The US government pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound, and capture those who reveal classified data. This plus constant control and surveillance makes it impossible to keep anything private or secret, Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges told RT.

RT: The US is focused on chasing Snowden, which seems to have distracted from his revelations - is anyone in the States asking whether the surveillance system prism was constitutional?

Chris Hedges: Some people are, but not many, which is quite distressing. You have Glenn Greenwald, the journalist from The Guardian who broke the story. You have lawyers Michael Ratner from the Center of the Constitutional Rights asking those kinds of questions, but I think that for those of us who care about freedom of information, about protecting sources, about stopping wholesale government surveillance, I think it’s been a very lonely time. And I think one of the things that’s been so distressing is that the serious questions that should be asked are not being asked.

RT: Does that play into the hands of the government and what Washington would like to keep secret?

CH: Well they can’t keep it a secret anymore, it’s exposed. But I think what they have done is divert attention to that kind of a mini-soap opera that is now taking place, as Snowden leaps from Hong Kong to Moscow, to ostensibly Cuba, Ecuador. They knew we saw the same thing happening to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to Bradley Manning, who exposed war crimes and is now on trial in military court in Maryland. It’s a very similar and oppressing kind of scenario, where the state propaganda machine has quite effectively diverted attention away from where it should be, which is the effect that there is no more privacy anymore left in the United States, and focused attention on character, on activities of Snowden. Through their lens, it’s not a dispassionate view of either Snowden or what he’s done.

 RT: When do you think Snowden might reveal his whereabouts and where do you think he will go?

CH: He doesn’t have many options: Cuba, Ecuador, maybe Venezuela, that’s about it. He has of course asked for political asylum as [Assange did], although the British government isn’t allowing him to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London. I mean these kinds of questions, again, for me are not the paramount questions as a journalist. The fact that the government sees virtually all the communications, electronic communications of American citizens, means that I can’t work. I think one of the reasons that Snowden went public with his disclosure is that he knew quite well that the US government has all the communications that Glenn Greenwald has made, and there was no way to hide those kind of contacts between himself as a traditional whistleblower and the journalist who wrote up this story of the wholesale spying on most American citizens by the National Security Agency. And that means that in essence you’re shutting down any capacity to shine a light on the internal workings of power. It becomes impossible to challenge the official narrative - and let’s not forget that the government quite selectively leaks classified information all the time to make themselves look good. But once information is exposed, that tarnishes them, and I think it’s quite clearly unconstitutional. Then the security and surveillance state pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound and capture those person or persons who made those revelations, and that’s precisely what we’re seeing, it’s not an uncommon scenario judging by what we’ve seen happening to Julian Assange and given of course what’s been happening to Bradley Manning.

RT: The authorities say surveillance is essential to counter terrorism. But does it justify daily spying on people, including on heads of state?

CH: I covered Al-Qaeda for the New York Times and spent seven years in the Middle East with a variety of Jihadist groups. These people are well aware, acutely aware of the fact that all of their communications is closely monitored by American security and intelligence officials. So there’s nothing new in these revelations to them. What is new is that we as Americans essentially have no privacy left, no capacity to communicate without the eye of the government upon every form of communications that we make – that’s what’s new. And that has nothing to do with terrorism, that has nothing to do with national security, that has to do with control of the population, as we see greater and greater effects - catastrophic effects - from climate change as the very fragile global economy again teeters on the brink of collapse, the security in surveillance state wants the capacity to shut down any form of dissent, and this mechanism of the wholesale surveillance gives them precisely that.

A lawyer for the former spy agency contractor has pointed out that Edward Snowden was told to flee Hong Kong by a middleman claiming to represent the Chinese controlled territory – which evidently could mean the advice was Beijing-backed.

Lawyer Albert Ho, who is also a Hong Kong legislator critical of China, indicated that he was approached by Snowden several days ago, according to Reuters.

The American asked the Hong Kong government if he could leave the city freely if he chose to do so, and tried to find out the Hong Kong government’s position on his situation.

After that, Ho met a senior Hong Kong official, who did not offer any comment.
However, Ho claims Snowden later told him an individual supposedly representing the Hong Kong authorities had contacted him and indicated he should leave the city, and wouldn't be stopped by the authorities.

Ho said he believed the middleman was acting on Beijing's orders. However, he had no solid evidence to prove it.

"They (Beijing) used someone behind the scenes to get Snowden to leave. And the Hong Kong government didn't have much of a role. Its role was to receive instructions to not stop him at the airport," Ho told Reuters.  

Ho stressed that in his opinion the case was clearly monitored and controlled by Beijing. 
"From seeing the nervousness with which the Hong Kong government didn't even give me any details at all <...>I have grounds to believe that the Hong Kong government had no authority over this case. That's to say the whole case was decided by Beijing."

Hong Kong is a former British colony which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 and although it retains an independent legal system and its own extradition laws, China is believed to have control over Hong Kong's foreign affairs. The Hong Kong government didn’t immediately comment on Ho's claims.

The Chinese government has expressed “grave concern” about the revelations of the US government's cyber attacks on Beijing.

“This once again proves that China is a victim of cyber attacks," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement.

On Sunday, the NSA leaker fled from Hong Kong to Russia, and was supposed to board a plane for Havana, Cuba.

However, he wasn’t seen during the boarding which took place at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Monday.

The White House expressed objections to authorities in Hong Kong and China that the countries let the whistleblower flee, and to Russia, urging Moscow to extradite Snowden to the US as soon as possible.

"We expect the Russian government to look at all options available to expel Mr. Snowden back to the US to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged."

Snowden has been charged by the US authorities with theft of federal government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person. The last two charges fall under the US Espionage Act.