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144 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

he declared that this agent would be “welcome, provided, however, that he stops any kind of activity that could damage Russian-US relations.”

Even before that public confirmation of the Russian role in Hong Kong, the White House was well aware of it. On June 23, the Democratic senator Charles Schumer of New York correctly said, based on a White House briefing, that “Vladimir Putin had personally approved Snowden’s flight” to Moscow. The NSA had the means to monitor Russian communication between Moscow and Hong Kong. The NSA also reportedly intercepted contacts between these Russian officials and Russian representatives of Aeroflot, the Russian state-owned airline that had flights between Hong Kong and Moscow. Aeroflot (like most other international carriers) ordinarily requires international passengers to have both a valid passport and, if necessary, a visa to the country of their destination. Those rules had to be waived for Snowden’s exfiltration from Hong Kong. Snowden’s defection to Moscow was not a haphazard result of unexpected circumstances. Russia obviously knew he was coming. This raised new questions for the investigation. What led Snowden to defect to Russia? Was his arrival in Moscow planned by Russian intelligence in advance of his going public in Hong Kong? Was any other party, such as China, privy to the plan? Was there a quid pro quo?

Putin’s authorization could certainly account for Aeroflot’s waiving its usual passport and visa check to allow Snowden to board its plane, as well as the dispatch with which Russian officials whisked Snowden off the plane after it landed at the Moscow airport. It could also account for Snowden’s vanishing from public view for the next three weeks and the promulgation of the cover story that Snowden was unwillingly trapped at the airport by the U.S. government. The reasons behind Putin’s move were less clear.

By September 2013, the investigation was looking into a veritable abyss. Snowden’s culpability was no longer an issue. What was lacking from Snowden’s video, or the two-hour film made by Laura Poitras, was any specific information on how many documents he had copied, how he had obtained the passwords to the computers on which they were stored, the period of time involved in the theft, or how he had breached all the security measures of the NSA in

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