Story highlights Snowden is safe and "possibly simply relaxing," WikiLeaks spokesman says 
 
 Venezuela hasn't gotten asylum request but would consider it, leader says 
 
 Vladimir Putin says Russia won't hand Snowden over to U.S. authorities 
 
 U.S. is asking for help in detaining former NSA contractor accused of spilling secrets 
 
 Edward Snowden , the former National Security Agency contractor who spilled U.S. surveillance secrets to the world, is a "free man" biding his time in a Moscow airport, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters Tuesday. 
 
 Putin said Snowden -- who flew to Moscow from Hong Kong on Sunday -- is in the "transit area" of Sheremetyevo International Airport, the zone between arrival gates and Russia's passport control checkpoints. While he said Russia won't hand Snowden over to the United States, he seemed eager to have the focus of international intrigue off his hands. 
 
 "The sooner he selects his final destination point, the better both for us and for himself," Putin said from Finland of Snowden, who is wanted by U.S. officials on espionage charges for disclosing classified details of U.S. surveillance programs. 
 
 Putin's comments end, for now at least, the international pastime of "Where's Snowden?" There have been rumors for days that the former NSA contractor had perhaps duped the world into thinking he was in Moscow to throw pursuers off his trail as he seeks a safe haven from U.S. prosecution. 
 
 Kristinn Hrafnsson -- a spokesman for WikiLeaks, an organization that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information and has one of its members with Snowden in Russia -- told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday only that Snowden "is in a safe place and is comfortable and possibly simply relaxing after a very stressful week." 
 
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 Noting the United States and Russia do not have an extradition agreement, Putin said Snowden can't be turned over to U.S. authorities and has committed no crimes on Russian soil. 
 
 But he also said Russian security forces have not been "working with" Snowden and expressed hope that the incident would not "affect the cordial nature of our relations with the U.S." Hrafnsson offered a similar story, saying there's been "no cooperation or coordination with the Russian authority" before or since Snowden arrived in Moscow. 
 
 A senior Obama administration official called Putin's comments "potentially positive" while reiterating hopes that Snowden would be expelled from Russia and returned to the United States. 
 
 U.S. officials believe Russian authorities have a "clear legal basis to expel Mr. Snowden, based on the status of his travel documents and the pending charges against him," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to reporters while traveling in Saudi Arabia, said the United States isn't looking to Russia to enforce U.S. law, only to "allow him to be subject to the laws of our land and our Constitution." 
 
 "We are not looking for confrontation, we're not ordering anybody," Kerry said. "We're simply requesting under a very normal procedure for the transfer of somebody, just as we transferred to Russia seven people in the last two years that they requested, that we did without any clamor, without any rancor, without any argument and according to our sense of the appropriateness of meeting their request." 
 
 Snowden left Hong Kong on Sunday after a couple of weeks spent doling out details of classified U.S. intelligence programs to journalists. 
 
 With his passport revoked by U.S. officials, Snowden traveled out of the semiautonomous Chinese territory on refugee papers issued by Ecuador, one of the countries from which he is seeking asylum. 
 
 International tiff 
 
 His travels have sparked international dust-ups, with U.S. officials accusing China of making a "deliberate choice" to let Snowden go free and criticizing Russia for failing to hand him over in a spirit of international cooperation. 
 
 On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman rejected the U.S. claims as "unreasonable," according to the official Xinhua news service. 
 
 "The accusation that the U.S. side made against the Central Government of China fell short of proof. The Chinese side will absolutely not accept it," spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. 
 
 Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung, Hong Kong's justice secretary, likewise denied that authorities there intentionally let Snowden leave before acting on U.S. requests. 
 
 "All along, we acted fully in accordance with the law and any suggestion that we have been deliberately letting Mr. Snowden go away or to do any other thing to obstruct the normal operation is totally untrue," Yuen said Tuesday. 
 
 Authorities in Hong Kong were seeking answers from U.S. authorities around when Snowden left, the justice secretary added. Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-Ying said Monday that authorities acted independently from Beijing "to follow procedural fairness and procedural justice." 
 
 In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the U.S. complaints "absolutely groundless and unacceptable." 
 
 "I want to say, right away, that we have nothing to do with Mr. Snowden or his movements around the world," Lavrov said. 
 
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 The White House is eager to avoid a repeat of what happened in Hong Kong, where authorities let Snowden leave despite a U.S. request for his arrest and extradition. Washington has described that move as a "serious setback" to building trust between the United States and China. 
 
 But the Obama administration doesn't have much leverage with Moscow, said Matthew Rojansky, an expert on U.S. and Russian national security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 
 
 "We really need Russian cooperation, I think, much more in most areas than the Russians need us," he said. 
 
 U.S. diplomatic headache 
 
 Washington is also telling other countries where Snowden might end up -- notably Ecuador, which says it's analyzing an asylum request from Snowden -- that they should hand him over if he lands on their soil. They note that his U.S. passport has been revoked. 
 
 "The U.S. is advising these governments that Mr. Snowden is wanted on felony charges and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel other than is necessary to return him here to the United States," Carney said. 
 
 One rumored destination is Venezuela, whose leaders have been frequently at odds with Washington in recent years. 
 
 According to the AVN state news agency, President Nicolas Maduro said Tuesday his country has not received a formal request for political asylum from Snowden. But if it did, the government would consider it on humanitarian grounds, the agency reports. 
 
 In its quest to get Snowden, the United States has limited options. CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the issue now "is much more of a political and diplomatic matter than it is a legal matter." 
 
 "In an ordinary case, sure, you need a passport to get around," Toobin said. "But here, where this case is causing increasing embarrassment for the United States, governments that want the United States to be embarrassed are only too happy to waive some of the technical legal rules." 
 
 The leak controversy 
 
 Snowden has acknowledged he leaked classified documents about the NSA's surveillance programs to the Guardian newspaper in Britain and The Washington Post. 
 
 The documents revealed the existence of programs that collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and monitor the Internet activity of people overseas residents. 
 
 The disclosures shook the U.S. intelligence community and raised questions about whether the NSA is eroding American civil liberties. 
 
 Snowden worked as a Hawaii-based computer network administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor, before he fled to Hong Kong last month with laptops full of confidential information. 
 
 The South China Morning Post newspaper published a story Monday quoting Snowden as saying he took the job to gather evidence on U.S. surveillance programs. 
 
 He told the Guardian that he exposed the surveillance programs because they pose a threat to democracy, but administration officials said the programs are vital to preventing terrorist attacks and are overseen by all three branches of government. 
 
 Carney questioned Snowden's assertion that he acted in defense of democratic transparency, saying his argument "is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen -- China, Russia, Ecuador." 
 
 "His failures to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States, not to advance Internet freedom and free speech," Carney told reporters. 
 
 Snowden's search 
 
 Snowden is seeking asylum from Ecuador, Iceland and other, unspecified countries, a WikiLeaks attorney said Monday. 
 
 Ecuador has already given WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange freedom if he can find a way out of the country's embassy in London. 
 
 In his aslyum request read by Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo, Snowden compared himself to Pvt. Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of leaking classified information through WikiLeaks. 
 
 He said U.S. officials have treated Manning inhumanely by holding him in solitary confinement, and he predicted a similar "cruel and unusual" fate for himself if he falls into U.S. hands. 
 
 Snowden has come under some criticism for seeking out help from nations with questionable histories on free speech and press freedom. 
 
 For instance, The Committee to Protect Journalists has criticized Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa's government for pushing legislation that would roll back press freedoms, calling its policies increasingly repressive. 
 
 Snowden isn't looking for "political nirvana," said Glenn Greenwald, the columnist for the Guardian who broke his revelations. 
 
 "He's searching for a place where he can be safe and remain free and participate in the debate, and Ecuador seems to be the place he has chosen," Greenwald told CNN's "The Lead." 
 
 Some have speculated Snowden has "doomsday insurance" in the form of even more top-secret U.S. documents that will go public if he's ever detained by U.S. authorities. 
 
 Hrafnsson, the WikiLeaks spokesman, said he didn't know about Snowden's specific plans, but did suggest more secrets may be revealed. 
 
 "This is simply information that should be out in the public," he said. "There is more to come." ||||| China's top state newspaper has praised the fugitive US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden for "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask" and rejected accusations Beijing had facilitated his departure from Hong Kong. 
 
 The strongly worded front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist party, responded to harsh criticism of China from the US for allowing Snowden to flee. 
 
 The Chinese government has said it was gravely concerned by Snowden's allegations that the US had hacked into many networks in Hong Kong and China, including Tsinghua University, which hosts one of the country's internet hubs, and Chinese mobile network companies. It said it had taken the issue up with Washington. 
 
 "Not only did the US authorities not give us an explanation and apology, it instead expressed dissatisfaction at the Hong Kong special administrative region for handling things in accordance with law," wrote Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Science in the People's Daily commentary. 
 
 "In a sense, the United States has gone from a 'model of human rights' to 'an eavesdropper on personal privacy', the 'manipulator' of the centralised power over the international internet, and the mad 'invader' of other countries' networks," the People's Daily said. 
 
 The White House said allowing Snowden to leave was "a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the US-China relationship". 
 
 The People's Daily, which reflects the thinking of the government, said China could not accept "this kind of dissatisfaction and opposition". 
 
 "The world will remember Edward Snowden," the newspaper said. "It was his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask". 
 
 The exchanges mark a deterioration in ties between the two countries just weeks after a successful summit meeting between presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. But experts say Washington is unlikely to resort to any punitive action. 
 
 A commentary in the Global Times, owned by the People's Daily, also attacked the US for cornering "a young idealist who has exposed the sinister scandals of the US government". 
 
 "Instead of apologising, Washington is showing off its muscle by attempting to control the whole situation," the Global Times said. 
 
 Snowden gave US authorities the slip by leaving Hong Kong on an Aeroflot plane to Moscow on Sunday. The US had requested his detention for extradition to the US on treason charges but the Hong Kong authorities responded that the papers had not been in order and Snowden was free to leave. 
 
 Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said Washington did not believe the explanation that it was a "technical" decision by Hong Kong immigration authorities. "The Hong Kong authorities were advised of the status of Mr Snowden's travel documents in plenty of time to have prohibited his travel as appropriate. We do not buy the suggestion that China could not have taken action." 
 
 On Monday Snowden had been expected to board another plane from Moscow for Cuba and ultimately fly from there to Ecuador, which is considering granting him asylum. But journalists who boarded the plane in Moscow soon found Snowden had not taken his seat. 
 
 When the plane landed in Cuba there was likewise no sign that Snowden had been on board. The pilot greeted journalists at Havana's Jose Marti international airport by pulling out his own camera, taking pictures of the them and saying: "No Snowden, no." 
 
 The harshly worded Chinese commentaries did not appear on the country's main news portals on Tuesday afternoon. Instead most articles focused on hard news, such as Snowden's still-unknown final destination, his relationship with WikiLeaks and the details of his departure from Hong Kong. 
 
 Another editorial in the People's Daily on Monday defended the Hong Kong government for allowing Snowden to leave despite a US warrant for his arrest, claiming that it acted according to the law and "will be able to withstand examination". 
 
 "The voices of a few American politicians and media outlets surrounding the Prism scandal have become truly shrill," it said. "Not only do some of them lack the least bit of self-reflection but they also arrogantly find fault with other countries for no reason at all." 
 
 Shi Yinhong, an expert on China-US relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said the Snowden affair had given China's leaders an opportunity to shore up their own legitimacy domestically by projecting a strong message of US hypocrisy. 
 
 Yet behind the scenes, he said, top leaders were probably reluctant to allow the affair to significantly impact bilateral ties. "Maybe this will have an impact on public opinion in China, but for the Chinese government almost nothing has changed," he said. "Even if this damages China-US relations it'll be very temporary." ||||| At the White House, President Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, reinforced what he called “our frustration and disappointment with Hong Kong and China,” calling their refusal to detain Mr. Snowden a “serious setback” in relations. He said the Hong Kong authorities had been notified that Mr. Snowden’s passport had been revoked, and he dismissed their explanation that they had no legal basis to stop Mr. Snowden. “We do not buy the suggestion that China could not have taken action,” Mr. Carney said. 
 
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 American officials also openly mocked China and Russia as states that repress free speech and transparency and therefore are hardly apt refuges for someone fighting government secrecy in the United States. 
 
 “I wonder if Mr. Snowden chose China and Russia as assistants in his flight from justice because they’re such powerful bastions of Internet freedom,” Mr. Kerry said sarcastically during a stop in New Delhi. 
 
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 Mr. Carney said Mr. Snowden’s chosen destinations indicated “his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States.” 
 
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 The strong words went beyond typical diplomatic language and underscored the growing ramifications of the case for the United States. The Obama administration’s inability, at least for now, to influence China, Russia and countries in Latin America that may accept Mr. Snowden for asylum, like Ecuador, brought home the limits of American power around the world. 
 
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 Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, criticized the United States on Monday for its pursuit of Mr. Snowden. “The one who is denounced pursues the denouncer,” Mr. Patiño said at a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, a stop on a previously scheduled diplomatic visit to Asia. “The man who tries to provide light and transparency to issues that affect everyone is pursued by those who should be giving explanations about the denunciations that have been presented.” 
 
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 Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, wrote on his Twitter account, “We will analyze very responsibly the Snowden case and with absolute sovereignty will make the decision we consider the most appropriate.” The United States remains Ecuador’s leading trading partner, but Washington’s influence in Quito has been slight since Mr. Correa became president in 2007. He has repeatedly flouted and tweaked the United States, by for example stopping American antidrug flights out of a military base in Manta, and expelling the American ambassador in 2011 after WikiLeaks cables suggested she felt Mr. Correa had tolerated police corruption. 
 
 A range of American officials, including the deputy secretary of state and the F.B.I. director, spent Monday reaching out to their Russian counterparts seeking cooperation, without any apparent result. Mr. Snowden, who spent Sunday night in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, did not board the flight for Havana he was said to have booked, and he made no public appearance or statement. 
 
 American officials said they believed he was still in Moscow, but it was unclear whether his failure to continue on to Cuba, Ecuador or elsewhere was a sign that Russia was considering handing him over to the United States, sheltering him itself, planning to allow him to leave later or trying to extract information from him before deciding. The United States and Russia do not have an extradition treaty. 
 
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 Nikolay N. Zakharov, a spokesman for Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., declined to say if intelligence officials had met with Mr. Snowden, nor would he say if they had sought to examine any secret files he was said to be carrying. “On this question, we will not comment,” Mr. Zakharov said. 
 
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 American intelligence officials remained deeply concerned that Mr. Snowden could make public more documents disclosing details of the National Security Agency’s collection system or that his documents could be obtained by foreign intelligence services, with or without his cooperation. 
 
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 Technical experts have been carrying out a forensic analysis of the trail he left in N.S.A. computer systems, trying to determine what he had access to as a systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, a United States government contractor, and what he may have downloaded, officials said. 
 
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 The South China Morning Post reported Monday night on its Web site that in an interview, Mr. Snowden said he had specifically sought the job at Booz Allen so he could collect information about the N.S.A’s secret surveillance programs to release to news outlets. 
 
 Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for The Guardian, has said Mr. Snowden gave him thousands of documents, only a tiny fraction of which were published. Many may be of limited public interest, but they could be of great value to a foreign intelligence service, which could get a more complete idea of the security agency’s technical abilities and how to evade its net, officials said. 
 
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 Mr. Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday put the United States at odds with onetime cold war rivals just as Mr. Obama was trying to ease tensions over a variety of other friction points. In the last few weeks, he hosted President Xi Jinping of China on a visit to California and met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Northern Ireland. But talk of constructive relations seemed long ago on Monday. 
 
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 Critics said the episode exposed the president’s failure in foreign policy. “It turns out that an irresolute amateur like Barack Obama was the best thing that the brutal but determined Putin could have hoped for,” Peter Wehner, a former aide to President George W. Bush, wrote in Commentary magazine. 
 
 Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, sent a letter to Russia’s ambassador, Sergei I. Kislyak, warning of a break if Moscow did not send Mr. Snowden back to the United States. “The Snowden case is an important test of the ‘reset’ in relations between our two countries,” Mr. Graham wrote. 
 
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 Mr. Obama’s team seemed angrier at China than Russia, which for the moment had not directly defied Washington. Officials disclosed more information about their request to Hong Kong to detain and return Mr. Snowden, defending themselves against assertions that they had mishandled the request. 
 
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 A senior official said the State Department had raised the issue of arresting Mr. Snowden with the Chinese after espionage charges were filed in secret on June 14. The official said that as soon as the charges were unsealed on Friday, the department revoked Mr. Snowden’s passport, and that legally it could not have done so earlier. Officials added that they had informed the Hong Kong authorities that the passport had been revoked before Mr. Snowden was allowed to board an Aeroflot flight for Moscow. 
 
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 “The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust,” Mr. Carney said. “And we think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem. And that is a point we are making to them very directly.” 
 
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 Officials also defended their decision not to seek a “red notice,” or international arrest warrant, from Interpol, saying they typically do so only when the whereabouts of the fugitive being sought is unknown. 
 
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 Jacques Semmelman, an extradition specialist and a former federal prosecutor, said that was generally correct, but he added that the United States still could have sought a red notice if it feared Mr. Snowden might flee, so the warrant would be in place wherever he landed. But Mr. Semmelman said the United States had good reason not to fear that Mr. Snowden might flee because of its 1996 treaty with Hong Kong, under which it had requested his provisional arrest. 
 
 He said that the information required to make such a request was simple — “it’s a one- or two-pager that is very easy to comply with"— and that it was “inconceivable” to him that American officials had not filled it out correctly. If the Hong Kong authorities were willing to overlook a proper request, then a revocation of Mr. Snowden’s passport or a red notice might not have made a difference. “I haven’t seen anything to show the United States dropped the ball,” he said. 
 
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 Critics of the surveillance programs exposed by Mr. Snowden moved in Congress on Monday to curtail them. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation intended to bolster privacy safeguards and require oversight. 
 
 Two other Democrats who joined him on the bill, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, sent a letter to Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A. director, asserting that a government fact sheet about its surveillance of foreigners abroad “contains an inaccurate statement.” They did not identify the inaccuracy because of secrecy rules but said “it portrays protections for Americans’ privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are.” 
 
 At Sheremetyevo airport, where journalists had maintained an all-night vigil, security was tight Monday as agents called passengers to board an Aeroflot flight that Mr. Snowden reportedly had planned to take to Havana. Police officers stood around the plane on the tarmac, and the entrance to the gate inside the terminal was cordoned off with about 25 feet of blue ribbon. 
 
 But before the plane pulled away, an Aeroflot employee said Mr. Snowden was not on board, which one of the flight’s two captains confirmed when the plane landed 16 hours later in Havana. 
 
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 In response to reporters’ shouted questions, “Was Snowden on board?” the captain, who would not give his name, replied: “No Snowden. No special people. Only journalists.” ||||| For President Barack Obama, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's globe-trotting evasion of U.S. authorities has dealt a startling setback to efforts to strengthen ties with China and raised the prospect of worsening tensions with Russia. 
 
 Aeroflot flight SU150 sits at the tarmac of the Jose Marti international airport after arriving from Moscow to Havana, Cuba, Monday, June 24, 2013. Confusion over the whereabouts of National Security... (Associated Press) 
 
 White House press secretary Jay Carney pauses during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Monday, June 24, 2013. Carney said the U.S. assumes that Edward Snowden is now in Russia... (Associated Press) 
 
 Aeroflot flight SU150 sits at the tarmac of the Jose Marti international airport after arriving from Moscow to Havana, Cuba, Monday, June 24, 2013. Confusion over the whereabouts of National Security... (Associated Press) 
 
 Indeed, Russia's foreign minister on Tuesday called U.S. demands for Snowden's extradition "ungrounded and unacceptable." 
 
 Relations with both China and Russia have been at the forefront of Obama's foreign policy agenda this month, underscoring the intertwined interests among these uneasy partners. Obama met just last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland and held an unusual two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California earlier this month. 
 
 Obama has made no known phone calls to Xi since Snowden surfaced in Hong Kong earlier this month, nor has he talked to Putin since Snowden arrived in Russia. 
 
 Former Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said it wasn't clear that Obama's "charm offensive" with Xi and Putin would matter much on this issue. The U.S. has "very little leverage," she said, given the broad array of issues on which the Obama administration needs Chinese and Russian cooperation. 
 
 "This isn't happening in a vacuum, and obviously China and Russia know that," said Harman, who now runs the Woodrow Wilson International Center. 
 
 Both the U.S. and China had hailed the Obama-Xi summit as a fresh start to a complex relationship, with the leaders building personal bonds during an hour-long walk through the grounds of the Sunnylands estate. But any easing of tensions appeared to vanish Monday following China's apparent flouting of U.S. demands that Snowden be returned from semi-autonomous Hong Kong to face espionage charges. 
 
 White House spokesman Jay Carney, in unusually harsh language, said China had "unquestionably" damaged its relationship with Washington. 
 
 "The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," Carney said. "We think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem." 
 
 A similar problem may be looming with Russia, where Snowden arrived Sunday. He had been expected to leave Moscow for a third country, but the White House said Monday it believed the former government contractor was still in Russia. 
 
 While the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, the White House publicly prodded the Kremlin to send Snowden back to the U.S., while officials privately negotiated with their Russian counterparts. 
 
 "We are expecting the Russians to examine the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden for his return to the United States," Carney said. 
 
 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday bluntly rejected the U.S. request, saying Snowden hasn't crossed the Russian border. He angrily lashed out at the U.S. for warnings of negative consequences if Moscow fails to comply. 
 
 "We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. 
 
 The U.S. has deep economic ties with China and needs the Asian power's help in persuading North Korea to end its nuclear provocations. The Obama administration also needs Russia's cooperation in ending the bloodshed in Syria and reducing nuclear stockpiles held by the former Cold War foes. 
 
 Members of Congress so far have focused their anger on China and Russia, not on Obama's inability to get either country to abide by U.S. demands. However, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said in an interview with CNN on Monday that he was starting to wonder why the president hasn't been "more forceful in dealing with foreign leaders." 
 
 Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed the White House's frustration with China. "That kind of action is not only detrimental to the U.S.-China relationship but it sets a bad precedent that could unravel the intricate international agreements about how countries respect the laws _ and particularly the extradition treaties," the possible 2016 presidential contender told an audience in Los Angeles. 
 
 Snowden fled to Hong Kong after seizing highly classified documents disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of U.S. phone and Internet records. He shared the information with The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. He also told the South China Morning Post that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." SMS, or short messaging service, generally means text messaging. 
 
 Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend. 
 
 Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China, has an extradition treaty with the U.S. Officials in Hong Kong said a formal U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with its laws, a claim the Justice Department disputes. 
 
 The White House made clear it believes the final decision to let Snowden leave for Russia was made by Chinese officials in Beijing. 
 
 Russia's ultimate response to U.S. pressure remains unclear. Putin could still agree to return Snowden to the U.S. But he may also let him stay in Russia or head elsewhere, perhaps to Ecuador or Venezuela _ both options certain to earn the ire of the White House. 
 
 Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said she expected Putin to take advantage of a "golden opportunity" to publicly defy the White House. 
 
 "This is one of those opportunities to score points against the United States that I would be surprised if Russia passed up," Hill said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Follow Julie Pace on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
– Edward Snowden is rapidly becoming one of the biggest one-man international incidents since the end of the Cold War. As the NSA whistleblower, who is believed to still be in Moscow, remains out of sight, angry words are flying between Moscow, Beijing, Quito, and Washington, the New York Times reports. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the incident has "unquestionably" damaged the US-China relationship, and repeated a demand for Russia to hand Snowden over to US authorities. (Indeed, the AP has an entire article about the diplomatic mess Snowden has created.) "I wonder if Mr. Snowden chose China and Russia as assistants in his flight from justice because they’re such powerful bastions of Internet freedom," John Kerry scoffed. Russia denies having any information on Snowden, but many experts find that hard to believe. "The guy is supposedly carrying four laptops, plus a bunch of thumb drives, supposedly knows all sorts of other things," says an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "You don’t pass up an opportunity like that. You don’t just let him pass through the business lounge, on the way to Cuba." But here's Russia's official word on the matter, according to CNN: "We have nothing to do with Mr. Snowden, or his movements around the world. ... He chose his itinerary on his own. He has not crossed the Russian border," said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a press conference, calling the US "accusations" "absolutely groundless and unacceptable." CNN notes that Snowden could be "somewhere on the transit side of the airport's immigration process" in Moscow; a passenger says she saw him on the flight from Hong Kong to that city. China has fired back at US accusations that Beijing made the decision to allow Snowden to depart Hong Kong, the Guardian reports. An editorial in the top state-run newspaper demanded an "explanation and apology" from the US, and praised Snowden for "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask." If Snowden does manage to make it to Ecuador to seek asylum, President Rafael Correa says that the decision on the case will be made with "absolute sovereignty," reports the Washington Post. His foreign minister slammed the US for pursuing "the man who tries to provide light and transparency to issues that affect everyone." Julian Assange claims Snowden is "in a safe place and his spirits are high," and that WikiLeaks is helping him seek asylum.