| ® | 162 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS it controlled in the NSA to expose himself by contacting journalists. Snowden’s continued interactions with Poitras and Greenwald make it implausible that he was under Russian control before he went to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Scenario The most compelling support for the scenario that Snowden was brought under Russian control while he was in Hong Kong comes, it will be recalled, from Vladimir Putin. His disclosure about the case leaves little doubt that Russian officials had engaged Snowden in Hong Kong, that Putin had authorized his trip to Moscow, and that the Russian government allowed him to fly to Moscow without a Russian visa. We know that Putin’s version is supported by U.S. sur- veillance of Snowden’s activities in Hong Kong. We also know that the Russians went to some lengths not only to facilitate his trip to Moscow but to arrange to keep him in Russia. This supports the © possibility that the Russian intelligence service managed to bring re) Snowden under its sway during his thirty-four days in Hong Kong. The Russian intelligence service might even have been aware of Snowden and his anti-NSA activities before his arrival on May 20. Snowden was anything but discreet in his contacts with strang- ers in the anti-surveillance movement, including such well-known activists as Runa Sandvik (to whom he revealed his true name and address via e-mail), Micah Lee, Jacob Appelbaum, Parker Higgins, and Laura Poitras. “It is not statistically improbable that members of this circle were being watched by a hostile service,” a former NSA counterintelligence officer told me in 2015. When I told him that Poitras and others in her circle had used PGP encryption, aliases, and Tor software in their exchanges with Snowden, he said, arching his eyebrows, “That might work against amateurs, but it wouldn't stop the Russians if they thought they might have a defector in the NSA.” He explained that both the NSA and hostile services have the