| ® | Prologue | 9 of Information request with the Hong Kong Security Bureau ask- ing for information about Snowden’s movements in May. Thomas Ng, the secretary for security, turned down the request, adding that Hong Kong authorities do not keep records of hotel registrations. I had run into a dead end with the Hong Kong authorities on the issue of Snowden’s “carer” and Snowden’s whereabouts for those eleven crucial days. At this point, I got some much-needed help from an old friend on the Obama White House staff. Before I had left New York, I asked him if he could find someone at the consulate in Hong Kong who might brief me on the Snowden case. I didn’t hear from him until just a few days before I was due to return to New York. He put me in touch with a former employee of the Hong Kong consulate, who he said was “fully informed” about the efforts of the U.S. mission to locate Snowden in Hong Kong. This person was still living in Hong Kong, and he agreed to meet with me on condition that I did not mention either his name or his specific job in the U.S. mission in Hong Kong. The venue was the terrace lounge of the American Club © in Exchange Square in central Hong Kong, a posh club mainly for ® expatriate Americans. It was on the forty-eighth floor, with a spec- tacular view of Victoria Harbor. Once there, I had no problem find- ing my source, identifying him by the description he had given me. He was sitting alone at a discreet table in the corner. After we ordered drinks, he told me ina soft voice about the Amer- ican reaction to Snowden’s revelations in Hong Kong. “All hell broke loose,” he said, describing the atmosphere at the U.S. mission after Snowden’s video was posted on The Guardian's website on June 9. asked about an assertion that Snowden had made concerning the U.S. consulate in that extraordinary video. Snowden had said that he could be seized at any moment by a CIA rendition team based at the U.S. consulate “just down the road” from the Mi