The Rest Is Classified - 46. The Leak That Changed The World: Snowden On The Run (Ep 4)

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

The world has met Edward Snowden and now he fears repercussions. How will he escape Hong Kong? Where will he go? And will any nation be willing to risk the fury of the USA and help him? Listen as David and Gordon continue the story of Edward Snowden and the leaks that changed the world. ------------------- To sign up to The Declassified Club, go to www.therestisclassified.com or click this ⁠link⁠. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ------------------- Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠ Pre-order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by The Guardian, requires Verizon on a quote ongoing daily basis to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration, the communications records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk,

regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers. Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And that, for those who have been listening to our series on Edward Snowden, is the first time, thank you Gordon, that I have not been forced to read an opening quote from Edward Snowden's memoir, Permanent Record. That is instead a quote from an

absolute bombshell of a new story dropped by the Guardian on June 5th, 2013. And I will note though, Gordon, in my effort to take extreme offense at all opening quotes, that this story was broken by a British newspaper, which is also offensive to me. But also an American journalist. By an American journalist for a British newspaper. That's right. That's right. That's right. Well, and for those tuning in here, we are on our fourth episode of our journey into the darkness of Edward Snowden's leaks.

He's bringing stuff to light, David, rather than the darkness. Anyway, we are now finally at a point in the story where after Edward Sonin has taken this information, he has got about one and a half million documents on various sort of SD cards and hard drives. He is in Hong Kong now, sort of ensconced in a disgusting hotel room filled with cartons of takeaway food. He is now in a room with journalist Glenn Greenwald, Ewan McCaskill from The Guardian and Laura Poitras, a filmmaker. And now June 5th, 2013, this first article drops and it's a massive one.

It is a massive one. The world doesn't yet know that the source for this article is Edward Snowden. All they get is this remarkable story. And I mean. I remember it dropping and thinking, where has this come from? It just felt so unusual as a story. We should explain what it was and why it's so significant. As the story you read says, it's a court order to the company Verizon that demands it hands over the details of every phone call in America under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. This was the successor of the secret program we talked about before known as Stellar Wind created after 9-11. What it was after was

what's called the metadata, not the content of the call. It's basically saying these two phones connected at this time for so long, not necessarily what was said in that phone call, but it allows the idea for the NSA and then the FBI to kind of carry out searches on it to look for terrorists or other suspects. The point being though that this looks like domestic surveillance by the NSA, a foreign intelligence agency. That was stunning partly because the US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, just a few months before had been asked in Congress, you know, by a senator, almost a question which suggests that the senator knew about this program, because the senator said, does the NSA collect any type

of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? And Clapper's reply was no. Now I will interject here. Defend the US intelligence community. In defense of James Clapper, I must interject just a couple of other points of context that you have left out of this, Gordon, which is this was an open hearing. Yeah. Now, for those who have seen the video, it would have been hard, I think, to picture

James Clapper looking more uncomfortable when he answered that question. He's constantly sort of scratching his bald head, probably thinking, why in the hell is this guy asking this question? I think that the real mistake here that Clapper made was not answering the question in that way, because how could he have answered that responsibly in an open hearing? It probably was not correcting the record afterward. Also, I'll note this clapper testimony in the sort of Edward Snowden, you know, revisionist history of all of this.

In the Snowden history, the clapper testimony is this sort of turning point for him. Yeah. Right. Now, that brings us back to my Snowden deadly sins, right? Now, that brings us back to my Snowdin Deadly Sins, right? And if you recall from earlier episodes of the list, Sin number two, Impure Motive, Snowdin's bulk download started months prior to the Clapper Testimony. But I agree with you that, and I think this is something that will be a thread connecting the rest of the episodes in our wonderful series on Snowdin is, a thread connecting the rest of the episodes in our wonderful series on Snowden is there is a tremendous gap between the understanding of this program, I think inside sort of the upper reaches of Congress and the intelligence community and the White House and what the

American people think is happening. And that's where this article is such a bombshell because Americans prior to this ordinary people did not have an understanding that any of this was authorized. Exactly. I think what's interesting, if it had just been that one story, it would have been big, but actually it's really an American story. It's about the kind of American constitution and legal protections. But, and I think you can imagine US officials going, okay, well, you know, that's bad.

But then the Guardian tells US officials who they're in contact with that they've got another story coming down the line. I think that's important because it makes clear that it's not just a single document that's been leaked, but there's more and it's coming from what looks like the inside the NSA. The next day, there's a little race, but the Guardian publishes a story on something called Prism. The Washington Post, which also remember had got some of these documents, also publishes

just before, a few moments before to get ahead. So you get a sense of the journalistic race there. Now, this is another biggie in terms of a reveal. And I think for a lot of people, this is perhaps particularly around the world, this is the more famous one, Prism. So maybe just briefly I'll explain, try and explain what it is. This is about the content of emails and communications, which are coming from big US tech firms. This is about basically the idea that the US and the PRISM story and the slides that

was based on suggested that the NSA had access directly, and we can come back to what that really meant, to companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, to things like Gmail, Outlook, Photos, all the data that people are sending around the world. This is in some ways a more stunning revelation because everyone around the world uses American tech companies. Those were basically the only companies you used for email and for everything else. Suddenly, this program is being revealed saying the NSA appears to have access to it and is able to target and get particular accounts and details of it. It's different from the bulk collection of American data, which is the phone records. This is more about foreigners around the world

This is more about foreigners around the world having their emails and the content of their communications targeted specifically as individuals. But it's still, again, pretty stunning. Well, and PRISM is the code name for this program. And I think it is important, very important to note that this is targeting the communications of foreign nationals. The intent behind this is for the United States government, for NSA to be able to query this database, essentially, and to be able to look at email, et cetera,

of foreign nationals who are outside the United States. But as that's being collected, you're of course, collecting the information of Americans at the same time, right? Who are sort of swept up in these searches, but you're not- They're not the target of it. They're not the target of it, right? It's sort of almost being collected incidentally by the NSA. I mean, there's a phrase which, you know, in the spy agencies they use, which was home

field advantage. And it's an interesting one because it works in two ways that the US and the UK for a long time built and owned the infrastructure of the internet, the kind of fibre optic cables, which meant they could kind of tap into them. And we'll come to that a bit later. But also now at this period, the US has a particular home field advantage because it's US tech companies, which are being used by everyone around the world. And as we know, collecting a whole load of their data.

And I guess the spies think, well, we want access to that. I mean, it is interesting because much of the story is built around a kind of slide deck, which Snowden had passed on. It's got these logos, I would argue very easy to draw whatever conclusion you like from that slide deck. Because you've got the logos of these tech companies on it. So I mean, that's part of the kind of drama of this story. And also the slides implied and the initial reporting implied that the NSA had direct

access into the company servers. And actually, it's interesting, but it's one of those things where over time it became a bit clearer, it was more complicated, that actually there was a kind of interface which allowed the NSA and FBI to send queries and then for the companies had a kind of interface which would pull it out. It wasn't a secret backdoor hacking into the companies, nor is it a kind of front door where they're going openly publicly. It's a kind of discrete side door, which allows the NSA and the FBI to go to these companies and get a flow of data that they are collecting from their customers. But you can see why that's pretty explosive for the companies and for the public who had no idea this was happening.

And important to note, it was legal. The tech companies knew this was happening. So a lot of the outrage that came afterward from Silicon Valley was primarily that it was leaked, not that it was happening. Yeah. Because I remember talking to tech company people at the time, first of all, they never heard the phrase prism. So people would go, what's this prism? And only a very few people inside the tech companies would have known it was happening. And the legal basis for this was something called section 702 of the foreign intelligence surveillance act, which FISA, that act had been passed in the seventies, been updated

amended over time. The authorities that NSA was operating under, FBI was operating under, were, I believe, part of the 0708 FISA Act. And that Section 702 is what really compelled, in many ways, these tech companies to provide that information to the federal government. And one of the things I was saying was some of the confusion over how the servers were accessed and whether it was direct access. And I think that also points to one of the challenges with these stories is that Snowden had often provided a set of slides and charts to the journalists, but he hadn't necessarily always worked directly

on these programs because he was an IT guy rather than on the whole a kind of intelligence analyst. And so one of the problems was he hadn't actually necessarily worked the programs or didn't necessarily know all the details. So they're left trying to decipher it. And sometimes, as we know, slides of people make shortcuts in how they write slides and do presentations. I take offense at that as a former management consultant, Gordon. My slides were perfect and clear and concise. It's fair to say these slides were not meant for public consumption. And you know, there are more questions raised by that initial Guardian article, for instance, whether GCHQ

had access to this data, which they did have in some cases, what's called the Five Eyes Alliance, which is the five countries, US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, who basically cooperate, particularly on signals intelligence. They're not supposed to spy on each other, and they're not supposed to spy on their own citizens without kind of warranty and legal things. There are all these questions, well, is this being used to get around it? Didn't necessarily appear to be the case, but suddenly all these questions are kind of thrown up, partly because all of this has been so secret. There've been a vacuum of understanding.

There'd be no kind of public knowledge about these programs. So suddenly everyone is like, whoa, what are the spy agencies doing? Well, and I think it is important to note here again in Deadly Sin number four, Snowden and indiscriminate leaking. There is a massive question when you raise this issue of Snowden even understanding what in the world was on these slides. So there's an annual training inside NSA on section 702 and FISA and how those queries could happen and the sort of legality and framework for understanding really Prism. And Snowden had failed his annual training on Section 702. an important fact to bring to bear in this is that he was outraged by this program, much

in the way, you know, out in Hawaii, he'd been outraged by acts where he thought the government was sort of intervening as censor or whatever, but had not read the bills. I think, again, in this case, he is, I mean, there's no doubt this is an important civil liberties topic, but at the same time, Edward Stone does not actually understand, I think, what the NSA is doing, as demonstrated by his inability to even pass the annual training on this. But if you go back to that time, I mean, some of it was confusing. It was stunning and confusing. I remember if you then talk to people now about what it was like in GCHQ, you know,

Britain's intelligence agency, I mean, there is blind panic when particularly Prism comes out. Ian Lobin, who is then the director, later said, when I heard the news, I lay awake saying to myself, I hope this isn't a Brit. Because they've realised they've got a leak. Some of it looks like it relates to Britain. He's reported to have gone round colleagues asking, is anyone in your teams at GCHQ taking a long holiday? And also, I mean, the US tried to get him to lean on the Guardian to get him to stop it. And he's like, that's not what we do. And I think meanwhile, in NSA as well, there's this kind of desperate panic as they realize their secrets are being unfurled. But first, they could hope that maybe the Verizon story was a leak from

inside Verizon. But that's- Which would make sense. Which would make sense. But once you get prison, you're like, oh no, this is someone who's got access to the secrets. They do the classic leak inquiry thing, which is, I guess, say who's got access to these documents and try and narrow it down. But it's kind of hard. It's too many people, probably.

Yeah. So at this point, we're heading to kind of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and the NSA are kind of, it seems like, and I've been asking people about this. They say they were narrowing down their list of suspects. And they probably do know, as we discussed last time, that someone's missing. He's missing. So I'm going to be honest, I still think there are some mysteries around this investigation

that leads to Snowden, which I think are unresolved and don't make sense to me even years later, because you know, the fact Snowden's girlfriend is visited, that could be because he's absent. But the person who provides an email account, which Snowden has been using to anonymously contact journalists, he said, and he told me years ago, that he had been contacted at the end of May by the FBI to ask for details of a certain account, which suggests that they were looking at something. Whether they were monitoring the journalists, you know, whether they were monitoring the journalists and had spotted something and were working that way by having, you know, monitored Laura Poitras and seen she was contacting someone, whether you've

got two different inquiries and then you have Snowden's absence and then you have this and then they all converge on Snowden, I don't know. But I think there are some things we've still not understood yet about what was going on inside the investigation there. Anyway, it's mysterious. But what's interesting is that they are kind of narrowing it down and they're certainly kind of heading towards Snowden if they don't know it already at this point. Typically, someone who'd done this would keep themselves secret and normally you'd have this kind of process and you've seen it before in news stories where there's weeks or months of like, who is it? And then eventually the FBI or someone will leak or come out that he's their top suspect.

But luckily he's a massive narcissist with a massive ego, right? He is a Tekken warrior for his clan, Gordon. But it's so interesting. Single combat against the US government. He can't hide in the shadows. No, but I also kind of think he wants to be public and he's made that decision all the way along. And it's interesting. He seems to know that they're going to trace him as well. Well, he's letting Laura Poitras film all of this in Hong Kong.

Yeah, he's made the decision. He's going to go public. And some of the journalists are kind of like, are you sure you want to go public? You know, there's risks to this. You could end up in jail, but he's clearly made that decision. They're going to find him. He wants to be public. He's going to make his mark and reveal himself to the world. He wants the world to meet him. He wants the world to beat him as he says. And so on the evening of Sunday, June the 9th, remember this very well. We just kind of reeling as journalists from all these leaks and stories.

And then suddenly on the Guardian website, up pops this video, Edward Snowden, the man reveals himself in a film by Laura Poytruss. So now we have Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, exposing the NSA's innermost secrets and he's just told the world exactly where he is. Well, maybe there we should take a quick break with Edward Snowden sort of on his rumpled bed in Hong Kong with his white t-shirt and his sunlight deprivation. Talking to Laura Poitras, let's take a quick break when we come back. We'll see what the world does when it meets Ed Snowden.

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extra months free. Plus, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. No risk, no trace, no loose ends. The link is in the episode description. Hi, this is Cathy Kay from The Rest Is Politics US. And this is Anthony Scaramucci. I've spent over two decades reporting from Washington. Presidents, while they come and go, the chaos, that never changes. And I've been inside the eye of the storm, 11 wild days in Trump's White House. I have seen how the sausage gets made and who's holding the knife. Yeah, that's not a nice image.

But on the rest is politics, U.S. We break down the stories that are behind the headlines and we actually look at what they mean to America and the rest of the world as well. We're not just talking politics. We're talking about power. We've got both of us, access, experience, and just enough cynicism to know when something smells a little off and how to trace it back to the source. No spin, no filter reporting the stories you won't hear anywhere else.

If you want smart analysis, global context, and a front row seat to the world's loudest democracy, this is the show. It's from two people that have ringside seats, occasionally center stage, in a country where court cases and campaign rallies share the same parking lot. The rest is Politics U.S. New episodes every week. Well, welcome back. We are here continuing Gordon Carrera's quest to make me read every absolute jackalope statement that Edward Snowden has ever made. And it is Sunday, the 9th of June, 2013. Ed Snowden is allowing the world in his own words to meet him.

Finally, in a video that Laura Poitras, the filmmaker, is filming of Ed Snowden in his hotel room in Hong Kong. And Snowden makes, let me read again, Gordon, thank you for this wonderful death march. No problem. Okay, this is Ed Snowden, June 9th, 2013 from Hong Kong. I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me or any of the third party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations, or they could pay off the triads, any of their agents or assets. We've got a CIA station just up the road, the

consulate here in Hong Kong, and I'm sure they are going to be very busy for the next week. And that is a fear I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be. You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk. Because they are such powerful adversaries, no one can meaningfully oppose them. If they want to get you, they will get you in time. But at the same time, you have to make a determination about what is important to you.

Thank you for reading that so beautifully. For those not watching on video, I have a large bottle of Colgate mouthwash I've been using to rinse my mouth out after reading all of this. So look, that is just one part of the video. It sounds like something that a sort of enterprising spy thriller writer might include in one of their insane spy thrillers. Yeah, I was going to say, perfect dialogue for you. Great dialogue.

I mean, it'd be a Perfect dialogue for you. Great dialogue. Great dialogue for your next novel. I mean, there is a touch of Jason Bourne to it, I think. I think maybe, I can't remember when the first Bourne films came out, but I think there is a touch of- Predate this by several decades, I believe. At least the books did. Yeah, the first books did, yeah.

But of the guy who's, you know, the insider who's now on the run. So you can see him almost kind of linking himself to those popular culture tropes of the guy who the CIA are going to come after and they're going to use the triads, the local organized crime in Hong Kong, to go after him. It's fascinating, I think. It's only one part of a bigger video in which he's talking about the 12-minute video that goes on The Guardian, but it's quite a telling bit, isn't it? But I think it does tell you something about his worldview, doesn't it? I realize that there will be a batch of listeners who would assume that this is what the former CIA guy

is going to say. But what Snowden is alleging here is ridiculous, that the CIA would attempt to render him from China. I mean, the US will later on request that the Chinese government send him back home. But the idea here is somehow that there are going to be a group of CIA paid triads that break into his hotel room and put a bag over his head and put them on a Gulf stream to fly back to Washington.

I mean, it's actually ludicrous. And I think it shows you how much of a video game he has turned this into. Yeah. Although dare I say, occasionally the CIA has been known to undertake certain acts of rendition from certain countries, even friendly countries, countries like Italy. So it's not entirely implausible. I mean, you know, not against its own citizens. Not against an NSA contractor. Who's also just gone public.

Who's just gone public. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's where, but you're, yes, you're right. But it's again, it's this idea he's filtering. He's the hero in his own video. He's the hero in his own video. Precisely. Yeah. I mean, and what's fascinating here is he's going public.

He's revealing himself to the world. He's saying this, that I could be hunted down by the Triads or by the CIA. And yet he hasn't planned an exit strategy. And I think it's really kind of telling an odd that he hasn't. One option would have been for him to go back to say, here I am and I'm going back to the US and I'm going to go on trial and I'm going to make my case. His argument is that he would have faced a sham trial. He might not have been able to have a jury trial in which he gave a defense and because of the Espionage Act he wouldn't be able to make his case. Yet he still doesn't really know

what he's going to do. Here now he's gone public in Hong Kong. In the video, they don't say he's at the Mirror Hotel, but it's clear it's Hong Kong. So now it becomes clear that people are going to track him down. Hong Kong press and the world's press are descending on Hong Kong to find this whistleblower. They're looking at the, as you do now with open source intelligence, looking at the pictures of him in his hotel room and going, that looks like the mirror hotel, you know. You referred to him by the W word, Gordon, whistleblower. Okay.

Okay. So he realized he's got to run, you know, the next day, he's got to go on the move. It does raise the question of what he thought would happen. Yeah. I think because in my view is that he probably thought once these articles came out that he would be able to go someplace like I think he even mentioned this as a possibility like Iceland. Even at this point, I don't think that in his mind, China or Russia are the preferred sort of destinations. I think he believed again in this kind of image

of him as, Hey, I'm the hero in the story. And it's self-evident that what I'm doing is right. I think he believed that someplace more friendly would accept him. Yeah. And Iceland seemed to have been his first choice. I mean, it's interesting because I think China does become an option at one point. So the next day after the video, he's bundled out of the Mira Hotel. I mean, you see a bit of it in the film. Lawyers in Hong Kong help him and help hide him. They take him to a kind of cramped apartment in a poor neighborhood filled with refugees rather than the kind of five-star hotels he's been in. And he kind of wears a hat and sunglasses. He's moving from place to place with people who are trying to escape deportation there is no point here what i think he does.

Consider going over the border to china and it's interesting because he doesn't interview with a local paper. In hong kong revealing that the nsa attacked chinese mobile phone companies and university now this is particularly awkward at this time because. university. Now, this is particularly awkward at this time because at almost literally at this moment, President Obama is meeting the leader of China for a big summit at Sunnylands in America. The argument was the US was going to press China about its hacking of American companies and stealing of intellectual property. At this moment, Edward Snowden turns up and goes, actually, we're hacking you. We're carrying carrying out kind of cyber espionage on China. And it is very awkward for the United States and for President Obama and that summit. But also to me, it suggests that Snowden is trying to maybe buy some support in China in order to get out and get over there, perhaps as one option.

get over there, perhaps as one option. Now, is that interview the first time that one of his leaks was connected to the US just straight up spying on a foreign adversary? Because that is another piece of this that is obviously not sat well with most Americans, I think, since is that he's revealing here in this interview in China, which by the way, I think in the context of all of these massive articles coming out in The Guardian the week prior was sort of ignored. Yeah. Right. Is that he's actually revealing something about just the US spying on a foreign adversary.

This had nothing to do with domestic collection. Mass surveillance. No, and his argument is, and it's interesting, I think we'll come back to it, but his argument is there's an element of US hypocrisy in complaining about others spying on America when it's spying on them and that it's carrying out mass surveillance of Chinese citizens and collecting their bulk data. Now I'll give that to what spy agencies do, but you're right, there is a kind of different tenor to some of these articles. But what's interesting is if he is trying to buy support to get into China, perhaps.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work. They don't want him. It's really interesting because this is something which I think has only become clearer now, is that the Chinese at that point know that this could become a big diplomatic row with the US. The US are going to want him back and if the Chinese are seen as sheltering him, they're going to get into problems. Relations with the US and China then, they're not as bad as they are now. And you know, one former spy chief told me, he said China should have kept him and squeezed him dry. That now is what a Western spy chief would have expected China to do.

He's kind of a political hot potato. Yeah, he's a hot potato. And on June 21st, the US formally requests his extradition. After all those failed attempts by the triads, the CIA hired triads to get into his hotel room. Well, they finally had to play it straight. The base chief in Hong Kong was just furious at the end of the week. This attempt to bag Ed Snowden had failed. So he's going to be charged on the espionage act and now his lawyers are kind of looking

for a way out. So they are talking to Iceland and other countries where they think the kind of long arm of America might not reach them. And Iceland, it's interesting, is his first choice because it's quite big into internet freedom. Why doesn't he go there first? Yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of interesting.

Why didn't he pop up in Iceland, if that's the case, rather than in Hong Kong? I guess as he goes, he's got to balance the threat of maybe immediate extradition. If you go to someplace like Iceland and it goes south, you know, you just maybe get sent home much more quickly straight away. Whereas Hong Kong, you've got a bit more. There's maybe a little bit more politically way. Yeah. And so maybe he's got to balance this kind of intermediate kind of airlock, right? Where he's potentially going to use the leaks and how that sort of gets filtered publicly

to build enough credibility to get a place that he considers sort of open to internet freedom or privacy to then accept him. And obviously it doesn't, it doesn't pan out that way at all. No. And it's at this point where who else comes onto the stage, but Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Enter WikiLeaks. Enter WikiLeaks. Ed Snowden had previously not chosen to go to WikiLeaks with this stuff, but Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Enter WikiLeaks. Enter WikiLeaks. Ed Snowden had previously not chosen to go to WikiLeaks with this stuff, but he's in

this no-man's land. He's looking for kind of ways out. And Julian Assange, who is not shy when it comes to publicity, has clearly seen this massive leak of documents. And I think, I think to some extent wants to associate himself with it and so offers help. And Julian Assange, we should say, WikiLeaks, this Australian hacker who takes on the US state, releases loads of videos and documents,

becomes a kind of thorn in the side of the US. At this point, Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London trying to fight extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, which he thinks are a means to get him extradited to America and it, Sweden, Sweden on sexual assault charges, which he thinks are a means to get him extradited to America. And it's all part of the plot against him. But he sends one of his lawyers out to help Edward Snowden. And the plan seems to be to get him to Ecuador as the route to freedom. Ecuador being kind of anti-American, anti-imperialist place, which would give him an element of

freedom. But I suppose they've got to create an itinerary that hopscotches through territories where he will not be extradited. Yeah, exactly. So they come up with a plan which is to take a long route to Ecuador via it looks like Havana, Caracas. The slow boat to Ecuador. And Moral, Moscow. Yeah.

I mean, that is quite a route. It's like Moscow, Caracas, Havana, you know, Ecuador. Yeah. I've flown that route before. It's exhausting. You always say that route. Yeah. That is my preferred way to go.

The whistleblower express. Yeah. The whistleblower express. I mean, one of- With my WikiLeaks minder next to me. You do have to wonder now with all that has come out, particularly around sort of WikiLeaks Russia connections, if at some point Assange may have mentioned Snowden to some of his Russian contacts along this path.

You all speculate about it. We have no idea. Yeah. But I do think- It's a breezy speculation from a former CIA guy. Yeah. I mean, it does seem odd, naive to transit through Moscow, you know, as a US intelligence whistleblower.

Snowden as we have discussed is an interesting combination as a potential intelligence target of egomania, bravery, and lack of guile. Naivety. I have to say. You could say innocence. And lack of guile, naivety, but I have to say, and I think in this case, I could certainly buy that Snowden did not understand the implications of traveling through Moscow. But Sarah Harrison, we should, you know, I mean, it's very interesting. It is. It's interesting. And so on Sunday, 23rd of June, he checks in on Aeroflot SU-213 to Moscow. We're all familiar with that flight. It's late all the time.

It's constantly delayed. Yeah. It's not quite clear how he could travel given his US passport had been cancelled. But I think, you know, the truth is, I think Hong Kong and China are like, on you go, you know, we don't care what passport you just get out of here. The Chinese are keen to get rid of the political hot potato. Yeah. And the Russians, maybe someone inside sort of Assange had mentioned it to

somebody and someone at the FSB says, let's let this guy come through. Come through the Aeroflot people in Hong Kong and let them through. Yeah. He lands in Moscow on June 23rd, about 5 PM local time. Now journalists already have heard about this. So they're scrambling to get there. The Ecuadorian ambassador arrives in Moscow's airport and all the journalists are like, where's Snowden? Where is he? And the Ecuadorian ambassador arrives, he's heard Snowden's coming,

and he says to the journalist, where's Snowden? And they're like, we thought you knew. You're the one who's supposed to be looking after him. There's no sign of him. So for a while, there's this fascinating mystery where no one knows where he is. And some people are sure that what he's supposed to be looking after him. There's no sign of him. So for a while, there's this fascinating mystery where no one knows where he is. And some people are sure that what he's going to do is get aboard a flight to Cuba, to Havana, which is then going to Venezuela and then will eventually take him to Ecuador. And so they're convinced that he's getting on a particular flight. And I remember one of my colleagues, Daniel Sanford, amongst other journalists, booking themselves on this flight to Havana from Moscow.

He was the Moscow correspondent. Sure, the Snowden's going to be there. And they think, right, we're going to be stuck on a flight with him. We're going to get the interview with him on it. And then they sat there on the plane and the door to the flight closes. As they look at the seat that's been booked for him, 17A, it's empty. He's not on it. How do they know the seat? Someone's leaked it, I guess. And someone told them. And there's this empty seat. And of course, by then, it's too late. The doors close and the plane's taken off. And then in the final blow to these journalists, they are told the flight is dry. There is no booze on the flight. Now, why is it a dry, why is that a dry flight? I don't know.

I don't know. It's just, it's almost like to taunt these journalists, you know, because this is the worst disaster for a journalist is, you know, the stories in Moscow, you've got onto a plane to Venezuela, not a short flight, without the target of your story, you're gonna have to turn around and go back again. And you can't even have a drink, it doesn't get much worse than that. I mean, of all of the shocking revelations in our series here, the idea of an outbound flight from Moscow being dry might be among the most interesting that we've encountered. I think that is, that's bizarre. Also the newspapers are approving these expense reports. Right?

It's the big story. These outbound flights are just roping on an economy flight from Moscow to Venezuela. All in the hunt for Edward Snowden. So I think that is the place to maybe leave it because all we know is Edward Snowden is in Moscow. So next time we'll see what happens to Snowden and the rather dramatic story actually of what happens to him as he arrives in Moscow, which the journalists don't yet know about and the fact that his revelations are still going to go on. Of course, members of the Declassified Club are able to hear that straight away.

Also listeners following the news, Gordon, will see that the Bulgarian spy ring we did a few episodes on a few weeks ago, well, they've been sentenced. This Friday, we have an absolute treat for club members. We have recorded an interview with the head of Scotland Yards Counterterrorism Division. Now, he was in charge of that case. He has an absolute insider's view on the minions, on those Bulgarians. It's the perfect compliment to those episodes. And if you want to hear that, just go ahead and join the Declassified Club at therestis is classified.com and take

advantage of our launch discount. That's right. It's the fairly unique chance to hear about Scotland Yard's view of minions, which is not something I ever thought I'd be discussing on the podcast. And here you are. Here you are. It's 2025 and we're talking Scotland Yard and minions. I believe he did talk about minions and refer to them as minions once or twice, maybe reluctantly. You'd be the judge. No, he did. He did. So anyway, listen out for that on the club. But thanks for listening, everyone. And we'll see you next

night. We'll see you next time.