Documents reveal feds’ effort to discredit Snowden, reveal CIA ties
(FOX)- Newly declassified NSA documents provide official confirmation that Edward Snowden was a CIA asset, and show the extent to which the government went to discredit him after he told lawmakers in Europe that he tried to blow the whistle on a secret federal program that snooped on private citizens.
The documents, obtained by Vice News, do not conclusively confirm claims by Snowden, then a private contractor working for the NSA, that he tried to alert supervisors of what he believed to be illegal spying before going public. They do show that following a flurry of claims by Snowden in early 2014 that his supposed concerns the agency was violating the constitutional rights of citizens were ignored, Obama administration officials sought to discredit him with his own words.
That effort centered around discussing the eventual May 2014 release of an April 2013 email from Snowden to the agency’s Office of General Counsel asking whether an Obama executive order allowing the snooping program could supersede federal statute. Officials largely viewed the query as simply a question about a test administered to contract workers.
“I’m not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply Executive Orders have the same precedence as law,” Snowden writes in the email after reposting a section of “the training.”
Snowden had contacted reporter Glenn Greenwald, who later used Snowden’s stolen NSA documents in several stories, four months before he wrote the email.