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treaty with the US. As the Russian officials in Hong Kong might well have informed him, Russia
had no extradition treaty with the US, It was also one of the few places in the world that he could
reach from Hong Kong without flying through airspace in which he might be intercepted by a US
ally. Moreover, Putin himself had approved his exfiltration, which meant that, even without a
valid passport or visa, Snowden could take the direct Aeroflot flight to Moscow. Snowden’s
choice was going to Russia or going to prison.

The Russians could have used this leverage in the Hong Kong scenario to extract a quid pro
quo. The price of admission in that quid pro quo was proving all his documents and putting
himself in the hands of Russian intelligence. To be sure, Snowden might have refused this
leverage in Hong Kong, and Putin may have decided the terms of the deal could better be
negotiated in Moscow.

The Moscow Scenario

The final possibility is that Snowden did not come under Russian control until after he arrived
in Moscow. Certainly, the Russian intelligence service could afford to wait in Hong Kong before
tightening the vice on Snowden. It knew that Interpol and the US would be pursuing him
throughout the world and that Snowden had no valid travel documents to go anywhere else. It
could also have determined that his credit cards had been frozen. So it could afford to wait until
his plane landed in Russia.

After the Russians took him in a “special operation” from the plane at the airport, he was
informed by Russian authorities that he would not be allowed to go to Cuba, Venezuela, Iceland,
Ecuador, or any other country without the permission of Russian officials, which would not be
immediately forthcoming. So he never even showed up for the flight to Cuba (which Assange had
“leaked” to the media he would be aboard.) He was now at the mercy of the Russian authorities.
There was good reason for keeping him in a virtual prison in Russia. "He can compromise
thousands of intelligence and military officials,” Sergei Alexandrovich Markov, the co-Chairman
of the National Strategic Council of Russia and an adviser to Putin, pointed out, “We can't send
him back just because America demands it."

So Snowden was consigned to the transit zone of the airport, which is a twilight zone neither
inside nor outside of Russia, a netherworld that extends beyond the confines of the airport to
include safe houses and other facilities maintained by the FSB for the purposes of interrogation
and security. Stranded at the Moscow airport, Snowden had no place to go except into the
waiting arms of the FSB. No matter what he had believed earlier in Hong Kong, he would quickly
realize that he had only one viable option: seeking sanctuary in Russia.

Even though the FSB is known by US intelligence to run a strict regime over present and
former members of foreign intelligence services, Snowden may not have realized the full extent of
the FSB’s interest in him. He naively told the Washington Post in December 2013 in Moscow, “I

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