Whistle-blower | 95

Whistle-blower | 95 the NSA “to wiretap anyone, even the president,” the press largely accepted his claims as established facts. As for American surveillance, he declared, “I don’t want to live in a society that does those sorts of things.” The Guardian story accompanying the video carried the headline “Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveil- lance Revelations.” Overnight, Snowden became a global celebrity and, to much of the world, a hero. The next morning he packed his belongings into a backpack and moved, without notifying the front desk, to another room Poitras had rented at the Mira. Complicated schemes, especially when they involve transferring state secrets to unauthorized parties in a for- eign country, do not necessarily go as planned. That was true of Snowden’s escape plan. Snowden had no plan to stay put and face the music. On the morning of June 10, though, there was apparently a problem. Robert Tibbo and Jonathan Man, the lawyers who, along with Albert Ho, had been retained for Snowden by an unidentified party, received an emergency phone call early in the morning tell- © ing them to help Snowden move to a safe location. Although Tibbo © would not identify the person who had called, the message had been relayed to Man and him through Ho’s office. When Tibbo called Snowden offering to help him move, Snowden told him, “I can make myself unrecognizable.” Tibbo and Man immediately proceeded to the mall adjacent to the Mira hotel, where they met Snowden. After he signed a docu- ment appointing Ho’s law firm as his “legal adviser,” the three of them slipped out via the mall exit. Tibbo and Man planned to move Snowden to the apartments of refugees who were their clients. Snowden’s credit card had been frozen, so it is not clear who paid his sizable hotel bill. According to hotel records, it was paid by another credit card. Poitras, who had taken a room at the hotel, might have used her own credit card, or Snowden might have had another benefactor in Hong Kong. In any case, the lawyers escorted Snowden to a prearranged residence. “T am in a safe house for now,” Snowden wrote to Greenwald on June 11. The situation might not have been totally under his control, because he added, “But I have no idea how safe it is.” | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 95 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019583