WikiLeaks whistleblower and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden hit back on Friday at a House Intelligence Committee report that described him as a “disgruntled employee” and not a “principled whistleblower”.
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A day before the release, the U.S. Congressional Intelligence Committee issued a scathing report, accusing Snowden of leaking highly sensitive information that “caused tremendous damage to national security”.
“Mr. Snowden’s claim that he stole this information and disclosed it to protect Americans, privacy and civil liberties is undercut by his actions”, the letter said. The HPSCI report found “no evidence that Snowden took any official effort to express concerns about USA intelligence activities – legal, moral, or otherwise – to any oversight officials within the US government, despite numerous avenues for him to do so”. In truth, he was on his way to Hong Kong with his trove of stolen documents.
Snowden was an NSA contract employee when he took the documents and leaked them to journalists who revealed massive domestic surveillance programs begun in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Reacting on Twitter, Snowden addressed several specific allegations in the report before categorically dismissing the document.
“One of them we would be to pardon Snowden”, he said.
The timing of Snowden’s interview with The Guardian appears to be timed to coincide with the release of “Snowden”, an Oliver Stone biopic about the former NSA contractor’s exploits.
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 summary goes on to call Snowden “a serial exaggerator and fabricator” whose record “reveals a pattern of intentional lying”, accusing him, among other things, of lying about his education, doctoring his performance evaluations, and exaggerating his role when he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
A congressional report has found that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden gave up top secret information to Russian Federation, embellished his resume and consistently lied throughout his short-lived intelligence career.
Snowden, speaking from Moscow by video link to a news conference in New York City, said that he would return to the United States if he felt he would receive a fair trial.
Stone told Snowden he was making the movie with or without the subject’s cooperation, Wizner said, so Snowden ultimately decided it was better “to help Oliver tell a more accurate story”.
But with Snowden, a movie starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception) and Shailene Woodley (The Divergent series), his campaign to get a full presidential pardon is getting some major assistance from Hollywood.
However, as the movie’s trailer makes clear, Stone goes to great lengths to dramatize Snowden’s special forces training.
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“Cases like Edward Snowden’s are precisely why the presidential pardon power exists”, said Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, who referred specifically to cases when mitigating circumstances merit forgiveness for a crime. In 2015, the Obama administration shot down a public White House petition with more than 160,000 signatures calling for a federal pardon.
