WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama’s administration escalated its criticism Monday of Russia, China and Ecuador, the countries that appeared to be protecting Edward Snowden, the fugitive former government contractor wanted for leaking classified documents, who has eluded what has become a global American manhunt.
The White House’s spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters that relations with China had suffered a setback over its apparent role in approving a decision Sunday by Hong Kong to let Snowden board a flight to Moscow and avoid arrest - even though his passport had been revoked. Carney also warned the Russian authorities that they should expel Snowden into American custody.
Snowden, 30, a former National Security Agency contractor whose leaks about American surveillance activities have captivated world attention, had apparently been set to board a flight from Moscow to Havana on Monday as part of an effort to seek political asylum in Ecuador, which has provided him with special travel papers. But in a deepening intrigue over his whereabouts, Snowden never boarded the flight.
Ecuador’s president and foreign minister declared Monday that national sovereignty and universal principles of human rights would govern their decision on granting asylum to Snowden.
President Rafael Correa said on Twitter that “we will take the decision that we feel most suitable, with absolute sovereignty.”
Snowden’s vacant seat raised the possibility that the Russian government had detained him, either to consider Washington’s demands or perhaps to question himfor its own purposes.
“If Russian special services hadn’t shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional,” Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia’s top military command who is now a security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization that has said it is helping Snowden, told reporters that Snowden was in a safe and secure place. The government of Ecuador, which is also protecting Assange, said it was still considering Snowden’s asylum request. But there was no direct word from Snowden himself.
American officials have reacted with increasing anger over their failure to winforeign cooperation in their pursuit of Snowden, who had been hiding in Hong Kong for the past few weeks with a trove of classified information on four laptop computers. Snowden has said he leaked the information about American surveillance to expose the government’s invasion of privacy. He has been charged with violating espionage laws.
On Monday, Carney impugned Snowden’s motives and criticized the three countries that appeared to be helping him.
“Mr. Snowden’s claim that he is focused on supporting transparency, freedom of the press and protection of individual rights and democracy is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen: China, Russia, Ecuador, as we’ve seen,” Carney said. “His failure to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injurethe national security of the United States, not to advance Internet freedom and free speech.”
Carney reiterated the American view that the authorities in Hong Kong, which follows China’s directives, should have detained Snowden and that it had plenty of time to do so. “We see this as a setback in terms of efforts to build mutual trust,” Carney told reporters.
Earlier Monday on a visit to New Delhi, Secretary of State John Kerry also emphasized that Russia should send Snowden to the United States. “I would urge them to live by the standards of the law,” he said.
In his first public comments since Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong, Obama was more restrained than his advisers. “We’re following all of the appropriate legal channels and working with various other countries to make sure that rule of law is observed,” he said in answer to a question before an immigration event.
Security was extremely tight at the gate at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Monday as agents called passengers to board the Havana-bound Aeroflot aircraft. Police officers stood around the plane on the tarmac, and the entrance to the gate inside the terminalwas cordoned off with about 25 feet of blue ribbon.
Snowden was said to have reserved a ticket on the flight, Aeroflot Flight 150, in coach seat 17A. But just before the plane pulled away, Nikolay Sokolov, an Aeroflot employee at the gate, said that Snowden was not on board.
Nikolay Zakharov, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Security Service declined to say if intelligence officials had met with Snowden during the time he spent at the transit area of the airport. Nor would Zakharov say if they had sought to examine the secret files he was said to be carrying.
Diplomats and law-enforcement officials from the United States warned countries in Latin America not to harbor Snowden or allow him to pass through to other destinations after he fled Hong Kong for Moscow, possibly en route to Ecuador or another nation where he could seek asylum.
There are no direct commercial flights from Moscow to Ecuador or to Venezuela, another potential destination for Snowden, and any stopover would create an opportunity for local authorities to seize him. Another possibility was that Snowden could leave Moscow on a private plane.
It was unclear how Snowden spent his time at the Moscow airport or precisely where he had spent it. The departure of the flight to Havana came after an allnight vigil by journalists who were posted outside a hotel in the transit zone of the airport where Snowden was apparently staying. But on Monday morning, the hotel staff said that no one named Snowden was staying there.
The turn of events opened a new chapter in a case that had already captivated many in the United States and around the world. Snowden’s transcontinental escape was seen as an embarrassment for the Obama administration and raised questions about its tactics in the case, such as its failure to immediately revoke Snowden’s passport.
It also further complicated Washington’s ties with Russia and China.
A person knowledgeable about the Hong Kong government’s deliberations said that there was considerable annoyance in Hong Kong about Washington’s handling of the case as well.
Particularly troublesome to Hong Kong was that the U.S. request for the surrender of Snowden had accused him of violating the Espionage Act, and not just of stealing materials or other crimes that would clearly be considered criminal and not political matters. Charging Snowden under the Espionage Act may have been good politics in the United States but was bad politics in terms of persuading Hong Kong to surrender Snowden, the person said.
Snowden was not spying for China, and neither Hong Kong government personnel not Chinese government agents attempted to interview or interrogate him at any time during his stay, the person said.
Snowden, who by his own account downloaded classified documents while working in Hawaii for the National Security Agency as an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, has said he unveiled secret American surveillance programs because he believed they violated privacy boundaries.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that U.S. congressional leaders he briefed in 2004 on a surveillance program recently disclosed by Snowden supported it, and both Republicans and Democrats wanted to keep it secret.
Cheney said he was directly involved in setting up the program, run by the National Security Agency in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said it has had “phenomenal results” in preventing terrorist attacks.
Information for this article was contributed by David M. Herszenhorn, Ellen Barry, Andrew Roth, Scott Shane, Steven Lee Myers and Charlie Savage of The New York Times; and by Jim Kuhnhenn, Lara Jakes, Julie Pace, Philip Elliott, Matthew Lee, Frederic J. Frommer, Lynn Berry, Vladimir Isachenkov, Max Seddon, Kevin Chan, Gonzalo Solano, Michael Weissenstein, Peter Orsi, David Barraza, Matthew Pennington and Sylvia Hui of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/25/2013