reset button in this game. The best that the NSA could do now was damage control while its

188 reset button in this game. The best that the NSA could do now was damage control while its adversaries took full advantage of the setback. Several hundred US and British intelligence officers worked around the clock in Washington DC, Fort Meade, Maryland and Cheltenham, England for months on end to determine if which parts could be still salvaged from what had been until the Snowden breach the most powerful communications intelligence system in the world. Adding insult to injury, Snowden, speaking from his new perch in Moscow, told applauding audience that the entire purpose of the U.S. exercise, including deliberately “trapping” him in Moscow, was to “demonize” him. For Russia, it was a textbook move. By providing Snowden with this platform to rail against the surveillance practices of his adversaries, Putin laid claim to the moral high ground in the Game of Nations. What remains missing from this picture is Snowden's motive in requesting documents from other foreign intelligence services, such as the GCHQ, and copying lists of NSA sources. It is difficult to believe that his motive was conventional whistle-blowing since these documents were not among those | he gave to journalists in Hong Kong. It will be recalled that his legal representative in Moscow, Anatoly Kucherena, said that he taken to Russia, and had access to, NSA documents that he had not given to journalists. He had gone effort in his final weeks at the NSA to take documents that any adversary service would prize. Copying them was, as we have seen, part of his well-calculated plan. Did he use them, as he used the documents he gave to Poitras, Greenwald and Gellman, as leverage in his transformation? Since the role that Moscow may have played in Snowden’s remarkable defection, while less visible than that of the movie- makers, journalists and activist, cannot be ignored in this puzzle. Since it requires a closer examination of the machinations that brought Snowden to Russia, I made arrangements to visit Moscow in October 2015. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020340