by Edward Lucas
The timing of Snowden's activities in Hawaii gives some support to that theory. Lindsey Mills, his girlfriend of five years (but now abandoned), has deleted her blog. But it is available on the internet archive via the Wayback Machine.87 With some acute observation, Fitzpatrick notes that Mills refers to her boyfriend disappearing off on a two-week trip on April 1st (Appelbaum's birthday is on or near April 3rd) and that she grumbles mildly about having to be a taxi-driver to a lot of people—Appelbaum's birthday guests, perhaps.88 (Ms Mills did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment.)
Another puzzle is about Snowden's arrival in Hong Kong. According to the account given, he told Poitras and Greenwald to wait outside a particular restaurant at a particular time, until they saw a man carrying a Rubik's cube. They were to ask him when the restaurant would open and he would reply that the food was bad. That sounds sensible. Snowden would know what Greenwald and Poitras looked like but they would need to know they were dealing with the right source, not a plant or decoy. The Rubik's cube may have been signalled in a mysterious and possibly coded tweet by Christine Corbett, a hacker friend of Appelbaum's, about a 'Rubik's Cube party'.89
The next puzzle concerns Snowden's travels after he disappeared from work, telling his employers that he needed treatment for epilepsy. If he were truly keen to portray himself as a whistleblower, why did he fly to Hong Kong? For anyone involved in American cyber-security, China is the biggest threat—bigger even than Russia. Though autonomous in economic terms, Hong Kong is firmly under the thumb of the Chinese authorities when it comes to security. Assuming he was not in a hurry, he could have flown anywhere he liked. Heading into Chinese jurisdiction—and promptly leaking details of NSA operations against China to the South China Morning Post—looks either like a deliberate snub to his former employers, or an act of boat-burning desperation, or perhaps a quid pro quo to some other party. One report in a Russian newspaper (denied by Snowden's American lawyer) says that once in Hong Kong, he celebrated his 30th birthday at the Russian consulate, spending two days there in all—mystifying behaviour for someone with his professed ideals and motivation.90
It is possible that he was simply muddled and panicked. But for someone who had years to hatch his plan, it seems odd that he would botch something as important as the escape. Another (to me more plausible) explanation was that he was bounced into seeking asylum in Moscow.
The first article based on Snowden's material (by Greenwald) appears on June 9th. Directly after that, Snowden disappears—apparently to stay with friends in Hong Kong. But on June 11th, Putin offered him political asylum, confirmed by the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov. On June 13th America opened a criminal case against Snowden, on charges of espionage, and warned other countries not to accept him. The net rapidly began to close: Iceland, a country which had been considered a likely destination, since its leftist government is sympathetic to whistleblowers and transparency causes, said it could consider asylum only if he actually arrived in the country.
America seems to have moved with deplorable slowness. It was not until June 20th that it issued an extradition request (though Hong Kong said on June 16th that it would entertain one). Snowden promptly went to the Russian consulate. On June 21st, America revoked Snowden's passport. He flew to Russia with another travel document—apparently one issued by the government of Ecuador via its embassy in London, where the fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ekes out a claustrophobic existence.
One way of interpreting this chain of events is as the result of pure muddle. Snowden had no idea what to do. Neither did his friends. He ended up in Moscow simply by chance, because events precluded any other option. It is also possible to imagine that the Russian authorities might want him under their supervision. One reason would be to get closer access to his secrets (or to the cryptographic keys with which access to the secrets is controlled, if they are indeed not in Russia). With his public utterances controlled, it would also be easier to prevent him blurting out facts that would undermine the story of an innocent whistleblower acting purely on his own initiative.
Certainly his arrival and stay in Moscow (with a year's temporary residence granted speedily by the authorities) did not allay suspicions. Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, is a notable public figure, and founder of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, a pro-Kremlin think-tank which aims to counter Western propaganda on human rights. He is on the 'Public Council' (a kind of advisory board) of the FSB, Russia's domestic security service.
Snowden's life in Moscow is shrouded with secrecy. He has a job, but nobody knows where. Barring a brief, staged meeting with journalists and activists at Moscow airport, he sees only his supporters. He has not given a proper press conference or opened himself to any form of scrutiny (odd behaviour, some might think, for an apostle of transparency). Nobody knows where he lives. None of this inspires confidence in the idea that he is a free agent. It supports the theory that he is a Russian one. Fitzpatrick has identified the background to one of the rare photos issued of Snowden in Moscow: on the basis of the distinctive striped pavements, the logo on a supermarket trolley he is pushing, and other visual clues it is, she believes, a shopping centre in Yasenevo, near Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service headquarters.91
Conclusion
I have spent the past months watching many of my media colleagues canonise Edward Snowden. The picture of a lone campaigner fighting for freedom and exposing abuses was initially captivating. But it didn't square with my own knowledge of our security and intelligence services. He has damaged them hugely, without exposing abuses that justify the damage. The story also didn't fit my experience of Russia. From the available clues, and based on 30 years of looking at Soviet and then Russian intelligence and propaganda operations, my conclusion is that this affair has Kremlin fingerprints on it. They may be faint and smudged, but they are there.
The operation would have one of the most prized virtues in espionage—deniability. There is no smoking gun. Snowden is Snowden, Greenwald is Greenwald, Appelbaum is Appelbaum and the Guardian is the Guardian. All the components of the operation exist in authentic form in the West. All it required were some gentle nudges to put them together. How that happened may never be told. Perhaps a thorough and truthful account of events from Snowden himself might give some clues: who were his friends in those years between Geneva and Hawaii? What was he doing in India? How did he really first come in contact with Appelbaum and Poitras? How exactly did he end up in Moscow? Who has been looking after him there and under what conditions? How did he choose what to steal and why? And what control does he have over the selection of documents to be released? Such an account is unlikely to be available soon, if ever.
I freely admit that it is possible that Snowden conceived his plan on his own, and with honourable if mistaken motives. It may well be that his allies are without exception enthusiastic and careless but not actually malevolent. It may be that Russia has watched the whole affair with bemusement, was reluctant to offer asylum, and is eager for him to leave. It is possible that Vladimir Putin is entirely sincere, if ineffective, when he says he wants no damage to be done to America as a result of Snowden's sojourn. It is all possible. But unlikely. At any rate I find it scandalous that Snowden's defenders are so blithe about his arrival and stay in Moscow. People who are so highly (and I would say unreasonably) suspicious of Western governments become bizarrely trusting where the interests and abilities of Vladimir Putin's regime are concerned.
Even if Russian intelligence is not involved, I cannot see the heroic virtues in the Snowden affair which others have celebrated. Nobody has proved that the NSA or GCHQ committed grave and deliberate breaches of the law. In the big scandals of the 1960s, the FBI illegally bugged American citizens and tried to blackmail the government's political opponents. For example, it wanted to make Martin Luther King commit suicide, by threatening him with the exposure of his adultery. No comparable examples have been produced now, and I do not believe any will be. Nobody has prod
uced individual victims of illegal NSA activity. There is no evidence of wilful, systematic breaches of the law by the NSA, or of contempt within its ranks, at any level, for judicial and legislative oversight. There is no modern counterpart of J Edgar Hoover, the brooding madman who brought the FBI to its darkest hour.
Without such evidence of wrongdoing, Snowden and his allies have no moral authority for their actions. These include colossal breaches of secrecy and trying to paralyse or destroy one of the most important limbs of national security: tantamount to sabotage. Nobody elected them. Their decisions are irreversible and not subject to appeal. Nobody will sack them if they make a mistake. What right do they have to determine who is, as they put it, 'innocent'? What rights do the accused have in this public show trial, and how can they defend themselves?
The charge sheet I have listed is long. How can a mere media outlet have the expertise to know if stolen secrets can be safely published? Even if it chooses not to publish them, how can it have the expertise to store them safely? Why do they take official guidance seriously in the case of how to prevent the gravest damage, but ignore the general principle that state secrets should be kept, not stolen?
The Snowden affair is indeed a story of secrecy and deception—but not on the side of the intelligence agencies. Far too little attention has been paid to the political agendas of the Snowdenistas. They cloak their beliefs in the language of privacy rights, civil liberties and digital freedoms. But the ardent Snowdenistas part company with most of their fellow citizens over the issue of whether an elected, law-governed government has the right to keep and defend its secrets. Some of them dislike all intelligence and security agencies on principle. By international standards, American scrutiny of its intelligence and security agencies is unusually detailed and robust. Yet anti-Americanism seems to blind the Snowdenistas to this vital point.
The NSA, GCHQ and other agencies, their political masters and their judicial and legislative overseers have undoubtedly made mistakes. Far too much is classified, at far too high a level. Far too many people have security clearances. The administration of these clearances has become an industry, rife with cronyism, bureaucracy and incompetence. If one proceeds on the basis that anything remotely useful to the enemy should be a secret, then everything ends up classified and nothing is really secure. It is far better to classify selectively and effectively. 'Contractorisation', as Americans term it, may save money and increase flexibility, but it also invites abuse, carelessness and leaks. It is better to have a small, lean and secure intelligence organisation, entirely in the public sector, than a large public-private hybrid that leaks.
The single biggest lesson of the whole Snowden fiasco is that America's own sloppiness made it vulnerable: whether to misguided whistleblowers, saboteurs or foreign spies is secondary. The intelligence agencies and their political and judicial overseers also need to do a much better job of explaining what they do and why. The best defence against a Snowden-style leak is a broad national consensus that the agencies are to be trusted and that the measures they take are necessary. Sweden is exemplary in this respect.
It is important not to concentrate the defence case too narrowly on terrorism. That is a grave threat, but not the only one. Invoking the attacks of September 11th 2001 as justification for everything the NSA does can be a powerful defence, but it wears out with over-use. It invites pointed questions, like how many terrorists did you catch by trawling meta-data? The answers may be elusive. It is much better to justify intelligence operations on a broad, prudential basis. A country like America faces a lot of threats and they are constantly changing. Good intelligence capabilities provide a well-stocked tool-kit for dealing with them. The traditional reluctance to discuss sources and methods, for fear of rendering them useless in future, is well founded. But in an atmosphere of suspicion, it is not wholly sustainable. Grim silence is not going to restore public trust. It may be necessary to sacrifice some degree of secrecy about past operations in order to win the backing needed for future ones.
Dissent within the espionage world needs to be better managed. Intelligence agencies are meant to be good at handling people. If your internal culture is strong and expert enough to recruit and run agents, it should be capable of managing your own staff too. If problems cannot be dealt with, the individual concerned must be smoothly eased into other employment. Former intelligence officers who express their discontent publicly do not automatically deserve to be hounded. To be sure, some self-proclaimed whistleblowers have ended their careers with well-deserved disciplinary sanctions. Others seem to have gone slightly mad. But the literal-minded and sometimes vindictive-seeming approach of prosecutors and investigators stokes the mistaken impression that the intelligence agencies are out of control and persecute dissidents.
The oversight of the intelligence agencies needs to change. FISA court judges should be appointed by the whole Supreme Court, not just by the chief justice. The court's work is necessarily secret, so it must have the broadest possible political support. It also needs a public defender or privacy advocate, with a high security clearance, to challenge the agencies' contentions in individual cases, in the adversarial tradition of American justice. Senior officials must be seen to take responsibility for their mistakes. General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, should have resigned as soon as the scale of the breach became apparent. The organisation in which this happened—too big, too commercial, too secretive, too vulnerable—was his creation. If this is indeed, as officials plausibly maintain, the worst intelligence disaster in American history, someone must be seen to take personal responsibility. General Clapper too should resign, for having misled Congress, however inadvertently. The strongest argument in rebutting Snowden's claims is that the existing system already works and that its shortcomings are not so grave that they require huge breaches of secrecy to galvanise reform. That contention will be more widely accepted if individuals who break the rules then visibly take the consequences.
Finally, it is tempting to see intelligence failures in a tidy, narrow context: a failure of procedure here, a flawed personality there. But they usually reflect broader problems: an agency or a country which cannot attract the necessary loyalty. From this point of view, the Snowden fiasco exemplifies not only problems inside America, but also in its relations with the rest of the world. Spying on allies is a mere irritant when those alliances are strong. When they are weak, it becomes a source of incendiary rows. In Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Germany and many other countries, America no longer enjoys the image it once had. Relationships have decayed; trust has ebbed. This is not a new problem. George W Bush's administration made a bonfire of American soft power with its botched war in Iraq. In different ways, the Obama administration's remote, chilly and arrogant style has compounded the damage.
The rush of secret material into the public realm has distracted opinion from the real issues: motives, benefits and damage. In the best case, Snowden is a misguided whistleblower and his allies are merely reckless and naïve. By whatever mixture of luck and skill they have successfully safeguarded the most damaging and sensitive material and it will never reach our enemies. The public debate is better informed. He has delivered, perhaps, some salutary shocks.
If so, all that comes at a great cost. We have lost capabilities built up with great expenditure of time, money and skill. Our alliances are strained and our standing in the world has suffered. The price is too high.
The nightmare is that the truth is far worse: Snowden is a pawn in a hostile and continuing intelligence and information-warfare operation, with allthe extra damage which that implies. Either way, Snowden's actions are no cause for comfort, let alone celebration.
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1 Of which he has won several, including from the Washington Post.
2 Often attributed to Lenin, this apocryphal saying was used in Cold War days to describe Westerners who helped the Soviet Union through their naïveté.
3 Partial exceptions include the Business Inside
r website which has run a series of articles by Michael Kelly, such as http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-we-know-about-snowden-leaks-2013-11 Two people who have really followed up this story are Catherine A Fitzpatrick in her 'Wired State' blog (see 3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state) and John Schindler at 20comittee.com; I gratefully acknowledge my debt to both.
4 When the ex-communist countries joined NATO, the alliance was so concerned about offending Russia that it initially decided not to make any plans to defend them. This changed after the war in Georgia in 2008, thanks to the Obama administration. I revealed the decision to draw up the plans in January 2010: see http://www.economist.com/node/15268095
5 To be published by Bloomsbury in 2015.
6 http://www.lawfareblog.com contains excellent analysis of these issues, especially by Benjamin Wittes. See also http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/us/politics/obama-nsa.html
7 http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1155a5NSAandSnowden.pdf. Another poll of young Americans shows a quarter backing Snowden, a quarter condemning him, and fully a half undecided: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21592654-revelations-about-cyber-espionage-dismay-barack-obamas-most-loyal-fans-snooper-blooper
8 See for example http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/1118/CLEANEDPRTT%202.pdf