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[–] 81603? 0 points 7 points (+7|-0) ago 

Allow me to help you wade through the metric ton of boring shit that the author has piled into this article. If you're like me and can't stand when these types of authors try to sell you an "experience," you may find the following details useful...they're pretty much the only real content of the entire piece:

Harrison says that for the thirteen days in Hong Kong, she consulted with various lawyers about the complexities of Snowden’s situation, and Assange, meanwhile, worked his connections in the Ecuadoran government to obtain diplomatic protection for the NSA leaker’s travels. WikiLeaks, she says, booked more than a dozen different flights for Harrison and Snowden, hoping to throw off any pursuers. “We also got Snowden to buy a ticket to India on his own credit card,” Harrison says. “We were working very hard to lay as many false trails as possible.” It was an excruciatingly anxious time. “I just kept hoping the tickets would be OK’d,” she says. She passed her parents’ phone number on to one of the lawyers, asking that they be contacted if something went wrong.

“She really put herself on the line,” says Laura Poitras, who filmed Snowden in his hotel room until the day after he revealed his identity publicly, at which point she had to back off in order not to jeopardize him. “I was being tailed,” she says. “The risks became very great.” Harrison had the right mix of steeliness and conviction to get him out of Hong Kong. “She’s extremely intelligent,” Poitras says, “and tenacious. And very motivated by her principles.”

Harrison says she didn’t actually meet Snowden until they climbed into a car together on Sunday morning to head to the airport. Harrison was dressed in jeans and flip-flops. Snowden, too, looked casual. The idea was that they might pass for a young couple headed off on vacation. On the drive, they said very little. “I was just so nervous and concentrated on the next steps,” she remembers.

They boarded the Moscow-bound Aeroflot plane, and it wasn’t until the plane was airborne that Snowden turned to her and spoke what was almost his first complete sentence: “I didn’t expect that WikiLeaks was going to send a ninja to get me out.”

Harrison says that she and Snowden disembarked in Moscow and went to check in for their next flight, which is when they learned of his canceled passport. Citing “security reasons,” she won’t provide specific details about where they stayed during the days that ensued, saying only that they shared a single, windowless room, did their laundry in the sink, watched movies on their laptops, and quickly grew tired of airport food. “If I have to ever eat another Burger King meal, I’ll die,” she says. The intimacy of the situation may have been uncomfortable, but it was also deliberate. “If anything untoward happened to him, I was there as a witness,” Harrison says, adding that WikiLeaks, with its ability to reach a vast global audience, served as a form of protection. “We would have made sure that the world knew.” She claims to have wandered the airport terminals freely, despite the roving media. “For girls, it’s a bit easier to fit in,” she tells me, saying that putting her curly hair into a bun served as enough of a disguise.

Harrison describes having a collegial friendship with Snowden. What pains her most are the accusations that he betrayed his country. Both she and Snowden have said that he was approached by Russian intelligence agents during their time at Sheremetyevo, but that he turned them away. “The last thing in the world he is,” Harrison says, “is a traitor and a spy.” She jokingly describes how Snowden quoted the U.S. Constitution so often in their conversations about the NSA’s overreaching programs that it ultimately grew annoying. “It got to the point where I was like, ‘All right, all right, the Constitution!’ ” More seriously she adds, “He’s the strongest patriot of any American I’ve ever met.”

Jacob Appelbaum, an American journalist and computer-security researcher who is based in Berlin, says that Harrison is something of an unsung hero. “She really saved Snowden’s life,” he says, noting that she’s now “basically in exile” in Berlin. “It’s a heavy price to pay.”

Snowden himself is aware that it was, in part, Harrison’s commitment to his cause that got him out of peril. In an email sent from Russia, he tells me that his lawyers initially informed him that it was dangerous for anybody at all to help him, that “anyone within a three-mile radius is going to get hammered.” But still, Harrison stepped forward. She could have left Moscow at any time but chose instead to stay—not for days or even weeks but for months. This, according to Snowden, is in keeping with her character. “In the face of very real risks, Sarah refuses to allow intimidation to shape her decisions,” he writes. “If you forced her to choose between disowning her principles or being burned at the stake, I think she’d hand you a match.”

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[–] camelToe 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Good reading. Thanks for saving me the fluff.

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[–] imhereforfruits 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Thank you for doing this, my headache has subsided.

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[–] JamesVang86 ago 

Shocking new for me

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[–] Empire_of_the_mind ago 

You're a hero