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12 times zones away to meet an anonymous source, Brazil also would have been a more certain place to meet Greenwald. If some consideration by Snowden precluded Brazil as a destination, Snowden could have also gone to Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, Iceland, or Venezuela, which are also countries that do not have active extradition treaties with the United States. Yet, instead of proceeding to a country from which he could not have been extradited, he flew to Hong Kong, which had a vigorously enforced extradition agreement.
His reason for choosing was not to keep a previously arranged rendezvous with a journalist. As previously mentioned, when he left Hong Kong not a single journalist had agreed to meet him in Hong Kong. Indeed, Gellman considered Hong Kong, as he put it, “in the jurisdiction of a country that’s unfriendly to the United States,” and notified Snowden that he would not be able to journey to Hong Kong. Yet, even without any appointments with journalists, he chose to fly to Hong Kong. So his choice was not based on either evading extradition or on accommodating journalists.
He chose Hong Kong for another reason. He told Greenwald Hong Kong, as a part of China, could provide him protection from any countermeasures by U.S. intelligence agencies. He made that consideration clear, saying that that Snowden’s “first priority was to ensure his physical safety from US interference.” Hong Kong “was part of China’s territories, he [Snowden] reasoned, and American agents would find it harder to operate there than other places,” according to Greenwald. Snowden further reckoned that China’s control over Hong Kong prevented “American agents from breaking down the door” of the hotel room and from seizing him. Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA station chief, told me that Snowden was correct in his assessment of that Hong Kong advantage. Drumheller said that Hong Kong was “home court” for the Chinese intelligence services. It played a: dominant role” in running the police, airport passport control and security regime there. According to Drumheller, this reality limited the role that American and British intelligence operatives could play there and Snowden would be protected in Hong Kong against an intrusion by America. “Snowden obviously knew this from his training at the CIA,” Drumheller said.
As the Chinese service was under no such restrictions, Snowden had gained protection at a price. While no US or British intelligence operatives would be in a position to retrieve the NSA files he had brought with him to Hong Kong, Chinese operatives, and their allies in the intelligence war, would have a free hand in Hong Kong. Yet, Snowden chose to put his physical safety in the hands of China.
One reason why Snowden may not have been overly concerned about Hong Kong’s extradition treaty with the U.S. was that he had never intended to test it by staying in Hong Kong after his media events. Snowden told the editor of the Guardian from the safety of Moscow, Hong Kong was only a temporary stop over. He added in the interview that allowing himself to become part of an extradition proceeding in the Hong Kong court was not part of his plan. If so, the Hong Kong lawyers, who believed they had been retained pro bono to battle against extradition, were part of a charade. Hong Kong merely was a protected stopover. The stopover may have provided him with a further advantage. If he had gone directly to his next destination, Moscow, and he provided the same journalists with the same documents at a press conference in Moscow, his status as a whistle-blower might have been viewed with less sympathy in the media. Even the Guardian, for example, might have been reluctant to publish a Moscow-based story revealing British and American communications intelligence secrets,
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