As NSA Leaker Disappears, Talk Of More To Come And Charges

The latest news about 29-year-old Edward Snowden and the secrets he has revealed about the nation's surveillance programs includes:

-- "He appears to have vanished," NPR's Dina Temple-Raston tells our Newscast Desk. Snowden, she reports, "was in a hotel on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong until Monday. One of the journalists who interviewed him, The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, has said he has a general idea where Snowden has gone" but has not been more specific.

-- There's more to come, according to Greenwald. The Associated Press writes that "the journalist who exposed classified U.S. surveillance programs leaked by an American defense contractor said Tuesday that there will be more 'significant revelations' to come from the documents. 'We are going to have a lot more significant revelations that have not yet been heard over the next several weeks and months,' said ... Greenwald."

-- Criminal charges are being prepared, says CBS News correspondent (and former FBI official) John Miller. The network reports Miller has learned that "U.S. officials are in the process of filing charges against a government contractor [Snowden] after he admitted leaking secret government documents about controversial U.S. surveillance programs."

CBS adds: "Although Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., the document has some exceptions, including for crimes deemed political. Any negotiations about his possible handover will involve Beijing, but some analysts believe China is unlikely to want to jeopardize its relationship with Washington over someone it would consider of little political interest."

Related posts:

You Face A U.S. Legal Problem. Where Should You Run?

For Bobby Fischer, WikiLeaks & NSA Leaker, Iceland Is Haven

Also Tuesday, Morning Edition host Renee Montagne spoke with journalist and author James Bamford about the massive amount of data that the National Security Agency collects.

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