A Republican-led bipartisan U.S. House intelligence committee on Thursday released a report calling Snowden a “serial exaggerator and fabricator” who doesn’t fit the profile of a whistleblower.
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“He handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defienses against terrorists and nation-states”, the HPSCI said in a three-page unclassified summary of the 36-page report, which has not been made public.
According to the committee, Snowden was “a disgruntled employee who had frequent conflicts with his managers and was reprimanded just two weeks before he began illegally downloading classified documents”.
Following Snowden’s revelations, widespread outrage prompted Congress to adopt measures in June 2015 to regulate the NSA’s collection of Americans’ phone call metadata. The report says the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to mitigate the damage Snowden caused.
The lawyer who assisted Snowden in his escape is Canadian-born, Hong Kong-based human rights lawyer Robert Tibbo. We meet a young, earnest and patriotic Snowden who believes in his government and is eager to serve in the Army special forces before starting a promising career in the Central Intelligence Agency.
Snowden has been charged with violating the United States Espionage Act.
The report was released a day before Friday’s opening of director Oliver Stone’s film Snowden.
Snowden is in the spotlight again, thanks in part to Oliver Stone’s recently released biopic about him, and as momentum builds around a campaign urging President Barack Obama to pardon Snowden before he leaves office in January, the House Intelligence Committee is letting it be known where they stand on the guy.
Snowden dismissed the report on Twitter.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are behind the campaign to pardon him.
“Snowden” follows the life of Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), from upstart soldier in 2004, through his training and career in the Central Intelligence Agency, and later as a contractor for the NSA, after Central Intelligence Agency field work proved to be too intense for the brilliant, reserved young man with deeply held beliefs about morality and patriotism.
In a September 14 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest nixed the idea of pardoning Snowden.
“Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing, but perhaps this is why the pardon power exists – for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, and when we look at the results, it seems obvious that these were necessary things”, he said. It also accuses Snowden of sharing classified intelligence with the Russian government and making it incidentally available to other adversaries or enemies of the U.S. When asked if a more reasonable outcome would be for Snowden to reach an agreement with the US government that would significantly trim the 30-year prison sentence he could face-an outcome Snowden himself has said he’s amenable to-Wizner said he’s eyeing only a full pardon.
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Woodley said she thinks Snowden “did one of the greatest services to the world and to future generations” and has great empathy for Mills.
