EDWARD Snowden, the man who delivered one of the biggest intelligence leaks in US history, left his girlfriend behind after going on the run.

Snowden, 29, was deeply in love with stunning ballerina Lindsay Mills, 28, and the pair were so close that family friends thought they might have got hitched in secret.

He whisked her away to Hong Kong where some thought the ceremony took place because it was a "special place" for them.

But he left her behind in Hawaii weeks ago when he leaked classified information about PRISM, a secret government phone surveillance program that harvests data on millions of Americans from telecommunications and online companies.

He never told Ms Mills where he was going or what he was doing - only that he needed to leave for a few weeks.

TV news program Inside Edition claims to have tracked Ms Mills down in Hawaii, where she is the member of an acrobatic troupe.

It appears that she was performing with the Waikiki Acrobatic Troupe. She also took classes last year from another troupe, Samadhi Hawaii, though never performed with the company.

Snowden, meanwhile, is a new breed of whistleblower.

Traditionally, spies who have leaked government secrets have remained in the shadows, trying to preserve their anonymity for as long as they can.

But not this 29-year-old geek who says his work as an undercover CIA computer administrator provided him with almost unlimited access to US intelligence secrets and details about its surveillance programs.

Far from waiting for the dust to settle on the stunning revelations about the National Security Agency's snooping operation, he has jumped into the limelight, admitting the crime with an eagerness that has stunned espionage experts.

Like Bradley Manning, the ex-army computer analyst on trial in Maryland for handing vast amounts of confidential government data to Wikileaks, Snowden is a very 21st century whistleblower.

Young, naive, idealistic and not short on self-righteousness, like Manning he clearly believes that government misbehaviour is sufficient justification to break the law and intelligence world codes of conduct.

And, as with Manning, his computer skills - desperately desired by the US in the post-9/11 world - meant he was given access to far more classified information than might have been wise considering his relative inexperience.

In a 12-minute video interview with the Guardian in his room shortly before he vacated the hotel and went on the run, Snowden appears at times rather pleased with himself and, at others, scared for his life.

Suspicious about a hotel alarm going off, he melodramatically suggested the room might be stormed any minute by the CIA or even their lackeys in the Chinese triad gangs.

Snowden, who communicated with journalists using the codename 'verax', Latin for truthteller - calmly described his journey from high school dropout to well-paid internet intelligence expert with a diplomatic passport and top-level security clearance.

In case anyone questions his motives - and there are many doing that in the US - he insists he has given up a 'very comfortable life' including a salary of around $A200,000, Ms Mills, a promising career and a family he loves.

Snowden had a 50km round trip each day commuting into Honolulu where he worked for defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton at the NSA's local office.

The couple appeared to be ready to move at short notice. Neighbours were struck by the huge number of boxes he kept, piled floor to ceiling, in his double garage.

Snowden, they said, was unremarkable but oddly stand-offish.

Carolyn Tijing said: 'We would say, "Hi, how's it going? How are you?" and he would just rush inside.'

Snowden said he made his final preparations for his public expose three weeks ago when he told his supervisor he needed a couple of weeks off to be treated for his epilepsy. Investigators will clearly be keen to talk to Ms Mills.

On May 20, he flew to Hong Kong. Until yesterday, when he checked out - destination unknown - he was staying at the five star Mira Hotel, rarely venturing out of his plush room and racking up a huge bill on room service.

Snowden appears to be paranoid about his safety and privacy - putting pillows under his door to prevent eavesdropping and hiding under a large red hood when he is typing passwords into his laptop.

Describing his own background, Snowden painted a portrait of a patriot who became disillusioned with his country's actions abroad.

He grew up in North Carolina and later Maryland - where his family lived near the NSA's HQ at Ford Meade. His mother works as a court clerk and, like her son, suffers from epilepsy. A neighbour described the Snowdens yesterday as 'very respectable people'.

Snowden fared badly at school and never even obtained a high school diploma let alone a degree.

Insisting he wanted to fight the Iraq War because he felt he had an 'obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression', he joined the army in 2003 and began training the following year for the special forces.

Officials say he was discharged after four months. Snowden said he left the army after breaking both legs in a training accident.

He said he was shocked to discover that, instead of helping Arabs, his military trainers were more concerned about teaching troops how to kill them.

Snowden went to work for the NSA as a security guard at one of its secret facilities at the University of Maryland. Described as a 'master on computers', he is apparently 'happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance'.

His tech skills propelled him up the intelligence ladder. He moved to the CIA to work in IT security and, by 2007, he was stationed in Geneva with diplomatic cover - an achievement for someone lacking educational qualifications.

His job maintaining computer network security inevitably allowed him to see a wide swathe of top secret files. What he saw of the CIA during three years working with the agency appalled the idealistic Snowden.

He admits he thought of exposing state secrets while working there but had high hopes that US behaviour would improve when Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

He left the CIA in 2009 but stayed in the same line of work, joining a private contractor working for the NSA in Japan. He is likely to face both agencies again soon because Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US.

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