Edward Snowden's True Permanent Record: My Washington Times Piece On NSA Leaker Edward Snowden

The Washington Times published my piece on NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

NSA leaker Edward Snowden has published a memoir called “Permanent Record.”

I’ve not read his book and I probably won’t.

I recall the late conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer on Fox News criticizing Mr. Snowden’s video appearance live from Russia to a conference in America in 2014. He was offended particularly by Mr. Snowden’s several references to the U.S. Constitution.

“I don’t want to be lectured by a traitor who speaks from a land that doesn’t have a constitution,” Krauthammer said. 

Like Krauthammer, I don’t want to be lectured by Mr. Snowden, and I don’t think I would glean any insights from a self-aggrandizing book by this liar, fraud, sneak thief and traitor.

The former CIA employee and NSA contractor stole and subsequently released to journalists in 2013 more than 1.5 million classified documents. The broad and largely unfiltered intel dump endangered American lives worldwide, and he no doubt gave much more damaging material to his hosts and protectors, the Chinese and the Russians.

Rather than reading Mr. Snowden’s suspect memoir, I reread the 2016 House Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan and unclassified report, “Review of the Unauthorized Disclosures of Former National Security Agency Contractor Edward Snowden.”

According to the report’s executive summary, Edward Snowden perpetrated the largest and most damaging public release of classified information in U.S. intelligence history. In August 2014, the chairman and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence directed committee staff to carry out a comprehensive review of the unauthorized disclosures.

The two-year extensive review offered a number of unclassified findings. According to the report, “these findings demonstrate that the public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions, a pattern that began before he stole 1.5 million sensitive documents.

“Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests — they instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries,” the report stated.

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

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/8/edward-snowdens-true-permanent-record/