The message was blunt and was delivered Friday night by a shadowy emissary who didn't identify himself but knew enough to locate Edward Snowden's secret caretaker: The 30-year-old American accused of leaking some of his country's most sensitive secrets should leave Hong Kong, the messenger said, and if he decided to depart the authorities would not interfere with his travel plans.
Since he had revealed himself on June 9 as the person who had turned over classified documents to The Washington Post and to The Guardian, Snowden had moved between different hideaways guided by a Hong Kong resident, according to one of his lawyers, Albert Ho. Like the emissary, the caretaker's name has not been disclosed, but Ho said the resident "must be well-connected."
For more than a week, the U.S. government had been pressing the government of Hong Kong, a semiautonomous part of China, to arrest Snowden. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder placed a call to his counterpart in Hong Kong. U.S. diplomats, the FBI and lawyers at the Justice Department all weighed in to urge Snowden's detention. But the newly disclosed details of Snowden's stay in Hong Kong indicate that the authorities there, probably acting with the guidance of Beijing, didn't want him to stay in Hong Kong for a long, messy legal process to determine whether he would be extradited, U.S. officials said Monday. The new information also raises question about whether the White House could have done more to prevent the former National Security Agency contractor from slipping away.