EDWARD SNOWDEN: Espionage case building (
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He betrayed his nation by spilling anti-terror secrets and putting Americans’ lives at risk — and self-promoting leaker Edward Snowden could spend the rest of his days in prison for it.
Snowden, a National Security Agency contractor, must have signed a nondisclosure agreement to gain access to the highly classified data he exposed, a senior US intelligence official said yesterday.
And breaching the agreement would mean the 29-year-old computer expert could be tried for espionage and get a life term if convicted, the official said.
US investigators have launched a massive hunt for Snowden and for every detail of his professional and private life to build a criminal case against him, sources said.
The investigation will include searches of Snowden’s home and efforts to interview his family, girlfriend, co-workers and friends, CNN reported.
The FBI visited the Pennsylvania home of Snowden’s father, nut agency officials refused to comment yesterday.
National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander — keeper of some of the nation’s most valuable secrets — claims Snowden has vanished and he does not know his whereabouts, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said yesterday after Alexander briefed key senators.
Snowden disappeared after hiding for three weeks in Hong Kong, where he leaked secrets about the government’s anti-terror tracking of phone record and Internet communications.
In other developments yesterday:
* Contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton said it had fired Snowden “for violations of the firm’s code of ethics and firm policy.”
It added that Snowden earned $122,000 a year — not the $200,000 he boasted of Sunday when he outed himself as the leaker.
* House Speaker John Boehner blasted Snowden as “a traitor.”
“The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk. It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are. And it’s a giant violation of the law,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
* Russia — no friend to free speech — said it might grant Snowden asylum if he requests it.
* The ACLU and NYCLU filed suit in Manhattan federal court, challenging the surveillance program under which the NSA gathers data about every phone call placed within, from or to the United States.
* The Obama administration said that it declassified some details about its secret PRISM Internet-spying program after Snowden exposed it. It said it did so to buttress its claim that the data mining helped foil a plot to blow up New York City’s subways.
Other evidence indicates that Britain already had the al-Qaeda address used to help capture convicted terror plotter Najibullah Zazi.
The director of the National Security Intelligence’s Office yesterday said there is no other declassification of PRISM’s surveillance secrets.
If Snowden is found in Hong Kong, American charges against him would have to comply with the US treaty with the Chinese territory io have him extradited.
The White House signaled that prosecuting Snowden for allegedly breaking a nondisclosure pact was fine with President Obama, CNN reported.
“When it comes to contract workers, they swear an oath to protect classified secrets, just as government workers do,” Obama spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.
So far, the feds haven’t found any evidence that Snowden had an accomplice in collecting top-secret documents about a vast national data-mining effort, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
Boehner joined several key legislators yesterday in describing Snowden as a “traitor” or his action as “treason.” But it’s unlikely he would be charged with treason — because it is punishable by death, which would create extradition problems.
Only one American — fugitive al Qaeda propaganda chief Adam Gadahn — has been charged with treason since the World War II era.
Also yesterday, major technology companies asked Washington to lift the veil on national-security requests they get from the feds.
Google sent a letter to federal authorities asking that secrecy restrictions be loosened so that the company could publish the number and scope of requests it receives to provide user data.
Microsoft and Facebook also released statements urging the US government to permit greater transparency on such requests.