The ability of contractor-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden to evade arrest is raising new concerns among U.S. officials about the security of top-secret documents he is believed to have in his possession — and about the possibility that he could willingly share them with those who assist his escape.

It’s unclear whether officials in Hong Kong or in Russia, where Snowden fled over the weekend, obtained any of the classified material. A spokesman for the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which has been assisting the former National Security Agency contractor, strenuously denied reports that foreign governments had made copies of the documents.

“This rumor that is being spread is a fabrication and just plays into the propaganda by the administration here that somehow Mr. Snowden is cooperating with Russian or Chinese authorities,” spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said in a phone interview Monday.

Nonetheless, in 2010 and 2011, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. documents it obtained from Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, and co-founder Julian Assange suggested in a teleconference call with reporters Monday that the group was interested in gaining access to the documents Snowden had obtained.

“In relation to publishing such material, of course WikiLeaks is in the business of publishing documents that are supposed to be suppressed,” Assange said. He declined to say whether Snowden had shared any of the material.

The NSA has teams of analysts scouring systems that they think Snowden may have accessed, officials said. Analysts are seeking to retrace his steps online and to assemble a catalogue of the material he may have taken.

“They think he copied so much stuff — that almost everything that place does, he has,” said one former government official, referring to the NSA, where Snowden worked as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton while in the NSA’s Hawaii facility. “Everyone’s nervous about what the next thing will be, what will be exposed.”

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian columnist who has published a series of stories based on documents provided by Snowden, said he has exercised discretion in choosing what to disclose. Snowden, too, has said he was selective in choosing what to disclose.

“I know that he has in his possession thousands of documents, which, if published, would impose crippling damage on the United States’ surveillance capabilities and systems around the world,” Greenwald told CNN. “He has never done any of that.”

via The Washington Post

Whether they are new or old details that surface, Edward Snowden continues to play out the virtual chess match that is unfolding against Obama and the U.S. government.

Why refer to it as a chess match? Simply put, Snowden’s first move put Obama and his administration in check and has led them on a global chase ever since.

Here are a few updates on the developments throughout the night:

Snowden, the World, Making a Fool of Obama | via FoxNews/Reuters

Since his first day in office, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy has rested on outreach: resetting ties with Russia, building a partnership with China and offering a fresh start with antagonistic leaders from Iran to Venezuela.

The United States on Monday increased pressure on Russia to hand over Edward Snowden, the American charged with disclosing secret U.S. surveillance programs, and said it believed he was still in Moscow despite earlier reports he was leaving for Cuba.

The whereabouts of Snowden, until recently a contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, remained a mystery. He had flown to Moscow after being allowed to leave Hong Kong on Sunday despite Washington asking the Chinese territory to detain him pending his possible extradition on espionage charges.

White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the administration’s attempts to bring Snowden into U.S. custody and instead blamed China for assisting in his release from Hong Kong. He said it would damage U.S. China relations.

Sources at the Russian airline Aeroflot had said he would be aboard a flight to Havana on Monday morning, but reporters who took the flight said another person occupied the seat that had been set aside for him, 17A, and he had not been seen.

“He didn’t take the flight (to Havana),” a source at Russia’s national airline Aeroflot told Reuters.

However, before the plane left for Cuba, a white van for VIPs approached it on the tarmac. Police stood by as a single man in a white shirt climbed the stairs on to the plane soon afterwards but he could not be identified by reporters watching in the transit area. It was not clear whether the plane had a section in which Snowden could have been concealed.

Julian Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks which is assisting Snowden, said the 30-year-old had fled to Moscow en route to Ecuador and was in good health in a “safe place” but did not say where he was now.

via Reuters

The hunt for Edward Snowden stretched around the globe Sunday as the 30-year-old leaker of U.S. classified material flew out of Hong Kong under cover of darkness, dropped into the protective embrace of Russia and made plans to hopscotch through Cuba and Venezuela to eventual asylum in Ecuador.

His stealthy movements, aided by the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks organization and its high-powered lawyers, played out like an international game of Where’s Waldo. The American citizen — a traitor to some and a folk hero to others — kept a step ahead of his government, which has charged him with violating the Espionage Act and revoked his U.S. passport in an effort to bring him to ground.

In his rush to elude arrest, the onetime low-level computer analyst appeared to be showing up the most powerful national security apparatus in the world, just as his campaign to expose vast U.S. surveillance programs had embarrassed the Obama administration by contradicting the president’s pledge to run a government with an “unprecedented level of openness.”

With the collusion of several governments, Snowden managed over the weekend to make Washington appear stumped in its attempts to extradite the former National Security Agency contract worker for leaking details of secret phone and Internet eavesdropping programs.

The drama afforded nations with histories of being thorns in the side of the U.S. a rare and low-cost opportunity to frustrate the administration.

Nevertheless, administration officials remained confident that, despite not succeeding in having Snowden detained in Hong Kong, they will eventually catch their man. “The belt will tighten. We will get him,” said one Department of Justice official, speaking anonymously because of the delicate matter of handling both a criminal case and an awkward game of multinational diplomacy.

via latimes.com