NSA Watchdog: Snowden Should Have Come To Me

Darren Samuelsohn at Politico.com offers a piece on the National Security Agency's Inspector General, who says that NSA leaker Edward Snowden should have come to him.

The National Security Agency’s top watchdog slammed Edward Snowden on Tuesday for failing to follow official protocol in relaying his concerns about wayward intelligence gathering and also faulted Congress for not vetting the details of post-9/11 surveillance programs.

“Snowden could have come to me,” George Ellard, the NSA’s inspector general, said during a panel discussion hosted by the Georgetown University Law Center.

Ellard, making his first public comments in seven years working for NSA, insisted that Snowden would have been given the same protections available to other employees who file approximately 1,000 complaints per year on the agency’s hotline system.

“We have surprising success in resolving the complaints that are brought to us,” he said.

In Snowden’s case, Ellard said a complaint would have prompted an independent assessment into the constitutionality of the law that allows for the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone metadata. But that review, he added, would have also shown the NSA was within the scope of the law.

“Perhaps it’s the case that we could have shown, we could have explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do,” Ellard said.

And if Snowden wasn’t satisfied, Ellard said the NSA would have then allowed him to speak to the House and Senate intelligence committees.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/nsa-inspector-general-edward-snowden-103949.html

You can also visit the NSA IG page via the below link:

http://www.nsa.gov/about/oig/ 

Note: I've said this from the beginning of the Snowden scandal. For a good number of years during my time as a Defense Department civilian employee, one of my assigned security duties was investigating and reporting on DoD Inspector General "Hotline" complaints. Mr. Ellard is correct, but I don't believe that Snowden was interested in righting wrongs. I believe he was interested in his own glory.