parents separated, Snowden’s mother, Wendy, bought a two-bedroom condominium in Elliott

45 parents separated, Snowden’s mother, Wendy, bought a two-bedroom condominium in Elliott City, Maryland. She moved Snowden, along with his two cats, into the condominium. She remained in the family house while awaiting its sale. According to his neighbor Joyce Kinsey, Snowden, alone, stayed home almost all the time. From what she could observe, he spent long hours in front of a computer screen. At the age of 18, Snowden was still living by himself, while other teens his age went to college, Snowden now devoted a large part of his time playing fantasy games on the Internet. Posting under the alias “The TrueHooHa” on a web site called Ars Technica, he showed himself to be a passionate gamer. He was especially drawn to Anime, a graphically violent style of Japanese animation. These Anime games had by 2002 achieved a fanatic following in both Japan and the United States. He claimed special skills at Takken, a martial arts fighting game. He even went to Anime conventions in the Washington DC area. When he became a webmaster for Ryuhana Press, a website running these anime-based games, he described himself somewhat fancifully as a 37-year old father of two children, The only clearly true part of his description was that he was born on “the longest day of the year” (June 21). He also apparently valued changing his body. He wrote Internet posts under his TrueHooHa alias about how he used weightlifting and intensive training to precision-shape his body. He bragged to his online followers that he had reduced his “body fat percentage to between 9.5% and 10.5%” (which was less than half of the average for his age.) He appeared somewhat restless with his solitary life in a Maryland suburb in his almost daily postings. He expressed a longing to go to Japan. “I’ve always dreamed of being able to "make it" in Japan. I've taken Japanese for a year and a half,” he posted in 2002. Despite his claim of learning Japanese, there is no record of him taking any courses in Japanese. But it perhaps part of his yearning. He also wrote that he wore “cool” purple sunglasses, practiced martial arts and was a fan of Japanese cuisine. He described himself at one point, as if advertising his virtues, as having a “head of vibrant, shimmering blond hair (with volume).” In pursuit of an employment opportunity in Japan, he posted “I’d love a cushy gov job over there.” Eventually, he gave up on the idea of relocating himself to Japan because, as he explained in a post, he would have to put his cats in quarantine for six months. Snowden’s father meanwhile moved to Pennsylvania with his new wife-to-be. This left Snowden with only one male family member in the area, his maternal grandfather, Admiral Edward J. Barrett. Unlike Snowden’s virtual career on the Internet, where at one point Snowden invented for himself two fantasy children, Admiral Barrett became a real actor in the top echelon of US intelligence. After the Coast Guard, he moved to the Pentagon. He was actually in the Pentagon when a plane piloted by terrorists crashed into it on 9-11. He emerged unscathed and, by 2004, was a top official in the intelligence regime that operated the interrogation center at Guantanamo. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020197