Justice Dept. in Spotlight After Snowden Hong Kong Evasion

The white house scrambling to find out how he slipped out of hong kong, whether anything can be done to stop him and pierre thomas in washington and, pierre, any sense at all in the u.S. Government of... See More

The white house scrambling to find out how he slipped out of hong kong, whether anything can be done to stop him and pierre thomas in washington and, pierre, any sense at all in the u.S. Government of what's going on with nod snowden. Reporter: They're desperate to find out but don't have any information that we know of, george. It's a really critical situation for the u.S. Government. Snowden is a walking treasure trove of information. They need to know where he is because any intelligence service including the russians would want to get access to him. Back to how he got out of hong kong. The u.S. Said they filed an extradition request and revoked his passport but the hong kong government said all the required paperwork wasn't there so did the u.S. Screw up, or is china stiff-arming us? Reporter: Well, it's a war of words between the u.S. Government and hong kong. They're challenging the assertion that the extradition request was flawed. U.S. Officials claim days went by after the request was made and hong kong never gave a clue there was a problem with the request until this past friday. The next thing the u.S. Government knew, snowden was gone. U.S. Officials say the pressure on hong kong was intense with the attorney general himself calling his counterpart last week, so, yes, they do feel they got stiff-armed. Intense pressure on hong kong and moscow, as well. We'll bring in our abc news