So Mr. Snowden seemed to have done the world a service. But in the last week both he and his former employers have misplayed their hands, and his story has become far trickier. Mr. Snowden did not start out as a spy, and calling him one bends the term past recognition. Spies don’t give their secrets to journalists for free.

Did he think he would be seen as a hero? Maybe. At least, as The Times’s Keith Bradsher reported Monday, he seems to have believed he would be allowed to stay quietly in Hong Kong while the world digested his revelations.

Given the Obama administration’s record of pursuing leakers, Mr. Snowden’s plans to live happily ever after were optimistic, at best. In fact, the fury from Washington and the intelligence community knew no bounds. Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, a late if enthusiastic convert to the antiterrorism cause, called Mr. Snowden a “defector.” Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said Mr. Snowden had committed “treason.” Federal prosecutors prepared a sealed (naturally) indictment. The White House asked Hong Kong to repatriate Snowden — and, unbelievably, seemed to think its extradition request would be handled like any other. We’ll just fax the papers, and you ship him to county, O.K., sheriff?

Faced with the prospect of decades in prison, Mr. Snowden panicked. Instead of waiting for the territory or its masters in Beijing to decide his fate, he packed his laptops and headed for Moscow. Now he gets to see a soft dictatorship (such a lovely phrase) up close. On Sunday, the willful naïfs from WikiLeaks who are “helping” Mr. Snowden said that Sheremetyevo airport would simply be a stopover. But why would the Russian government let him go before it has squeezed him dry? In interviews, Mr. Snowden has said he has plenty of secrets left on his hard drives, and there’s no reason to doubt him. He has already disclosed details of American and British spying on a conference in 2009 in London.

Mr. Snowden has put himself in a terrible spot. Moscow will surely protect him for as long as it feels like irritating Washington. But by the time the Russians are finished sifting through his laptops, he’ll be their spy, whether or not he meant to be. Beijing may have already pulled the same trick; some intelligence officers believe that Chinese spy agencies copied Mr. Snowden’s hard drives during his Hong Kong stay.