Snowden Might Have Been Working With The Russians For Years
To ask for "evidence" that Snowden is working for the Russians indicates a deep misunderstanding, perhaps willful, of how the espionage game is played. Vladimir Putin's Russia does not take in American intelligence defectors - and if you don't understand that word, don't question its use here - without something in return. We will not have the full story on what exactly happened with this case for years, maybe decades, probably when a Russian intelligence officer defects to the West with insider details, as sometimes happens.
Until then, much of the essential outline is visible.
The critical question from a counterintelligence viewpoint is: When did Ed go over to the Russians? In the Spy War, as it's played in the Division I game where the Russians operate, defections happen. There's invariably a complicated backstory, and this case is surely no exception.
Bob Baer, the famous CIA operations officer and a media gadfly in his retirement from espionage, opined that Ed went over to the Russians back in 2007, when he was serving in Geneva as an IT guy on a CIA contract. That seems plausible - it's the most obvious place to look, given known Russian intelligence tradecraft (konspiratsiya - "conspiracy" - in Russian), but there are other possibilities too.
Some have asked questions about an "ethical hacker" course Ed took in New Delhi in 2010. That seems like a story that needs investigation, given India's longtime reputation as a playground for Russian intelligence.
What can be dismissed out of hand is the notion that while staying in Hong Kong a year ago, Ed met with Russian spies - sorry, "diplomats" - at their consulate there and suddenly decided to hop a flight to Moscow. Espionage simply does not work that way, folks.
We can only guess at what was on Ed's mind, but those who know the Russian "special services" understand that such a scenario is so implausible that it can be ruled out altogether. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) simply does not allow American intelligence personnel they've just met to jump on a flight to Mother Russia. That never happens.
Why not, you ask? The risks are too great. Deciding to work with a possible defector, particularly one from your main adversary, is a big step in and of itself, since both sides play sneaky operational games. In particular, they use dangles, fake agents who present themselves as tasty morsels, hoping for a bite. They show up uninvited to talk to the other side secretly, offering the hope of a big recruitment - if you're the Russian intelligence officer working the duty desk the day that "Mr. Walker"* comes through the door, your career just got made if this works out.
Remember that for the Russians, penetrations of U.S. intelligence are the Holy Grail of espionage, while recruiting a spy inside NSA - the prime target that Kremlin spymasters termed OMEGA during the Cold War - was the highest of all KGB, and now SVR, priorities.
But there are risks. Big ones. "Mr. Walker" may not be real. He (or she) may be testing you: memorizing names and faces, watching your espionage procedures, seeing how you and your team react to his showing up at your door. Therefore the SVR, like any competent intelligence service, first establishes the bona fides of a potential defector. You do name checks, you search the internet, you scour your own secret databases, and those of friendly services, to see if they've heard of this guy and the exact organization he claims to work for.
Does the story he's telling you seem plausible? Extensive background checks and maybe polygraphs - note the plural - will be ordered. In short, you need to know: Does this guy check out?
What you really want to avoid is getting deceived and taking the bait on a guy who actually is working for the other side and playing you. Such a misstep can have grave consequences. That "Mr. Walker" is just an attention-seeking fantasist also has to ruled out, since that will be an embarrassing report back to Moscow too.
As the team on the spot, you need to make sure that this scenario is what it seems to be, so you use a lot of precautions. You take your time so as not to get burned. Establishing that "Mr. Walker" is who he says he is, and not a dangle or a plant or a nutjob, can take weeks, if not months. And this is just to recruit him as an agent, a witting source of the SVR, to say nothing of his becoming a defector, which is a much bigger step.
You always prefer an agent-in-place over a defector, since that gets public and messy, not to mention that the moment he reaches Russia, your defector's information has ceased to be up-to-date. A potentially golden source has dried up once he defects.
Letting Edward Snowden move to Moscow was a major decision for the Kremlin, one with huge political ramifications. We can be certain that such a decision was not made by a mid-grade SVR officer in Hong Kong. Neither was such a choice made quickly by the Russians, particularly under a president who understands counterintelligence very well. The reality is that Edward Snowden's relationship with Russian intelligence, whatever it exactly is, predated his arrival in Moscow on June 23, 2013, probably by a considerable margin.
It did not begin in Hong Kong, but before, possibly long before. It cannot be ruled out that the SVR (or possibly GRU, Russian military intelligence, which is a formidable espionage service in its own right) initially dealt with Snowden in a false-flag operation, masking their true identity for a time. But experts who are acquainted with Russia's "special services" understand that the Official Narrative, that Ed just up and moved to Moscow, cannot be true.
Getting to the bottom of this question is critical to assessing the damage Snowden has wrought, which, despite the claims of his lawyers, is vast and unprecedented. Although it will probably take years to unravel the full story of Ed's relationship with Russian intelligence, this matter needs thorough investigation now.
The U.S. Intelligence Community has senior people who, following in the long line of espionage bosses who really would rather not know the full story behind an epic traitor, seem to prefer to avert their eyes from this issue, just as many journalists do. For them, as bad as the Snowden story is already, think how much worse it will look if Ed was really working for the Russians for years: that would be a truly epic counterintelligence fail, and careers and reputations will be ruined.
But we need to know the full story here if we are to prevent future Snowdens, as we must.
*Intelligence community inside joke: People who show up at the door asking to work for you, unsolicited and unrecruited, are called "walk-ins" by U.S. intelligence (the Russians prefer the term "volunteer"), hence the unknown guy is referred to as "Mr. Walker" until his actual identity is established. Relevant analogies to the Snowden case in the annals of U.S. intelligence are Edward Lee Howard (a failed CIA case officer who defected to Moscow in 1985) and William Martin and Bernon Mitchell (NSA analysts who defected to Moscow in 1960): in all these cases the men had contact with the KGB that long predated their defections; all ended badly.