Washington:
Frustrated Obama administration officials pressed Russia on Monday to turn over Edward J Snowden, the national security contractor who disclosed surveillance programs, while warning China of "consequences" for letting him flee to Moscow.
As Snowden remained out of sight, apparently holed up in Moscow awaiting word of his fate, what started as a dramatic escape story involving a self-described whistle-blower evolved into a diplomatic incident in which the United States faces an open rift with one major power and a tense standoff with another. Hopes for a quick resolution had faded by nightfall.
Secretary of State John Kerry said China's decision to allow Snowden to leave Hong Kong despite an arrest request from the United States would have "without any question some effect, an impact on the relationship, and consequences." He called on Russia to expel Snowden.
"I would urge them to live by the standards of the law, because that's in the interest of everybody," Kerry said.
He pointed out that the United States in the past two years had transferred seven prisoners Russia had sought, although the parallel is not exact, since Snowden is not being held by the Russian government.
At the White House, President Barack Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, reinforced what he called "our frustration and disappointment with Hong Kong and China," calling their refusal to detain Snowden a "serious setback" in relations. He said Hong Kong authorities had been notified that Snowden's passport had been revoked, and he dismissed their explanation that they had no legal basis to stop Snowden.
"We do not buy the suggestion that China could not have taken action," Carney said.
US officials also openly mocked China and Russia as states that repress free speech and transparency and therefore are hardly apt refuges for someone fighting government secrecy in the United States.
"I wonder if Mr Snowden chose China and Russia as assistants in his flight from justice because they're such powerful bastions of Internet freedom," Kerry said sarcastically during a stop in New Delhi.
Carney said Snowden's chosen destinations indicated "his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States."
The strong words went beyond typical diplomatic language and underscored the growing ramifications of the case for the United States. The Obama administration's inability, at least for now, to influence China, Russia and countries in Latin America that may accept Snowden for asylum, like Ecuador, brought home the limits of US power around the world.
A range of US officials, including the deputy secretary of state and the FBI director, spent the day reaching out to their Russian counterparts seeking cooperation without any apparent result. Snowden, who spent Sunday night in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, did not board the flight for Havana he was said to have booked, and he made no public appearance or statement.
US officials said they believed he was still in Moscow, but it was unclear whether his failure to continue on to Cuba, Ecuador or elsewhere was a sign that Russia was considering handing him over to the United States, sheltering him itself, planning to allow him to leave later or trying to extract information from him before making a decision. The United States and Russia do not have an extradition treaty.
Nikolay N Zakharov, a spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, declined to say if intelligence officials had met with Snowden, nor would he say if they had sought to examine any secret files he was said to be carrying.
"On this question, we will not comment," Zakharov said.
US intelligence officials remained concerned that Snowden could make public more documents disclosing details of the National Security Agency's collection system or that his documents could be obtained by foreign intelligence services, with or without his cooperation.
Technical experts have been carrying out a forensic analysis of the trail he left in NSA computer systems, trying to determine what he had access to as a systems administrator and what he may have downloaded, officials said.
Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for The Guardian, has said that Snowden gave him thousands of documents, only a tiny fraction of which have been published. Many may be of limited public interest, but they could be of great value to a foreign intelligence service, which could get a more complete idea of the security agency's technical abilities and how to evade its net, officials said.
Snowden's flight from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday put the United States at odds with onetime cold war rivals just as Obama was trying to ease tensions over a variety of other friction points. In the past few weeks, he hosted President Xi Jinping of China on a visit to California and met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Northern Ireland. But talk of constructive relations seemed long ago Monday.
Critics said the episode exposed the president's failure in foreign policy.
"It turns out that an irresolute amateur like Barack Obama was the best thing that the brutal but determined Putin could have hoped for," Peter Wehner, a former aide to President George W. Bush, wrote in Commentary magazine.
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, sent a letter to Russia's ambassador, Sergei I Kislyak, warning of a break if Moscow did not send Snowden back to the United States.
"The Snowden case is an important test of the 'reset' in relations between our two countries," Graham wrote.
Obama's team seemed angrier at China than Russia, which for the moment had not directly defied Washington. Officials disclosed more information about their request to Hong Kong to detain and return Snowden, defending themselves against assertions that they had mishandled the request.
A senior official said the State Department had raised the issue of arresting Snowden with the Chinese after espionage charges were filed against him in secret June 14. The official said that as soon as the charges were unsealed Friday, the department revoked Snowden's passport, and that legally it could not have done so earlier. Officials added that they informed Hong Kong authorities that the passport had been revoked before Snowden was allowed to board an Aeroflot flight for Moscow.
"The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," Carney said. "And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem. And that is a point we are making to them very directly."
Officials also defended their decision not to seek a "red notice," or international arrest warrant, from Interpol, saying they typically do so only when a fugitive's whereabouts is unknown.
Jacques Semmelman, an extradition specialist and a former federal prosecutor, said that was generally correct, but he added that the United States still could have sought a red notice if they feared Snowden might flee, so the warrant would be in place wherever he landed. But Semmelman said the United States had good reason not to fear that Snowden might flee because of its 1996 treaty with Hong Kong, under which it had requested his provisional arrest.
He said the information required to make such a request is simple - "it's a one- or two-pager that is very easy to comply with"- and that it was "inconceivable" to him that US officials did not fill it out correctly. If Hong Kong authorities were willing to overlook a proper request, then a revocation of Snowden's passport or a red notice might not have made a difference.
"I haven't seen anything to show the United States dropped the ball," he said.
Critics of the surveillance programs exposed by Snowden moved in Congress on Monday to curtail them. Senator Patrick J Leahy, D-Vt, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation intended to bolster privacy safeguards and require oversight.
Two other Democrats who joined him on the bill, Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, sent a letter to Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director, asserting that a government fact sheet about its surveillance of foreigners abroad "contains an inaccurate statement." They did not identify the inaccuracy because of secrecy rules but said "it portrays protections for Americans' privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are."
At Sheremetyevo airport, where journalists had maintained an all-night vigil, security was tight Monday as agents called passengers to board an Aeroflot flight that Snowden reportedly had planned to take to Havana. Police officers stood around the plane on the tarmac, and the entrance to the gate inside the terminal was cordoned off with about 25 feet of blue ribbon.
But before the plane pulled away, an Aeroflot employee said Snowden was not on board, which one of the flight's two captains confirmed when the plane landed 16 hours later in Havana.
In response to reporters' shouted questions, "Was Snowden on board?" the captain, who would not give his name, replied: "No Snowden. No special people. Only journalists."
© 2013, The New York Times News Service