HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020346.jpg

194 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Vanishing Act “They talk about Russia like it’s the worst place on earth. Russia’s great.”—Snowden Moscow, 2015 My night flight from New York to Moscow took less than eight hours. It landed at 7:40 AM on October 29, 2015 at terminal D a Sheremetyevo International Airport. I did not immediately proceed through passport control, not just because I wanted to avoid the killer bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic, but because I wanted to explore the transit zone in which Snowden was supposedly trapped in for six weeks. Sheremetyevo Two, where all international flights land, was built in the waning days of the Cold War for international passengers arriving for the Moscow 1980 Summer Olympics. It was modernized in 2010, including opening a walkway that connects Terminal D, E and F for transit passengers. Snowden had vanished, at least from public view, in this complex of terminals for nearly six weeks in the summer of 2013. His explanation, as will be recalled, was two-part. First, he had planned to board the next fight to Cuba, and from there proceed to Ecuador. But he was unable to board this flight because his passport had been invalidated while he was flying to Russia by the U.S. Government. Second, after discovering his passport had been revoked, he stayed in a capsule hotel in the transit zone for the next 38 days. To better understand the plausibility of his version of those events, I proceeded through the transit passage to Terminal F where Snowden’s plane from Hong Kong had landed at 5:15 PM Moscow time on June 23, 2013. Snowden did not o through passport control on June 23rd. Before any of the other passengers were allowed to disembark from the plane, Russian plainclothes officers from the Special Services boarded the plane and asked both Snowden and Sarah Harrison, his Wiki leak’s supplied “ninja,” to accompany them to a waiting car that whisked them away. Assange and Harrison had organized a number of decoy flights. They may have confused U.S and British intelligence services, as they were intended to do, but they evidently did not fool the Russian intelligence services. According to the account in /zvestia, “a special operation was conducted for his reception and evacuation.” It further said: “Snowden flight to Moscow was coordinated with the Russian authorities and intelligence services.” What was less clear is whether Snowden had voluntarily participated in this “special operation” that effectively took him into custody. Wherever Snowden and Harrison were next taken-- the “transit zone” extends beyond the airport to medical and other facilities— he was not brought to Terminal E, where the next Aeroflot flight to Cuba departed at 1:40 PM on June 24" 2013. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020346