Luke Harding: The Snowden Files

One paragraph caught the eye. Though he didn’t say so explicitly, it seemed Snowden hoped to leave Russia at some future point. He signed off: ‘I look forward to speaking with you in your country when the situation is resolved and thank you for your efforts in upholding the international laws that protect us.

‘With my best regards

Days later, Harrison said goodbye to Snowden and flew to Berlin. She had been with him in Moscow for four months. On what was said to be legal advice, she declined to return to the UK. The German capital and East Berlin in particular was now a hub for a growing number of Snowden exiles: Poitras, journalist Jacob Appelbaum and Harrison. For anyone with a sense of history this was ironic. Stasiland had become an island of media freedom.

Greenwald, meanwhile, announced his resignation from the Guardian to join a new media venture backed by the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

What were Snowden’s prospects of exiting Moscow for a new life in western Europe? Left-leaning politicians, intellectuals and writers called on the German government to grant him asylum. There was even a campaign to rename a Berlin street next to the US embassy ‘Snowden Strasse’. (An artist erected a new street sign, and posted the video on Facebook.) But Germany’s strategic relationship with America was more important than the fate of one individual, at least in the probable view of Merkel, now chancellor for a third time.

So it was in Moscow that Snowden remained. The lawyer Kucherena gently reminded the world that if he did try and leave he would forfeit his asylum status. He was a guest of the Russian Federation, whether he liked it or not. And in some sense its captive. No one quite knew how long his exile might last. Months? Years? Decades?

The author would like to thank:

Spencer Ackerman, Richard Adams, James Ball, Douglas Birch, Jane Birch, David Blishen, Julian Borger, Rory Carroll, Sarah Churchwell, Kate Connolly, Nick Davies, Lindsay Davies, Martin Dewhirst, Miriam Elder, Peter Finn, Sheila Fitzsimons, Nora FitzGerald, Kemlin Furley, Janine Gibson, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Hassan, Bernhard Haubold, Henning Hoff, Nick Hopkins, Paul Johnson, Jeff Larson, David Leigh, Paul Lewis, Ewen MacAskill, Justin McCurry, Stuart Millar, Sara Montgomery, Richard Norton-Taylor, Philip Oltermann, Anna Pallai, Gill Phillips, Laura Poitras, Mark Rice-Oxley, Alan Rusbridger, Phoebe Taplin and Jon Watts

LUKE HARDING is a journalist, writer and award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian . He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian ’s Moscow bureau chief; the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war.

He is the author of three previous non-fiction books. They are The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken , nominated for the Orwell Prize; and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy , both written with David Leigh. Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia appeared in 2011. His books have been translated into 13 languages.

Luke lives in Hertfordshire with his wife, the freelance journalist Phoebe Taplin, and their two children.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 2014

Copyright © 2014 by The Guardian

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