Five rules for NSA leaker Edward Snowden to make sure that
life on the run goes as smoothly as possible.
BY BRENDAN I. KOERNER
As he journeys west from Hong Kong toward asylum in Ecuador,
Cuba, or possibly Venezuela, NSA leaker Edward Snowden should keep in mind that
dodging American justice isn't just a matter of hopping a few flights through
sympathetic countries. It's an extremely long game. Once the initial
public-relations buzz wears off, regimes can tire of harboring high-profile
fugitives who end up causing more trouble than they're worth. If Snowden wishes
to reach a ripe old age in Quito or Guayaquil, he might want to take some cues about
staying one step ahead of the law from the fugitives of the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Here are five rules from that chaotic era, when terrorists,
radicals, and slightly bonkers hijackers regularly hopped across borders in
search of asylum.
1. Clearly define your political motive. Extradition
treaties typically include exceptions for crimes of a "political character." In
theory, these clauses are meant to protect political dissidents from being sent
back home to face prosecution for acts such as organizing protests or penning
anti-government tracts. But governments have wide latitude to define these
crimes as they see fit: In 1974, for example, the French declined to arrest the
fourBasque assassins of Spanish prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco, stating
that extradition would be an impossibility because the crime was "so obviously
political."
Snowden didn't do anything that extreme, of course, but the
U.S. government will obviously contend that his actions were more criminal than
political and therefore worthy of extradition. In his
interview
with
The Guardian earlier this month,
Snowden did a good job of heading off that line of argument by emphasizing his
dedication to the public interest. His proxies should now reiterate that
sentiment as much as possible, so that no future Ecuadorian president is ever
tempted to see things from the American point of view.
2. Stay quiet. Snowden has already
discussed his motivation for leaking the details of the NSA spy programs, but
from now on he should leave that campaign to his surrogates. History has shown
that big-mouthed fugitives run the risk of rubbing their hosts the wrong way.
The classic example from the Vietnam Era was Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information
of the Black Panther Party. On the run from an attempted-murder charge in
California in 1968, Cleaver escaped to Cuba, where he was initially welcomed
with open arms by Fidel Castro's regime. But Cleaver ruined things fairly
quickly by speaking candidly to reporters, particularly about the harsh
treatment being accorded several imprisoned American hijackers. The irate Cubans
forced Cleaver to move to Algeria, where the
Soul on Ice author eventually wore out his welcome by publicly
calling for dictatorial president Houari Boumedienne to give him the $1 million
brought
over by a group of American hijackers. Boumedienne had Cleaver's
headquarters
raided
in revenge.
Snowden doesn't appear to be quite the loose cannon that
Cleaver was, but he should still be aware that his odds of accidentally
upsetting his hosts greatly increase every time he opens his mouth on the
record.
3. Find allies on the ground. Though
his Algerian sojourn ended in disaster, Cleaver actually lasted over three
years in the North African country -- a pretty impressive run, given his
penchant for ruining things with his self-described "fat mouth." One of the
keys to his success was the way he gained the support of other welcome guests
in Algiers -- notably the North Korean diplomatic corps and representatives of
the Vietcong, the latter of whom gave him a villa they owned in the tony El
Biar neighborhood. These allies helped Cleaver liaise with the Algerian
authorities. (Cleaver returned the favor to both: He broadcast
virulently
anti-American messages to American G.I.'s in Vietnam, urging them to
frag their commanding
officers, and he
wrote
the foreword to the English-language translation of Kim il-Sung's
Juche.)
Snowden's libertarian politics don't dovetail naturally with
the leftism espoused by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (nor perhaps his
government's assault on free speech), but he still should find some sympathetic
souls on Quito's cocktail-party circuit. He'll need to tap those contacts in
order to handle some very pragmatic issues, like figuring out a long-term
housing situation and, more importantly, how to ensure his personal security in
a nation with a high crime rate.
4. Make money. Staying on the lam is
always more expensive than one might anticipate, especially when a mammoth
entity like the United States of America is doing all it can to shut down your
potential sources of income. The root cause of the Black Panthers' demise in
Algeria was poverty -- the United States froze Cleavers royalties from
Soul on Ice in accordance with the
Trading with the Enemy Act, thereby forcing him to look to hijackers for a cash
influx. (Washington claimed that Cleaver had forfeited his American citizenship
by visiting North Vietnam and North Korea in 1970.) Snowden will have plenty of
expenses while in Ecuador, both legal and personal, and the Correa regime
probably won't want to pick up the tab for all eternity. Crowdsourced donations
sound like a fine way to keep things going, but the WikiLeaks experience is not
encouraging; last year, the organization
attracted
just $68,000 in handouts, barely enough to keep its servers running. Sure,
Snowden could always settle for a run-of-the-mill IT job with some Quito firm
to make ends meet. But who can honestly see that happening?
But there are always ways to route money to those in need.
Snowden's wealthiest and most avid supporters should start thinking now about
ways they can slip cash into his pockets without attracting the ire of the
American government.
Bitcoins
could sure come in handy here.
5. Do something fulfilling. Boredom and
loneliness can be vexing foes, particularly for an intelligent 29-year-old keen
to leave his mark on history. Plenty of the folks who hijacked planes to Cuba
in the late 1960s and early 1970s can attest to this dilemma: many of the ones
who settled down into normal lives in Havana, sometimes complete with spouses
and children, eventually decided to return to the United States often because
they had tired of their drab proletarian existences. Can you really picture Snowden being content with a
nine-to-five gig in Ecuador? He obviously has a grander future in mind for
himself.
Perhaps Snowden should follow the lead of a few notorious
American fugitives who found some measure of contentment by transforming
themselves into do-gooders. An excellent example of this path are Melvin and
Jean McNair, a couple who helped hijack Delta Airlines Flight 841 to Algiers in
July 1972; they now
operate
an orphanage in Caen, France. And the Black Panther Pete O'Neal, another
veteran of Algiers who fled a federal gun charge, wound up
running
a shelter for homeless children in Tanzania.
So what selfless occupation could Snowden take up in order
to create meaning in his life? How about teaching free programming classes in a
barrio periférico.
