Why Has Edward Snowden Gone Underground Since Ukraine Invasion?

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor and press freedom advocate who has lived in Moscow in exile since 2013, hasn’t uttered a word publicly on Russia’s move to criminalize independent reporting about its invasion of Ukraine.

Snowden is the president of Freedom of the Press Foundation, a California-based charity that tracks “press freedom violations” in the United States as minor as journalists being denied access to press conferences. As recently as Jan. 26, Snowden urged Danish citizens to resist their government after it threatened to impose lengthy prison sentences to members of the media who reported on state secrets.

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But Snowden hasn’t said anything publicly, let alone issued a call for active resistance from the Russian people, about the legislation signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week that threatens imprisonment of up to 15 years for spreading what the Russian government deems to be “fake information.”

Examples of “fake information” in the eyes of the Russian government include any reporting about its invasion of Ukraine that isn’t sourced directly from the Russian Defense Ministry.

The law has led numerous Western news outlets to suspend reporting in Russia in recent days.

“The change to the criminal code, which seems designed to turn any independent reporter into a criminal purely by association, makes it impossible to continue any semblance of normal journalism inside the country,” Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said Friday.

Snowden and the Freedom of the Press Foundation did not return requests for comment.

Snowden issued numerous tweets in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine criticizing the Biden administration for claiming Russia’s invasion was imminent and blasting American media for “pushing for war.”

“So… if nobody shows up for the invasion Biden scheduled for tomorrow morning at 3AM, I’m not saying your journalistic credibility was instrumentalized as part of one of those disinformation campaigns you like to write about, but you should at least consider the possibility,” Snowden tweeted on Feb. 15.

Snowden hasn’t posted a tweet to his 5.1 million followers since Feb. 27, three days after the start of Russia’s invasion.

“I’m not suspended from the ceiling above a barrel of acid by a rope that burns a little faster every time I tweet, you concern-trolling ghouls,” he said. “I’ve just lost any confidence I had that sharing my thinking on this particular topic continues to be useful, because I called it wrong.”

The Russian government granted Snowden permanent residency in October 2020. Snowden says he has never cooperated with or received funding from the Russian government.

Snowden worked at the CIA prior to a stint as a contractor for the National Security Agency. In 2013, he left his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, flew to Hong Kong, and soon disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists. Snowden revealed not just domestic surveillance programs, but also exposed global national security operations by the U.S. and its allies. Snowden, who was granted asylum by Russia and lives in Moscow, was charged with violating the Espionage Act.

The House Intelligence Committee, which released a redacted 36-page report on Snowden in 2016, argued Snowden “was not a whistleblower” and “was, and remains, a serial exaggerator and fabricator.”

“Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests — they instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries,” the HPSCI report read. “He handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states.”

The report also cast doubt on Snowden’s timeline of events: “Two weeks before Snowden began mass downloads of classified documents, he was reprimanded after engaging in a workplace spat with NSA managers. … Despite Snowden’s later claim that the March 2013 congressional testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was a ‘breaking point’ for him, these mass downloads predated Director Clapper’s testimony by eight months.”

The report indicated that “in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense and security committee publicly conceded that ‘Snowden did share intelligence’ with his government.”

Snowden also gave a 2013 interview to the South China Morning Post while hiding out in Hong Kong, claiming that “we hack network backbones … that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers.” He also claimed that the NSA hacks Chinese cellphone companies and that U.S. spies hacked Chinese universities.

The committee sent a bipartisan letter to then-President Barack Obama, saying Snowden “took the material to China and Russia — two regimes that routinely violate their citizens’ privacy and civil liberties.”

Among the signatories were current Democratic Chairman Adam Schiff, former Republican Chairman Devin Nunes, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then a congressman.

Trump tweeted about Snowden dozens of times before becoming president, calling the leaker a “traitor” and a “spy” as he lamented that “we are being embarrassed by Russia and China on Snowden.”

“I’m not that aware of the Snowden situation, but I’m going to start looking at it,” Trump said after being asked about a possible pardon in August 2020.

Then-Attorney General William Barr said he was “vehemently opposed” to pardoning the “traitor.”

The day Trump left office without pardoning him, Snowden tweeted: “I am not at all disappointed to go unpardoned by a man who has never known a love he had not paid for.”