Epstein Secrets

ly that any communication or movement, Snowden made during his next 18 days in Hong Kong would escape its scrutiny. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020338 187 The U.Ss also had the ability to track Snowden’s movements via the cell phones of his lawyers and other confederates after he surfaced. This tracking could al

wald, Poitras and MacAskill did not concern themselves with the issue of the mechanics of the largest theft of top secret documents in the history of the United States. In entire filmed interview at the Mira Hotel, they did not ask their source how he managed to get access to the documents. Unlike those interviews,

out after the Cold War ended, the KGB also had the ability to sustain moles for decades. The CIA also had its share of long term successes, such as Alexander Poteyev, who fed the CIA secrets for over ten years while burrowing into Russian intelligence. In the choreography of these operations, as in Le Carre’s fict

le awaiting his trial and was facing a long prison sentence. There was no reason for Snowden to expect a better outcome for himself if he returned to the United States or was arrested anywhere else that had an extradition treaty with the United States. As the Russian officials in Hong Kong would have informed him, R

sian espionage. It came in the form of a message from one of its best-placed moles in the Russian intelligence service. This surreptitious source was Alexander Poteyev, a fifty-four-year- old colonel in the SVR, which was the successor agency to the first chief directorate of the KGB. While the FSB took over the KGB

his anonymous data was archived into a huge database. The idea was that when any foreigner on the FBI’s watch list of terrorists called any number in the United States, the FBI could trace that person’s entire chain of telephone contacts to try to determine if he or she was connected to a known terrorist cell. There

who requested anonymity, interview with author. CHAPTER 18 The Unheeded Warning 185 “The NSA—the world’s”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 287. 185 Alexander Poteyev: Sergei L. Loiko, “Former Russian Spymaster Convicted of Treason,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2011. 186 “live under cover in the West”: Pavel Sudop