Snowden not a whistleblower, congressional report says

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They said that Snowden failed basic annual training for NSA employees on a key provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which included explanations of the privacy protections related to PRISM - another program whose details were revealed as a result of Snowden's leaks. The programs collected the telephone metadata records of millions of Americans and examined emails from overseas. He then fled to Russian Federation via Hong Kong.

Sarah Harrison, a representative of the website WikiLeaks who helped Snowden flee Hong Kong and seek refuge in Russian Federation, said although she hopes the film will help rehabilitate him, she agreed an amnesty is unlikely.

"His conduct put American lives at risk and it risked American national security", he told reporters. "In light of his long list of exaggerations and outright fabrications detailed in this report, no one should take him at his word". In late July, the administration responded to an earlier petition campaign by rejecting the idea and saying that Snowden should return to the United States to face trial. Always fearful and distrustful, Snowden finally makes the decision to steal classified information and share it globally.

The report, the staffer said, contains new information and "contradicts" the image of Snowden as a principled whistleblower motivated by his concerns with systemic privacy violations by the NSA.

Snowden has said he was moved to leak details of the NSA's capabilities because he was anxious about the privacy of American citizens, but the committee investigators concluded he began siphoning documents shortly after getting in a fight with his bosses in 2012.

Critics have said Snowden is a traitor, and that his disclosures harmed the ability of the United States and its allies to fight terrorism.

Russian Federation granted Snowden asylum in 2013 after the Department of Justice charged the former NSA contractor under the Espionage Act, which allows the government to target whistleblowers in the same way it targets foreign spies.

Snowden was charged by USA federal prosecutors in 2013 with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person. Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans pushed through a reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act past year that ended the program.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden and his supporters have formally lodged the case that he should be pardoned by US President Barack Obama.

"The majority of what he took has to do with military secrets and defense secrets", Schiff said in an interview Thursday for C-SPAN's "Newsmakers".

"I think we all have a duty, sort of collectively in society, to remember this, to think about when we are being manipulated".

The Obama administration has urged Snowden to return to the USA and face trial.

The issuance of the House committee report coincided with the release of "Snowden", a movie directed by Oliver Stone that portrays him as a whistle-blower and hero. "He is not a whistleblower", the letter said.

NSA and Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Lynn Westmoreland said Snowden "did more damage to USA national security than any other individual in our nation's history". They said he began his massive download two weeks after a spat with a supervisor. The summary also claims Snowden is a "serial exaggerator and fabricator" who lied about why he dropped out of the Army and stole answers to an employment test, among other purported falsehoods.