While Edward Snowden was trapped in the transit zone of Moscow\u2019s Sheremetyevo Airport last year, U.S. officials were confronting their own dearth of options in the White House Situation Room.<\/p>\n
For weeks, senior officials from the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and other agencies assembled nearly every day in a desperate search for a way to apprehend the former intelligence contractor who had exposed the inner workings of American espionage<\/a> then fled to Hong Kong before ending up in Moscow.<\/p>\n Convened by White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, the meetings kept ending at the same impasse: Have everyone make yet another round of appeals to their Russian counterparts and hope that Snowden makes a misstep.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best play for us is him landing in a third country,\u201d Monaco said, according to an official who met with her at the White House. The official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity, added, \u201cWe were hoping he was going to be stupid enough to get on some kind of airplane, and then have an ally say: \u2018You\u2019re in our airspace. Land.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. officials thought they saw such an opening on July 2 when Bolivian President Evo Morales, who expressed support for Snowden, left Moscow aboard his presidential aircraft. The decision to divert that plane<\/a> ended in embarrassment when it was searched in Vienna and Snowden was not aboard.<\/p>\n A year later, Snowden appears to have moved further beyond U.S. reach. His expiring asylum status in Russia is expected to be extended this summer. Negotiations between his attorneys and the Justice Department about a possible deal to secure his return have been dormant for months.<\/p>\n U.S. officials offer conflicting accounts of how much they know about Snowden\u2019s situation in Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an ongoing investigation,\u201d U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in an interview. \u201cWe have done the appropriate things at this stage of the investigation, and we know exactly where Mr. Snowden is.\u201d<\/p>\n Others said the United States lacks answers to even basic questions about Snowden\u2019s circumstances, including where he lives and \u2014 perhaps most important \u2014 the role of the Russian security service, the FSB, in his day-to-day life.<\/p>\n Asked whether the United States knows Snowden\u2019s location, a U.S. official regularly briefed on the matter said, \u201cThat\u2019s not our understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n The gaps persist despite Snowden\u2019s ability to meet with U.S. journalists in Moscow<\/a> and make high-profile appearances, including during a call-in show with Russian President Vladi\u00admir Putin.<\/p>\n Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia until February, said he never had detailed information on the American fugitive\u2019s whereabouts. \u201cI do not know where Mr. Snowden is living, what his relationship to the Russian government is or how he makes a living,\u201d said McFaul, who has returned to the faculty at Stanford University.<\/p>\n Several U.S. officials cited a complication to gathering intelligence on Snowden that could be seen as ironic: the fact that there has been no determination that he is an \u201cagent of a foreign power,\u201d a legal distinction required to make an American citizen a target of espionage overseas.<\/p>\n If true, it means that the former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor, who leaked thousands of classified files to expose what he considered rampant and illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, is shielded at least to some extent from spying by his former employers.<\/p>\n Snowden is facing espionage-related charges, and the FBI has power to conduct wiretaps and enlist the NSA and CIA in its investigative efforts overseas. But even with such help, officials said, the bureau\u2019s reach in Moscow is limited.<\/p>\n \u201cThe FBI doesn\u2019t have any capability to operate in Moscow without the collaboration of the FSB,\u201d said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who served in the Russian capital.<\/p>\n The lack of a warrant deeming Snowden a foreign agent would also cast doubt on the claims of some of his critics. U.S. officials, including Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have speculated that Snowden had Russian help in stealing U.S. secrets and probably works with the FSB now.<\/p>\n Snowden has acknowledged that he was approached by Russian intelligence upon his arrival, but he has said he rejected the pitch and did not bring any classified files with him. He insisted in a recent NBC television interview that he has \u201cno relationship\u201d with the Russian government.<\/p>\n Snowden attorney Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who corresponded with his client for this article, said Snowden gets no financial support from the Russian government and does not need it.<\/p>\n Beyond savings from his six-figure NSA jobs, Snowden has received tens of thousands of dollars in cash awards and appearance fees from privacy organizations and other groups over the past year, Wizner said. An organization called the Courage Foundation launched a Web site to raise money for Snowden\u2019s legal defense and listed contributions of $1,356 as of Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n The apparent stability of Snowden\u2019s situation contrasts with the uncertainty of the eight-week stretch last summer after he had publicly identified himself as the source of a trove of NSA documents but before he secured asylum in Russia \u2014 a critical but now closed window in U.S. efforts to catch him.<\/p>\n The burst of activity during that period \u2014 including the White House meetings, a broad diplomatic scramble and the decision to force a foreign leader\u2019s plane to land \u2014 was far more extensive than U.S. officials acknowledged at the time.<\/p>\n President Obama in particular seemed to strike a dismissive pose, saying on June 27 that he was \u201cnot going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.\u201d Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said Obama\u2019s remark referred only to the prospect of using military assets. \u201cThe president made clear he wouldn\u2019t,\u201d Hayden said in recent statement the The Washington Post. \u201cNot because we weren\u2019t working hard to get Snowden back to the U.S.,\u201d but because it was a law enforcement matter.<\/p>\n From the outset, the pursuit of Snowden was led by the FBI. Lon Snowden, the fugitive\u2019s father, said FBI agents descended on his house within hours after a video of his son identifying himself as the source of the NSA leaks appeared on the Web site of the British news outlet the Guardian.<\/p>\n \u201cI spoke to them approximately four hours on the 10th of June,\u201d Lon Snowden said. Later, the FBI offered to send the elder Snowden to Moscow as part of an effort to deliver a scripted pitch to his son to turn himself in and return home. A former officer in the Coast Guard, Lon Snowden was initially cooperative with the bureau but became angered as his son was depicted by U.S. officials as a traitor.<\/p>\n \u201cI came to know that they were not functioning in good faith\u201d and turned down the trip, Snowden said.<\/p>\n By then, Monaco was convening meetings nearly every day at the White House. Among the participants were the CIA\u2019s head of counterintelligence, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and McFaul, who often took part by videoconference in sessions that got underway well after midnight in Moscow.<\/p>\n The meetings \u201cwere not just about Edward Snowden the fugitive\u201d and covered subjects including assessments of the damage the leaks had caused, Joyce said. But there was a constant search for ideas to recover him. \u201cThere were several things that were sort of ongoing,\u201d Joyce said, declining to be more specific. \u201cNone of them actually panned out.\u201d<\/p>\n