Snowden Flew To Moscow A Year Ago Today - Here's Why That Was A 'Great Mistake'
Edward Snowden is facing an increasingly difficult problem: He is an NSA-trained hacker living in an undisclosed Russian apartment under the protection of the country's security services.
Basically, he may never go home.
Snowden has retained prominent Washington defense lawyer Plato Cacheris to negotiate a potential deal with the U.S. government that could bring the 30-year-old American home.
But an agreement is unlikely since Snowden's camp wants leniency for the surveillance debate started by his leaks to journalists, while top Pentagon officials believe Snowden also took military documents and is not a pure-intentioned whistleblower.
It's still unclear how many documents Snowden took or when he gave up access. And when one considers that the former NSA systems administrator was a "genius among geniuses," living under Kremlin protection for 10 months and counting is a very vulnerable position.
"To a foreign intelligence service, Snowden is priceless," Robert Caruso, a former assistant command security manager in the Navy and a consultant, told BI. "He can be exploited again and again." Caruso explained that while U.S. agencies can "change names of facilities, physically relocate the more sensitive activities, [reassign] personnel he endangered, [etc.]" to mitigate damage from leaked documents, Snowden cannot alter or unlearn the granular level of detail with which he knows NSA systems. In other words, the classified intel in his brain is what makes him so appealing to a U.S. adversary like Russia, especially because Snowden may be in over his head. "He does not have the training to deal with this kind of situation," Russian security services expert Andrei Soldatov previously told BI. "Every time, he found himself in some new difficult circumstances and he was forced to make some decision. And long term, it's a very successful thing [for Russia]." So as long as Snowden doesn't reach a plea deal with Washington, the former CIA technician is stuck in a Kremlin-controlled environment. Consequently, Soldatav believes that "Snowden made a great mistake when he decided to go to Moscow."Snowden and his closest supporters contend that Snowden flew from Hong Kong to Moscow on his way to Latin America when the U.S. government stranded him in Russia by revoking his passport. There are several reasons to question that claim, including the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - who paid for Snowden's lodging and travel in Hong Kong - advised Snowden against going to Latin America because "he would be physically safest in Russia."
Ben Wizner, one of Snowden's legal advisors, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Snowden's current living situation.