WH: Hong Kong’s story of Snowden escape ‘simply not credible’

White House officials on Thursday blasted officials in Hong Kong who claimed they allowed Edward Snowden to leave the country partially because the U.S. government got his middle name wrong on extradition documents.

“The authorities in Hong Kong knew full well who Mr. Snowden was,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters, adding it was “simply not credible to say they weren’t able to discern who this individual was.”

Snowden, who has admitted to leaking details of top-secret National Security Agency surveillance programs, flew from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday. He remains at the airport there as he reportedly seeks asylum in Ecuador.

{mosads}Hong Kong Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen said Tuesday that while immigration records listed Snowden’s middle name as Joseph, documents filed by the U.S. government used the name James or simply the middle initial J.

“These three names are not exactly the same, therefore we believed that there was a need to clarify,” he told The Associated Press.

Rhodes was also pressed on President Obama’s remark earlier in the day that he was “not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.”

The White House spokesman said reporters shouldn’t interpret the comment as speaking to those in the United States that have expressed concern that American officials might act aggressively to capture the leaker, saying Obama simply meant “there are established channels for doing this.”

“There’s ample basis for Russia to expel him and for Russia and other countries to cooperate,” Rhodes said.

Pressed repeatedly on whether and how U.S.-Russia relations would be hurt if authorities there continued to refuse to intervene, Rhodes deferred, saying simply that “our very strong preference is for the Russians to work with us.” He also refused to outline how American authorities were lobbying Russian officials for Snowden to be expelled.

Earlier Thursday, the president said he had not contacted Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin about the extradition request.

“I have not called President Xi personally or President Putin personally and the reason is … No. 1, I shouldn’t have to,” Obama said.

“No. 2, we’ve got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I’m not going to have one case of a suspect who we’re trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I’ve got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues,” Obama said.

Asked if either Russia or China had attempted to engage American officials in such “wheeling and dealing,” Rhodes said they had not.

Rhodes also said that Snowden’s decision to travel with classified information to Hong Kong and Moscow “clearly compromised the security of whatever he has.”