MOSCOW. Sept 18 (Interfax) - Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena has confirmed that the Federal Security Service (FSB) tried to recruit former CIA operative Edward Snowden upon his arrival in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in June 2013.
"There was a meeting as soon as he arrived in Sheremetyevo together with a friend from WikiLeaks. He told me later that security services offered him to cooperate but he declined the offer," Kucherena told Interfax on Wednesday in his comments on Snowden's book, Permanent Record.
Interfax asked Kucherena whether FSB offered cooperation to Snowden in a later period. "I know nothing about that," Kucherena said. "Edward has been quite frank with me all the time, he could have told me, but he said nothing of the sort," he said.
The long and difficult process of receiving asylum in Russia is circumstantial evidence of the fact that Snowden declined to cooperate with FSB, Kucherena said.
"As soon as we started to discuss legal issues and the possibility of receiving asylum in Russia, he told me he had refused to cooperate with security services and asked how that might impact his chance to receive a residence permit and how long it might take to process his documents. I explained Russian laws to him and told him what he could hope for," Kucherena said.
"The process actually took quite long, and he spent over three weeks in the Sheremetyevo transit zone," he said.
"No matter who says what, he would have been let go in two or three days and would not have experienced any problems if the situation had been so bright and he had actually been recruited. Instead, there were problems and I kept trying to persuade migration officers to come to the health office in the transit zone for filling out the application for temporary asylum and, later on, for a residence permit," Kucherena said.
As to Snowden's arrival without any documents or materials that would be of any interest to Russian security services, Kucherena said, "He really came here with his bag empty. There was nothing there, as he handed over every secret to journalists in Hong Kong."