A summary of a two-year report prepared by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee depicted the former National Security Agency contractor as “a disgruntled employee who had frequent conflicts with his managers and was reprimanded just weeks before he began illegally downloading classified documents”.
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The letter states Snowden, who breached government surveillance programs after he leaked stolen records about the agency in 2013, “perpetrated the largest and most damaging public disclosure of classified information in our nation’s history”, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union launched their “Pardon Snowden” campaign on Wednesday, urging President Obama to do so before he leaves office in January 2017.
Edward Snowden is also the hero of a new movie by American director Oliver Stone, who also pleads for his forgiveness.
The US government has struggled to manage the effects of Snowden’s disclosures, which brought to light extensive its digital surveillance programmes and have led to dramatic changes in digital communications security and worldwide data-sharing arrangements, including the annullation of a data-sharing treaty between the US and the EU.
“Rather than avail himself of the many lawful avenues to express legal, moral, or ethical qualms with U.S. intelligence activities, Mr Snowden stole 1.5 million classified documents from National Security Agency networks”.
In a series of tweets, Snowden dismissed the findings of the report.
The full 36-page House committee review remains classified, but the committee released a three-page executive summary slamming Snowden both personally and for the “tremendous damage” the committee said was done to American national security.
Snowden is also accused of being a “serial exaggerator and fabricator”, such as by claiming that he left the army because of broken legs when in fact he had shin splints.
“The claim I “doctored performance evaluations?”
“One of them we would be to pardon Snowden”, he said.
“The vast majority of what he took has nothing to do with American privacy”, said Adam Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on the committee.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Friday joined a growing list of celebrities, industry leaders and other public figures campaigning for a presidential pardon for Edward Snowden.
‘I will be voting, ‘ Snowden said today, speaking at a conference in Athens by video link from Moscow.
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Edward Snowden was a “disgruntled employee” and not a “principled whistleblower”, according to a report from Congress released Thursday, which comes amid mounting pressure for a presidential pardon. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
