| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020244)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020244" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2329 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 92 |
| CHAPTER ELEVEN |
| The Escape Artist |
| "I'm not self-destructive. I don't want to self-immolate and erase myself from the pages of history. But if we don't |
| take chances, we can't win." |
| --Snowden in Moscow |
| The next evening Snowden drove to Honolulu International Airport. He left his leased car in |
| the parking lot. He took with him only carry-on baggage, including a back-pack and a laptop |
| with a TOR sticker on it. "I took everything I had on my back," he said. Before leaving he also |
| packed in his luggage the cash that would pay for his fugitive life. Along with the cash, he took |
| the thumb drives containing the NSA's keys to the kingdom. |
| At this point, Snowden was still a free man. He was not wanted by the authorities. He had |
| provided his employer and the NSA with a medical excuse for his absence from work so he would |
| not be immediately missed. He also had a valid passport, a credit card, and ID. He had he yet |
| made arrangements to meet the journalists. Snowden's destination was Hong Kong. After |
| crossing the International Date Line, Snowden waited three hours in the transit zone of Narita. |
| Here he was reportedly captured by the airports CCTV cameras sitting alone. He then boarded a |
| plane to Hong Kong. After the four-hour long flight from Narita, he arrived in Hong Kong early |
| in the morning on May 20th. |
| He had visited Hong Kong at least once before with Lindsay Mills when he was stationed in |
| Japan. He had also made some arrangements. According to Albert Ho, his Hong Kong Lawyer, |
| Snowden stayed at a residence arranged for him in advance by a party whom Snowden knew prior |
| to his arrival. This "carer," Ho said, had assisted Snowden with his logistics. For the next ten |
| days, Snowden did not use his credit card or leave any paper trail to his location. Wherever he |
| was, |
| "his first priority," as he told Greenwald, was to find a place safe from US countermeasures. |
| He brought with him a large number of electronic copies of NSA documents marked "TS/SCI/ |
| NOFORN, which stood for Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmentalized Information and No |
| Foreign Distribution. According to government rules, data carrying these labels could not be |
| removed from a government-approved "SCI facility." Yet Snowden, who brought them with him |
| into this semi-autonomous zone in China, intended to break these rules. |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020244 |
|
|
