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A Transit Zone Becomes a Snowden-Watching Zone A Stakeout Grinds On in Airport Limbo
(about 7 hours later)
MOSCOW — The airport transit area here where Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American national security contractor, is believed to be planning his next move, has a Burger King, TGI Friday’s and panoply of coffee shops. MOSCOW — The airport transit area here where Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American national security contractor, is believed to be planning his next move has a Burger King, a T.G.I. Friday’s and a bar called Pub, or as rendered in Russian, “Pab.” It also has a vast number of locked doors, something you might not notice without spending 17 hours looking for Mr. Snowden.
At dawn on Tuesday it was largely empty, with sleeping passengers stretched out on the floor and on rows of seats. A group of Japanese men sat on the floor into the afternoon alongside several empty and nearly empty whiskey bottles. Many reporters, holding plane tickets that give them access to the area, have spent sleepless nights patrolling the long halls of the transit zone, looking for witnesses among the area’s janitors, cashiers and flight attendants.
There was also a constellation of V.I.P. salons with names like Galaktika and Blues, and a Soviet-looking Hall for Official Individuals accessible to a parking lot outside. A recent renovation has left the area, which stretches across the D, E and F terminals, airy and gleaming, with new features like the Vozdushny Ekspress, a small “capsule hotel” where journalists have been gathered since midday Sunday in hopes of getting a glimpse of Mr. Snowden. By Tuesday, some airport staff members were getting cranky. “I know who you’re looking for,” said a receptionist at a business-class lounge called Jazz. “This is a business-class place, not a no-visa kind of place.”
Many reporters, with purchased plane tickets that have given them access to the area, have spent sleepless nights patrolling the long halls of the transit zone, looking for witnesses among the janitors, cashiers and flight attendants. At another V.I.P. hall, the receptionist answered a query about Mr. Snowden by saying, “So you can do this?” and mimicking machine-gun fire.
There have also been security personnel on patrol in plain clothes, some of them clearly monitoring the journalists. And especially when a Havana-bound Aeroflot plane that Mr. Snowden was believed to have been on departed from gate D28 on Monday afternoon, there were bystanders who looked both foreign and exceptionally curious, prompting speculation that they might have been intelligence officers sent by other countries. But a police officer, who would not give his name, found humor in the situation. As several journalists explained why they were leaving the terminal without boarding their flights, he asked: “Are you looking for someone? You won’t find him.” Asked if he had seen him, the officer said: “I see him all the time. You won’t find him, though.”
Journalists have spent days searching for Mr. Snowden in lounges and V.I.P. halls and behind locked doors throughout the transit zone, and at 3 a.m. one of them could be seen sitting dejectedly in a glassed-in smoking area. At times, the quest took on an air of desperation: reporters from a Russian tabloid covertly took photographs of a correspondent for The New York Times, then showed them to her and explained that they thought she might be Sarah Harrison, the WikiLeaks adviser who is believed to be traveling with Mr. Snowden. But mostly, during the predawn hours, it is quiet. Passengers stretch out on the floor, some with newspapers on their faces.
In the early hours of the stakeout, men who were apparently plainclothes security officers mingled among the journalists. And when the Havana-bound Aeroflot plane departed on Monday afternoon without Mr. Snowden on board, some bystanders looked both foreign and very curious, prompting speculation that they, too, might have been spies.
So far the search for Mr. Snowden has been thankless. Early Tuesday morning, reporters from a Russian tabloid covertly photographed a correspondent for The New York Times, wondering if she might be Sarah Harrison, the WikiLeaks adviser who is believed to be traveling with Mr. Snowden.
The policeman, who seemed to know more than anyone else, held out little hope that the stakeout would end anytime soon.
“He’s going to sit here like Assange,” he said, referring to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder currently taking refuge in Ecuador’s Embassy in London, “until the situation works itself out.”