Epstein Secrets

that other glaring gap in the chain of events that led Snowden to Moscow: his whereabouts and activi- ties during his first eleven days in Hong Kong. Mike Rogers, the @ chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, even sug- @ gested, without any evidence, that Snowden might have been taken to mainl

cknowledges: Bamford, “Edward Snowden.” 154 “absence of evidence”: Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), 49. 154 “The greatest trick”: Cherkashin, interview with author. The quotation from The Usual Suspects was adopted by the movie from Charles Baudelaire’s observation “La plus belle des rus

th author. Cuarter 25 Through the Looking Glass 254 “There's definitely a deep state”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.” 255 according to Cherkashin: Cherkashin, interview with author. 258 Pelton had left the NSA: George E. Curry, “Ex-intelligence Expert Guilty of Espionage,” Chicago Tribune, Jun

ains another glaring gap in the chain of events that led Snowden to Moscow: his whereabouts and activities during his first eleven days in Hong Kong. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, even speculated that Snowden might have been taken to mainland China during this period.

201 “Tt was the information in his head that we wanted.” Cherkashin said that as KGB rarely got access to any NSA officer, it was worth the risk. So he was given $5,000 in cash and a plane ticket to Vienna, where he w

the NSA would have received its full attention after he contacted Russian officials in Hong Kong. While the tactics of the SVR may have changed since Cherkashin retired, its objectives remained the same. And the NSA remained its principal target. Nor is there any reason to doubt that it still measures success

of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said after she was briefed on Snowden’s theft. “I think it’s an act of treason.” The Republican representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, her coun- @ terpart on the House Intelligence Committee, said on the NBC pro- @ gram Meet the Press that Snowden might be working for a

then cited the signature line from the movie The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” Cherkashin thinly smiled and said, “CIA denial [of moles] certainly helped.” In view of such past successes of the Russian intelligence services, it cannot be