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10 arrival in Hong Kong in 2013.. He proposed we meet at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club on top of Ice House Street in central Hong Kong, a venue, I recalled, reminiscent of where John LeCarre had set the opening chapter of his spy novel The Honourable Schoolboy. When we spoke later, Bradsher told me that he knew Albert Ho, who had been retained as Snowden’s lawyer, for more than a decade, and interviewed him many times as he was a leader of a political movement in Hong Kong. Bradsher said that a few days after Snowden had revealed himself on June 9", 2013, he met with Ho and questioned him on the very question that intrigued me about Snowden’s unknown whereabouts. Ho told Bradsher that all of Snowden’s logistics had been arranged for him by an intermediary, who Ho called a “carer.” Ho further said that Snowden had been in contact with the “carer” prior to his arrival in Hong Kong on May 20th. According to Ho, it was this person who had arranged accommodations for Snowden on his arrival—and afterwards. If so, It seemed plausible to me that this person might be able to shed light on whom, if anyone, Snowden saw in his first 1i days in Hong Kong. Of course, this person may have been unaware of the reasons for Snowden’s escape to Hong Kong when he made the arrangements for him but he was the best lead I had to learning why Snowden had come to Hong Kong. But who was the “carer?” Bradsher told me that he pressed Ho for details about this mystery person over the course of several meeting but Ho would not identify him beyond saying, that he was a “well- connected “resident” of Hong Kong. I next called Ho’s law office in Hong Kong. But Ho politely declined to be interviewed by me, saying he had said all he was going to say about the Snowden case. I next made an appointment with Robert Tibbo, a Canadian-born barrister, specializing in civil liberties cases, who had worked closely with Ho on the Snowden case. He immediately agreed to see me. I met Tibbo in the tea room at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on Hong Kong Island, where I moved to from the Mira hotel. The Mandarin was also convenient to Tibbo’s office at the court. Tibbo was a tall, round-faced man, with thinning hair, in his early fifties. He talked freely about his remarkable career. After earning a degree in chemical engineering from McGill University, and working in Asia as an engineer for a decade, he went to law school in New Zealand, and then became a barrister in Hong Kong specializing in cases involving the legal status of refugees. Over a leisurely tea, Tibbo made it clear to me that he had played a far more active role than Ho in the Snowden case, even personally escorting Snowden from the Mira Hotel on June 10" to a safe house. He did not dispute what Ho had told Bradsher, but said that he was himself bound by lawyer-client privilege which prevented him from providing me with any details that might reveal the identity of the person who had made arrangements for Snowden. When I asked the date that he was officially retained by Snowden, he said that Snowden had signed an agreement hiring Ho’s law firm as his legal adviser on June 10, 2013 (which was a matter of public record.) “I understand that,” I said, “but I am inquiring about something that had happened before you became his legal adviser.” He shook his head, as if getting rid of a pesky fly, and said that his oath precluded him saying anything at all that might do damage to the credibility HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020162