This is an effort by the US to see if one of those “other” intelligence services will take out Snowden so US won’t be linked to it. What they don’t understand is all hell will break loose if that happens. His handlers will be dropping enough dimes to balance the budget.
Snowden already said that he turned over all the data to Greenwald in Hong Kong. And Greenwald’s boyfriend was caught recently with some of the data on a London airport.
So, to put the genie back in the bottle, Snowden, Greenwald and his boyfriend would have to be taken out.
It’s probably too late for that. At this point, all the intelligence services in the world would have to assume that the Russians, the Chinese and who knows who else also has the data.