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Greenwald pense que sans elle, il serait en prison aux States.

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.

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.” [lol]

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.”

Voir aussi : Sarah Harrison : « Le droit international doit protéger les #lanceurs_d'alerte » ▻http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/080315/sarah-harrison-le-droit-international-doit-proteger-les-lanceurs-dalerte?o