Epstein Secrets

hared all of it with the Russians, and they are very grateful.” This assessment was backed by Frants Klintsevich. As the first deputy chairman of the Kremlin’s defense and security committee at the time of Snowden’s defection, he was | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 166 @ 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE

ncerning the NSA hacking of the cell phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. The story was published on October 23 on the Der Spiegel website. Appelbaum was the co- author of the story. Even though Snowden had by now been in Rus- sia for four months, he was cited in the story, along with unnamed “othe

n with the FSB and other Russian agencies. At the outset, Kucherena made it clear to Snowden that he would have to play by Moscow’s tules before the Kremlin would grant him permission to stay in Russia. To begin with, Snowden had to withdraw any and application he had made elsewhere for asylum. He had to

len documents, Wikileaks became a media sensation and Assange, the runner-up for Zime’s Man-of-the Year for 2010, became a leading figure, along with Appelbaum, in the global hacktavist underground. In November 2010, however, he also ran into a legal problem. A judge in Stockholm, Sweden ordered his detentio

ander Litvinenko in London, I had interviewed a number of people in Moscow, including Andrei Lugovoy. A former KGB officer assigned to protecting the Kremlin’s top members in the 1990s, Lugovoy later opened his own security company. In 2005, he became a business associate of Litvinenko’s in gathering infor

ing Stone interview with Jacob Appelbaum, “Meet the Most Dangerous Man in Cyberspace: The American Behind Wikileaks, Rolling Stone, December 2,2010 “Appelbaum acted to defeat-...”—George Packer, The Holder of Secrets, The New Yorker, October 20, 2014 “She identified herself in Forbes...’”—Runa A Sandvik, F