| ® | The Keys to the Kingdom Are Missing | 181 The Post-Hong Kong Documents The NSA concern about who had access to its missing files deepened further when NSA documents continued to surface in the press after Snowden went to Moscow. If U.S. intelligence needed any further evidence that someone had access to the documents, these additional revelations provided it. The most sensational of them was a purported document attrib- uted to Snowden concerning the NSA hacking of the cell phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. The story was published on October 23 on the Der Spiegel website. Appelbaum was the co- author of the story. Even though Snowden had by now been in Rus- sia for four months, he was cited in the story, along with unnamed “others,” as the source for the NSA document. Snowden did not deny it. Indeed, he took a measure of credit for the revelation, say- ing on German TV, “What I can say is we know Angela Merkel was monitored by the National Security Agency.” If Snowden had been involved in the release of this document, it would be consistent with © Kucherena’s assertion that he had access to the archive. ® Adding to the intrigue, Poitras was apparently caught by surprise when the Merkel story broke in Der Spiegel. She urgently texted Snowden on what she called “background” (which ordinarily means that a journalist will not attribute information to a source), She asked him in the text to explain the NSA’s actions. Snowden explained to her that Merkel was listed by her true name (and not by a code name) in the NSA document because the German chancellor was an NSA “target not an asset.” Presumably, Poitras would have already known that distinction if she had the document referred to in Der Spiegel. If the Merkel document was not among the data given to Poitras in Hong Kong, how did it get to the authors of the Der Spiegel article? Appelbaum, of course, had been in contact with Snowden before he went public. He had served as Poitras’s co-interrogator o