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CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
The Whistle Blower Who Became a Controlled Source
“The [U.S.] government’s investigation failed—that they don’t know what was taken”
—Edward Snowden in Moscow
In Moscow I had learned that Russian intelligence services use the broad, umbrella term “espionage source” to describe moles, volunteers and anyone else who delivers another state’s secrets to it. It applies not only to documents but to the secret knowledge that such a source is able to recall and includes both controlled and uncontrolled bearers of secrets. It is also a job description that fitted Edward Snowden in June 2013.
Unless one is willing to believe that the Putin regime acted out of purely altruistic motives in exfiltrating this American intelligence worker to Moscow, the only plausible explanation for its actions in Hong Kong was that it valued Snowden’s potential as an espionage source.
Snowden’s open disillusionment with the NSA presented the very situation that the Russian intelligence services specialized in exploiting. He had also revealed to reporters in Hong Kong that he had deliberately gained access to the NSA’s sources and methods and he that he had taken to Hong Kong highly-classified documents. He further disclosed that, before leaving the NSA, he had gained access to the lists of computers that the NSA had penetrated in foreign countries. He even went so far as to describe to these journalists the secrets that he had taken as a “single point of failure” for the NSA. And aside from the documents he had copied, he claimed, it will be recalled, that he had secret knowledge in his head that, if disclosed would wreak havoc on the entire U.S. foreign intelligence system. “If I were providing information that I know, that’s in my head, to some foreign government, the US intelligence community would ... see sources go dark that were previously productive, he told the editor of the Guardian in Moscow.
In short, he advertised possessing precisely the priceless data that the Russian intelligence services had been seeking, with little success, for the past six decades. These electronic files could provide it with the keys to unlock the NSA’s entire kingdom of electronic spying. Could any world-class intelligence service ignore such a prize? To miss the opportunity to gets in hands such a potential espionage source would be nothing short of gross negligence.
In fact, as has been already established in these pages, this golden opportunity was not missed in Hong Kong. Even if the Russian intelligence service had not previously had him in its sights — which, as discussed in chapter XV, appears to me to be extremely unlikely-- he made contact with Russian officials in Hong Kong, and Putin, as he himself said, personally approved allowing
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