U.S. FUGITIVE’S RUN FROM LAW
How Snowden hid in Hong Kong
The tall, lanky American dressed in all black looked familiar. But Ajith, 44, a Sri Lankan asylum-seeker, figured the nervous-looking man with the red-rimmed eyes fidgeting in the darkness outside the United Nations building was a U.S. army dodger.
Summoned by his immigration lawyer late on June 10, 2013, Ajith (last names of the refugees in this story have been withheld), a former soldier in the Sri Lankan military, was told the man was “famous” and needed “protection.” Little else was revealed except he would be responsible for covertly moving the American around at a moment’s notice.
“I was very happy to help him,” Ajith recalled during a recent interview with the National Post. “This famous person was a refugee, too, same as me.”
Earlier that day, that “famous” 29-year-old walked out of the five-star Hotel Mira in Kowloon, sparking a global manhunt not seen since the search for al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden after 9/11.
Edward Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, became the world’s mostwanted fugitive after leaking classified documents that extensively detailed the cyber-spying networks used by Washington to monitor its citizens and other governments.
To escape the long arm of American justice, the man responsible for the largest national security breach in U.S. history turned to a Canadian lawyer in Hong Kong.
Their plan included applying for refugee status at the local UN office to avoid extradition to the U.S., then going underground to elude authorities and media.
Snowden hid for two weeks among refugee claimants in some of the territory’s most cramped tenements before fleeing to Moscow.
“The Americans wanted the data and they wanted to shut him down. Our greatest fear was that Ed would be found,” Robert Tibbo, the whistleblower’s lead lawyer, said in a wide-ranging interview, the first detailing the chaotic days of Snowden’s escape.
Their covert scheme could have been ripped from the pages of a spy thriller.
Snowden was moved around by car only at night. By day, he hunkered down in small, dingy rooms where up to four people shared less than 150 square feet.
Batteries were removed from cellphones when they gathered, burner phones were used to place calls, SIM cards were exchanged and sophisticated computer encryption was used to communicate when face-to-face meetings were impossible.
“Nobody would dream that a man of such high profile would be placed among the most reviled people in Hong Kong,” said Tibbo, a Canadian-born and educated lawyer who has practised for 15 years. “We put him in a place where no one would look.”
Perhaps more importantly, added Jonathan Man, another Snowden lawyer who worked with Tibbo, “We knew (the asylum-seekers) because we had helped them on their (immigration cases). And we knew they would not betray us.”
Until now, details of how Snowden avoided detection, and where and who sheltered him have been closely guarded secrets.
He remains a controversial figure: a traitor to U.S. lawmakers and many in the intelligence community, but a pop-culture icon to antiestablishment followers. Inevitably, Hollywood has weighed in with a biopic, directed by Oliver Stone and produced with Snowden’s co-operation. The film is scheduled for its world première Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“Imagine the world’s most wanted dissident brought to your door. Would you open it? They didn’t even hesitate, and I’ll always be grateful for that,” Snowden said in an exclusive encrypted text to the Post.
The lives of the refugee families who hid him may be forever changed now that their roles will become public.
“I think these are very brave, selfless people who did something extraordinary at a very difficult time and at enormous personal risk,” said Laura Poitras, a journalist and Oscar-winning documentary maker who debriefed Snowden in his Hong Kong hotel room for eight days.
Late on June 10, Supun’s cellphone rang.
The 32-year-old Sri Lankan, who has languished in Hong Kong’s refugee system since 2005, took the call in the 150-sq.-ft. apartment in New Kowloon he shares with his partner, Nadeeka, and daughter Suwasistiki.
On the other end was Tibbo, asking to meet outside.
“I was scared to ask questions,” Supun said. “I told Nadeeka, ‘I don’t know why he’s coming.’ I thought it had to with my (asylum) case.”
On the sidewalk were Tibbo, Man and an unknown American.
“I was very scared,” Supun said, and thought the stranger was in the military because of his short haircut. “They told me he was staying with me. Feed him and don’t talk to nobody about him.”
Supun wasn’t told Snowden had fled the hotel, where he had been with journalists Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, going through classified documents stolen from the National Security Agency’s Threat Operations Centre in Hawaii where he worked.
Four days earlier, Snowden had unmasked himself as the source of the classified disclosures on the Guardian’s website.
That set in motion the high-stakes plan to keep him safe. Although Snowden’s visa was still valid, he couldn’t be sure the Hong Kong government would protect him.
Filing a refugee claim with the UN bought time and temporarily prevented the authorities from extraditing him at the U.S.’s request.
At the same time, any thoughts he could remain in Hong Kong to fight extradition disappeared when it became clear his freedom — and his access to computers — would have been curtailed.
Snowden’s lawyers knew they had to keep him safe until they could work out an exit strategy, which is why they came to Supun.
Today, the family of four — they have a newborn son — sleep on a mattress that barely fits in a room no bigger than a large janitor’s closet. A Minnie Mouse toy rests against a pillow, and bags containing their belongings are piled in a corner.
In the other room are three plastic red stools, a small refrigerator, a tattered green upholstered chair and an ancient Dell desktop computer. A bathroom doubles as the kitchen, with pots and pans stacked on top of and underneath the sink and toilet.
“You’re a good man to take care of me,” Supun said the stranger told him.
The next day, Snowden asked him to buy the South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper. It wasn’t until he got back that the couple saw the giant front-page photo of the pale young man in their bed.
“We were very, very surprised that this famous person was in our house,” Nadeeka said.
Their tiny living space soon became overcrowded. Snowden “stayed in the room all the time” and Nadeeka had to force him to shower so she could clean.
Once Snowden confirmed his identity, he ordered Supun to unplug the computer because he was worried about it being traced. He also asked him to buy special encryption software.
“He was in shock for the first three days,” Tibbo said. “He was a zombie, like he’d just walked out of a car crash.”
Snowden recalled it differently: “I was in a mission-focused state of mind at that point. I wasn’t bothered by the idea of rough living, but I was worried about accidentally dragging people down with me.”
On June 14, Washington filed sealed criminal charges against Snowden; the following day it asked Hong Kong to detain him, as a prelude to a formal application.
Snowden’s passport and visa remained valid as long as the seal was in place, but his lawyers feared the authorities were closing in.
“I still remember the feeling in my stomach as I’d hear sirens screaming toward the building, I’d pray like hell that they were for something else as I raced to disable any equipment that might be transmitting, getting ready to move,” Snowden said.
Bidding farewell to his hosts and giving them US$200, he was shuttled off to another secret location.
His next temporary home was a one-bedroom apartment in Sham Shui Po, where Vanessa, 46, a Filipino asylum claimant, lived with her mother and Keana, 1. Again, it was late in the evening when Tibbo, Man and the stranger showed up.
“I had no idea who (Snowden) was,” she said. “My lawyer Robert Tibbo told me this man needed help. So I let them come into my house … They didn’t explain anything; just that he needed help, safety and do not talk to anyone.”
Now living on Hong Kong Island, Vanessa said Snowden was “very, very upset” and shaken.
“I was shocked,” she said when she learned his identity. Still, she wasn’t overly concerned.
“Mr. Tibbo would not put me in trouble. I just listened to him and didn’t talk to anyone,” she said during an interview with her lawyer present.
Most of the time, her guest was quiet and preoccupied on his computer.
“He was worried a lot about his next step,” Vanessa said. “He talked about his past life. He was really scared most of the time.”
Snowden stayed for four days and once again gave a parting gift of US$200. Then he moved in with Ajith, who had been helping ferry him around.
But his stay lasted only one night. On June 21 — his 30th birthday — Snowden was formally charged in the United States, and Washington asked Hong Kong to arrest him. The clock also began ticking on when the U.S. would revoke his passport.
It was no longer safe for the refugees to host Snowden, who faced up to 30 years in a U.S. maximum-security prison if convicted. They would be harbouring a fugitive from the law, making them even more vulnerable to deportation.
Snowden was also concerned about how he would be treated if caught. The fate, by military trial, of Bradley “Chelsea” Manning, then 25, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq who passed more than 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, was underway. (He is now serving 35 years in a U.S. military prison.)
After 12 days in hiding, Snowden was taken to the home of one of his lawyers, where they celebrated his milestone birthday with pizza, his favourite meal.
It was clear fighting for asylum in Hong Kong was fraught with uncertainty.
“It was Ed’s decision to leave,” Tibbo said. But Snowden also knew he needed help elsewhere. He asked his lawyers to contact Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks network.
Sarah Harrison, a British WikiLeaks staffer and Assange confidante, flew in from Australia to help.
She bought more than a dozen airline tickets to different destinations, including Iceland, Cuba and India, to confuse anyone monitoring the airport, despite having received “neutral to a greenlight” from Hong Kong that Snowden could leave.
In London, Assange worked his connections with South American governments to obtain diplomatic protection for the American.
On June 23, Tibbo drove Snowden and Harrison to Hong Kong International Airport. The pair posed as a couple headed on vacation, first stop Moscow.
Leaving little to chance, Man bought a ticket to Shanghai to get access to the boarding gates in case Snowden encountered problems, while Tibbo waited in immigration.
“We tried our best to avoid surveillance,” Man recalled. “Looking back, we must have been crazy. We understood the danger, but we didn’t think much about it. Luckily, it turned out successfully.”
Once the Aeroflot flight had left Chinese airspace, Hong Kong announced Snowden’s departure. Washington was furious and revoked his passport.
That meant once he arrived in Moscow, he was stuck in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport, barred from boarding another flight.
“I never intended to end up in Russia, much less choose it,” he said.
Despite asking many countries for asylum, Snowden remained at the airport for a month before Moscow gave him temporary asylum, recently extended for another three years.
He remains America’s most wanted fugitive, although he says he would return if guaranteed a fair trial. His lawyers are working on a plea deal and preparing to petition for a presidential pardon this fall.
Inevitably, Stone’s movie will reignite the debate over whether the high school dropout-turned-computer whiz was a reckless traitor or a disillusioned idealist with sincere motives.
For the people who helped him in Hong Kong, the stakes are high as the movie reveals their role in his escape.
“They had a hundred chances to betray me while I was amongst them, and no one could have blamed them, given their precarious situations. But they never did,” Snowden said.
“If not for their compassion, my story could have ended differently. They taught me no matter who you are, no matter what you have, sometimes a little courage can change the course of history.”
NOBODY WOULD DREAM THAT A MAN OF SUCH HIGH PROFILE WOULD BE PLACED AMONG THE MOST REVILED PEOPLE IN HONG KONG. WE PUT HIM IN A PLACE WHERE NO ONE WOULD LOOK. — ROBERT TIBBO, LEAD LAWYER FOR EDWARD SNOWDEN