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

ght not be totally coincidental. Snowden blamed high officials in the U.S. government who pur- posely “trapped him” in Russia. He told the editor of The Nation, “I’m in exile. My government revoked my passport intentionally to leave me exiled” and “chose to keep me in Russia.” He repeated that assertion over

T_019753 266 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS Alexander Litvinenko, I had interviewed 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

ca, because the CIA can oper- ate with impunity down there,” he explained in the previously cited interview with Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation, in 2014. He had already discussed the likelihood of his being captured in Ecuador with Assange before his departure for Moscow. He later told Alan R

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

osed NSA surveillance: James Bamford writing for Wired magazine, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation. He also gave a televised interview to Brian Williams of NBC News in which he explained that since he had no access to the NSA documents in Russia, h