Snowden Says He Didn't Cover His Tracks In Hong Kong - But No One Knows Where He Was For The First 11 Days

But U.S. authorities still don't know what he did for the first 11 days after his arrival.

"That whole period was very carefully planned and orchestrated," Snowden told the Guardian. "There was no risk of compromise. ... And I didn't cover my traces [in Hong Kong]. I only tried to avoid being detected in advance of travel ... on the other side I wanted them to know where I was at. I wanted them to know."

In his book, Greenwald writes that Snowden "arrived in Hong Kong from Hawaii on May 20, checking into the Mira Hotel under his own name."

And Snowden told Vanity Fair that "I used a personal credit card so the government could immediately verify that I was entirely self-financed [and] independent."

But Edward Jay Epstein of The Wall Street Journal recently reported, citing a source familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency report on the Snowden affair, that "U.S. investigative agencies have been unable to find any credit-card charges or hotel records indicating his whereabouts" between May 20 and June 1.

Furthermore, Epstein went to Hong Kong and confirmed that Snowden didn't check into the Mira Hotel until June 1, which was a couple of days before he met with journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.

"Mr. Snowden would tell Mr. Greenwald on June 3 that he had been 'holed up' in his room at the Mira Hotel from the time of his arrival in Hong Kong. But according to inquiries by Wall Street Journal reporter Te-Ping Chen, Mr. Snowden arrived there on June 1," Epstein reported. "I confirmed that date with the hotel's employees. A hotel security guard told me that Mr. Snowden was not in the Mira during that late-May period and, when he did stay there, he used his own passport and credit card."

This led Epstein to ask: "So where was Edward Snowden between May 20 and May 31?"

Strangely, no one seems to know - even though Snowden says he made it obvious.