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House Intel panel urges Obama not to pardon Snowden

Snowden, a former contractor working for the National Security Agency, left the U.S.in May 2013 with a trove of NSA documents that he began passing along to reporters.

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Although privacy advocates have hailed Snowden as a fearless whistleblower who exposed an out-of-control surveillance state to the American people, his critics have long accused him of treason for revealing classified information and endangering national security.

Summarizing its investigation of Edward Snowden, the House Intelligence Committee says the former National Security Agency contractor did tremendous damage to the U.S. A smart man who wants to serve his country, Snowden continues working for the government on various classified surveillance programs, domestic and overseas, and begins to question his superiors’ methods when it comes to citizens’ civil liberties.

Gordon-Levitt said he related to Snowden’s disillusionment with the United States government after watching National Intelligence director James Clapper deny, before a congressional committee, that the NSA was collecting records on millions of Americans.

The actual report, which was fully adopted by all members of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, is classified but the panel issued a four-page synopsis of the investigation’s conclusion.

The press conference was part of a combined campaign between the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch which aims to put pressure on President Obama to pardon the NSA whistleblower before the end of this administration.

Ben Wizner, Snowden’s attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, blasted the report, saying it was an attempt to discredit a “genuine American hero”.

The government charges I faked a sick day and have a GED?

Stone’s biography was true to events that transpired in real life, Snowden said, but he joked that “it made me look like the world’s worst boyfriend”.

“We urge you not to pardon Edward Snowden, who perpetrated the largest and most damaging public disclosure of classified information in our nation, s history”, the letter states. The committee found that Snowden’s disclosures helped to diminish the government’s ability to collect information about foreign intelligence targets, failed to express his concerns of legal or moral wrongdoing to any official government channel, and that Snowden “was, and remains, a serial exaggerator and fabricator”.

In 2015 the White House rejected a petition signed by 150,000 to pardon Snowden.

While it’s well acted and the director puts several welcome thriller touches on the inherently tiresome computer world, Snowden (** out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) just doesn’t have the signature chutzpah or engrossing nature that Stone’s infused in his more high-profile and controversial projects (Platoon, JFK, Natural Born Killers).

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At a press conference in New York, Snowden, who is now living in Russian Federation, spoke to the crowd via video. In fact, the president has previously said he did not see Snowden as a whistleblower and that he wanted Snowden to come back and face charges.

This image released by Open Road Films shows from left Melissa Leo as Laura Poitras Joseph Gordon Levitt as Edward Snowden Tom Wilkinson as Ewen Mac Askill and Zachary Quinto as Glenn Greenwald in a scene from'Snowden. (Jürgen Olczyk  Open Road Fi