesting that the Hong Kong authorities first requested “additional information” on Friday.
“The United States has been in touch via diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries in the Western Hemisphere through which Snowden might transit or that could serve as final destinations,” the official said. “The U.S. is advising these governments that Snowden is wanted on felony charges, and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States.”
“At no point, in all of our discussions through Friday, did the authorities in Hong Kong raise any issues regarding the sufficiency of the U.S.’s provisional arrest request,” a department official said. “In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling.”
The director of the National Security Agency said Sunday that Mr. Snowden’s disclosures had caused “irreversible damage” to American intelligence. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” after the news of Mr. Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong had broken, the director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, said: “This is not an individual who in my opinion was acting with noble intent.”
By the end of the day American officials, unsure whether Mr. Snowden was actually heading to Ecuador, or possibly Cuba or Venezuela, as also variously reported, were sending messages to an array of possible destinations.
The United States had asked the Hong Kong authorities to find and detain Mr. Snowden, where he had been in hiding for the past few weeks, but the Hong Kong government said on Sunday that it had requested clarifications about the request and legally could not stop him from boarding the flight to Moscow. A statement by the Hong Kong government — the first official word that Mr. Snowden had fled the territory — said it had informed the United States of his departure.
“The U.S. is advising these governments that Snowden is wanted on felony charges and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States,” a State Department official said in a statement.
Russia’s Interfax news service, citing a “person familiar with the situation,” reported that Mr. Snowden would remain in transit at an airport in Moscow for “several hours” pending an onward flight to Cuba on Monday, and would therefore not formally cross the Russian border or be subject to detention.
President Obama, who has drawn criticism since the disclosure of domestic telephone data and foreign Internet communications surveillance programs, remained silent on the latest developments on Sunday. Aides said only that he was being updated by national security officials and that he had not made any telephone calls personally to foreign leaders seeking cooperation.
Mr. Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong punctuated a day of embarrassment for American officials whose unsuccessful quest so far to have him arrested has now placed the United States in awkward situations with governments on at least three continents.
Legal experts said the administration appeared to have flubbed Mr. Snowden’s case. “What mystifies me is that the State Department didn’t revoke his passport after the charges were filed” on June 14, said David H. Laufman, a former federal prosecutor. “They missed an opportunity to freeze him in place.” He said he was also puzzled by the decision to unseal the charges on Friday rather than waiting until the defendant was in custody.
Hong Kong’s decision to allow him to leave was an especially troublesome setback for the United States, which had been pressing Hong Kong to surrender him to American law enforcement officials. The Hong Kong government, in its first detailed statement about Mr. Snowden, said on Sunday that the United States had made a legal request for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr. Snowden, but that the Hong Kong government had concluded that the request "did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.”
While officials said Mr. Snowden’s passport was revoked on Saturday, it was not clear whether the Hong Kong authorities knew that by the time he boarded the plane, nor was it clear whether revoking it earlier would have made a difference given the Ecuadorean travel document that Mr. Assange said he helped arrange. When Mr. Snowden landed in Moscow, he was informed of his passport revocation.
The statement said that Hong Kong had requested more information from the United States but had not received it. Because the government “has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong,” the statement said.
Mr. Assange said he did not know whether Mr. Snowden might be able to travel beyond Moscow using the Ecuadorean document. “Different airlines have different rules so it’s a technical matter whether they will accept the document,” he said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington, Nanda Chitre, confirmed that the Hong Kong authorities had informed the American government of Mr. Snowden’s departure. “We will continue to discuss this matter with Hong Kong and pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel,” Ms. Chitre said in a statement.
Mr. Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London a year ago to avoid being sent to Sweden for questioning in a sexual offense investigation, but the British authorities have not permitted him to leave the country without risking arrest. Mr. Snowden could end up in a similar predicament, accepted by Ecuador or another country but unable to get there.
The State Department apparently had revoked Mr. Snowden’s passport in an effort to thwart his escape, without explicitly acknowledging the fact. “As is routine and consistent with U.S. regulations, persons with felony arrest warrants are subject to having their passport revoked,” the department’s spokeswoman, Jennifer R. Psaki, said in a statement. “Such a revocation does not affect citizenship status. Persons wanted on felony charges, such as Mr. Snowden, should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States.”
Mr. Snowden, who by his own account downloaded classified documents while working in Hawaii for the National Security Agency as an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, has said he unveiled secret American surveillance programs because he believed they violated privacy boundaries.
David H. Laufman, a former federal prosecutor in the United States, said it appeared that the Obama administration had flubbed Mr. Snowden’s case in at least two ways.
American officials characterize it differently. “I don’t think this man is a whistle blower,” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “Whatever his motives are, and I take him at face value, he could’ve stayed and faced the music. I don’t think running is a noble thought.”
“What mystifies me is that the State Department didn’t revoke his passport after the charges were filed” on June 14, Mr. Laufman said. “They missed an opportunity to freeze him in place.”
Some of his disclosures may have provided motivation to aid his flight in both Beijing and Moscow, where he is celebrated as a hero by the public.
He also said he was puzzled by the decision to unseal the criminal charges on Friday, possibly prompting Mr. Snowden to flee. The standard practice in such cases is to unseal the charges only after the defendant is in custody, he said.
Mr. Snowden told The South China Morning Post that the National Security Agency had tapped into Chinese mobile telephone companies to read millions of text messages, hacked dozens of computers at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, and other computers operated by Pacnet, a major telecommunications company with headquarters in Hong Kong and Singapore. According to The Guardian newspaper, he also provided a document showing that the United States during a conference in London in 2009 was able to access the communications of Dmitri A. Medvedev, then Russia’s president and now its prime minister.
The statement from the Hong Kong government also said it had written to the United States government to ask for clarification about news media reports that Mr. Snowden had released documents showing that United States government agencies had hacked computer systems there, adding that the Hong Kong government, “will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong.”
Mr. Snowden’s presence on Russian territory dealt a fresh blow to a relationship that has deteriorated sharply over the past year over issues like Syria and human rights. Yet Russian leaders seemed to be making efforts to keep his visit relatively quiet, not parading Mr. Snowden before cameras or trumpeting his arrival.
Late Saturday, a Hong Kong newspaper, The South China Morning Post, reported additional details of the N.S.A.'s spying on Hong Kong and China, apparently based on an interview with Mr. Snowden on June 12. Mr. Snowden told the newspaper that the N.S.A. had tapped into Chinese mobile phone companies to read millions of text messages, hacked dozens of computers at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing and other computers operated by Pacnet, a major telecommunications company with headquarters in Hong Kong and Singapore.
“We have nothing to do with this story,” said Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin. “I am not in charge of tickets. I don’t approve or disapprove plane tickets. We’re not the proper people to address this question to.”
While there was no independent confirmation of the claims, all the operations described by Mr. Snowden are consistent with the N.S.A.'s aggressive monitoring of foreign communications. And the newspaper’s report could win Mr. Snowden more public support in China and Hong Kong.
But Dmitri V. Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Mr. Snowden could remain in Moscow. “Russia is turning into a haven — virtually, intellectually and physically — for those who have an ax to grind with the West, who are whistle blowers or have problems with Western authorities,” he said. “It’s the only country in the world that at this point can afford it, or thinks it can afford it.”
Mr. Snowden’s presence on Russian territory deals a fresh blow to a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated sharply over the past year, as Russia ratcheted up its support for the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and accused Western governments of trying to destabilize Russia’s political system.
Ecuador, like Cuba and Venezuela, has expressed antipathy toward what it considers arrogant American policies in Latin America and demonstrated with its decision to shelter Mr. Assange that it was willing to defy Washington. Ricardo Patiño, the country’s foreign minister, said in a Twitter message that it had received an asylum request from Mr. Snowden and he later scheduled a news conference for Monday.
As the story unfolded, however, Russian leaders seemed to be making efforts to keep his visit relatively quiet. Fyodor Lukyanov, a top foreign policy analyst and editor of Russia in Global Affairs, said Russia leaders might seek to limit the damage, especially if Mr. Snowden transited through Russia and did not remain. He said Russia did not seem eager to offer him asylum.
How long Mr. Snowden can evade arrest remained to be seen. In an interview with The Guardian earlier this month, he expressed pessimism. “You can’t come up against the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk,” he said. “If they want to get you, over time they will.”
“It just sends the message that ‘we pay with the same coin as you do’ -- you protect our dissidents and human rights people, so you also have some of these,” Mr. Lukyanov said. “The scandal around him is so big, since he emerged in Hong Kong, that of course it could not be just an accident. Of course there was all kinds of advance work to allow him to pass through Russia to somewhere else.”
Ellen
Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.
Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said late Sunday that Kremlin officials were not aware of Mr. Snowden’s flight plans.
“We have nothing to do with this story,” he said. “I am not in charge of tickets. I don’t approve or disapprove plane tickets. We are not the proper people to address this question to.”
A Russian law enforcement official quoted anonymously by Interfax said that the Russian authorities had taken unusual measures to protect Mr. Snowden. “This was done so that nothing threatened Edward Snowden, so that he could spend the night calmly in a capsule hotel and fly to Russia without problems,” the official was quoted as saying.
Mr. Snowden is reportedly carrying four laptop computers with American intelligence documents that he downloaded to a thumb drive this spring while working in Hawaii for the National Security Agency as an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton. The Guardian newspaper of Britain disclosed a week ago that Mr. Snowden had provided the newspaper with documents showing that during a conference in London in 2009, the United States was able to access the communications of Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the Russian president and now the prime minister. That disclosure will almost certainly cause Russia to review its codes and other procedures for top leaders.
Dmitri V. Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Russia is increasingly positioning itself as a protector of people like Mr. Assange, whom Western governments wish to prosecute.
“Russia is turning into a haven — virtually, intellectually and physically — for those who have an ax to grind with the West, who are whistle-blowers or have problems with Western authorities,” he said. “It’s the only country in the world that at this point can afford it, or thinks it can afford it.” Mr. Trenin said that even if Mr. Snowden transfers in Moscow and continues to another destination, Russia will still have played a central role in his flight from prosecution.
“The minute Aeroflot got the information that a certain person by the name of Snowden is about to buy a ticket, this information would be immediately transferred to the quote-unquote competent authorities,” he said. “It would be a political decision to give him a ticket or deny him a ticket.”
Mr. Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong could limit any damage to Chinese-American relations from his sojourn there, although American officials are likely to press ahead with their inquiries into what role, if any, China may have played in his initial choice of Hong Kong, the former British colony that was returned to Chinese control in 1997.
For Hong Kong, Mr. Snowden’s departure means that the city can avoid a painful tug-of-war over whether to surrender him, with the United States demanding him back while nationalists in mainland China and some human rights activists in Hong Kong were calling for him to be allowed to remain.
Regina Ip, a lawmaker and former secretary of security in Hong Kong, predicted that the United States would initially be annoyed with Hong Kong for letting Mr. Snowden leave. “I think your government will be upset for a while, but I hope that they will shrug it off, because our government acted in accordance with the law,” she said. “Our government officials can breathe a sigh of relief.”
Even though Mr. Snowden left Hong Kong, he may still have handed China a considerable diplomatic and public relations coup. The state-run news agency Xinhua said in a commentary late Sunday morning, before news of his flight from Hong Kong, that Mr. Snowden’s disclosures had undermined the Washington’s argument that the Chinese government was guilty of widespread computer hacking.
His claims “demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age,” the commentary said.
Ellen Barry reported from Moscow and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Reporting was contributed by Andrew Roth and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow, Sarah Lyall from London, Jane Perlez from Beijing, Scott Shane, Steven Lee Myers and Michael R. Gordon from Washington, William Neuman from São Paulo, Brazil, Maggy Ayala from Quito, Ecuador, and Michael Schwirtz, Jennifer Preston and Rick Gladstone from New York.
