Interesting, looks like he got out by the skin of his teeth as the US was on him hard but at the same time: In October 2013, Snowden said that before flying to

Interesting, looks like he got out by the skin of his teeth as the US was on him hard but at the same time: In October 2013, Snowden said that before flying to Moscow, he gave all the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, and kept no copies for himself.[126] In January 2014, he told a German TV interviewer that he gave all of his information to American journalists reporting on American issues.[77] During his first American TV interview, in May 2014, Snowden said he had protected himself from Russian leverage by destroying the material he had been holding before landing in Moscow.[35]