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Prologue | 7 ments on May 25. He had now not only downloaded documents but also violated the oath he had signed when he took his job by provid- ing them to an unauthorized party. During this period, Snowden also contacted Barton Gellman, on behalf of The Washington Post, via e-mail. Indeed, while he was staying someplace other than the place he claimed to be staying, he made almost all the arrangements for his journalistic coming-out. He was in contact with at least one foreign mission during this period, according to what he wrote to Gellman on May 24. In that e-mail, concerning when and how his story was to be published by The Washington Post, Snowden asked Gellman to include some text that would help Snowden with his dealings with this mission. But which country was he approaching? In an effort to establish Snowden’s whereabouts during these “miss- ing” eleven days, which, among other things, could shed light on why he first came to Hong Kong, I called Keith Bradsher, a prizewin- ning journalist who had been the New York Times bureau chief in Hong Kong in 2013. He had written a well-researched report about Snowden’s arrival there. He proposed we meet at the Foreign Cor- © respondents’ Club. ® Bradsher told me that he had known Albert Ho, who had been retained as Snowden’s lawyer, for more than a decade. He had inter- viewed him many times, because he was a leader of a political move- ment in Hong Kong. Bradsher said that a few days after Snowden had revealed himself on June 9, he met with Ho and questioned him about Snowden’s unknown whereabouts. Ho told Bradsher that all of Snowden’s logistics had been arranged for him by an intermediary, whom Ho called a “carer.” Ho said that Snowden had been in contact with the “carer” prior to his arrival in Hong Kong on May 20. According to Ho, it was this person who had arranged accommodations for Snowden on his arrival and afterward. If so, it seemed to me that this person might be able to shed light on whom, if anyone, Snowden saw in his first eleven days in Hong Kong. Even if this person might have been unaware of the reasons for Snowden’s trip to Hong Kong when he made the arrangements for him, he was still the best lead I had to learning why Snowden had come to Hong Kong. Bradsher told me that he pressed Ho for details about this mystery person over the course of several meet- | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_rt.zindd 7 ® 929N6 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019495