The House of Representatives intelligence committee released a three-page unclassified summary of its two-year examination of the case. Snowden, a former NSA contractor who revealed widespread government surveillance programs, now lives in self-imposed exile to avoid charges in the USA for violating the Espionage Act and other laws.
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Presumably the thinking is that if a pardon for Snowden is to be secured, they have a much better chance of persuading Obama than likely next President Hillary Clinton – who is thought to be a level of magnitude more hawkish on national security issues.
NSA and Cybersecurity Subcommittee chairman Lynn Westmoreland said Snowden “did more damage to U.S. national security than any other individual in our nation’s history”.
Snowden was charged by the United States government in 2013 under the Espionage Act, a law from 1917 that fails to differentiate in any way, between a spy handing over information to foreign governments and whistleblowers providing records to journalists about illegal and/or questionable government activities.
Snowden’s 2013 revelations sparked widespread outrage over mass surveillance that prompted Congress to adopt measures curbing the NSA’s collection of phone call metadata. The debate resulted in changing in passing new legislation that ostensibly provide protection from the government’s intrusive practices. “This report diminishes the committee”.
Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing Snowden, criticized the House report.
Snowden now lives in Russian Federation, where he fled after sharing with MacAskill and other journalists a vast database of documents that revealed the scope of the NSA’s surveillance efforts in the United States and overseas.
Two weeks before he began to download classified documents at an NSA installation in Hawaii, the report said, he was reprimanded after “engaging in a workplace spat” with managers. The committee also described Snowden as a “serial exaggerator and fabricator”.
The report said Snowden “doctored his performance evaluations” and exaggerated his resume to obtain “new positions at the NSA”.
The report’s summary also accused Snowden of claiming he had left Army basic training earlier in his career because of broken legs, as The Guardian reported when Snowden first came forward, “when in fact he washed out because of shin splints”.
Speaking by video link from Moscow, Snowden said Wednesday that whistleblowing “is democracy’s safeguard of last resort, the one on which we rely when all other checks and balances have failed and the public has no idea what’s going on behind closed doors”.
The 33-year-old spoke ahead of the opening of the movie ‘Snowden, ‘ starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Although the 36-page report is classified, officials released a shorter, unclassified version on Thursday a day ahead of Friday’s United States premier of an Oliver Stone drama based on the 33-year-old contractor’s exploits.
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