Snowden Book and Upcoming Film Chronicle Exile

Ueslei Marcelino / ReutersPeople wearing masks with pictures of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden during the testimonial of U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first published the documents, in Brazil.

To me, Edward Snowden is a hero, Oliver Stone said last July. U.S. Vice President John Kerry recently described him as a coward and a traitor. In truth, Edward Snowden is a much more ambiguous figure than either of those two extreme descriptions. For a man with such a global profile, his actual life in Moscow is low profile, though he has recently been interviewed by several news organizations, notably the Brian Williams interview on NBC.

This month he will be celebrating both his 31st birthday in Moscow as well as the first anniversary of his arrival. Is Snowden lonely? Does he yearn for the U.S. and his family? Alan Bennett called his 1980s play about Guy Burgess in Moscow An Englishman Abroad. Snowden could well be An American in Exile and Bennett said in a BBC interview in May: The Edward Snowden stuff I am wholly on his side.

Luke Harding was The Guardians Moscow correspondent between 2007 and 2011, before being expelled following a series of highly critical articles and books about the state and Putin regime. Harding extensively researched Snowden for his book The Snowden Files, published in the Britain and U.S. to great acclaim in February. It has been announced that Oliver Stone is adapt Hardings book to film before the end of the year. Harding spoke to The Moscow Times about Snowdens life in the Russian capital and helped dispel some of the myths of misinformation which have emerged.

Edward Snowden arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport in June 2013. Russia was not intended as his final destination, as he was attempting to gain political asylum in South America. It was there he met Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian attorney who persuaded Snowden to abandon his attempts for South American asylum and remain in Russia instead. But was it Snowden who approached Kucherena, and how important is he in the Snowden story?

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Journalist Luke Harding

We do not know the answer to that question, says Harding. Snowden has not said, nor has Kucherena. Kucherena has close links with the FSB he sits on its supervisory board. I have talked to other Russians about Kucherena and they say he is not formally an FSB agent, although some people have suggested he might be. They describe him as a person of the system and I think that is right. He is clearly someone inside the state rather than outside the state.

Kucherena played an important role during Snowdens initial weeks in limbo at Sheremetyevo as the only one between the American and the outside world. Now that Snowden has asylum, Kucherena has become less relevant.

After 39 days in limbo, Snowden left the airport. But then he disappeared for several months I think what we do know is something slightly more strategic, Harding explains, that after he got his asylum and was driven away from the airport, that Snowden took a decision that he would disappear, that he would vanish and the reason he did that was because he wanted the focus to be on the documents he leaked to The Guardian and other newspapers, which we were interrogating and publishing a lot of stories on. He did not want the focus to be on him. He was being bombarded with requests via Glenn Greensward every single U.S. network wanted to interview him, everybody wanted a piece of him. Actually, until December of last year, he turned everybody down.

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Snowden Book and Upcoming Film Chronicle Exile