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The Keys to the Kingdom Are Missing | 173 ter and Politburo member of the Soviet Union and, after the Soviet Union broke up, the first president of Georgia. Even though she had interviewed many top political figures in Russia, obtaining an hour- long interview with Kucherena was a coup because, until then, he had not discussed Snowden in a television interview. About halfway through the interview, Shevardnadze brought up the highly sensitive subject of the disposition of the NSA docu- ments. If anyone was in a position to know about these documents, it was Kucherena. He had acted as an intermediary for Snowden in his negotiations with Russian authorities, including the FSB. As such, he would be privy to the status of the secret material that was of interest to the Russian intelligence services. When I interviewed Kucherena in Moscow in 2015, he told me that “all the reports” con- cerning Snowden had been turned over to him by “Russian authori- ties” in July 2013. “I had all of Snowden’s statements,” he said. If so, he presumably knew what Snowden had told the Russian security services. Had Snowden come to Russia with empty hands or bearing gifts? ) Shevardnadze directly asked Kucherena if Snowden had given all © the documents he had taken from the NSA to journalists in Hong Kong. Kucherena answered her question without any evasion, say- ing that Snowden had only given “some” of the NSA’s documents in his possession to journalists in Hong Kong. He had kept the remain- ing documents in his possession. That confirmed what Snowden had told Greenwald, Poitras, and Lam in Hong Kong. Snowden told them that he had divided the stolen NSA documents into two separate sets of documents. One set he gave to Poitras and Greenwald on thumb drives. The other set, which he told them he considered too sensi- tive for these journalists, he retained for himself. U.S. investigators at the NSA, the CIA, and the Department of Defense would like to know what Snowden did with the set of documents he had retained for himself and had not shared with the journalists in Hong Kong. Shevardnadze, who makes it a point to drill her interviewees, pressed Kucherena as to whether Snowden still had these NSA files, or “material,” in Russia. The dialogue went as follows (from the transcript supplied to me by Shevardnadze). | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 173 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019661