If I end up in chains in Guantaénamo, I can live with that

CHAPTER 12 Fugitive If I end up in chains in Guantaénamo, I can live with that. —EDWARD SNOWDEN, Hong Kong, 2013 URING HIS INTERVIEWS with Poitras and Greenwald in June, Snowden said stoically, “If I am arrested, I am arrested.” His fatalistic words notwithstanding, Snowden had made plans to seek a haven from American justice well before his meeting them. As early as May 24, 2013, he had suggested to Barton Gellman that he was making arrangements with a foreign government. To that end, he asked Gellman to insert an encrypted key in the Internet version of the NSA exposé that Snowden proposed he write for The Washington Post. He told him the purpose of the encrypted key was to assist him with a foreign government. Snowden did not iden- tify any foreign government to Gellman, but Gellman said he knew that Snowden wanted to “seek asylum” overseas. He decided against assisting him. “I can’t help him evade U.S. jurisdiction—I don’t want to, and I can’t,” he later explained. “It’s not my job. It’s not the rela- tionship. I am a journalist.” Although Gellman suspected that Iceland might be the foreign government in question, Snowden, as it turned out, had never con- | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 105 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019593