NSA Leaker Snowden May Have Had Help
The volume and level of detail of the classified documents describing government intelligence gathering leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden indicate that he might not have acted alone, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said today.
Rogers, who described the damage to national security stemming from the leaks as "significant and in many cases irreversible," would not say whether he believes the contractor was working in concert with a foreign government, though he suggested that Snowden, on his own, would not have known to perform the queries that he did to obtain the documents, and that he could well have received help to navigate through the security checks in the NSA systems.
"I still think there's a lot of unanswered questions here. When you look at some of the things he did that may have been a little bit beyond his capabilities, you look at the kinds of information he queried and the way he queried it on his smash-and-grab, run out the door to the bastions of Internet freedom -- China and Russia -- there's some things in there that just don't add up quite yet," Rogers said in a panel discussion hosted by the Washington Post.
