![]() When being interviewed at the South by Southwest conference or receiving humanitarian awards, his disembodied image smiles down from jumbotron screens. But he has nevertheless maintained a presence on the world stage-not only as a man without a country but as a man without a body. ![]() ![]() Physically, very few people have seen him since he disappeared into Moscow’s airport complex last June. He is a uniquely postmodern breed of whistle-blower. Since then I have written two more books about the NSA, as well as numerous magazine articles (including two previous cover stories about the NSA for WIRED), book reviews, op-eds, and documentaries.īut in all my work, I’ve never run across anyone quite like Snowden. At several points I was threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act, the same 1917 law under which Snowden is charged (in my case those threats had no basis and were never carried out). Finally, after graduation, I decided to write the first book about the NSA. I testified about the program in a closed hearing before the Church Committee, the congressional investigation that led to sweeping reforms of US intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Then, as a reservist in law school, I blew the whistle on the NSA when I stumbled across a program that involved illegally eavesdropping on US citizens. Like him, I was assigned to a National Security Agency unit in Hawaii-in my case, as part of three years of active duty in the Navy during the Vietnam War. I confess to feeling some kinship with Snowden. But as far as I can tell, it is a charge with no valid evidence. When Snowden fled to Russia after stealing the largest cache of secrets in American history, some in Washington accused him of being another link in this chain of Russian agents. ![]() And I stayed here again in 1995, during the Russian war in Chechnya, when I met with Yuri Modin, the Soviet agent who ran Britain’s notorious Cambridge Five spy ring. I stayed here 20 years ago when I interviewed Victor Cherkashin, the senior KGB officer who oversaw American spies such as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. I’ve had several occasions to stay at the Metropol during my three decades as an investigative journalist. Now his image adorns a large plaque on the exterior of the hotel, appropriately facing away from the symbols of the new Russia on the next block-Bentley and Ferrari dealerships and luxury jewelers like Harry Winston and Chopard. In the restaurant, Lenin would harangue his followers in a greatcoat and Kirza high boots. Built during the time of Czar Nicholas II, it later became the Second House of the Soviets after the Bolsheviks took over in 1917. I am staying at the Hotel Metropol, a whimsical sand-colored monument to pre-revolutionary art nouveau. I landed in Moscow without knowing precisely where or when Snowden and I would actually meet. But the finer details of the rendezvous remain shrouded in mystery. It is the most time that any journalist has been allowed to spend with him since he arrived in Russia in June 2013. Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What drove Snowden to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents, revelations that have laid bare the vast scope of the government’s domestic surveillance programs? In May I received an email from his lawyer, ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, confirming that Snowden would meet me in Moscow and let me hang out and chat with him for what turned out to be three solid days over several weeks. For almost nine months, I have been trying to set up an interview with him-traveling to Berlin, Rio de Janeiro twice, and New York multiple times to talk with the handful of his confidants who can arrange a meeting. Bring a book and wait for ES to find you.” ¶ ES is Edward Snowden, the most wanted man in the world. The message arrives on my “clean machine,” a MacBook Air loaded only with a sophisticated encryption package.
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