Story highlights Ecuador denies issuing Snowden travel documents

U.S. won't be "scrambling jets" to bring Snowden in, President Obama says

A Hong Kong official says the U.S. was at fault for Snowden not being held there

Ecuador invites Washington to argue in writing why Snowden should not get asylum

The United States will keep to routine channels in its efforts to bring self-avowed NSA leaker Edward Snowden back for prosecution, President Barack Obama said Thursday.

"I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," he told reporters during a news conference in Senegal.

Meanwhile, Ecuador's Political Affairs Secretary Bety Tola said officials had not yet "dealt with" Snowden's request for asylum because he is not in the country. Officials also denied statements this week by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that Ecuador had given Snowden refugee documents to travel on after his U.S. passport was revoked.

The statements further muddy an already complicated set of scenarios involving Snowden, who apparently remained in a Moscow airport with Russian officials suggesting it's time for him to move on.

Snowden, the former National Security Agency computer contractor who spilled details of U.S. surveillance programs to reporters, flew to Moscow from Hong Kong after American authorities sought his extradition on espionage charges. Russia says it has no interest in arresting him, but for a second day, a top Russian official questioned how long he will be hanging around Sheremetyevo International Airport.

Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – John Walker ran a father and son spy ring, passing classified material to the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1985. Walker was a Navy communication specialist with financial difficulties when he walked into the Soviet Embassy and sold a piece of cyphering equipment. Navy and Defense officials said that Walker enabled the Soviet Union to unscramble military communications and pinpoint the location of U.S. submarines at all times. As part of his plea deal, prosecutors promised leniency for Walker's son Michael Walker, a former Navy seaman. Click through the gallery to see other high-profile leak scandals the United States has seen over the years. Hide Caption 1 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon's administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist's office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer. Hide Caption 2 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Jonathan Pollard is a divisive figure in U.S.-Israeli relations. The former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst was caught spying for Israel in 1985 and was sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment. Previously, the United States and Israel discussed his possible release as part of efforts to save fragile Middle East peace negotiations, according to sources familiar with the talks. On July 28, 2015, Pollard's lawyer announced that the convicted spy had been granted parole and would be released on November 21 -- exactly 30 years after his arrest. Hide Caption 3 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Wen Ho Lee was a scientist at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico who was charged with 59 counts of downloading classified information onto computer tapes and passing it to China. Lee eventually agreed to plead guilty to a count of mishandling classified information after prosecutors deemed their case to be too weak. He was released after nine months in solitary confinement. Lee later received a $1.6 million in separate settlements with the government and five news agencies after he sued them, accusing the government of leaking damaging information about him to the media. Hide Caption 4 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Members of the Bush administration were accused retaliating against Valerie Plame, pictured, by blowing her cover in 2003 as a U.S. intelligence operative, after her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote a series of New York Times op-eds questioning the basis of certain facts the administration used to make the argument to go to war in Iraq. Hide Caption 5 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – In 2007, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was convicted on charges related to the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in connection with the case. His 30-month sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush. Cheney told a special prosecutor in 2004 that he had no idea who leaked the information. Hide Caption 6 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Aldrich Ames, a 31-year CIA employee, pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 1994 and was sentenced to life in prison. Ames was a CIA case worker who specialized in Soviet intelligence services and had been passing classified information to the KGB since 1985. U.S. intelligence officials believe that information passed along by Ames led to the arrest and execution of Russian officials they had recruited to spy for them. Hide Caption 7 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Robert Hanssen pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 2001 in return for the government not seeking the death penalty. Hanssen began spying for the Soviet Union in 1979, three years after going to work for the FBI and prosecutors said he collected $1.4 million for the information he turned over to the Cold War enemy. In 1981, Hanssen's wife caught him with classified documents and convinced him to stop spying, but he started passing secrets to the Soviets again four years later. In 1991, he broke off relations with the KGB, but resumed his espionage career in 1999, this time with the Russian Intelligence Service. He was arrested after making a drop in a Virginia park in 2001. Hide Caption 8 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Army Pvt. Bradley Manning was convicted July 30 of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of classified documents and videos to WikiLeaks, and the counts against him included violations of the Espionage Act. He was found guilty of 20 of the 22 charges but acquitted of the most serious charge -- aiding the enemy. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison in 2013. Hide Caption 9 of 10 Photos: Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks – Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed himself as the leaker of details of U.S. government surveillance programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia after initially fleeing to Hong Kong. He has been charged with three felony counts, including violations of the U.S. Espionage Act, over the leaks. Hide Caption 10 of 10

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"He did not violate any laws of the Russian Federation. He did not cross the border, stays in the transit zone of the airport and has a right to fly in any direction he thinks of," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the ITAR-TASS news agency Wednesday. "And as the president put it, the sooner it happens, the better."

The United States has called on any country where Snowden may travel to turn him away. The 30-year-old is being aided by WikiLeaks, the international anti-secrecy group that facilitates the release of classified information.

Ecuador, the South American country where Snowden has sought refuge, has already hosted Assange for a year in its embassy in London.

The Ecuadorian government took a swipe at Washington on Wednesday, rejecting what it called "detrimental, untrue, and unproductive" claims the U.S. government has made about Ecuador. But it also invited Washington to weigh in on the request.

A response to Snowden's asylum application could take as long as two months, the Ecuadorian foreign minister said Wednesday.

"The decision on asylum could resolve itself in one day, one week or, as with Assange, it could take two months," Ricardo Patino wrote on his Twitter account.

Relations between the United States and Ecuador have been tense under the leftist administration of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. The United States has criticized a new law in Ecuador it says will restrict press freedoms, and the countries expelled each others' ambassadors in 2011 after WikiLeaks released U.S. diplomatic cables saying Ecuador's government tolerated police corruption.

An Ecuadorian deputy foreign minister denied Wednesday previous reports that the nation had given Snowden documents to facilitate his travel.

"It is not true that he has an ID, passport or any document given to him by any Ecuadorian consulate," Galo Galarza said. "It is possible that he may have letters of recommendation or references. But from our side, the Foreign Ministry, we have not provided any document as is being reported by some media outlets."

Documents Snowden provided to newspapers revealed the scope of U.S. programs that collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and monitor the Internet activity of overseas residents. The disclosures shook the U.S. intelligence community and raised questions about whether the NSA is eroding American civil liberties. Defenders of the program say it has helped investigators break up several terrorist plots and that the operations are conducted under the oversight of all three branches of government.

Snowden went to Hong Kong before details of the NSA leaks began appearing in newspapers. He left Sunday, after the United States asked authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory to hold him for extradition proceedings.

The United States has expressed dismay at the failure of the Hong Kong government to stop Snowden, with White House spokesman Jay Carney calling the decision "a serious setback" to U.S.-China ties. But Hong Kong's top prosecutor, Rimsky Yuen, said U.S. officials failed to respond to a request for further information, leaving authorities there unable to arrest him.

Yuen told reporters late Tuesday that some documents referred to an "Edward James Snowden," while Hong Kong immigration records listed his middle name as Joseph, and another document only referred to "Edward J. Snowden." That, along with a lack of a passport number, slowed down a decision on issuing an arrest warrant, Yuen said.

But in a statement provided to CNN, the U.S. Justice Department said Hong Kong's request for more information were just a dodge that let Snowden get away.

"The true motive of the letter from Hong Kong authorities is revealed by its request for the supposed 'clarification' of Mr. Snowden's identity with regard to his middle name," the statement said. "That Hong Kong would ask for more information about his identity demonstrates that it was simply trying to create a pretext for not acting on the provisional arrest request."

The statement said U.S. officials had met all legal requirements in its paperwork. And a law enforcement official said officials in Hong Kong had the request from the United States for days but waited until Friday night to raise concern about Snowden's name.