White House: Hong Kong had 'plenty of time' to stop Snowden – live coverage
LIVE• US sees 'negative impact' on US-China relations
• White House believes Snowden 'remains in Russia'
• WikiLeaks' Julian Assange says he knows where Snowden is
• Read our latest summary
• Read our latest news story
• White House believes Snowden 'remains in Russia'
• WikiLeaks' Julian Assange says he knows where Snowden is
• Read our latest summary
• Read our latest news story
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Erik Wemple of the Washington Post asks Glenn Greenwald what he makes of media hostility directed toward... Glenn Greenwald.Glenn replies:
Media reaction to our scoops has been mixed. Many journalists have taken them very seriously, been quite supportive of the reporting I’ve been doing, and have with particular vigor defended our free press rights to report this.But it is true that the Guardian generally, and me in particular, are outsiders, not members of the Beltway establishment media clique. I’ve purposely made myself an outsider by very aggressively and harshly criticizing not just the culture itself but the most prominent members of it, including David Gregory and Andrew Ross Sorkin, who this morning suggested on CNBC that I be arrested.*
Glenn goes on to write that the "Beltway establishment media clique" are "just courtiers doing what courtiers have always done: defending the royal court and attacking anyone who challenges or dissents from it."
Read the full Greenwald response – and Sorkin's response – on Erik Wemple blog here.
Here's somebody the Obama administration would probably rather have refrain from mounting a vocal public defense of the government surveillance programs. But former vice president Dick Cheney wants Americans to know that the programs were his pet project, the AP reports:
Cheney said he was directly involved in setting up the program, run by the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the U.S. He said it has had "phenomenal results" in preventing terrorist attacks.Cheney did not specify which surveillance program he was referring to. [...]"There was a time when it was a very, very close hold. Unfortunately it's become public," said Cheney.He was asked about Snowden's disclosures at a forum at a Washington think tank on U.S.-Korean affairs. [...]
Cheney also said that Congress, remarkably, opposed congressional oversight of the programs (three years late, in any case):
Cheney said he met and briefed congressional leaders whom he did not identify about three years after the program started and they were "unanimous" that it should continue."I said, 'Do you think we ought to come back to the Congress in order to get more formal authorization?' and they said, 'Absolutely not.' Everybody, Republican and Democrat, said, 'Don't come back up here, it will leak'," Cheney said.
The Bush administration always maintained that its spying programs were legal. But behind the scenes Dick Cheney apparently had his doubts.
Updated
David Carr writes in the New York Times about the Obama administration's "war on the press":
If you add up the pulling of news organization phone records (The Associated Press), the tracking of individual reporters (Fox News), and the effort by the current administration to go after sources (seven instances and counting in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media), suggesting that there is a war on the press is less hyperbole than simple math.
Carr sees David Gregory's adversarial NBC interview Sunday with Glenn Greenwald as an example of media friendly fire (Carr is referring to an exchange below at 1m45s). Read Carr's full piece here.
The South China Morning Post, which interviewed Edward Snowden when he was in Hong Kong, reports that Snowden told them he took his most recent job, with defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, in order to gain access to "lists of machines... the NSA hacked":
“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”During a global online chat last week, Snowden also stated he took pay cuts “in the course of pursuing specific work”.
Read the full report here.
The Guardian's Tania Branigan in Hong Kong has more details on Snowden’s last few days in the territory:
Albert Ho, a solicitor who acted for the former NSA contractor in Hong Kong, told the Guardian that Snowden had asked him to make inquiries of the authorities about their intentions."I talked to government officials on Friday seeking verification of whether they really wanted him to go, and in case they really wanted him to go, whether he would be given safe passage," Ho said.Snowden made up his mind on Friday to leave for Moscow, Ho said."It was evident that extradition proceedings would begin quite quickly,” he said.Another source with knowledge of events in Hong Kong said Snowden appeared nervous when he left and that he was not sure whether he might be heading into a trap. "It happened very suddenly, in one or two days. Before that he was thinking of staying and fighting the case," the source said. "He well understood what the different situations were and the consequences. Things were changing all the time. He knew that he was in trouble, but he didn't panic. He understood the consequences of what he had done, making enemies of many people, but he didn't regret it."Ho said he las saw Snowden on Tuesday last week. "He was rather relaxed when I saw him. We had a birthday party for him. I didn't know it was around his birthday so I bought pizza and fried chicken so we could have dinner together. We toasted him – but he drank Pepsi instead of red wine. We talked about American and international politics and countries where he could seek asylum. He seemed to have done a lot of research and mentioned a number of countries."Ho said Snowden described the place he was staying in Hong Kong as "a very small place", "but he was OK, with his computer he could communicate with people".
Updated
One flaw with NSA claims that the government needs to be able to suck up Internet data from services such as Skype and Gmail to fight terrorists: Studies show that would-be terrorists don't use those services.
Moscow-based writer Leonid Bershidsky describes the Undernet – the vast majority of Internet activity going on in the shadows, attracting extremists and eluding Google:
The infrastructure set up by the National Security Agency, however, may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists. The Prism surveillance program focuses on access to the servers of America’s largest Internet companies, which support such popular services as Skype, Gmail and iCloud. These are not the services that truly dangerous elements typically use.In a January 2012 report titled “Jihadism on the Web: A Breeding Ground for Jihad in the Modern Age,” the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service drew a convincing picture of an Islamist Web underground centered around “core forums.” These websites are part of the Deep Web, or Undernet, the multitude of online resources not indexed by commonly used search engines.
"In 2010, Google Inc. said it had indexed just 0.004 percent of the information on the Internet," Bershidsky notes. Meaning much dangerous activity remains unsearchable by the most popular means. Read the full piece here.
(follow @normative)
Updated
Amnesty International sees a "great risk of human rights violations" if Snowden ends up inside the US justice system.
Amnesty believes Snowden "could be at risk of ill-treatment if extradited to the USA," the organization said in a statement.
“No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government," said senior Amnesty official Widney Brown:
"Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression." [...]“[Snowden's] forced transfer to the USA would put him at great risk of human rights violations and must be challenged.”
While White House spokesman Jay Carney had harsh words for China for its handling of the Snowden case, he emphasized collegiality with Russia – at a time when the Obama administration would deeply appreciate a generous gesture on the part of Moscow.
"We have a strong cooperative relationship with the Russians on law enforcement matters," Carney said.
"It's our understanding that Mr. Snowden remains in Russia," Carney said.
Updated
Carney says "it's safe to assume" that classified information Snowden has with him has already been obtained by foreign intelligence services.
"It's safe to assume that information he has... is already compromised," Carney says.
He doesn't say why he thinks so. He's not the only one to think so. The line is also being peddled to the media by anonymous US officials.
"It's our understanding that Mr. Snowden remains in Russia," Carney says.
Updated
Carney fully rejects the Hong Kong explanation that Snowden was allowed to travel because the US request for his arrest and extradition was legally incomplete:
The Hong Kong authorities were advised of the status of Mr. Snowden's travel documents in plenty of time to have prohibited his travel as appropriate.We do not buy the suggestion that China could not have taken action.There is no reason why... that this would require a communication from the president.
Carney wants to leave the door open on a possible Russian cooperation on Snowden after all:
We have a strong cooperative relationship with the Russians on law enforcement matters.When it comes to our relations with Hong Kong and China, we see this as a setback.
White House spokesman Jay Carney is addressing the Snowden affair.
He is pushing back hard against the idea that the White House fumbled its attempt to detain Snowden, either by not revoking his passport soon enough (it was revoked Saturday) or by not acting forcefully enough to convince Hong Kong authorities to act.
Carney says US officials have been in constant contact with their Hong Kong counterparts. Then he says the decision to let Snowden travel has hurt US-China relations:
We are just not buying that this is a technical decision by a Hong Kong immigration official... That decision unquestionably has a negative impact on US-China relations.
The AP reports that Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has written the Russian ambassador urging Moscow to turn over former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden:
Graham said in a letter on Monday that if the U.S. and Russia are to have a constructive relationship, Russia must cooperate with American authorities and apprehend Snowden.Graham said the case is a critical test of the reset in relations between the two countries.Graham wrote to Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States.Snowden is facing espionage charges stemming from his disclosure of U.S. surveillance programs. He left Hong Kong on Sunday and traveled to Moscow though his whereabouts are unknown.
James Bamford, the national security journalist who last year provided the first in-depth look at the giant NSA data storage and analysis facility under construction in Bluffdale, Utah, has written a list of "five myths about the National Security Agency" in the Washington Post.
Myth No. 3: "Congress has a lot of oversight over the NSA":
This is the second part of the mantra from NSA Director Keith Alexander and other senior agency officials. Indeed, when the congressional intelligence committees were formed in 1976 and 1977, their emphasis was on protecting the public from the intelligence agencies, which were rife with abuses.Today, however, the intelligence committees are more dedicated to protecting the agencies from budget cuts than safeguarding the public from their transgressions. Hence their failure to discover the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping activity and their failure to take action against the NSA’s gathering of telephone and Internet records.
Read all five myths here.
Had Snowden ever regretted what he had done, or regretted revealing his identity? Assange said:
No, he has not. He has expressed no regret about his decision to reveal this important information to the public.In a situation where the US government perceived wrongly or rightly that eliminating would eliminate the exposure of its worldwide spying programme the kidnapping or incapacitating of Mr Snowden must have been considered, so I believe Mr Snowden was well advised to go public at the time that he did in order to protect his personal safety and the safety of the journalists involved.
Asked if he was enacting a form of “vengeance” against the US by helping Snowden, Assange said:
I have personal sympathy with Mr Snowden … but the Wikileaks organisation more broadly exists to defend the practical of rites of whistleblowers to bring information to the public.
Was it in Snowden’s interests to associate himself with Wikileaks?
Mr Snowden found himself in a grave situation. He should not have been placed in that situation by the US government. He should have felt that the US legal system would protect his rights. However, his assessment that it would not based on the treatment of Bradley Manning is as far as we’re concerned correct.Wikileaks has over six years of experience in dealing with threats to publishing and whistleblowers … and a situation directly analogous to the one Mr Snowden found himself in.
Assange said he “instructed the organisation to assist” Snowden, although he refused to go into further details. And with that the conference call ended.
A White House petition to pardon Edward Snowden, who has been charged with three felonies so far, has garnered more than 100,000 signatures, the threshold for earning an official reply.
The petition gained the needed signatures with more than two weeks to spare in the petitioning period. The White House presents the petitions as a way to include "your voice in our government."
The petition reads:
Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.
The White House takes care to ascertain that petition signatories are bona fide US citizens. A WhiteHouse.gov account is required to sign petitions.
Updated
Wikileaks has paid for Snowden’s travel costs and lodgings since he has left Hong Kong, Assange revealed. But Snowden paid his own hotel bills in Hong Kong, he said.
Asked about how Snowden had been able to travel after his US passport had been cancelled, Assange said Snowden was “supplied with a refugee document of passage by the Ecuadoran government”. But this did not imply they would accept his asylum application.
It is the right of citizenship should not be revocable under the UN conventions to which the US is a party. Citizens must have free movement to enter and leave their country. No one wants travelling overseas under difficult conditions to effectively have their citizenship be revoked by the removing of the most important instrument: a passport. that unilateral action without any due process against Mr Snowden is another example of a secret process in the US.In relation to Hong Kong Mr Snowden was supplied with a refugee document of passage by the Ecuadoran government.
Asked if Snowden had been interviewed by the Chinese authorities at all before leaving Hong Kong, Assange said: “As far as I am aware that is false.”
There was no advance communication between Snowden and Russian officials before he departed from Hong Kong, Assange said.
Updated
Assange said Wikileaks figures were advising Edward Snowden and assisting with his asylum application. He said that Snowden may have applied for asylum in other countries apart from Ecuador, and Wikileaks press spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said he had approached the Icelandic government with a formal request on Snowden’s behalf.
He said the US was attempting to “bully” Russia and other nations from giving asylum to Snowden, but “every person has the right to seek and receive political asylum. Those rights are enshrined in UN agreements of which the US is a party. It is counterproductive and unacceptable for the Obama administration to try and interfere with those rights.”
Assange was asked if Snowden had passed the secret documents he had shown to the Guardian to Wikileaks too and whether Wikileaks would publish such documents. Assange said:
That is a sourcing matter so as a matter of policy I can’t speak about it. In relation to publishing such material of course Wikileaks is in the business of publishing documents suppressed by governments.
He took issue with descriptions of Snowden as a traitor:
Edward Snowden is not a traitor. He is not a spy. He is a whistleblower who has told the public an important truth … In law a traitor must adhere to US enemies and there is also a requirement that the conduct is in congressionally approved wartime - neither of these apply here.
He added that “the Obama administration was not given a mandate to spy on the entire world, to breach the US constitution and laws of other nations in the manner it has”. He also warned that the US’s crackdown on journalistic sources under Barack Obama threatened “the complete destruction of national security journalism”.
Michael Ratner, Wikileaks’s American attorney, said whistleblowers were protected under international conventions on refugees. The US had recognised that when it applied to Chinese and African whistleblowers, he said, “so it’s surprising to me now - though maybe not surprising in this particular case - to see the US ignore that”.
“Asylum trumps extradition,” he said, and countries were not supposed to interfere with each other’s asylum processes. He said there was “no international arrest warrant that we know of” so Snowden was “not a fugitive in any sense of the word”.
In a characteristic rhetorical flourish, Assange said that Obama had taken on “a generation” in this case – “a young generation of people who find the mass violation of privacy unacceptable. In taking on a generation the Obama administration can only lose."
Paul Owen has more from the Assange call. Assange said he knows where Snowden is and "his spirits are high":
The current status of Mr Snowden and Ms [Sarah] Harrrison [of Wikileaks, who travelled with him from Hong Kong]: both are healthy and safe and they are in contact with their legal team. I can’t give further information as to their whereabouts or present circumstances other than to say that the matter is in hand.
Assange added:
We are aware of where Edward Snowden is. He is in a safe place and his spirits are high. Due to the bellicose threats coming from the US administration we cannot go into further detail at this time.Unfortunately we cannot reveal what country he is in at this time.
More to come.
Updated
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is holding a conference call to discuss Snowden's case. Wikileaks legal advisers are assisting Snowden in his effort to avoid imprisonment, and a member of the organization reportedly traveled with Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow.
Assange said Snowden is "healthy and safe." We'll have a full report on the call shortly.
The Guardian's Rory Carroll, who recently published his biography of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, is traveling to Ecuador on the chance that Snowden will turn up there.
In an appearance on ABC News Sunday, NSA director Keith Alexander repeated his assertion that Snowden's leaks have done "irreversible" damage to the United States:
"This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent," General Alexander told ABC's This Week "... What Snowden has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies."Alexander said the NSA surveillance programs Snowden had disclosed to the Guardian were tightly overseen and disputed statements from members of the Senate intelligence committee that they had not played a unique role in preventing terrorist attacks. [...]Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have disputed that the NSA's collection of phone records on millions of Americans was key to preventing any terrorist attack. Alexander said that in "a little over 10" cases, the phone records databases helped the US government find individuals inside the US connected to terrorists.
Read the full report by Spencer Ackerman and Dominic Rushe here.
Summary
Here’s a summary of today’s key events so far:
• Edward Snowden’s whereabouts are currently unknown after he failed to get on an Aeroflot flight the Russian airline said he was booked on from Moscow to Havana. It has been assumed that he was heading via Cuba for Ecuador; Quito’s foreign minister Ricardo Patiño Aroca said yesterday the country had received an asylum application from him. But amid farcical scenes the plane full of journalists – and presumably representatives of various governments – took off for Cuba without him. One reporter tweeted a plaintive picture of Snowden’s empty chair.
• Patino said Snowden – the former NSA contractor whose leaks to the Guardian about US intelligence programmes have caused controversy around the world – had arrived in Russia and said his government was currently considering his asylum request.But he said Quito did not know where Snowden was at this moment – or where he was going next. Patino hinted that if Ecuador accepted Snowden’s request it would be on the grounds of privacy, freedom of speech, and human rights. The country already shelters Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at its embassy in London. Wikileaks was todayforced to defend Ecuador’s questionable record on press freedom.
• Patino read out what appeared to be Snowden's asylum request, in which the whistleblower compared himself to Wikileaks source Bradley Manning, who is currently on trial for “aiding the enemy”, and said: “It is unlikely that I will have a fair trial or humane treatment before trial, and also I have the risk of life imprisonment or death.”
• Snowden yesterday fled Hong Kong – which he had used as a base to leak his secret documents to the Guardian and reveal his identity – after the authorities in the Chinese province said Washington’s provisional extradition warrant did not fully comply with legal requirements. Wikileaks, which says it has been assisting Snowden, and Aeroflot sources speaking to various news organisations both said he was going to Russia. No Russian officials have confirmed he ever arrived, although Patino’s comments about that today were categorical.
• John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said it would be “deeply troubling” if either China or Russia had had advance notice of Snowden’s travel plans and let him fly. Kerry said the US had no idea where Snowden was or where he was going next.
Updated
Earlier, Ecuadoran foreign minister Ricardo Patino Arocam read some kind of statement from Snowden, in which he compared himself to Bradley Manning, the Wikileaks source currently on trial on a number of charges, including "aiding the enemy". Here's what Patino said:
Manning has been subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment. The trial of Bradley Manning is taking place now and secret witnesses have been summoned to court and secret documents have been submitted.The communication ends, Mr Snowden says: I think that because of the circumstances it is unlikely that I will have a fair trial or humane treatment before trial, and also I have the risk of life imprisonment or death.This is the end of the communication signed by Mr Edward J Snowden.
The Associated Press has some direct quotes from John Kerry, the US secretary of state, on what the US knows about Snowden's travels – and what it thinks about them.
We don't know, specifically, where he may head, or what his intended destination may be.It would be deeply troubling, obviously, if they [Russia and China] had adequate notice, and notwithstanding that, they make the decision wilfully to ignore that and not live by the standards of the law.There is a surrender treaty with Hong Kong and if there was adequate notice I don't know yet what the communication status was. But if there was, it would be very disappointing if he was wilfully allowed to board an airplane ... and there would be, without any question, some effect and impact on the relationship and consequences.With respect to Russia, likewise.
In the past two years the US has transferred seven prisoners to Russia at Moscow's request. Kerry said:
I think reciprocity and the enforcement of the law is pretty important ...I suppose there is no small irony here. I mean, I wonder if Mr Snowden chose China and Russian assistance in his flight from justice because they're such powerful bastions of internet freedom, and I wonder if while he was in either of those countries he raised the question of internet freedom, since that seems to be what he champions.
Patino is asked where Snowden is and where he is going.
Patino says:
I cannot give you information about that. We are in contact with the Russian government, but this specific information about this precise situation of Edward Snowden, we cannot give it to you right now, because we don't have it.
Snowden, as we all know, arrived in Russia, Patino says. The Ecuadoran government has maintained respectful and diplomatic contact with Russia and has informed it Ecuador is considering Snowden's asylum request.
Patino says the right of asylum is recognised by the Ecuadoran constitution.
But there are also important rules of international law we will have to evaluate, he says.
The UN protects the right to privacy and from abuse by technology, he says.
Every human being has the right to freedom of speech, Patino says, and this includes not being attacked for exercising one's rights.
He refers to the US fourth and fifth amendments on these topics.
Ecuador's constitution says it will guarantee the safety of people who publish opinions through the media and work in any form of communication, he says. No human being will be considered illegal because of his immigration status, Patino says. We do not do that in Ecuador.
Patino says all the citizens in the world have been affected by the US surveillance programmes revealed by Snowden.
In the last few days the word treason has been mentioned, he says. We have to ask who has betrayed whom?
Snowden finds himself persecuted by those who should be providing information to the world about what Snowden has revealed, he says.
Snowden also feels he will not receive a fair trial, Patino says.
He says Ecuador will act according to the framework of human rights and international law.
Ecuador places principles of the universal declaration of human rights above its own interests, he says.
Updated
Ricardo Patino Arocam, the Ecuadoran foreign minister, is speaking now.
He is noting Wikileaks source Bradley Manning's "cruel and inhuman treatment" by the US.
Former Bush administration White House spokesman Ari Fleischer just posted this slightly sinister tweet, which won’t do much to change the perception that the US is keen to keep track of everyone everywhere …
Ecuador is considering Snowden's asylum request, according to Russia Today. Ricardo Patino Arocam, the country's foreign minister, has told reporters in Hanoi:
We are analysing it with a lot of responsibility. [The decision has to do] with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world.We always act in the name of principles, not in our own interests. There are governments who make decisions more according to their own intrerests. We don't do that. Our main focus is human rights.
Ricardo Patiño Aroca, Ecuador’s foreign minister, is holding a press conference in 10 minutes time.
He seems to be in Hanoi.
WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson has defended the press freedom record of Ecuador and dismissed a recent Committee to Protect Journalists report that criticised the country's commitment to journalists' freedom, saying the findings "might be wrong in some ways",my colleague Oliver Laughland reports from Sydney.
The Committee to Protect Journalists risk list, which examines a number of press freedom criteria including censorship, the implementation of restrictive laws and the number of exiled journalists, placed Ecuador among the 10 worst countries in the world.
Miriam Elder sends more from Interfax and its "source familiar with Snowden's situation":
Snowden is probably already outside the Russian Federation. He could have flown on a different place. It is unlikely journalists could become witnesses to his flight.
Interfax, the Russian news agency, is reporting that Snowden might be taking the next flight to Latin America via Cuba – citing “a source familiar with the situation”. The source said: “He’s probably got another ticket also via Cuba, as there are no direct flights [from Moscow] to Caracas or Quito.”
How do we know Snowden was ever in Russia?
Hong Kong’s original statement yesterday saying Edward Snowden had left the Chinese territory made no mention of Russia, saying only that he had gone to a “third country”:
Mr Edward Snowden left Hong Kong today [June 23] of his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel.The US government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR [Hong Kong special administrative region] government for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr Snowden. Since the documents provided by the US government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR government has requested the US government to provide additional information so that the Department of Justice could consider whether the US government's request can meet the relevant legal conditions.As the HKSAR government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong. The HKSAR government has already informed the US government of Mr Snowden's departure.
Wikileaks, which says it has been assisting Snowden, and Aeroflot sources speaking to various news organisations both said he was going to Russia.
But no Russian officials ever confirmed he has arrived. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Guardian yesterday: “I don’t [know if he's planning to stay in Moscow]. I heard about his potential arrival from the press. I know nothing.”
Russian security personnel certainly swarmed around Sheremetyevo airport, and the Ecuadorian ambassador Patricio Chavez also turned up – asking “Do you know where he is? Is he coming here?”
Russian news agency Interfax also reported that a Venezuelan diplomat picked Snowden up when he arrived.
Aeroflot told the Associated Press this morning that he was registered for the Havana flight that left half an hour ago.
Updated
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said Washington does not know what Snowden's travel plans are.
Speaking at a joint press conference with the Indian foreign minister in New Delhi, Kerry also said he would be deeply troubled if China and Russia had had prior notice of Snowden's plans to leave Hong Kong.
Washington has pressed Moscow to do all in its power to extradite Snowden.
Apparently those poor journalists on the plane to Cuba can't even drown their sorrows ...
Starting from Feb 10, 2010, the sale of alcohol is suspended on flights to/from Havana, Bangkok, Shanghai, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Yuzhno-Sahalinsk, and Khabarovsk.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has been speaking about the Snowden case. Kerry said he would be deeply troubled if China and Russia had had prior notice of Snowden's travel plans. More details soon ...
My colleague Miriam Elder didn’t manage to get on that plane to Cuba – but she’s very glad, since it seems Edward Snowden never got on it either. I just spoke to her.
She said Aeroflot officials had told her “with a little smirk” that they had been expecting Snowden too.
But Miriam pointed out that Snowden had never actually been sighted in Moscow, and there was actually no real evidence that he had ever been in Russia at all.
Meanwhile a planeload of journalists are now off to spend the day in Cuba …
Max Seddon of the Associated Press says that he is standing next to Snowden's seat on the flight – and "he ain't here".
A man has moved from the "VIP" van at Sheremetyevo airport on to the plane – but it is not clear if this is Snowden.
Albert Ho, a Hong Kong legislator critical of Beijing who says he was in touch with Snowden during his stay in Hong Kong, has said the whistleblower's departure from the territory was "decided by Beijing".He told the Daily Telegraph:
They [Beijing] used someone behind the scenes to get Snowden to leave. And the Hong Kong government didn't have much of a role. Its role was to receive instructions to not stop him at the airport.From seeing the nervousness with which the Hong Kong government didn't even give me any details at all ... I have grounds to believe that the Hong Kong government had no authority over this case. That's to say the whole case was decided by Beijing.
Ho says Snowden approached him a few days ago asking him to approach the Hong Kong government for him, so as to gauge its position on his extradition. Ho says he met a HK official who offered no comment, but was then approached by an individual claiming to represent Hong Kong but who he believes was actually speaking for Beijing.
Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous part of China.
Here my colleagues Tania Branigan in Hong Kong, Miriam Elder in Moscow and Nick Hopkins in London explain why it suited China for Snowden to slip away.
Ronny Tong Ka-wah, a barrister and legislator for the pro-democracy Civic party, said letting Snowden leave with a minimum of fuss must have been China's preferred option."If Beijing was to refuse to surrender Snowden, that might harm Sino-US relations. On the other hand, if Beijing was to allow Snowden to surrender, it might well be subject to criticism both here in Hong Kong and in European countries making noises about the conduct of the US."
And they described the scene in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport yesterday:
In Moscow, meanwhile, various welcoming parties gathered at Terminal F of Sheremetyevo international airport in anticipation of Snowden's arrival. The biggest comprised reporters from the world's media, who assembled airside to greet the US fugitive and his travelling companion, Sarah Harrison, who works for WikiLeaks.Neither of them emerged into the public lounges, provoking a new round of conspiracy theories and rumours about where they might have gone.Russian security vehicles surrounded the plane when it landed, while plain-clothed Russian agents trawled the terminal, deflecting questions about which state agency they represented by pretending to be businessmen from Munich and journalists from state-run NTV.
Here is the tweet from Ecuador's foreign minister Ricardo Patiño Aroca yesterday revealing that Quito had received a request for asylum from Snowden.
Here is a map showing Edward Snowden's progress around the world so far. He moved from Hawaii to Hong Kong on 20 May in order to begin sending his documents to the Guardian, and then left Hong Kong yesterday for Moscow. He is booked on a plane to Havana today, and is expected to travel from there to Ecuador, where he is expected to apply for asylum.
Aeroflot staff want to take away the phones of passengers on the flight from Moscow to Havana and only return them once the plane lands, Miriam Elder reports.
In Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, Lidia Kelly of Reuters reports that members of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) are on the move.
At Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, Miriam Elder says Aeroflot staff are threatening to take away people's phones.
Journalists searching for Snowden at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport over the last 24 hours seem to have started hallucinating. Lidia Kelly of Reuters tweeted yesterday:
Meanwhile in Britain the Independent published this picture of a red-shirted Snowden arriving at Sheremetyevo. It wasn’t Snowden.
The photo was later resent to newspapers by Barcroft Media with the words “URGENT CAPTION CORRECTION” plastered over it in white. The caption correction was: “*** THIS IS NOT EDWARD SNOWDEN IN THIS IMAGE***.”
My colleague Miriam Elder is at the airport in Moscow about to get on what we hope is the same plane to Havana as Edward Snowden. She told me:
As far as we know he’s expected to get on this flight to Havana in two hours, around 2pm Moscow time. There is speculation that maybe all this information that he’ll be on it is a ruse, but there’s a whole lot of journalists here taking the chance that he’ll be on that flight.
I asked her what the reaction had been in Russia to Snowden’s sudden arrival in Moscow yesterday.
It’s obviously been huge. It’s been a really big story. The airport has been crawling both with international journalists and Russian journalists … We haven’t had any really huge statements from Russian officials; Putin hasn’t commented on it. The foreign ministry, last I checked, just said they were looking into what his plans are.And you’ve had a lot of Russian MPs calling for him to stay here and all I can say, being at the airport until 1am last night, is that there were Russian undercover agents all over the terminal where we believed him to be. It was really clear that the Russians were in charge of the situation here. There were Ecuadorian diplomats milling around trying to get to talk to him but the Russians seemed to be controlling everything here.
Miriam reiterated that there had been no confirmation of American speculation that the countries allowing Snowden to visit were getting information from him in exchange, but she said: “I would expect that Russian officials would be very eager to talk to him. And not only to talk to him to get information from him, but I suspect maybe to try to get him to stay here. Again, there’s no confirmation of that at all.”
She added that Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, had repeated to her that Moscow would consider any asylum request from Snowden.
I talked to Peskov yesterday morning and he said yes. I said, ‘Would you consider an asylum request from him?’ and he said, ‘Yes, that’s just standard procedure. That’s what we do for every application that we get.’
Elsewhere Peskov said the Kremlin was unaware of any contact between Snowden and the Russian authorities.
Miriam has tweeted a picture of the plane.
We’ll have more from her once she gets to Cuba.
Updated
Edward Snowden is expected to catch a plane today from Moscow to Cuba as he attempts to reach Ecuador and evade US attempts to have him extradited and tried on espionage charges.
Snowden – the former NSA contractor whose leaks to the Guardian about US intelligence programmes have caused controversy around the world – yesterday fled Hong Kong for Moscow after the authorities in the Chinese province said Washington’s provisional warrant did not fully comply with legal requirements. He had travelled to Hong Kong on 20 May as a base from which to reveal his secrets and his identity.
A representative of Russia’s Aeroflot airline told the Associated Press that Snowden registered for the flight to Havana that leaves Moscow today at 2.05pm (11.05am BST). He is expected to then leave Havana for Ecuador – the country that has granted asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at its embassy in London.
The airline says he registered for the flight on Sunday using his US passport – which American officials say has been annulled as part of an effort to prosecute him for revealing the highly classified government secrets.
Ecuador's foreign minister said Sunday that Quito is considering his application for asylum.
We’ll have live coverage of all the latest developments here throughout the day.
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