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CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Escape Artist

“I’m not self-destructive. I don’t want to self-immolate and erase myself from the pages of history. But if we don’t take chances, we can’t win.”

--Snowden in Moscow

The next evening Snowden drove to Honolulu International Airport. He left his leased car in the parking lot. He took with him only carry-on baggage, including a back-pack and a laptop with a TOR sticker on it. “I took everything I had on my back,” he said. Before leaving he also packed in his luggage the cash that would pay for his fugitive life. Along with the cash, he took the thumb drives containing the NSA’s keys to the kingdom.

At this point, Snowden was still a free man. He was not wanted by the authorities. He had provided his employer and the NSA with a medical excuse for his absence from work so he would not be immediately missed. He also had a valid passport, a credit card, and ID. He had he yet made arrangements to meet the journalists. Snowden’s destination was Hong Kong. After crossing the International Date Line, Snowden waited three hours in the transit zone of Narita. Here he was reportedly captured by the airports CCTV cameras sitting alone. He then boarded a plane to Hong Kong. After the four-hour long flight from Narita, he arrived in Hong Kong early in the morning on May 20th.

He had visited Hong Kong at least once before with Lindsay Mills when he was stationed in Japan. He had also made some arrangements. According to Albert Ho, his Hong Kong Lawyer, Snowden stayed at a residence arranged for him in advance by a party whom Snowden knew prior to his arrival. This “carer,” Ho said, had assisted Snowden with his logistics. For the next ten days, Snowden did not use his credit card or leave any paper trail to his location. Wherever he was, “his first priority,” as he told Greenwald, was to find a place safe from US countermeasures. He brought with him a large number of electronic copies of NSA documents marked “TS/SCI/ NOFORN, which stood for Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmentalized Information and No Foreign Distribution. According to government rules, data carrying these labels could not be removed from a government-approved “SCI facility.” Yet Snowden, who brought them with him into this semi-autonomous zone in China, intended to break these rules.

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