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he was the most famous visitor in Hong Kong, his passage through passport control may have reflected the acquiescence of the Hong Kong authorities to the reported request of China to be rid of Snowden by June 23rd. All we know for certain is that Hong Kong airport police did not stop Snowden.

He was allowed on the Aeroflot flight at Hong Kong International Airport. Aeroflot, a state-owned airline, presumably responds to the Russian government when matters of state security are concerned. According to one Aeroflot official, ordinarily all international passengers are required to have a valid passport as well as a visa to the country of final destination. Snowden had neither a valid passport nor a visa. These boarding requirements were waived so that Snowden was able to board the flight to Moscow.

Snowden only met Harrison in person on June 23rd, the day he was to depart Hong Kong. She was waiting for him in the private car that Jonathan Mann had arranged to take him to the airport that morning. Snowden was dressed in a grey shirt and khaki slacks. Harrison was also casually dressed in jeans and flip-flops. She said she chosen this dress style so that they would blend in at the airport with vacationing tourists. As she had financed the trip, she was apparently now calling the shots. Harrison’s concern was that they might be arrested at the airport, so Mann accompanied them through passport control. He was able to do this because he bought a ticker on a cheap international flight. Harrison also gave Mann a phone number to call if they got arrested. When they finally boarded the flight at 12:45 pm, Harrison effectively became Snowden’s second “carer”—a job that would require her presence in Moscow for the next four months.

Once the plane took off, Snowden, who had only said a few words in the car, said to her, as she recalled, the first full sentence she had heard from him. It was “I didn’t expect that WikiLeaks was going to send a ninja to get me out.”

Meanwhile, Assange continued creating “distractions,” as he put it. On June 24th, a booking was made for Snowden on the Aeroflot flight to Cuba, and this information was relayed to the foreign press organization in Moscow, resulting on over a dozen reporters buying tickets on the flight. But Snowden never showed up for the flight. This ruse resulted in these foreign correspondents flying to Havana. “In some of our communications, we deliberately spoke about that [flight] on open lines to lawyers in the United States,” Assange said. One subsequent piece of his misinformation was that Snowden was flying to Bolivia on the private plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales (who was then in Moscow for a meeting.) That misinformation had the desired effect. US allies in Europe, including France, Spain and Portugal refused to allow that plane to fly through its airspace, forcing the plane to land in Austria. This Assange-inspired distraction caused an international incident but did not change the fact that Snowden was in the custody of Russia.

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