Edward Snowden characterized as ‘serial exaggerator’ in House intelligence committee report

A House intelligence committee report on Edward Snowden characterizes the former National Security Agency contractor not as a whistleblower but as a “serial exaggerator” whose theft of 1.5 million classified government documents has done tremendous damage to national security.

A 4-page summary of the classified report released by the House committee on Thursday says the bulk of the documents taken “have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests” but rather pertain to military, defense and intelligence programs.

“A review of the materials Snowden compromised makes clear that he handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states,” the report states. “Some of Snowden’s disclosures exacerbated and accelerated existing trends that diminished the IC’s capabilities to collect against legitimate foreign intelligence targets, while others resulted in the loss of intelligence streams that had saved American lives.”

The report, two years in the making, was released a day after supporters of Mr. Snowden launched a formal campaign to request that President Obama grant him a pardon and just ahead of the release of Oliver Stone’s theatrical film about Mr. Snowden.

The documents leaked by Mr. Snowden in 2013 revealed the U.S. government’s global surveillance capabilities, which triggered public outcry and ultimately led to reform of the programs. The 33-year-old computer technician went into hiding as the reports about the telephone record surveillance programs were published. Prosecutors later charged him with theft of government property and espionage, but Mr. Snowden has avoided prosecution by taking asylum in Russia.

While Mr. Snowden has characterized himself as a whistleblower for revealing the surveillance programs, lawmakers on Thursday referred to him a disgruntled employee who argued with his supervisors and had been reprimanded just two weeks before he began illegally downloading classified documents.

“Edward Snowden is no hero — he’s a traitor who willfully betrayed his colleagues and his country. He put our servicemembers and the American people at risk after perceived slights by his superiors,” said Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. “In light of his long list of exaggerations and outright fabrications detailed in this report, no one should take him at his word.”

However, Mr. Snowden’s supporters, including civil and privacy rights advocates, say his actions brought about awareness of secret government activities and should be applauded, not criminalized.

Mr. Snowden took to Twitter to refute the characterization of several allegations made in the report, among them that he feuded with supervisors and was reprimanded after he circumvented the chain of command to report problems.

“Claim: I reported a critical problem (software updates taking field sites offline) to senior management, and was reprimanded. True! That doesn’t say good things about going through ’proper channels’ at NSA. Not sure they understand how this hurts their case,” he wrote.

He went on to call the report a distortion of the facts.

“Their report is so artlessly distorted that it would be amusing if it weren’t such a serious act of bad faith,” Mr. Snowden wrote. “Bottom line: after ’two years of investigation,’ the American people deserve better. This report diminishes the committee.”

In addition to its conclusions about Mr. Snowden and the documents taken, the report summary also notes concern about the NSA’s ability to prevent a breach of such magnitude in the future.

The report states that the NSA and the intelligence community “have not done enough to minimize the risk of another massive unauthorized disclosure. Although it is impossible to reduce the chance of another Snowden to zero, more work can and should be done to improve the security of the people and computer networks that keep America’s most closely held secrets.”

The full report, which is 36 pages long, is classified. The summary report indicates that to write the report, the committee interviewed key individuals who had reviewed interviews with Mr. Snowden’s coworkers and supervisors but that they did not speak with anyone directly who could be called as a witness in the criminal case against Mr. Snowden if he is eventually brought to trial.