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according to Assange, Snowden claimed that one reason he decided to take the secret NSA documents was the brutal treatment of Bradley Manning after he was arrested in 2010 by the US government. “Snowden told me they had abused Manning in a way that contributed to his decision to become a whistleblower,” Assange said in an interview in 2015. If Manning’s mistreatment was Snowden’s motive, it was a sharp departure from the position that Snowden had taken in his postings on the Ars Technica site in January 2009. He complained in a post on Ars Technica about the detrimental consequences to U.S. intelligence of leakers revealing “classified shit” to the New York Times, and he suggested as punishment “those people should be shot in the balls.” Either he either had a change of heart about punishment or he was telling Assange what he believed he wanted to hear.

Assange did not suggest that Snowden go to Ecuador to seek asylum. He counseled him to go directly to Russia. “My advice was that he should take asylum in Russia despite the negative PR consequences,” he told the (London) Times in 2015. He found “Snowden was well aware of the spin that would be put on it if he took asylum in Russia.” Assange had another way for Snowden to defuse the “PR consequences” of Snowden landing in Moscow. A story would be released, coinciding with his departure, asserting that Snowden was “bound for the republic of Ecuador via a safe route.”

When Snowden asked how he would carry out the plan, Assange told Snowden that he would immediately dispatch one of his senior staff members to help him engineer his escape to Russia. That senior staff member was Sarah Harrison,

After speaking to Snowden, Assange called Harrison, who was in Melbourne, Australia. She had gone there a month earlier to help organize Assange’s somewhat quixotic election campaign for President of Australia, Assange now told her to forget the campaign and go to Hong Kong. Her mission there was to use Wikileaks resources to save Snowden from “a life time in prison.” Presumably, he also told her that he advised Snowden to proceed to Russia, where Harrison had a visa since part of her work on the Mediastan film was done in Moscow.

Harrison did not hesitate in following Assange’s instructions. She later said that she didn’t even bother to pack her clothing. She caught the next plane out of Australia.

After an eight hour flight, she arrived in Hong Kong on June 11th—the same day that Snowden texted Greenwald he was in a safe house. Harrison had her own connections in Hong Kong. Both her two younger sisters, Kate and Alexandra Harrison, who had also attended Sevenoaks, lived there and were part of the expatriate community. She also had an older brother, Simon Harrison, who headed Avro, a ship brokerage and commodity trading company. Although headquartered in Singapore, Avro also operated out of Hong Kong, and he frequently travelled there.

Like Poitras, Harrison took great care to shield her movements. She did not even have a Twitter, Facebook or any other social media account. She made it a point not to own a cell

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