Luke Harding - The Snowden Files

The island’s surroundings would have given Snowden plenty to brood about during his daily commute up Kunia Road. To the west of his bungalow cocoon lie the Wai’anae Mountains, the remains of an ancient volcano. The peaks are inhabited by menacing, bruised clouds: they have a tendency to suddenly replicate, blacken the sky and hammer the valley with torrential rain.

Behind him, to the south, was Pearl Harbor, the target of Japan’s surprise attack on 7 December 1941. A day of ‘infamy’, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, which caught America’s spymasters with their pants down and brought the US into the second world war.

At the time, ramping up intelligence capabilities, the chastened spooks built a vast tunnel complex in the middle of Oahu, and called it ‘the hole’. Originally intended as an underground aircraft assembly and storage plant, it was turned into a chamber to make charts, maps and models of Japanese islands for invading US forces. After the war it became a navy command centre and was reinforced to withstand chemical, biological and radiological attack.

Today it is known as the Kunia Regional Security Operations Center (RSOC) and hosts the US Cryptological System Group, an agency staffed by specialists from each branch of the military as well as civilian contractors. At some point the facility’s nickname changed to ‘the tunnel’.

Snowden’s bungalow was seven miles away, on the nearest housing estate – just 13 minutes, door to door. Largely deserted countryside stretches in between. It is not a beautiful drive. The two-lane highway dips and rises, flanked by high mounds of earth and tangles of weeds, which obscure the landscape. It is easy to feel boxed in. Occasionally you glimpse corn seed plantations and yellowing fields.

‘The tunnel’ had two main spying targets: the People’s Republic of China and its unpredictable, troublesome Stalinist satellite, North Korea. It was clear to everyone – not just NSA analysts – that China was a rising military and economic power. The NSA’s mission in the Pacific was to keep a watchful eye on the Chinese navy, its frigates, support vessels and destroyers, as well as the troops and military capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Plus the PLA’s computer networks. If penetrated, these were a rich source of data.

By this point Snowden was a China specialist. He had targeted Chinese networks. He had also taught a course on Chinese cyber-counterintelligence, instructing senior officials from the Department of Defense how to protect their data from Beijing and its avid hackers. He was intimately familiar with the NSA’s active operations against the Chinese, later saying he had ‘access to every target’.

The Japanese were no longer the enemy. Rather, they were among several prosperous East Asian nations whom the US considered as valuable intelligence partners. The NSA co-ordinated its SIGINT work with other allies in the region. Visitors to the subterranean complex included the new defence chief of South Korea’s security agency, the incoming boss of Thailand’s national security bureau and delegations from Tokyo. ‘The tunnel’ also tracked Thailand and the Philippines, supporting counter-terrorism operations there, as well as in Pakistan.

According to an NSA staffer who spoke to Forbes magazine, Snowden was a principled and ultra-competent, if somewhat eccentric, colleague. Inside ‘the tunnel’ he wore a hoodie featuring a parody NSA logo. Instead of a key in an eagle’s claws it had a pair of eavesdropping headphones covering the bird’s ears. His co-workers assumed the sweatshirt, sold by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was a joke.

There were further hints of a non-conformist personality. Snowden kept a copy of the constitution on his desk. He flourished it when he wanted to argue against NSA activities he felt violated it. He wandered the halls carrying a Rubik’s cube. He also cared about his colleagues, leaving small gifts on their desks. He almost lost his job sticking up for one co-worker who was being disciplined.

The RSOC where Snowden worked is just one of several military installations in the area. Displays of US power abound. A giant satellite dish peeks from a hillside. CH-47 Chinook helicopters whump overhead. Camouflage trucks trundle by. Young men and women in uniform drive SUVs, sports cars and motorbikes. They go fast. As one Dodge Convertible’s bumper sticker put it: ‘Get in. Sit down. Shut up. Hold on.’

The RSOC is almost invisible from the road, the complex set back behind dogwood trees and a 10-foot-high metal fence topped with barbed wire. There is just one small, generic sign – ‘Government property. No trespassing’ – to indicate this is an official facility. Take the turn off and you roll down a hill to a guardhouse containing two navy guards in blue camouflage with pistols strapped to their thighs. Beyond the security barrier is a car park with more than a hundred vehicles, as well as several billboards warning against drunk driving. ‘006 days since the last accident,’ says one.

Given the number of vehicles, the dearth of people or buildings – just a few cabins – is puzzling, until you realise everyone is underground. They enter via a long, curious-looking, rectangular structure with an orange roof built into a steep hillside of brown earth. The gradient is so steep it’s a wonder the structure doesn’t slide down. Steps lead up the dark mouth. ‘The doors inside are huge. It’s like something out of King Kong . It takes ages just to get in,’ said a former air force officer who worked here.

Exfiltrating secret material from here would be a high-risk undertaking. It would require quite remarkable nerve.

In the regular blog written by Snowden’s partner, Lindsay Mills, Snowden makes the odd oblique appearance. She calls him E. He is very much an off-stage presence – a loyal boyfriend, certainly, but one who is prone to mysterious absences and disappearances. As in Switzerland, Hawaii Snowden is a man with a mask.

On just a couple of occasions, E poses with Mills in her weekly portraits, posted to Instagram. You don’t see his face. In one shot Snowden is on a beach, bent over, trousers rolled up to his knees. A flapping black winter coat hides his face. Probably he’s laughing, but it’s difficult to tell, and he reminds one of a Richard III impersonator. ‘A world where people move like ravens,’ Mills writes on her blog, noting: ‘a rare shot of E’. Someone points out that Snowden looks a bit like Quasimodo. Mills shoots back: ‘Don’t mess with E!’

Mills described the motivation for her blog: ‘Been shooting daily self portraits for several years now. They’re not just for mothers. I find it helps me work out my emotions and document my life. Not that anyone would be interested in it, but someday I may thank myself for these shots. Or hate myself – either way I’ll feel something. ’ The portraits are done in bright colours – a sort of artist’s diary – with Mills dressing up to capture a mood or an emotion. Many are coquettish. She meditates, hangs from trees or watches the Hawaii sunset.

Snowden kept himself apart from other staff during the 13 months he spent in Hawaii. He was by nature reserved but he had special reason to be guarded. If it came off, his leak would be the most significant since the Pentagon Papers, eclipsing the 2010 release of US diplomatic cables and warlogs by a disaffected US army private, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. It would lift the lid on mass surveillance, not just of millions of Americans but the entire world. But it was a big if. A slip on his part, a careless word, an unusual work request, a rogue flash drive, could arouse questions, with potentially catastrophic consequences.