NSA Responds to FOIA Request: No Record of Snowden Challenging Spying
NSA leaker Edward Snowden has been claiming for months that he sent numerous emails to NSA officials and the Office of General Counsel, trying to “blow the whistle” on illegal practices before stealing as much information as possible and fleeing the country.
But a month ago, the NSA released the only email they had discovered from Snowden, and it had nothing to do with reporting wrongdoing or abuse; it was a mundane question about a training course.
This point is no small matter; Snowden’s claim to be a whistleblower hinges on it. If he made no attempt to go through legal channels before his massive theft of secret documents, he can’t claim to be a whistleblower.
And yesterday, in response to an FOIA request from one of Snowden’s biggest boosters, Truthout’s Jason Leopold, the NSA says they’ve conducted a thorough search of their files — and turned up no abuse reports at all from Snowden.
The National Security Agency says it has not been able to find a single recorded case where former contractor Edward Snowen raised complaints about the agency’s operations.
The claim, revealed in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from investigative reporter Jason Leopold, undercuts Snowden’s claim that he raised concerns with his superiors before leaking top-secret spy agency documents to the press.
“A thorough search of our files was conducted, but there are no documents indicating that Mr. Snowden contacted agency officials to raise concerns about NSA programs,” the agency said in a response to the journalist.
No doubt, Snowden and his public relations flack Glenn Greenwald will now say the NSA is lying and hiding these emails. But if he really did make these complaints as he claims, wouldn’t he have kept copies? How could anyone in that position not retain their own copies of these complaints, knowing that it would be a major issue of credibility?
Yet, Snowden has not released any such copies, even though he could destroy the NSA’s claims and vindicate himself by doing so. This simply doesn’t pass even a rudimentary smell test, folks.
