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Leaker’s Flight Raises Tension Between U.S. and 3 Nations
(about 9 hours later)
WASHINGTON — An increasingly frustrated Obama administration escalated its criticism on Monday of Russia, China and Ecuador, the countries that appeared to be protecting Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former government contractor wanted for leaking classified documents, who has eluded what has become a global American manhunt.
WASHINGTON — Frustrated Obama administration officials pressed Russia on Monday to turn over Edward J. Snowden, the national security contractor who disclosed surveillance programs, while warning China of “consequences” for letting him flee to Moscow.
The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters that relations with China had suffered a setback over its apparent role in approving a decision on Sunday by Hong Kong to let Mr. Snowden board a flight to Moscow and avoid arrest — even though his passport had been revoked. Mr. Carney also warned the Russian authorities that they should expel Mr. Snowden into American custody.
As Mr. Snowden remained out of sight, apparently holed up in Moscow awaiting word of his fate, what started as a dramatic escape story involving a self-described whistle-blower evolved into a diplomatic incident in which the United States faces an open rift with one major power and a tense standoff with another. Hopes for a quick resolution had faded by nightfall.
Mr. Snowden, 30, a former National Security Agency contractor whose leaks about American surveillance activities have captivated world attention, had apparently been set to board a flight from Moscow to Havana on Monday as part of an effort to seek political asylum in Ecuador, which has provided him with special travel papers. But in a deepening intrigue over his whereabouts, Mr. Snowden never boarded the flight.
Secretary of State John Kerry said China’s decision to allow Mr. Snowden to leave Hong Kong despite an arrest request from the United States would have “without any question some effect, an impact on the relationship, and consequences.” He called on Russia to expel Mr. Snowden. “I would urge them to live by the standards of the law, because that’s in the interest of everybody,” Mr. Kerry said.
Mr. Snowden’s vacant seat raised the possibility that the Russian government had detained him, either to consider Washington’s demands or perhaps to question him for Russia’s own purposes.
He pointed out that the United States in the past two years had transferred seven prisoners Russia had sought, though the parallel is not exact, since Mr. Snowden is not being held by the Russian government.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization that has said it is helping Mr. Snowden, told reporters that Mr. Snowden was in a safe and secure place. The government of Ecuador, which is also protecting Mr. Assange, said it was still considering Mr. Snowden’s asylum request. But there was no direct word from Mr. Snowden himself.
At the White House, President Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, reinforced what he called “our frustration and disappointment with Hong Kong and China,” calling their refusal to detain Mr. Snowden a “serious setback” in relations. He said the Hong Kong authorities had been notified that Mr. Snowden’s passport had been revoked, and he dismissed their explanation that they had no legal basis to stop Mr. Snowden. “We do not buy the suggestion that China could not have taken action,” Mr. Carney said.
American officials have reacted with increasing anger over their failure to win foreign cooperation in their pursuit of Mr. Snowden, who had been hiding in Hong Kong for the past few weeks with a trove of classified information on four laptop computers. Mr. Snowden has said he leaked the information about American surveillance to expose the government’s invasion of privacy. He has been charged with violating espionage laws.
American officials also openly mocked China and Russia as states that repress free speech and transparency and therefore are hardly apt refuges for someone fighting government secrecy in the United States.
Further ramping up the criticism on Monday, a senior government official in Washington denounced both Mr. Snowden and the triumvirate of countries that appeared to be helping him.
“I wonder if Mr. Snowden chose China and Russia as assistants in his flight from justice because they’re such powerful bastions of Internet freedom,” Mr. Kerry said sarcastically during a stop in New Delhi.
“Mr. Snowden’s claim that he is focused on supporting transparency, freedom of the press, and protection of individual rights and democracy is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen: China, Russia and Ecuador,” the official said in a statement. “Working with such nations — each of which has been cited for its failure to permit freedom of expression and of the press — makes clear that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the U.S., not to advance Internet freedom and free speech.”
Mr. Carney said Mr. Snowden’s chosen destinations indicated “his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States.”
The Snowden pursuit dominated the questioning at the daily noon White House press briefing in Washington, where Mr. Carney reiterated the American view that the authorities in Hong Kong, which follows China’s directives, should have detained Mr. Snowden and that it had plenty of time to do so. “We see this as a setback in terms of efforts to build mutual trust,” Mr. Carney told reporters.
The strong words went beyond typical diplomatic language and underscored the growing ramifications of the case for the United States. The Obama administration’s inability, at least for now, to influence China, Russia and countries in Latin America that may accept Mr. Snowden for asylum, like Ecuador, brought home the limits of American power around the world.
He also said that “it is our understanding that Mr. Snowden remains in Russia” and that “we have asked the Russians to look at the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden back to the United States.”
Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, criticized the United States on Monday for its pursuit of Mr. Snowden “The one who is denounced pursues the denouncer,” Mr. Patiño said at a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, a stop on a previously scheduled diplomatic visit to Asia. “The man who tries to provide light and transparency to issues that affect everyone is pursued by those who should be giving explanations about the denunciations that have been presented.”
Earlier Monday on a visit to New Delhi, Secretary of State John Kerry also emphasized that Russia should send Mr. Snowden to the United States. "I would urge them to live by the standards of the law,” he said.
Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, wrote on his Twitter account, “We will analyze very responsibly the Snowden case and with absolute sovereignty will make the decision we consider the most appropriate.” The United States remains Ecuador’s leading trading partner, but Washington’s influence in Quito has been slight since Mr. Correa became president in 2007. He has repeatedly flouted and tweaked the United States, by for example stopping American antidrug flights out of a military base in Manta, and expelling the American ambassador in 2011 after WikiLeaks cables suggested she felt Mr. Correa had tolerated police corruption. .
Security was extremely tight at the gate at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Monday as agents called passengers to board the Havana-bound Aeroflot aircraft. Police officers stood around the plane on the tarmac, and the entrance to the gate inside the terminal was cordoned off with about 25 feet of blue ribbon.
A range of American officials, including the deputy secretary of state and the F.B.I. director, spent Monday reaching out to their Russian counterparts seeking cooperation, without any apparent result. Mr. Snowden, who spent Sunday night in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, did not board the flight for Havana he was said to have booked, and he made no public appearance or statement.
Mr. Snowden was said to have reserved a ticket on the flight, Aeroflot Flight 150, in coach seat 17A. But just before the plane pulled away, Nikolay Sokolov, an Aeroflot employee at the gate, said that Mr. Snowden was not on board. “He is not there,” Mr. Sokolov said. “I was waiting myself.”
American officials said they believed he was still in Moscow, but it was unclear whether his failure to continue on to Cuba, Ecuador or elsewhere was a sign that Russia was considering handing him over to the United States, sheltering him itself, planning to allow him to leave later or trying to extract information from him before deciding. The United States and Russia do not have an extradition treaty.
The unwillingness of the Hong Kong authorities to detain Mr. Snowden, and Ecuador’s public declaration that it was considering his asylum request, underscored just how little sympathy the United States was receiving from several countries over the unveiling of its surveillance efforts.
Nikolay N. Zakharov, a spokesman for Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., declined to say if intelligence officials had met with Mr. Snowden, nor would he say if they had sought to examine any secret files he was said to be carrying. “On this question, we will not comment,” Mr. Zakharov said.
Russia had seemed intent on allowing Mr. Snowden to transit through Moscow, but at the highest levels of the Russian government officials seemed to be pulling a page from a cold war playbook, coyly denying any knowledge of Mr. Snowden.
American intelligence officials remained deeply concerned that Mr. Snowden could make public more documents disclosing details of the National Security Agency’s collection system or that his documents could be obtained by foreign intelligence services, with or without his cooperation.
“Over all, we have no information about him,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, told Reuters early on Monday.
Technical experts have been carrying out a forensic analysis of the trail he left in N.S.A. computer systems, trying to determine what he had access to as a systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, a United States government contractor, and what he may have downloaded, officials said.
Nikolay N. Zakharov, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., declined to say if intelligence officials had met with Mr. Snowden during the time he spent at the transit area of the airport. Nor would Mr. Zakharov say if they had sought to examine the secret files he was said to be carrying.
The South China Morning Post reported Monday night on its Web site that in an interview, Mr. Snowden said he had specificallysought the job at Booz Allen so he could collect information about the N.S.A’s secret surveillance programs to release to news outlets.
“On this question, we will not comment,” Mr. Zakharov said.
Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for The Guardian, has said Mr. Snowden gave him thousands of documents, only a tiny fraction of which were published. Many may be of limited public interest, but they could be of great value to a foreign intelligence service, which could get a more complete idea of the security agency’s technical abilities and how to evade its net, officials said.
A scattering of tourists carrying bags from the duty-free shops boarded the Havana-bound plane, but many of the passengers were journalists hoping to trail Mr. Snowden on the next leg of his extraordinary odyssey, which began early Sunday when he fled his hide-out in Hong Kong.
Mr. Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday put the United States at odds with onetime cold war rivals just as Mr. Obama was trying to ease tensions over a variety of other friction points. In the last few weeks, he hosted President Xi Jinping of China on a visit to California and met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Northern Ireland. But talk of constructive relations seemed long ago on Monday.
Several journalists carrying American passports were ejected from the aircraft because they lacked the visa requirements to visit Cuba.
Critics said the episode exposed the president’s failure in foreign policy. “It turns out that an irresolute amateur like Barack Obama was the best thing that the brutal but determined Putin could have hoped for,” Peter Wehner, a former aide to President George W. Bush, wrote in Commentary magazine.
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.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, sent a letter to Russia’s ambassador, Sergei I. Kislyak, warning of a break if Moscow did not send Mr. Snowden back to the United States. “The Snowden case is an important test of the ‘reset’ in relations between our two countries,” Mr. Graham wrote.
There are no direct commercial flights from Moscow to Ecuador or to Venezuela, another potential destination for Mr. Snowden, and any stopover would create an opportunity for local authorities to seize him. Another possibility was that Mr. Snowden could leave Moscow on a private plane.
Mr. Obama’s team seemed angrier at China than Russia, which for the moment had not directly defied Washington. Officials disclosed more information about their request to Hong Kong to detain and return Mr. Snowden, defending themselves against assertions that they had mishandled the request.
In New Delhi, Mr. Kerry said that the United States had extradited seven individuals to Russia in response to Russian requests. “I think reciprocity in the enforcement of the law is pretty important,” he said.
A senior official said the State Department had raised the issue of arresting Mr. Snowden with the Chinese after espionage charges were filed in secret on June 14. The official said that as soon as the charges were unsealed on Friday, the department revoked Mr. Snowden’s passport, and that legally it could not have done so earlier. Officials added that they had informed the Hong Kong authorities that the passport had been revoked before Mr. Snowden was allowed to board an Aeroflot flight for Moscow.
Mr. Kerry said that it was ironic that Mr. Snowden may have been seeking the cooperation of China and Russia in his flight, given their positions in restricting Internet freedom. William J. Burns, the deputy secretary of state, has been in touch with Russian authorities on the Snowden matter, Mr. Kerry said.
“The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust,” Mr. Carney said. “And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem. And that is a point we are making to them very directly.”
It was unclear how Mr. Snowden spent his time at the Moscow airport or precisely where he had spent it. The departure of the flight to Havana came after an all-night vigil by journalists who were posted outside a hotel in the transit zone of the airport where Mr. Snowden was apparently staying. But on Monday morning, hotel staff said that no one named Snowden was staying there.
Officials also defended their decision not to seek a “red notice,” or international arrest warrant, from Interpol, saying they typically do so only when the whereabouts of the fugitive being sought is unknown.
The White House, in its first official statement released just after midnight on Monday, expressed disappointment in Hong Kong’s decision to allow Mr. Snowden to leave and pressed Russia to turn him over, citing the cooperation between the two countries since the Boston Marathon bombings.
Jacques Semmelman, an extradition specialist and a former federal prosecutor, said that was generally correct, but he added that the United States still could have sought a red notice if it feared Mr. Snowden might flee, so the warrant would be in place wherever he landed. But Mr. Semmelman said the United States had good reason not to fear that Mr. Snowden might flee because of its 1996 treaty with Hong Kong, under which it had requested his provisional arrest.
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.
He said that the information required to make such a request was simple — “it’s a one- or two-pager that is very easy to comply with"— and that it was “inconceivable” to him that American officials had not filled it out correctly. If the Hong Kong authorities were willing to overlook a proper request, then a revocation of Mr. Snowden’s passport or a red notice might not have made a difference. “I haven’t seen anything to show the United States dropped the ball,” he said.
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.
Critics of the surveillance programs exposed by Mr. Snowden moved in Congress on Monday to curtail them. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation intended to bolster privacy safeguards and require oversight.
Mr. Assange said Sunday that he had raised Mr. Snowden’s case with Ecuador’s government. 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.”
Two other Democrats who joined him on the bill, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, sent a letter to Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A. director, asserting that a government fact sheet about its surveillance of foreigners abroad “contains an inaccurate statement.” They did not identify the inaccuracy because of secrecy rules but said “it portrays protections for Americans’ privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are.”
Obama administration officials expressed frustration that Hong Kong allowed Mr. Snowden to board the Moscow-bound flight 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.
At Sheremetyevo airport, where journalists had maintained an all-night vigil, security was tight Monday as agents called passengers to board an Aeroflot flight that Mr. Snowden reportedly had planned to take to Havana. Police officers stood around the plane on the tarmac, and the entrance to the gate inside the terminal was cordoned off with about 25 feet of blue ribbon.
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said no red notice was requested because they are “most valuable when the whereabouts of a fugitive are unknown.” Since Mr. Snowden was known to be in Hong Kong, the official said, his provisional arrest had been sought under an existing American agreement with Hong Kong.
But before the plane pulled away, an Aeroflot employee said Mr. Snowden was not on board, which one of the flight’s two captains confirmed when the plane landed 16 hours later in Havana.
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.
In response to reporters’ shouted questions, “Was Snowden on board?” the captain, who would not give his name, replied: “No Snowden. No special people. Only journalists.”
“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.”
Peter
Baker reported from Washington, and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by Scott Shane, Steven Lee Myers and Charlie Savage from Washington; David M. Herszenhorn from Moscow; Michael R. Gordon from New Delhi; Rick Gladstone from New York; William Neuman from Quito, Ecuador; and Victoria Burnett from Havana.
A person knowledgeable about the Hong Kong government’s deliberations said that there was considerable annoyance in Hong Kong about Washington’s handling of the case as well.
Particularly troublesome to Hong Kong was that the United States request for the surrender of Mr. Snowden had accused him of violating the Espionage Act, and not just of stealing materials or other crimes that would clearly be considered criminal and not political matters. Charging Mr. Snowden under the Espionage Act may have been good politics in the United States, but was bad politics in terms of persuading Hong Kong to surrender Mr. Snowden, the person said.
Mr. Snowden was not spying for China, and neither Hong Kong government personnel not Chinese government agents attempted to interview or interrogate him at any time during his stay, the person said. But the appearance of surrendering someone on an Espionage Act charge worried many in the government here.
“I don’t think you can send a guy back for spying for China, otherwise no one will spy for us,” the person said.
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.
It was not clear whether the Hong Kong authorities knew that Mr. Snowden’s passport had been revoked when 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, Mr. Assange said.
Mr. Assange also 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.
Mr. Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London a year ago to avoid extradition 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.
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.
Peter Baker reported from Washington and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by David M. Herszenhorn, Ellen Barry and Andrew Roth from Moscow; Scott Shane, Steven Lee Myers and Charlie Savage from Washington; Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong; and Michael R. Gordon from New Delhi.
