| ® || The Espionage Source | 287 held incommunicado in Vienna for two weeks during his debrief- ing. It would be inconceivable for an intelligence service to bring a potential espionage source such as Snowden to Russia and allow him to catch the next plane to Latin America. The false report pro- vided to the press that Snowden was flying there was likely nothing more than a smoke screen to confuse foreign observers while he was receiving his initial debriefing and evaluation. When it comes to the esoteric enterprise of reconstructing the work of U.S. communications intelligence, military as well as civilian experts in cryptology, computer sciences, and communications are necessary. Unlike in the case of Pelton, Snowden, according to Ana- toly Kucherena, had secret material in his possession. Even if Rus- sian intelligence had already acquired copies of the electronic files prior to Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, Snowden’s interpretation of them would be part of the debriefing because intelligence data needs to be put in context. “This debriefing could not be done overnight,” according to a for- mer high-ranking officer in the GRU, the Russian military intel- © ligence service. “There is no way that Snowden would not be fully re) debriefed,” he said. He also said GRU specialists in signals intelli- gence would be called in. Putin’s approval of the Snowden operation was not without con- sequences. Not only did Obama make good on his threat to can- cel the pre-Olympics summit with Putin, but also, as it turned out, the Snowden exfiltration proved a turning point in the “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations. Having to accept the onus of declining rela- tions with the Obama administration, Putin, it seems safe to assume, attempted to get the bonus of the NSA’s communications intelli- gence from Snowden. The GRU, the SVR, and other Russian intel- ligence services would not stop questioning Snowden, even if it took years, until they had squeezed out of him whatever