Snowden and Putin: U.S. Whistleblower’s Fate Is in Russian President’s Hands

For Russia‘s spy agencies, the arrival of Edward Snowden in Moscow on Sunday would have presented a great temptation, like a king salmon jumping into the lap of a grisly bear. Here was a bona fide American intelligence source alighting in Russia with no valid passport, no bodyguards and no legal protections, possibly carrying several hard drives full of U.S. secrets and, apparently, unfriendly feelings toward his former employers at the CIA and the NSA.

But on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin said his men had been keeping their distance. “Our special services have never worked with Mr. Snowden and are not working with him today,” Putin said. “As a transit passenger, he is in the transit hall [of the airport], and that is where he remains.”

So for two days Snowden has been hanging out among the stiff-backed chairs and lousy cafes of Sheremetyevo airport, within whispering distance of Russian spies, and all of them have avoided “working” with him? That would be a feat of restraint. The Kremlin’s intelligence agencies spend enormous resources trying to learn the kinds of secrets that Snowden possesses. And the U.S. surveillance programs he has already exposed to the Guardian and the Washington Post newspapers seem to be just a taste of the information he is carrying.

According to Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian columnist who first reported the leak, Snowden has “in his possession thousands of documents, which, if published, would impose crippling damage on the United States’ surveillance capabilities and systems around the world.” At least in the past, Russian security services would have killed — literally — to get their hands on such a cache of documents.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/06/25/snowden-and-putin-u-s-whistleblowers-fate-is-in-russian-presidents-hands/#ixzz2XGQaucHY