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globalcrisis/globalchange NEWS
Martin Zeis, 07.11.2015

Dear all,

I recommend You reading this impressive report about a meeting with Edward Snowden by Lena Sundström and Lotta Härdelin (Dagens Nyheter, Sweden). The report/interview is completely attached (pdf, 35 p) and available via http://fokus.dn.se/edward-snowden-english

Best regards,
Martin Zeis

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http://fokus.dn.se/edward-snowden-english

Five hours with Edward Snowden

DAGENS NYHETER
6 NOVEMBER, 2015

Suddenly he opens the door. DN’s Lena Sundström and Lotta Härdelin had a unique meeting with the whistleblower who has fans all over the world but risks lifetime imprisonment in the home country he once tried to save.

Text Lena Sundström
Foto Lotta Härdelin

Talking to room service, Edward Snowden covers the mouth piece of the phone and shouts across the room.
– How would you like your steak?
– Medium rare, I answer.
– And to drink?
– Water.
– Still or sparkling?
Sparkling.
– Wait.
He laughs.
– There’s actually more. Vegetables or mashed potatoes?
– Vegetables.
The choice of two left shoes of the former Soviet Union is, since decades, history in Russia. On my way here, I passed Cyrillic letters that were perfectly readable, even without any knowledge of Russian. Brands like McDonald’s, Starbucks, World Class Gym, Michael Kors and United Colors of Benetton are like a universal code language, making everything understandable, whether the signs are in Moscow, Stockholm, San Francisco or Bangkok. If you think you can measure totalitarian tendencies, freedom of speech and rule of law in a country, by the standard of the cars, the number of restaurants or Stella McCartney’s latest spring collection, you’re fooling yourself.
Poverty shows. Democratic deficit doesn’t.
I watch the traffic thickening through my hotel room window; if this is possible in a city, where the traffic constantly is so congested that you’re faster off walking.
Not too long ago, I was sitting with the photographer, Lotta Härdelin, at our established meeting point, where our contact would pick us up, and take us further, wondering if something was wrong.
For months, I had emailed encrypted messages back and forth with contacts and lawyers.
We finally got a date and a message telling us to go to Moscow, where further instructions would follow.
Now we’re here, in a dim Russian hotel lobby. There’s no plan B and everything feels uncertain and unpredictable. The security measures, concern and need for total control of the past weeks have now been reduced to waiting and quiet powerlessness in a cream-colored armchair.
In the morning, our contact told us to be at a hotel, pointed out to us on a big Moscow map at 12:45 PM. We were told to quietly signal our understanding.
Now we fear that we agreed to it too fast.
– Are you sure this is the spot he pointed out?
12:45 turns into 1:00 that turns into 1:25.
What if we’re at the wrong place?
After a while, we pick up the map and start looking for buildings and hotels that could be mixed up with the place we’re at. We left our cell phones at our hotel, just as instructed, as did our contact. Neither of us can reach the other if something has gone wrong, and there’s no plan B.
The lobby is full of Russian military. Men boasting a low center of gravity step in and out of the lifts, ranks showing on their chests and in their eyes.
After a while, we order tea and croissants to try to blend in with the crowd. Everywhere we believe we see mysterious hotel staff and guests who don’t blend in. As if we’ve ended up in a Roy Andersson movie where you don’t know if the extras are actors or the actors are extras.
A woman is pointing a video camera in our direction. A man standing by a pillar is talking on his cell phone for a suspiciously long time.
We laugh, telling each other we’re being paranoid.
Then our contact finally appears.
The contrast when standing outside the actual meeting point surprises me. Everything suddenly makes complete sense. Any concern that the interview would be cancelled; that something would happen – broken bones, vomiting disease, visa problems – seems to have vanished.
Edward Snowden opens the door. I sit down on the couch. In a strange kind of way, this feels like a place you could drop by any Wednesday to talk.
Reality is of course less simple.
Ever since Edward Snowden in June 2013 went public as the whistleblower behind the leaked classified documents that revealed the US mass surveillance of its own citizens, he has been one of the world’s most hunted men. Back in the US he risks a lifelong sentence. Russia, which only should have been a stopover on his way to Cuba, is so far the only country that has granted him asylum. This made the country the only safe place in the world for him.
Two and a half years have passed. Edward Snowden – who has become a symbol of freedom of speech, an icon, a face without a body talking on giant screens through links – greets us with a disarming smile and a notebook in his hand.
He immediately asks what we want to eat. And looks so relaxed in his black shirt and three-piece suit that he makes it feel like something he would go jogging in. If he felt like it.

How are you doing?
He smiles
(…)

SNOWDEN-Interview_with_Dagens_Nyheter151106.pdf