title: Edward Snowden

text: In his May 2014 interview with NBC News, Snowden accused the U.S. government of trying to use one position here or there in his career to distract from the totality of his experience, downplaying him as a "low-level analyst." In his words, he was "trained as a spy in the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseas—pretending to work in a job that I'm not—and even being assigned a name that was not mine." He said he'd worked for the NSA undercover overseas, and for the DIA had developed sources and methods to keep information and people secure "in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world. So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading." In a June interview with Globo TV, Snowden reiterated that he "was actually functioning at a very senior level." In a July interview with "The Guardian", Snowden explained that, during his NSA career, "I began to move from merely overseeing these systems to actively directing their use. Many people don't understand that I was actually an analyst and I designated individuals and groups for targeting." Snowden subsequently told "Wired" that while at Dell in 2011, "I would sit down with the CIO of the CIA, the CTO of the CIA, the chiefs of all the technical branches. They would tell me their hardest technology problems, and it was my job to come up with a way to fix them."


title: Edward Snowden

text: During his time as an NSA analyst, directing the work of others, Snowden recalled a moment when he and his colleagues began to have severe ethical doubts. Snowden said 18 to 22-year-old analysts were suddenly"thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility, where they now have access to all your private records. In the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated in any sort of necessary sense—for example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation. But they're extremely attractive. So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker ... and sooner or later this person's whole life has been seen by all of these other people." Snowden observed that this behavior happened routinely every two months but was never reported, being considered one of the "fringe benefits" of the work.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden has described himself as a whistleblower, a description used by many sources, including CNBC, "The New Yorker", Reuters, and "The Guardian", among others. The term has both informal and legal meanings.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden said that he had told multiple employees and two supervisors about his concerns, but the NSA disputes his claim. Snowden elaborated in January 2014, saying "[I] made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the proper clearance who would listen. The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom to go to through what [Thomas Andrews] Drake did." In March 2014, during testimony to the European Parliament, Snowden wrote that before revealing classified information he had reported "clearly problematic programs" to ten officials, who he said did nothing in response. In a May 2014 interview, Snowden told NBC News that after bringing his concerns about the legality of the NSA spying programs to officials, he was told to stay silent on the matter. He said that the NSA had copies of emails he sent to their Office of General Counsel, oversight, and compliance personnel broaching "concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In May 2014, U.S. officials released a single email that Snowden had written in April 2013 inquiring about legal authorities but said that they had found no other evidence that Snowden had expressed his concerns to someone in an oversight position. In June 2014, the NSA said it had not been able to find any records of Snowden raising internal complaints about the agency's operations. That same month, Snowden explained that he had not produced the communiqués in question because of the ongoing nature of the dispute, disclosing for the first time that "I am working with the NSA in regard to these records and we're going back and forth, so I don't want to reveal everything that will come out."


title: Edward Snowden

text: Self-description as a whistleblower and attribution as such in news reports does not determine whether he qualifies as a whistleblower within the meaning of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (5 USC 2303(b)(8)-(9); Pub. Law 101-12). However, Snowden's potential status as a Whistleblower under the 1989 Act is not directly addressed in the criminal complaint against him in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (see below) (Case No. 1:13 CR 265 (0MH)). These and similar and related issues are discussed in an essay by David Pozen, in a chapter of the book "Whistleblowing Nation", published in March 2020, an adaptation of which also appeared on "Lawfare Blog" in March 2019.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The unclassified portion of a September 15, 2016, report by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), initiated by the chairman and Ranking Member in August 2014, and posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, concluded that Snowden was not a whistleblower in the sense required by the Whistleblower Protection Act. The bulk of the report is classified.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The exact size of Snowden's disclosure is unknown, but Australian officials have estimated 15,000 or more Australian intelligence files and British officials estimate at least 58,000 British intelligence files were included. NSA Director Keith Alexander initially estimated that Snowden had copied anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 NSA documents. Later estimates provided by U.S. officials were in the order of 1.7 million, a number that originally came from Department of Defense talking points. In July 2014, "The Washington Post" reported on a cache previously provided by Snowden from domestic NSA operations consisting of "roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts." A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report declassified in June 2015 said that Snowden took 900,000 Department of Defense files, more than he downloaded from the NSA.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In March 2014, Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee, "The vast majority of the documents that Snowden ... exfiltrated from our highest levels of security ... had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities. The vast majority of those were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures." When asked in a May 2014 interview to quantify the number of documents Snowden stole, retired NSA director Keith Alexander said there was no accurate way of counting what he took, but Snowden may have downloaded more than a million documents.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In a 2013 Associated Press interview, Glenn Greenwald stated:"In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do." Thus the Snowden documents allegedly contained sensitive NSA "blueprints" detailing how the NSA operates, and which would allow someone who read them to evade or even duplicate NSA surveillance. Further, a July 20, 2015 "New York Times" article reported that the terror group Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) had studied revelations from Snowden, about how the United States gathered information on militants, the main result is that the group's top leaders used couriers or encrypted channels to avoid being tracked or monitoring of their communications by Western analysts.


title: Edward Snowden

text: According to Snowden, he did not indiscriminately turn over documents to journalists, stating that "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over" and that "I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists ... If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country." Despite these measures, the improper redaction of a document by "The New York Times" resulted in the exposure of intelligence activity against al-Qaeda.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In June 2014, the NSA's recently installed director, U.S. Navy Admiral Michael S. Rogers, said that while some terrorist groups had altered their communications to avoid surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden, the damage done was not significant enough to conclude that "the sky is falling." Nevertheless, in February 2015, Rogers said that Snowden's disclosures had a material impact on the NSA's detection and evaluation of terrorist activities worldwide.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 14, 2015, the London "Sunday Times" reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies. "The Sunday Times" said it was not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden's data or whether Snowden voluntarily handed it over to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow. In April 2015, the Henry Jackson Society, a British neoconservative think tank, published a report claiming that Snowden's intelligence leaks negatively impacted Britain's ability to fight terrorism and organized crime. Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, criticized the report for, in his opinion, presuming that the public became concerned about privacy only after Snowden's disclosures.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden's decision to leak NSA documents developed gradually following his March 2007 posting as a technician to the Geneva CIA station. Snowden later made contact with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working at "The Guardian". He contacted Greenwald anonymously as "Cincinnatus" and said he had sensitive documents that he would like to share. Greenwald found the measures that the source asked him to take to secure their communications, such as encrypting email, too annoying to employ. Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013. According to Poitras, Snowden chose to contact her after seeing her "New York Times" article about NSA whistleblower William Binney. What originally attracted Snowden to Greenwald and Poitras was a "Salon" article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras's controversial films had made her a target of the government.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February or April 2013, after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City, at which point Snowden began providing documents to them. Barton Gellman, writing for "The Washington Post", says his first direct contact was on May 16, 2013. According to Gellman, Snowden approached Greenwald after the "Post" declined to guarantee publication within 72 hours of all 41 PowerPoint slides that Snowden had leaked exposing the PRISM electronic data mining program, and to publish online an encrypted code allowing Snowden to later prove that he was the source.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden communicated using encrypted email, and going by the codename "Verax". He asked not to be quoted at length for fear of identification by stylometry.


title: Edward Snowden

text: According to Gellman, before their first meeting in person, Snowden wrote, "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions and that the return of this information to the public marks my end." Snowden also told Gellman that until the articles were published, the journalists working with him would also be at mortal risk from the United States Intelligence Community "if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In May 2013, Snowden was permitted temporary leave from his position at the NSA in Hawaii, on the pretext of receiving treatment for his epilepsy. In mid-May, Snowden gave an electronic interview to Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum which was published weeks later by "Der Spiegel".


title: Edward Snowden

text: After disclosing the copied documents, Snowden promised that nothing would stop subsequent disclosures. In June 2013, he said, "All I can say right now is the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."


title: Edward Snowden

text: On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where he was staying when the initial articles based on the leaked documents were published, beginning with "The Guardian" on June 5. Greenwald later said Snowden disclosed 9,000 to 10,000 documents.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Within months, documents had been obtained and published by media outlets worldwide, most notably "The Guardian" (Britain), "Der Spiegel" (Germany), "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times" (U.S.), "O Globo" (Brazil), "Le Monde" (France), and similar outlets in Sweden, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Australia. In 2014, NBC broke its first story based on the leaked documents. In February 2014, for reporting based on Snowden's leaks, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and "The Guardian′"s Ewen MacAskill were honored as co-recipients of the 2013 George Polk Award, which they dedicated to Snowden. The NSA reporting by these journalists also earned "The Guardian" and "The Washington Post" the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing the "widespread surveillance" and for helping to spark a "huge public debate about the extent of the government's spying". "The Guardian"s chief editor, Alan Rusbridger, credited Snowden for having performed a public service.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The ongoing publication of leaked documents has revealed previously unknown details of a global surveillance apparatus run by the United States' NSA in close cooperation with three of its four Five Eyes partners: Australia's ASD, the UK's GCHQ, and Canada's CSEC.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 5, 2013, media reports documenting the existence and functions of classified surveillance programs and their scope began and continued throughout the entire year. The first program to be revealed was PRISM, which allows for court-approved direct access to Americans' Google and Yahoo accounts, reported from both "The Washington Post" and "The Guardian" published one hour apart. Barton Gellman of "The Washington Post" was the first journalist to report on Snowden's documents. He said the U.S. government urged him not to specify by name which companies were involved, but Gellman decided that to name them "would make it real to Americans." Reports also revealed details of Tempora, a secret British surveillance program run by the NSA's British partner, GCHQ. The initial reports included details about NSA call database, Boundless Informant, and of a secret court order requiring Verizon to hand the NSA millions of Americans' phone records daily, the surveillance of French citizens' phone and Internet records, and those of "high-profile individuals from the world of business or politics." XKeyscore, an analytical tool that allows for collection of "almost anything done on the internet," was described by "The Guardian" as a program that shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements: "I, sitting at my desk [could] wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email."


title: Edward Snowden

text: The NSA's top-secret black budget, obtained from Snowden by "The Washington Post", exposed the successes and failures of the 16 spy agencies comprising the U.S. intelligence community, and revealed that the NSA was paying U.S. private tech companies for clandestine access to their communications networks. The agencies were allotted $52 billion for the 2013 fiscal year.


title: Edward Snowden

text: It was revealed that the NSA was harvesting millions of email and instant messaging contact lists, searching email content, tracking and mapping the location of cell phones, undermining attempts at encryption via Bullrun and that the agency was using cookies to piggyback on the same tools used by Internet advertisers "to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance." The NSA was shown to be secretly accessing Yahoo and Google data centers to collect information from hundreds of millions of account holders worldwide by tapping undersea cables using the MUSCULAR surveillance program.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The NSA, the CIA and GCHQ spied on users of "Second Life", Xbox Live and "World of Warcraft", and attempted to recruit would-be informants from the sites, according to documents revealed in December 2013. Leaked documents showed NSA agents also spied on their own "love interests," a practice NSA employees termed LOVEINT. The NSA was shown to be tracking the online sexual activity of people they termed "radicalizers" in order to discredit them. Following the revelation of Black Pearl, a program targeting private networks, the NSA was accused of extending beyond its primary mission of national security. The agency's intelligence-gathering operations had targeted, among others, oil giant Petrobras, Brazil's largest company. The NSA and the GCHQ were also shown to be surveilling charities including UNICEF and Médecins du Monde, as well as allies such as European Commissioner Joaquín Almunia and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In October 2013, Glenn Greenwald said "the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish." In November, "The Guardian"s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger said that only one percent of the documents had been published. In December, Australia's Minister for Defence David Johnston said his government assumed the worst was yet to come.


title: Edward Snowden

text: By October 2013, Snowden's disclosures had created tensions between the U.S. and some of its close allies after they revealed that the U.S. had spied on Brazil, France, Mexico, Britain, China, Germany, and Spain, as well as 35 world leaders, most notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said "spying among friends" was unacceptable and compared the NSA with the Stasi. Leaked documents published by "Der Spiegel" in 2014 appeared to show that the NSA had targeted 122 high-ranking leaders.


title: Edward Snowden

text: An NSA mission statement titled "SIGINT Strategy 2012-2016" affirmed that the NSA had plans for the continued expansion of surveillance activities. Their stated goal was to "dramatically increase mastery of the global network" and to acquire adversaries' data from "anyone, anytime, anywhere." Leaked slides revealed in Greenwald's book "No Place to Hide", released in May 2014, showed that the NSA's stated objective was to "Collect it All," "Process it All," "Exploit it All," "Partner it All," "Sniff it All" and "Know it All."


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden said in a January 2014 interview with German television that the NSA does not limit its data collection to national security issues, accusing the agency of conducting industrial espionage. Using the example of German company Siemens, he said, "If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to US national interests—even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security—then they'll take that information nevertheless." In the wake of Snowden's revelations and in response to an inquiry from the Left Party, Germany's domestic security agency Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) investigated and found no concrete evidence that the U.S. conducted economic or industrial espionage in Germany.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In February 2014, during testimony to the European Union, Snowden said of the remaining undisclosed programs, "I will leave the public interest determinations as to which of these may be safely disclosed to responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In March 2014, documents disclosed by Glenn Greenwald writing for "The Intercept" showed the NSA, in cooperation with the GCHQ, has plans to infect millions of computers with malware using a program called TURBINE. Revelations included information about QUANTUMHAND, a program through which the NSA set up a fake Facebook server to intercept connections.


title: Edward Snowden

text: According to a report in "The Washington Post" in July 2014, relying on information furnished by Snowden, 90% of those placed under surveillance in the U.S. are ordinary Americans and are not the intended targets. The newspaper said it had examined documents including emails, message texts, and online accounts that support the claim.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In an August 2014 interview, Snowden for the first time disclosed a cyberwarfare program in the works, codenamed MonsterMind, that would automate the detection of a foreign cyberattack as it began and automatically fire back. "These attacks can be spoofed," said Snowden. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?"


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden first contemplated leaking confidential documents around 2008 but held back, partly because he believed the newly elected Barack Obama might introduce reforms. After the disclosures, his identity was made public by "The Guardian" at his request on June 9, 2013. "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded," he said. "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden said he wanted to "embolden others to step forward" by demonstrating that "they can win." He also said that the system for reporting problems did not work. "You have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it." He cited a lack of whistleblower protection for government contractors, the use of the Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute leakers and the belief that had he used internal mechanisms to "sound the alarm," his revelations "would have been buried forever."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In December 2013, upon learning that a U.S. federal judge had ruled the collection of U.S. phone metadata conducted by the NSA as likely unconstitutional, Snowden said, "I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts ... today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In January 2014, Snowden said his "breaking point" was "seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress." This referred to testimony on March 12, 2013—three months after Snowden first sought to share thousands of NSA documents with Greenwald, and nine months after the NSA says Snowden made his first illegal downloads during the summer of 2012—in which Clapper denied to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA wittingly collects data on millions of Americans. Snowden said, "There's no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions. Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back. Beyond that, it was the creeping realization that no one else was going to do this. The public had a right to know about these programs." In March 2014, Snowden said he had reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than ten officials, but as a contractor had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In May 2013, Snowden quit his job, telling his supervisors he required epilepsy treatment, but instead fled the United States for Hong Kong on May 10. He chose Hong Kong because at the time “they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent”. Snowden had been in his room at the Mira Hotel since his arrival in the city, rarely going out.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden vowed to challenge any extradition attempt by the U.S. government, and engaged a Hong Kong-based Canadian human rights lawyer Robert Tibbo as a legal adviser. Snowden told the "South China Morning Post" that he planned to remain in Hong Kong for as long as its government would permit. Snowden also told the "Post" that "the United States government has committed a tremendous number of crimes against Hong Kong [and] the PRC as well," going on to identify Chinese Internet Protocol addresses that the NSA monitored and stating that the NSA collected text-message data for Hong Kong residents. Glenn Greenwald said Snowden was motivated by a need to "ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China."


title: Edward Snowden

text: After leaving the Mira Hotel, Snowden was housed for two weeks in several apartments by other refugees seeking asylum in Hong Kong, an arrangement set up by Tibbo to hide from the US authorities.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The Russian newspaper "Kommersant" nevertheless reported that Snowden was living at the Russian consulate shortly before his departure from Hong Kong to Moscow. Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and legal adviser to Snowden, said in January 2014, "Every news organization in the world has been trying to confirm that story. They haven't been able to, because it's false."<ref name="Mayer/New Yorker"></ref> Likewise rejecting the "Kommersant" story was Anatoly Kucherena, who became Snowden's lawyer in July 2013 when Snowden asked him for help in seeking temporary asylum in Russia. Kucherena said Snowden did not communicate with Russian diplomats while he was in Hong Kong. In early September 2013, however, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that, a few days before boarding a plane to Moscow, Snowden met in Hong Kong with Russian diplomatic representatives.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 22, 18 days after the publication of Snowden's NSA documents began, officials revoked his U.S. passport. On June 23, Snowden boarded a commercial Aeroflot flight, SU213, to Moscow, accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks, with an intended final destination of Ecuador due to an Ecuadorian emergency travel document that Snowden had acquired. However Snowden became initially stranded in Russia upon his landing in Moscow when his U.S. passport was revoked. Hong Kong authorities said that Snowden had not been detained for the U.S. because the request had not fully complied with Hong Kong law, and there was no legal basis to prevent Snowden from leaving. On June 24, a U.S. State Department spokesman rejected the explanation of technical noncompliance, accusing the Hong Kong government of deliberately releasing a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant and after having sufficient time to prohibit his travel. That same day, Julian Assange said that WikiLeaks had paid for Snowden's lodging in Hong Kong and his flight out. Assange also asked Fidel Narváez, consul at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, to sign an emergency travel document for Snowden. Snowden said that having the document gave him "the confidence, the courage to get on that plane to begin the journey".


title: Edward Snowden

text: In October 2013, Snowden said that before flying to Moscow, he gave all the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong and kept no copies for himself. In January 2014, he told a German TV interviewer that he gave all of his information to American journalists reporting on American issues. During his first American TV interview, in May 2014, Snowden said he had protected himself from Russian leverage by destroying the material he had been holding before landing in Moscow.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In January 2019, Vanessa Rodel, one of the refugees who had housed Snowden in Hong Kong, and her 7-year-old daughter were granted asylum by Canada. In 2021, Supun Thilina Kellapatha, Nadeeka Dilrukshi Nonis and their children found refuge in Canada, leaving only one of Snowden's Hong Kong helpers waiting for asylum.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. WikiLeaks said he was on a circuitous but safe route to asylum in Ecuador. Snowden had a seat reserved to continue to Cuba but did not board that onward flight, saying in a January 2014 interview that he intended to transit through Russia but was stopped en route. He said "a planeload of reporters documented the seat I was supposed to be in" when he was ticketed for Havana, but the U.S. canceled his passport. He said the U.S. wanted him to stay in Moscow so "they could say, 'He's a Russian spy.'" Greenwald's account differed on the point of Snowden being already ticketed. According to Greenwald, Snowden's passport was valid when he departed Hong Kong but was revoked during the hours he was in transit to Moscow, preventing him from obtaining a ticket to leave Russia. Greenwald said Snowden was thus forced to stay in Moscow and seek asylum.


title: Edward Snowden

text: According to one Russian report, Snowden planned to fly from Moscow through Havana to Latin America; however, Cuba told Moscow it would not allow the Aeroflot plane carrying Snowden to land. The Russian newspaper "Kommersant" reported that Cuba had a change of heart after receiving pressure from U.S. officials, leaving him stuck in the transit zone because at the last minute Havana told officials in Moscow not to allow him on the flight. "The Washington Post" contrasted this version with what it called "widespread speculation" that Russia never intended to let Snowden proceed. Fidel Castro called claims that Cuba would have blocked Snowden's entry a "lie" and a "libel." Describing Snowden's arrival in Moscow as a surprise and likening it to "an unwanted Christmas gift," Russian president Putin said that Snowden remained in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport, had committed no crime in Russia, was free to leave and should do so.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Following Snowden's arrival in Moscow, the White House expressed disappointment in Hong Kong's decision to allow him to leave. An anonymous U.S. official not authorized to discuss the matter told the Associated Press Snowden's passport had been revoked before he left Hong Kong, but that a senior official in a country or airline could order subordinates to overlook the withdrawn passport. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Snowden's passport was canceled "within two hours" of the charges against Snowden being made public which was Friday, June 21. In a July 1 statement, Snowden said, "Although I am convicted of nothing, [the U.S. government] has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum."


title: Edward Snowden

text: Four countries offered Snowden permanent asylum: Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela. No direct flights between Moscow and Venezuela, Bolivia, or Nicaragua existed, however, and the U.S. pressured countries along his route to hand him over. Snowden said in July 2013 that he decided to bid for asylum in Russia because he felt there was no safe way to reach Latin America. Snowden said he remained in Russia because "when we were talking about possibilities for asylum in Latin America, the United States forced down the Bolivian president's plane", citing the Morales plane incident. According to Snowden, "the CIA has a very powerful presence [in Latin America] and the governments and the security services there are relatively much less capable than, say, Russia... they could have basically snatched me..." On the issue, he said "some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights." Snowden said that he would travel from Russia if there was no interference from the U.S. government.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Four months after Snowden received asylum in Russia, Julian Assange commented: "While Venezuela and Ecuador could protect him in the short term, over the long term there could be a change in government. In Russia, he's safe, he's well-regarded, and that is not likely to change. That was my advice to Snowden, that he would be physically safest in Russia."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In an October 2014 interview with "The Nation" magazine, Snowden reiterated that he had originally intended to travel to Latin America: "A lot of people are still unaware that I never intended to end up in Russia." According to Snowden, the U.S. government "waited until I departed Hong Kong to cancel my passport in order to trap me in Russia." Snowden added, "If they really wanted to capture me, they would've allowed me to travel to Latin America because the CIA can operate with impunity down there. They did not want that; they chose to keep me in Russia."


title: Edward Snowden

text: On July 1, 2013, president Evo Morales of Bolivia, who had been attending a conference in Russia, suggested during an interview with RT (formerly Russia Today) that he would consider a request by Snowden for asylum. The following day, Morales's plane, en route to Bolivia, was rerouted to Austria and landed there, after France, Spain, and Italy denied access to their airspace. While the plane was parked in Vienna, the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived with two embassy personnel and asked to search the plane but they were denied permission by Morales himself. U.S. officials had raised suspicions that Snowden may have been on board. Morales blamed the U.S. for putting pressure on European countries and said that the grounding of his plane was a violation of international law.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In April 2015, Bolivia's ambassador to Russia, María Luisa Ramos Urzagaste, accused Julian Assange of inadvertently putting Morales's life at risk by intentionally providing to the U.S. false rumors that Snowden was on Morales's plane. Assange responded that "we weren't expecting this outcome. The result was caused by the United States' intervention. We can only regret what happened."


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden applied for political asylum to 21 countries. A statement attributed to him contended that the U.S. administration, and specifically then–Vice President Joe Biden, had pressured the governments to refuse his asylum petitions. Biden had telephoned President Rafael Correa days prior to Snowden's remarks, asking the Ecuadorian leader not to grant Snowden asylum. Ecuador had initially offered Snowden a temporary travel document but later withdrew it, and Correa later called the offer a mistake.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On July 1, 2013, Snowden accused the U.S. government of "using citizenship as a weapon" and using what he described as "old, bad tools of political aggression." Citing Obama's promise to not allow "wheeling and dealing" over the case, Snowden commented, "This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile." Several days later, WikiLeaks announced that Snowden had applied for asylum in six additional countries, but declined to name them, alleging attempted U.S. interference.


title: Edward Snowden

text: After evaluating the law and Snowden's situation, the French interior ministry rejected his request for asylum. Poland refused to process his application because it did not conform to legal procedure. Brazil's Foreign Ministry said the government planned no response to Snowden's asylum request. Germany and India rejected Snowden's application outright, while Austria, Ecuador, Finland, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain said he must be on their territory to apply. In November 2014, Germany announced that Snowden had not renewed his previously denied request and was not being considered for asylum. Glenn Greenwald later reported that Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor of Germany, told him the U.S. government had threatened to stop sharing intelligence if Germany offered Snowden asylum or arranged for his travel there.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Putin said on July 1, 2013, that if Snowden wanted to be granted asylum in Russia, he would be required to "stop his work aimed at harming our American partners." A spokesman for Putin subsequently said that Snowden had withdrawn his asylum application upon learning of the conditions.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In a July 12 meeting at Sheremetyevo Airport with representatives of human rights organizations and lawyers, organized in part by the Russian government, Snowden said he was accepting all offers of asylum that he had already received or would receive. He added that Venezuela's grant of asylum formalized his asylee status, removing any basis for state interference with his right to asylum. He also said he would request asylum in Russia until he resolved his travel problems. Slovenian correspondent Polonca Frelih, the only journalist, who presented at the July 12 meeting with Snowden, reported that he “looked like someone without daylight for long time but strong enough psychologically” while expressing worries about his medical condition. Russian Federal Migration Service officials confirmed on July 16 that Snowden had submitted an application for temporary asylum. On July 24, Kucherena said his client wanted to find work in Russia, travel and create a life for himself, and had already begun learning Russian.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Amid media reports in early July 2013 attributed to U.S. administration sources that Obama's one-on-one meeting with Putin, ahead of a G20 meeting in St Petersburg scheduled for September, was in doubt due to Snowden's protracted sojourn in Russia, top U.S. officials repeatedly made it clear to Moscow that Snowden should immediately be returned to the United States to face charges for the unauthorized leaking of classified information. His Russian lawyer said Snowden needed asylum because he faced persecution by the U.S. government and feared "that he could be subjected to torture and capital punishment."


title: Edward Snowden

text: On April 16, 2020, CNN reported that Edward Snowden had requested a three-year extension of his Russian residency permit.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In October 2020, Snowden was granted permanent residency in Russia. His lawyer said that granting an unlimited residence permit became possible after changes in the migration legislation of the Russian Federation in 2019.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On September 26th, 2022, Putin granted Snowden Russian citizenship, making it impossible to extradite him to any country.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In a letter to Russian Minister of Justice Aleksandr Konovalov dated July 23, 2013, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder repudiated Snowden's claim to refugee status and offered a limited validity passport good for direct return to the U.S. He stated that Snowden would not be subject to torture or the death penalty, and would receive a trial in a civilian court with proper legal counsel. The same day, the Russian president's spokesman reiterated that his government would not hand over Snowden, commenting that Putin was not personally involved in the matter and that it was being handled through talks between the FBI and Russia's FSB.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with three felonies: theft of government property and two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U. S. C. Sect. 792 et. seq.; Publ. L. 65-24) through unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. The criminal complaint was initially secret but was unsealed a week later.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Stephen P. Mulligan and Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative attorneys for the Congressional Research Service, provide a 2017 analysis of the uses of the Espionage Act to prosecute unauthorized disclosures of classified information, based on what was disclosed, to whom, and how; the burden of proof requirements e.g. degrees of Mens Rea (guilty mind), and the relationship of such considerations to the First Amendment framework of protections of free speech are also analyzed. The analysis includes the charges against Snowden, among several other cases. The discussion also covers gaps in the legal framework used to prosecute such cases.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden was asked in a January 2014 interview about returning to the U.S. to face the charges in court, as Obama had suggested a few days prior. Snowden explained why he rejected the request: What he doesn't say are that the crimes that he's charged me with are crimes that don't allow me to make my case. They don't allow me to defend myself in an open court to the public and convince a jury that what I did was to their benefit. ... So it's, I would say, illustrative that the president would choose to say someone should face the music when he knows the music is a show trial. Snowden's legal representative, Jesselyn Radack, wrote that "the Espionage Act effectively hinders a person from defending himself before a jury in an open court." She said that the "arcane World War I law" was never meant to prosecute whistleblowers, but rather spies who betrayed their trust by selling secrets to enemies for profit. Non-profit betrayals were not considered.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On September 17, 2019, the United States filed a lawsuit, Civil Action No. 1:19-cv-1197-LO-TCB, against Snowden for alleged violations of non-disclosure agreements with the CIA and NSA.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The two-count civil complaint alleged that Snowden had violated prepublication obligations related to the publication of his memoir "Permanent Record". The complaint listed the publishers Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC d.b.a. Henry Holt and Company and Holtzbrink, as relief-defendants.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The Hon. Liam O'Grady, a judge in the Alexandria Division of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found for the United States (Plaintiff) by summary judgement, on both counts of the action. The judgment also found that Snowden had been paid speaker honorariums totaling $1.03 million for a series of 56 speeches delivered by video link. The effect of the ruling was that the US government can collect the proceeds from his book and speeches and means that Snowden has to relinquish more than $5.2 million earned to a “constructive trust”, created to transfer the money to the government.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport aboard a commercial Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong. After 39 days in the transit section, he left the airport on August 1 and was granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year by the Federal Migration Service.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden had the choice to apply for renewal of his temporary refugee status for 12 months or requesting a permit for temporary stay for three years. A year later, his temporary refugee status having expired, Snowden received a three-year temporary residency permit allowing him to travel freely within Russia and to go abroad for up to three months. He was not granted permanent political asylum. In 2017, his temporary residency permit was extended for another three years.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In December 2013, Snowden told journalist Barton Gellman that supporters in Silicon Valley had donated enough bitcoins for him to live on. (A single bitcoin was then worth about $1,000.) In 2017, Snowden secretly married Lindsay Mills. By 2019, he no longer felt the need to be disguised in public and lived what was described by "The Guardian" as a "more or less normal life." He was able to travel around Russia and make a living from speaking arrangements, locally and over the internet.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden's memoir "Permanent Record" was released internationally on September 17, 2019, and while U.S. royalties were expected to be seized, he was able to receive an advance of $4.2 million. The memoir reached the top position on Amazon's bestseller list that day. Snowden said his work for the NSA and CIA showed him that the United States Intelligence Community (IC) had "hacked the Constitution", and that he had concluded there was no option for him but to expose his revelations via the press. In the memoir he wrote, "I realized that I was crazy to have imagined that the Supreme Court, or Congress, or President Obama, seeking to distance his administration from President George W. Bush's, would ever hold the IC legally responsible–for anything". Of Russia he said, "One of the things that is lost in all the problematic politics of the Russian government is the fact this is one of the most beautiful countries in the world" with "friendly" and "warm" people.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden has also used the pseudonym John Dobbertin (after cryptographer Hans Dobbertin). In 2016, from Russia, Snowden participated in the creation ceremony of the zcash cryptocurrency as John Dobbertin, by briefly holding a part of the private cryptographic key for the zcash genesis block, before destroying it.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On November 1, 2019, new amendments took effect introducing a permanent residence permit for the first time and removing the requirement to renew the pre-2019 so-called "permanent" residence permit every five years. The new permanent residence permit must be replaced three times in a lifetime like an ordinary internal passport for Russian citizens. In accordance with that law, Snowden was in October 2020 granted permanent residence in Russia instead of another extension.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In April 2020, an amendment to Russian nationality law allowing foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship without renouncing a foreign citizenship came into force. In November 2020, Snowden announced that he and his wife, Lindsay, who was expecting their son in late December, were applying for dual U.S.-Russian citizenship in order not to be separated from him "in this era of pandemics and closed borders." On September 26, 2022, President Vladimir Putin granted Snowden Russian citizenship. The couple by then had two young sons born in Russia. On December 1, Snowden swore an oath of allegiance to Russia and received a Russian passport, according to his lawyer.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden has said that, in the 2008 presidential election, he voted for a third-party candidate, though he "believed in Obama's promises." Following the election, he believed President Barack Obama was continuing policies espoused by George W. Bush.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In accounts published in June 2013, interviewers noted that Snowden's laptop displayed stickers supporting Internet freedom organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project. A week after publication of his leaks began, "Ars Technica" confirmed that Snowden had been an active participant at the site's online forum from 2001 through May 2012, discussing a variety of topics under the pseudonym "TheTrueHOOHA." In an online discussion about racism in 2009, Snowden said: <nowiki>"</nowiki>I went to London just last year it's where all of your muslims live I didn't want to get out of the car. I thought I had gotten off of the plane in the wrong country... it was terrifying.<nowiki>"</nowiki> In a January 2009 entry, TheTrueHOOHA exhibited strong support for the U.S. security state apparatus and said leakers of classified information "should be shot in the balls." However, Snowden disliked Obama's CIA director appointment of Leon Panetta, saying "Obama just named a fucking politician to run the CIA." Snowden was also offended by a possible ban on assault weapons, writing "Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished." Snowden disliked Obama's economic policies, was against Social Security, and favored Ron Paul's call for a return to the gold standard. In 2014, Snowden supported a universal basic income.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In response to outrage by European leaders, President Barack Obama said in early July 2013 that all nations collect intelligence, including those expressing outrage. His remarks came in response to an article in the German magazine "Der Spiegel".


title: Edward Snowden

text: In 2014, Obama stated, "our nation's defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation's secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy." He objected to the "sensational" way the leaks were reported, saying the reporting often "shed more heat than light." He said that the disclosures had revealed "methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations."


title: Edward Snowden

text: During a November 2016 interview with the German broadcaster ARD and the German paper "Der Spiegel", then-outgoing President Obama said he "can't" pardon Edward Snowden unless he is physically submitted to US authorities on US soil.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In 2013, Donald Trump made a series of tweets in which he referred to Snowden as a "traitor", saying he gave "serious information to China and Russia" and "should be executed". Later that year he added a caveat, tweeting "if it and he could reveal Obama's [birth] records, I might become a major fan".


title: Edward Snowden

text: In August 2020, Trump said during a press conference that he would "take a look" at pardoning Snowden, and added that he was "not that aware of the Snowden situation". He stated, "There are many, many people–it seems to be a split decision that many people think that he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things, and I'm going to take a very good look at it."


title: Edward Snowden

text: "Forbes" described Trump's willingness to consider a pardon as "leagues away" from his 2013 views. Snowden responded to the announcement saying, "the last time we heard a White House considering a pardon was 2016, when the very same Attorney General who once charged me conceded that, on balance, my work in exposing the NSA's unconstitutional system of mass surveillance had been 'a public service'." Top members of the House Armed Services Committee immediately voiced strong opposition to a pardon, saying Snowden's actions resulted in "tremendous harm" to national security, and that he needed to stand trial. Liz Cheney called the idea of a pardon "unconscionable". A week prior to the announcement, Trump also said he had been thinking of letting Snowden return to the U.S. without facing any time in jail.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Days later, Attorney General William Barr told the AP he was "vehemently opposed" to the idea of a pardon, saying "[Snowden] was a traitor and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people, he was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. We can't tolerate that."


title: Edward Snowden

text: "Pentagon Papers" leaker Daniel Ellsberg called Snowden's release of NSA material the most significant leak in U.S. history. Shortly before the September 2016 release of his biographical thriller film "Snowden," a semi-fictionalized drama based on the life of Edward Snowden with a short appearance by Snowden himself, Oliver Stone said that Snowden should be pardoned, calling him a "patriot above all" and suggesting that he should run the NSA himself.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In a December 18, 2013, CNN editorial, former NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe, known for his involvement in the NSA's Trailblazer Project, noted that a federal judge for the District of Columbia, the Hon. Richard J. Leon, had ruled in a contemporaneous case before him that the NSA warrantless surveillance program was likely unconstitutional; Wiebe then proposed that Snowden should be granted amnesty and allowed to return to the United States.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Numerous high-ranking current or former U.S. government officials reacted publicly to Snowden's disclosures.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In the U.S., Snowden's actions precipitated an intense debate on privacy and warrantless domestic surveillance. President Obama was initially dismissive of Snowden, saying "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker." In August 2013, Obama rejected the suggestion that Snowden was a patriot, and in November said that "the benefit of the debate he generated was not worth the damage done, because there was another way of doing it."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In June 2013, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont shared a "must-read" news story on his blog by Ron Fournier, stating "Love him or hate him, we all owe Snowden our thanks for forcing upon the nation an important debate. But the debate shouldn't be about him. It should be about the gnawing questions his actions raised from the shadows." In 2015, Sanders stated that "Snowden played a very important role in educating the American public" and that although Snowden should not go unpunished for breaking the law, "that education should be taken into consideration before the sentencing."


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden said in December 2013 that he was "inspired by the global debate" ignited by the leaks and that NSA's "culture of indiscriminate global espionage ... is collapsing."


title: Edward Snowden

text: At the end of 2013, "The Washington Post" said that the public debate and its offshoots had produced no meaningful change in policy, with the status quo continuing.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In 2016, on "The Axe Files" podcast, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that Snowden "performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made." Holder nevertheless said that Snowden's actions were inappropriate and illegal.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In September 2016, the bipartisan U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence completed a review of the Snowden disclosures and said that the federal government would have to spend millions of dollars responding to the fallout from Snowden's disclosures. The report also said that "the public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions." The report was denounced by "Washington Post" reporter Barton Gellman, who, in an opinion piece for The Century Foundation, called it "aggressively dishonest" and "contemptuous of fact."


title: Edward Snowden

text: In August 2013, President Obama said that he had called for a review of U.S. surveillance activities before Snowden had begun revealing details of the NSA's operations, and announced that he was directing DNI James Clapper "to establish a review group on intelligence and communications technologies." In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the NSA to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using backdoors in hardware or software. Panel member Geoffrey R. Stone said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 6, 2013, in the wake of Snowden's leaks, conservative public interest lawyer and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government had unlawfully collected metadata for his telephone calls and was harassing him. In "Klayman v. Obama", Judge Richard J. Leon referred to the NSA's "almost-Orwellian technology" and ruled the bulk telephone metadata program to be likely unconstitutional.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 11, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, alleging that the NSA's phone records program was unconstitutional. In December 2013, ten days after Judge Leon's ruling, Judge William H. Pauley III came to the opposite conclusion. In "ACLU v. Clapper", although acknowledging that privacy concerns are not trivial, Pauley found that the potential benefits of surveillance outweigh these considerations and ruled that the NSA's collection of phone data is legal.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Gary Schmitt, former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote that "The two decisions have generated public confusion over the constitutionality of the NSA's data collection program—a kind of judicial 'he-said, she-said' standoff."


title: Edward Snowden

text: On May 7, 2015, in the case of "ACLU v. Clapper", the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that Section 215 of the Patriot Act did not authorize the NSA to collect Americans' calling records in bulk, as exposed by Snowden in 2013. The decision voided U.S. District Judge William Pauley's December 2013 finding that the NSA program was lawful, and remanded the case to him for further review. The appeals court did not rule on the constitutionality of the bulk surveillance and declined to enjoin the program, noting the pending expiration of relevant parts of the Patriot Act. Circuit Judge Gerard E. Lynch wrote that, given the national security interests at stake, it was prudent to give Congress an opportunity to debate and decide the matter.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On September 2, 2020, a US federal court ruled that the US intelligence's mass surveillance program, exposed by Edward Snowden, was illegal and possibly unconstitutional. They also cited that the US intelligence leaders, who publicly defended it, were not telling the truth.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On June 2, 2015, the U.S. Senate passed, and President Obama signed, the USA Freedom Act which restored in modified form several provisions of the Patriot Act that had expired the day before, while for the first time imposing some limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication data on U.S. citizens by American intelligence agencies. The new restrictions were widely seen as stemming from Snowden's revelations.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In an official report published in October 2015, the United Nations special rapporteur for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of speech, Professor David Kaye, criticized the U.S. government's harsh treatment of, and bringing criminal charges against, whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden. The report found that Snowden's revelations were important for people everywhere and made "a deep and lasting impact on law, policy, and politics." The European Parliament invited Snowden to make a pre-recorded video appearance to aid their NSA investigation. Snowden gave written testimony in which he said that he was seeking asylum in the EU, but that he was told by European Parliamentarians that the U.S. would not allow EU partners to make such an offer. He told the Parliament that the NSA was working with the security agencies of EU states to "get access to as much data of EU citizens as possible." He said that the NSA's Foreign Affairs Division lobbies the EU and other countries to change their laws, allowing for "everyone in the country" to be spied on legally.


title: Edward Snowden

text: By mid-2013, Snowden had applied for asylum in 21 countries, including countries in Europe and South America, obtaining negative responses in most cases.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden, speaking to a Geneva, Switzerland audience via video link from Moscow, said he would love to return to Geneva, where he had previously worked undercover for the CIA. Swiss media said that the Swiss Attorney General had determined that Switzerland would not extradite Snowden if the US request were considered "politically motivated". Switzerland would grant Snowden asylum if he revealed the extent of espionage activities by the United States government. According to the paper "Sonntags Zeitung", Snowden would be granted safe entry and residency in Switzerland, in return for his knowledge of American intelligence activities. Swiss paper "Le Matin" reported that Snowden's activity could be part of criminal proceedings or part of a parliamentary inquiry. Extradition would also be rejected if Snowden faced the "death penalty", for which the United States has already provided assurances. The three felony charges which Snowden faces each carry a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. As reported in "Der Bund", the upper-level Swiss government could create an obstacle.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On September 16, 2019, it was reported that Snowden had said he "would love" to get political asylum in France.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden first applied unsuccessfully for asylum in France in 2013, under then French President François Hollande. His second request, under President Emmanuel Macron, was favorably received by Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet. However, no other members of the French government were known to express support for Snowden's asylum request, possibly due to the potential adverse diplomatic consequences.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic security agency, speculated that Snowden could have been working for the Russian government. Snowden rejected this insinuation, speculating on Twitter in German that "it cannot be proven if Maaßen is an agent of the SVR or FSB."


title: Edward Snowden

text: On October 31, 2013, Snowden met with German Green Party lawmaker Hans-Christian Ströbele in Moscow to discuss the possibility of Snowden giving testimony in Germany.


title: Edward Snowden

text: At the meeting, Snowden gave Ströbele a letter to the German government, parliament, and federal Attorney-General, the details of which were to later be made public.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Germany later blocked Snowden from testifying in person in an NSA inquiry, citing a potential "grave strain" on US-German relations.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The FBI demanded that Nordic countries arrest Snowden should he visit their countries. Snowden made asylum requests to Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. All requests were ultimately denied, with varying degrees of severity in the response.


title: Edward Snowden

text: According to Finnish foreign ministry spokeswoman Tytti Pylkkö, Snowden made an asylum request to Finland by sending an application to the Finnish embassy in Moscow while he was confined to the transit area of the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, but was told that Finnish law required him to be on Finnish soil.


title: Edward Snowden

text: According to SVT News, Snowden met with three Swedish MP's; Matthias Sundin (L), Jakop Dalunde (MP) and Cecilia Magnusson (M), in Moscow, to discuss his views on mass surveillance.


title: Edward Snowden

text: The meeting was organized by the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, which awarded Snowden the "Right Livelihood Honorary Award", often called Sweden's "Alternative Nobel Prize." According to the foundation, the prize was for Snowden's work on press freedom. Sweden ultimately rejected Snowden's asylum, however, so the award was accepted by his father, Lon Snowden, on his behalf.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden was granted a freedom of speech award by the Oslo branch of the writer's group PEN International. He applied for asylum in Norway but Norwegian Justice Secretary insisted that the application be made on Norwegian soil and further expressed doubt that Snowden met the criteria for gaining asylum - being "important for foreign political reasons". Snowden then filed a lawsuit for free passage through Norway in order to receive his freedom of speech award, through Oslo's District Court, followed by an appeals court, and finally Norway's Supreme Court. The lawsuit was ultimately rejected by the Norwegian Supreme Court.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden also applied for asylum in Denmark, but this was rejected by the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who said he could see no reason to grant Snowden asylum, calling him a "criminal".


title: Edward Snowden

text: Apparently, under an agreement with the Danish government, a US government jet lay in wait on standby in Copenhagen, to transfer Snowden back to the United States from any Scandinavian country.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Support for Snowden came from Latin and South American leaders including the Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Crediting the Snowden leaks, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution 68/167 in December 2013. The non-binding resolution denounced unwarranted digital surveillance and included a symbolic declaration of the right of all individuals to online privacy.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In July 2014, Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news conference in Geneva that the U.S. should abandon its efforts to prosecute Snowden, since his leaks were in the public interest.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Surveys conducted by news outlets and professional polling organizations found that American public opinion was divided on Snowden's disclosures and that those polled in Canada and Europe were more supportive of Snowden than respondents in the U.S., although more Americans have grown more supportive of Snowden's disclosure. In Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, more than 80% of people familiar with Snowden view him positively.


title: Edward Snowden

text: For his global surveillance disclosures, Snowden has been honored by publications and organizations based in Europe and the United States. He was voted as "The Guardian"s person of the year 2013, garnering four times the number of votes as any other candidate.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In March 2014, Snowden spoke at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive technology conference in Austin, Texas, in front of 3,500 attendees. He participated by teleconference carried over multiple routers running the Google Hangouts platform. On-stage moderators were Christopher Soghoian and Snowden's legal counsel Wizner, both from the ACLU. Snowden said that the NSA was "setting fire to the future of the internet," and that the SXSW audience was "the firefighters." Attendees could use Twitter to send questions to Snowden, who answered one by saying that information gathered by corporations was much less dangerous than that gathered by a government agency, because "governments have the power to deprive you of your rights." Then-Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) of the House Intelligence Committee, later director of the CIA and secretary of state, had tried unsuccessfully to get the SXSW management to cancel Snowden's appearance; instead, SXSW director Hugh Forrest said that the NSA was welcome to respond to Snowden at the 2015 conference.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Later that month, Snowden appeared by teleconference at the TED conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Represented on stage by a robot with a video screen, video camera, microphones, and speakers, Snowden conversed with TED curator Chris Anderson and told the attendees that online businesses should act quickly to encrypt their websites. He described the NSA's PRISM program as the U.S. government using businesses to collect data for them, and that the NSA "intentionally misleads corporate partners" using, as an example, the Bullrun decryption program to create backdoor access. Snowden said he would gladly return to the U.S. if given immunity from prosecution, but that he was more concerned about alerting the public about abuses of government authority. Anderson invited Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee on stage to converse with Snowden, who said that he would support Berners-Lee's concept of an "internet Magna Carta" to "encode our values in the structure of the internet."


title: Edward Snowden

text: On September 15, 2014, Snowden appeared via remote video link, along with Julian Assange, on Kim Dotcom's "Moment of Truth" town hall meeting held in Auckland. He made a similar video link appearance on February 2, 2015, along with Greenwald, as the keynote speaker at the World Affairs Conference at Upper Canada College in Toronto.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In March 2015, while speaking at the FIFDH (international human rights film festival) he made a public appeal for Switzerland to grant him asylum, saying he would like to return to live in Geneva, where he once worked undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In April 2015, John Oliver, the host of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, flew to Moscow to interview Edward Snowden.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On November 10, 2015, Snowden appeared at the Newseum, via remote video link, for PEN American Center's "Secret Sources: Whistleblowers, National Security and Free Expression," event.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On March 19, 2016, Snowden delivered the opening keynote address of the LibrePlanet conference, a meeting of international free software activists and developers presented by the Free Software Foundation. The conference was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the first such time Snowden spoke via teleconference using a full free software stack, end-to-end.


title: Edward Snowden

text: On July 21, 2016, Snowden and hardware hacker Bunnie Huang, in a talk at MIT Media Lab's Forbidden Research event, published research for a smartphone case, the so-called "Introspection Engine", that would monitor signals received and sent by that phone to provide an alert to the user if his or her phone is transmitting or receiving information when it shouldn't be (for example when it's turned off or in airplane mode), a feature described by Snowden to be useful for journalists or activists operating under hostile governments that would otherwise track their activities through their phones.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In August 2020, a court filing by the Department of Justice indicated that Snowden had collected a total of over $1.2 million in speaking fees in addition to advances on books since 2013. In September 2021, Yahoo! Finance reported that for 67 speaking appearances by video link from September 2015–May 2020, Snowden had earned more than $1.2 million. In March 2021, Iowa State University paid him $35,000 for one such speech, his first at a public U.S. college since February 2017, when the University of Pittsburgh paid him $15,000.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In April 2021, Snowden appeared at a Canadian investment conference sponsored by Sunil Tulsiani, a former policeman who had been barred from trading for life after dishonest behavior. Snowden took the opportunity to affirm his role as a whistleblower, inform viewers of Tulsiani's background, and encourage investors to conduct proper research before spending any money.


title: Edward Snowden

text: In July 2013, media critic Jay Rosen defined the "Snowden effect" as "Direct and indirect gains in public knowledge from the cascade of events and further reporting that followed Edward Snowden's leaks of classified information about the surveillance state in the U.S." In December 2013, "The Nation" wrote that Snowden had sparked an overdue debate about national security and individual privacy. In "Forbes", the effect was seen to have nearly united the U.S. Congress in opposition to the massive post-9/11 domestic intelligence gathering system. In its Spring 2014 Global Attitudes Survey, the Pew Research Center found that Snowden's disclosures had tarnished the image of the United States, especially in Europe and Latin America.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Snowden's impact as a public figure has been felt in cinema, television, advertising, video games, literature, music, statuary, and social media.


title: Edward Snowden

text: Oliver Stone and written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald, was released in 2016. Snowden grossed a total of $37,357,216 at the box office worldwide. The documentary "Citizenfour" directed by Laura Poitras won Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Jonathan Edward Bernthal (; born September 20, 1976) is an American actor. Beginning his career in the early 2000s, he came to prominence for portraying Shane Walsh on the AMC horror series "The Walking Dead" (2010–2012; 2018), where he was a starring cast member in the first two seasons. Bernthal achieved further recognition as The Punisher in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), originating the role on the second season of the Netflix action series "Daredevil" (2016) and headlining an eponymous series from 2017 to 2019; Bernthal's likeness was also used for the character in the Marvel Comics series "The Punisher: War Machine" (2017) and an ongoing "Punisher" comic book series. His film roles include "Snitch" (2013), "The Wolf of Wall Street" (2013), "Fury" (2014), "Sicario" (2015), "The Accountant" (2016), "Baby Driver" (2017), "Wind River" (2017), "Widows" (2018), "Ford v Ferrari" (2019), "Those Who Wish Me Dead", "King Richard", and "The Many Saints of Newark" (all 2021), and "We Own This City" (2022).


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Jonathan Edward Bernthal was born in Washington, D.C. on September 20, 1976, to a Jewish family. He is the son of Joan Lurie (née Marx) and Eric Lawrence "Rick" Bernthal, a former lawyer with Latham & Watkins LLP and chair of the board of directors for The Humane Society of the United States until 2019. His paternal grandfather was musician and producer Murray Bernthal (1911–2010). He has two brothers: Nicholas, an orthopedic surgeon and professor at UCLA, and Thomas, a consulting agency CEO who is married to billionaire and outgoing Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. His cousin was musician Adam Schlesinger, who died in April 2020 of complications from COVID-19 during the global pandemic of the virus.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal grew up in Cabin John, Maryland. He attended the Sidwell Friends School, graduating in 1995. He has often described his younger self as a "troublemaker". After high school, he studied at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, but dropped out. On the advice of his acting teacher, Alma Becker, he joined the Moscow Art Theatre School in Russia. During his time there, he was a catcher for a Russian professional baseball team.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal was discovered while at the Moscow Art Theatre by the executive director of Harvard University's Institute for Advanced Theater Training at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts; he studied there as a graduate-level certificate student and completed his studies in 2002. After graduating he moved to New York City to pursue a career in theater. He is a method actor.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Since 2002, Bernthal has performed in over thirty plays regionally and Off-Broadway, including many with his own award-winning theater company, the now defunct Fovea Floods. He also had small guest roles in television series such as "Boston Legal", "" and "How I Met Your Mother".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal relocated to Los Angeles in 2006. He booked his first regular role on a television series with the CBS sitcom "The Class"; the show was canceled after one season. After this he had roles in films such as "Day Zero", and Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: In 2009, Bernthal was a series regular on the ABC television series "Eastwick", and starred alongside actress Jaime Ray Newman (his future co-star in "The Punisher"); "Eastwick" was canceled after one season. In 2010, Bernthal portrayed Sgt. Manuel Rodriguez on the HBO miniseries "The Pacific".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal found critical success portraying Shane Walsh in Frank Darabont's "The Walking Dead", based on the comic book series of the same name. He was a regular on the show until 2012 and was nominated for the Breakout Performance – Male Award at the 2011 Scream Awards. Bernthal reunited with Darabont for the TNT series "Mob City", in which he portrayed LAPD Detective Joe Teague, a police officer working in a corrupt 1940s Los Angeles, which was cancelled after one season.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: During this period Bernthal had supporting roles in the 2009 Ben Stiller comedy film "" as mobster Al Capone and the 2010 Roman Polanski thriller "The Ghost Writer". He also appeared in the 2011 Woody Harrelson feature "Rampart" and guest starred in episodes of TV shows such as "Numbers" and "Harry's Law". In 2011, Bernthal performed in the premiere of the dark comedy play "Small Engine Repair". The play was critically acclaimed; critics praised Bernthal's performance for his "energy and wit" and he was nominated for an Ovation Award. After its world premiere run "Small Engine Repair" was transferred Off-Broadway by MCC Theater with Bernthal signing on to reprise his role. However, filming commitments made Bernthal withdraw from the play and he was replaced by James Badge Dale.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: In 2013, Bernthal had supporting roles in the crime drama film "Snitch", and the sports comedy film "Grudge Match." Bernthal played Brad in the Martin Scorsese film "The Wolf of Wall Street". He played southerner Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis in the 2014 World War II film "Fury", with critics praising the cast of the film. In 2014, Bernthal took part in filming the movie "Viena and the Fantomes," opposite Dakota Fanning and Evan Rachel Wood; the film was only released in 2020.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal next appeared in Denis Villeneuve's 2015 action drama film "Sicario", which won numerous awards and received positive reviews from critics. 2015 also saw Bernthal in supporting roles in "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl", winner of the US Grand Jury Prize for drama at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and "We Are Your Friends".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: During this time, Bernthal portrayed NAACP attorney Michael H. Sussman in the HBO miniseries "Show Me a Hero." He also, alongside actor Viggo Mortensen, executive produced the play "The Time of Our Lies – The Life and Times of Howard Zinn", directed by frequent theater collaborator Josh Chambers. "The Time of Our Lies" was performed through the month of August 2014 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: In June 2015, Marvel announced that Bernthal would portray Frank Castle / The Punisher in season two of Netflix's superhero series "Daredevil", which was released on March 18, 2016. While initially hesitant in joining a superhero franchise, Bernthal decided to take the role after admiring the performances of actors Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock / Daredevil) and Vincent D'Onofrio (Wilson Fisk) in the previous season of "Daredevil". Critics commended Bernthal's performance as The Punisher, with IGN calling it "an absolutely stellar, gutting performance". Comic book writer and the Punisher's co-creator Gerry Conway called Bernthal's performance a favorite on-screen portrayal of the character and said, "Jon Bernthal gives The Punisher the kind of pathos that's underneath the tough guy and I really like that".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Despite not initially being ordered by Netflix, the network spun-off the character's self-titled series "The Punisher", released on November 17, 2017. His portrayal of the title character in season one was commended as a "truly remarkable and intense performance" for its emotional depth and "possibly the best grizzly antihero performance among all of Marvel's Netflix series to date". Bernthal likes to perform his own stunts on the show. On December 12, 2017, it was announced that the show had been renewed for season two by Netflix, which was released on January 18, 2019. A month later, the show was canceled.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: In 2016, Bernthal co-starred in the Ben Affleck thriller "The Accountant" as Brax. He also was interviewed for the 2016 documentary "Can't Be Stopped" about the Los Angeles graffiti crew of the same name.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: In 2017, he co-starred in "Sicario" writer Taylor Sheridan's directorial debut "Wind River", which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. He also appeared in significant roles in Edgar Wright's "Baby Driver" as Griff and prison drama "Shot Caller". Additionally, Bernthal starred in Irish action thriller film "Pilgrimage". Set in 13th century Ireland, Bernthal plays The Mute in the film. Due to the actor's preference to stay in character on film sets, he chose not to speak to the cast or crew for the first few weeks of production. Bernthal was praised for his acting, with "The Hollywood Reporter" remarking that Bernthal "steals the film with his intense, nearly wordless performance... with his buff physicality and commanding presence filling the screen".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: On November 17, 2017, the initial season of "The Punisher" and the film "Sweet Virginia" were both released. In "Sweet Virginia", Bernthal plays Sam, a gentle motel-owner with Parkinson's disease; critics praised his performance. During the press tours at this time Bernthal's interview on "Jim Norton and Sam Roberts" made news due to his description of Kevin Spacey (who had faced recent sexual assault charges) of making him uncomfortable on the set of "Baby Driver". Bernthal stated that he "lost all respect" for Spacey and that "[Spacey] was a bit of a bully." In the same month, Bernthal was supposed to participate in the biographical 2018 film "First Man", but left the project due to his daughter's illness.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: In 2018, he appeared in Steve McQueen's heist thriller "Widows", and reprised his "The Walking Dead" role of Shane Walsh in the season 9 episode "What Comes After". In 2019, he appeared in the independent adventure film "The Peanut Butter Falcon", playing Shia LaBeouf's character's brother. Bernthal portrayed business magnate Lee Iacocca in a supporting role for James Mangold's action biographical drama "Ford v Ferrari". Production began in the summer of 2018 and the movie was released in November 2019. In Summer 2019, Bernthal filmed "Those Who Wish Me Dead", a western film directed by Taylor Sheridan who previously wrote "Sicario", which featured Bernthal. It was released in May 2021.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: During the beginning of 2019, Bernthal reprised his role in the film version of "Small Engine Repair", a play in which he originated the role of Terrance Swaino in 2011. The film was released in September 2021. In January 2019, Bernthal joined the cast of "The Many Saints of Newark", the prequel feature film of HBO's "The Sopranos", which was released in October 2021. In the Netflix film "The Unforgivable", Bernthal played the love interest of a murderous woman (Sandra Bullock).


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal has also done work in the PC and console gaming world as a voice actor, and his appearance has been used for non-playable characters (NPCs). He appears in "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint" as LT Cole D. Walker, and while he was featured in a trailer for "Borderlands 3", a title released in 2019, he made no voice or likeness appearances in that game.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal starred as Baltimore Police Department Sergeant Wayne Jenkins in the HBO miniseries "We Own This City". His new role is as the title character of the eight episode season of "American Gigolo" as Johnny and his gigolo alter ego "Julian".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: It was announced in October 2018 that Bernthal has a role in the dark comedy movie "Snow Ponies", notably an entry on the 2006 Black List; since the original casting announcement, the film has remained in development. Cast in October 2016, Bernthal will also star in the film "Stingray" opposite Joel Edgerton which has also remained in development. in October 2022 it was confirmed Bernthal has reprised his role as Frank Castle / The Punisher in MCU projects produced by Marvel Studios, including a new series, "", which is in development for Disney+.


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal and his brother Nicholas run the nonprofit organization Drops Fill Buckets, described as an "impact-driven, entrepreneurial approach to making a difference".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal is also an advocate of pit bull ownership and is a spokesperson for the Animal Farm Foundation, which rescues and promotes the equal treatment of pit bulls. He has three pit bulls of his own who often accompany him to set; two of them, Boss and Venice, made appearances in his 2012 film "Rampart".


title: Jon Bernthal

text: Bernthal married trauma nurse Erin Angle, the niece of retired professional wrestler Kurt Angle, on September 25, 2010, in Potomac, Maryland. They have three children together. The family lives in Ojai, California. He is a fan of the Washington Commanders.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Muñoz Ramirez (; February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), dubbed Night Stalker, Valley Intruder (as his attacks were first clustered in the San Gabriel Valley), and Walk-in Killer was an American serial killer whose crime spree took place in California between June 1984 and August 1985. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989. He died in 2013 while awaiting execution.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Ramirez's childhood is considered an influence on his crimes. Abused by his father, Ramirez began developing gruesome, macabre interests in his early and mid-teens from his older cousin, Miguel ("Mike") Ramirez, who allegedly also taught him some of the military skills that he would go on to use during his year-long killing spree. Ramirez also cultivated a strong interest in Satanism and the occult. By the time he had left his home in Texas and moved to California at the age of 22, he had begun frequently using cocaine. Ramirez would often commit burglaries to support his drug addiction, many of which were later frequently accompanied by murders, attempted murders, rapes, and assaults.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Ramirez's highly publicized home invasion and murder spree terrorized the residents of the Greater Los Angeles area and later the San Francisco Bay Area over the course of fourteen months. However, his first known murder occurred as early as April 1984; this crime was not connected to Ramirez, nor was it known to be his doing, until 2009. Ramirez used a wide variety of weapons and different murder methods, including handguns, various types of knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a claw hammer. He punched, pistol whipped, and strangled many of his victims, both with his hands and in one instance a ligature; stomped at least one victim to death in her sleep, and tortured another victim by shocking her with a live electrical cord. Ramirez also enjoyed frequently degrading and humiliating his victims, especially those who survived his attacks or whom he explicitly decided not to kill, by forcing them to profess that they loved Satan, or telling them to "swear on Satan" if there were no more valuables left in their homes he had broken into and burglarized.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: In 1989, Ramirez was convicted of thirteen counts of murder, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries. The judge who upheld Ramirez's nineteen death sentences remarked that his deeds exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding". Ramirez never expressed any remorse for his crimes. He died on June 7, 2013, of complications from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution on California's death row.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Muñoz Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas, on February 29, 1960, to Julián and Mercedes Ramirez, the youngest of their five children. His father Julián, a Mexican national and former Ciudad Juárez policeman who later became a laborer on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, was an alcoholic who was prone to fits of anger that often resulted in physical abuse towards his wife and children. Richard began smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol at the age of 10.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: As a 12-year-old, Richardor "Richie", as he was known to his familywas strongly influenced by his older cousin, Miguel ("Mike") Ramirez, a decorated Green Beret combat veteran who himself had already become a serial killer and a rapist during his time in the United States Army in the Vietnam War. Mike often boasted of his brutal war crimes, and shared Polaroid photos with Richard showing Vietnamese women whom he had raped, murdered, and dismembered or decapitated. Richard would later state while incarcerated that he was fascinated, rather than repulsed, by the images and stories Mike shared with him. Mike taught his young cousin some of his military skills, such as killing with stealth and effectively staying hidden in the dark, especially at night. Around this time, Richard began to seek escape from his father's violent temper by sleeping in a local cemetery.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Richard was present on May 4, 1973, when Mike fatally shot his wife, Jessie, in the face with a handgun during a domestic argument. Like the graphic photos and stories of his cousin's war crimes in Vietnam, Ramirez would later similarly remark that witnessing the murder was not traumatic for him in any traditional sense, but rather a subject of fascination. After the shooting, Richard became sullen and withdrawn from his family and peers. Mike was later found not guilty of Jessie's murder by reason of insanity, with the shooting attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in Vietnam; he was confined for several years at the Texas State Mental Hospital.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Shortly after the shooting, Richard moved in with his older sister, Ruth, and her husband, Roberto, an obsessive "peeping tom" who took Richard along on his nocturnal exploits. After Mike was released from the mental hospital in 1977, he sometimes accompanied Richard and Roberto on these voyeuristic walks, spying on women in the nearby areas through their windows. By the time Richard had turned 14 in early 1974, he began using LSD frequently; he and Mike resumed bonding over their shared use of drugs and alcohol. It was during this period that Richard began to cultivate an interest in Satanism and the occult.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: When he reached adolescence, Richard Ramirez began to meld his burgeoning sexual fantasies with graphic violence including forced bondage/BDSM, murder, mutilation, and rape. While still in school, he took a job at a local Holiday Inn and used his passkey to rob sleeping patrons. On at least one occasion, Ramirez molested two children in an elevator at the hotel, but he was never reported or prosecuted for this act. His employment ended abruptly after Ramirez attempted to rape a woman in her hotel room and was caught in the act by the victim's husband. Although the husband beat Ramirez at the scene, criminal charges were dropped when the couple, who lived out of state, declined to return to Texas to testify against him.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Ramirez dropped out of Jefferson High School in the ninth grade. In 1982, at the age of 22, he moved to and settled permanently in California. It was around this time that Ramirez began to use cocaine, which quickly became his substance of choice, and began to commit theft and burglaries to procure money for sustaining his addiction. He lived nomadically between San Francisco and Los Angeles County during this time prior to his incarceration. He frequently traveled between the northern and southern areas of California both before and during his yearlong crime spree.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: On April 10, 1984, Ramirez murdered Mei Leung, a 9-year-old Chinese-American girl, in the basement of his apartment building in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Leung was with her 8-year-old brother and looking for a lost one-dollar bill when Ramirez approached the girl and told her to follow him into the basement to find it. Once they were in the basement, Ramirez beat, strangled and raped Leung before stabbing her to death with a switchblade, hanging her partially nude body from a pipe by her blouse. The killing was not linked to Ramirez until 2009, when his DNA was matched to a sample obtained at the crime scene.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: In 2016, officials disclosed evidence of a second suspect, identified through another DNA sample retrieved from the scene, who is believed to have been present at Leung's murder. Authorities have not publicly identified the suspect, described as being a juvenile at the time, and have not brought charges due to the lack of evidence.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: On June 28, 1984, 79-year-old Jennie Vincow was found murdered in her apartment in Glassell Park, Los Angeles. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the head, neck, and chest while asleep in her bed, and her throat slashed so deeply that she was nearly decapitated. Ramirez's fingerprint was found on a mesh screen he removed to gain access through an open window. This, Ramirez's second known murder, established his pattern of breaking into homes, committing particularly vicious murders, and frequently burglarizing his victims either before or after killing them, which was mainly to support his cocaine addiction and pay his rent.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: On March 17, 1985, Ramirez attacked 22-year-old Maria Hernandez outside her home in Rosemead, California, shooting her in the face with a .22 caliber handgun after she pulled into her garage. She survived when the bullet ricocheted off the keys she held in her hands as she lifted them to protect herself. Hernandez played dead until Ramirez left the scene. Inside the house, her roommate, Dayle Yoshie Okazaki, age 34, heard the gunshot and ducked behind a counter when she saw Ramirez enter the kitchen. When she raised her head to get a look at what had happened, he shot Okazaki once in the forehead, killing her instantly.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: Within an hour of the Rosemead home invasion, Ramirez pulled 30-year-old Tsai-Lian "Veronica" Yu out of her car in Monterey Park, shot her twice with a .22 caliber handgun, and fled. She was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. The two murders, and attempted third, in a single day attracted extensive coverage from news media, who dubbed the attacker, described as curly-haired with bulging eyes and wide-spaced, rotting teeth, "The Walk-in Killer" and "The Valley Intruder".


title: Richard Ramirez

text: On March 27, 1985, Ramirez entered a home that he had burglarized a year earlier just outside of Whittier, California, at approximately 2 a.m. and killed the sleeping Vincent Charles Zazzara, age 64, with a gunshot to his head from a .22 caliber handgun. Zazzara's wife, Maxine Levenia Zazzara, age 44, was awakened by the gunshot, and Ramirez beat her and bound her hands while demanding to know where her valuables were. While he ransacked the room, Maxine escaped her bonds and retrieved a shotgun from under the bed, which was not loaded. The infuriated Ramirez shot her three times with the .22, then fetched a large carving knife from the kitchen. He mutilated her body by stabbing her several times, then removed her eyes with the knife and placed them in a jewelry box, which he took when he left, and kept at his apartment as a souvenir until his arrest. The autopsy determined that the mutilations were post-mortem. Vincent and Maxine's bodies were discovered by their son, Peter. Ramirez left footprints from a pair of Avia sneakers in the flower beds, which the police photographed and cast. This was virtually the only evidence that the police had at the time. Bullets found at the scene were matched to those found at previous attacks, and the police determined that a serial killer was at large.


title: Richard Ramirez

text: On May 14, 1985, Ramirez returned to Monterey Park and entered the home of Bill Doi, age 66, and his disabled wife, Lillian, age 56. Surprising Doi in his bedroom, Ramirez shot him in the face with a .22 semi-automatic pistol as Doi went for his own handgun. After beating the mortally wounded man into unconsciousness, Ramirez entered Lillian's bedroom, bound her with thumbcuffs, then raped her after he had ransacked the home for valuables. Bill Doi died of his injuries while in the hospital.