“If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: he has to stop his work aimed at damaging our U.S. partners, no matter how strange this sounds coming from me,” Putin told reporters.

But Putin also qualified his comments, saying that it appears the NSA leaker has no plans to stop his work and therefore should pick a final destination soon.

Snowden has been holed up in Moscow’s Sheremedevo International Airport for over a week, unable to travel after the State Department canceled his passport. He also appears to have few safe places to go, with routes to possible political asylum in Ecuador blocked.

Putin’s comments came amid reports that Snowden had recently applied for political asylum elsewhere as his options dwindle, including in Russia.

A Russian immigration official confirmed to ABC News a New York Times report that WikiLeaks member Sarah Harrison, who is traveling with Snowden, came to him with the application late Sunday. Earlier, the Los Angeles Times reported that Snowden handed Russian officials applications for asylum in 15 countries.

Putin, meanwhile, stood by his previous refusal to extradite Snowden to the United States.

“Russia never extradites anyone anywhere and is not going to extradite anyone. No one ever extradites anyone to us,” he said, adding that Snowden “is a free man.”

Putin also denied that Snowden was working with Russian intelligence.

“He is not our agent, he is not cooperating with us,” he said.

READ: Officials Say How They Think Snowden Could Hurt the U.S.

Department Of Justice/FBI

When police officers around the country meet for their morning musters over the next week, many of them will likely be reminded by supervisors that fireworks – so popular around the Fourth of July – can be used to build bombs.

“Recent incidents in the Homeland demonstrate that consumer fireworks – widely used during the upcoming [July 4] celebrations – can be misused by criminals and violent extremists to construct improvised explosive devices,” the FBI and Department of Homeland Security said Friday in a notice to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Such notices have become somewhat routine, acting as an “FYI” to the larger law enforcement community and rarely drawing on any fresh intelligence. Still, there is an added sense of caution around this Fourth of July because of how the Boston Marathon bombs were constructed.

Explosive powder from fireworks was used to construct the bombs used in that attack, according to federal authorities. And shells of fireworks were later recovered in a backpack belonging to one of the suspects, the notice issued Friday said.

SEE ABC’S FULL COVERAGE OF THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS

According to FBI officials, homegrown terrorists and other extremists acting on their own “are of paramount concern” this Fourth of July as masses of revelers are expected to pack city centers and other locations. The officials worried such “crowd density” could be an “opportunity to perpetuate a mass casualty attack,” as illustrated by the Boston bombings.

In fact, the suspects in that attack originally planned to strike Fourth of July festivities in Boston, which hosts one of the biggest and most acclaimed celebrations each year, sources have said. But the bombers allegedly changed their minds and launched their attack months earlier when the homemade bombs were ready.

For the first time this year, the FBI’s New York Field Office is sending at least two bomb-technicians to Boston to help their colleagues there over the holiday. It’s unclear if other field offices are following suit.

One law enforcement official said the assistance is simply “out of an abundance of caution” to boost manpower in a city recently rocked by a terrorist attack. As of Friday night, authorities had come across no specific, credible threats related to this holiday, one U.S. official said.

Still, the official said, authorities can’t help but be “concerned about other knuckleheads” like those responsible for the Boston bombings.

Friday’s “Roll Call Release,” as such notices from the FBI and DHS are titled, offered law enforcement agencies and private security personnel tips to identify potentially suspicious behavior, including paying close attention to anyone asking questions “that go beyond mere curiosity about the potential damage fireworks could cause.”

The notice, obtained by ABC News, comes one day after federal authorities released a 30-count indictment against the surviving Boston bombing suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He allegedly learned how to build bombs from Volume One of “Inspire,” the online magazine produced by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The magazine, first published in summer 2010, included detailed instructions for building homemade bombs using pressure cookers, shrapnel and explosive powder from fireworks, according to indictment.

Two months before the Boston bombing, the older suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, drove to Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook, N.H., where he bought 48 mortars containing about eight pounds of low explosive powder, the indictment alleged. After the attack on April 15, authorities found fireworks emptied of their explosive powder in the younger suspect’s college dormitory room, according to the indictment.

The pair is allegedly responsible for one of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, killing three, including an 8-year-old boy, and injuring more than 260.

But even before “Inspire” magazine offered detailed bomb-making instructions to anyone with Internet access, homegrown terrorists tried to use fireworks in their plots against the U.S. homeland. In May 2010, Faisal Shahzad, trained by the Pakistani Taliban, used more than 150 small fireworks in his failed attempt to blow up a Nissan Pathfinder in New York City’s Times Square.

The notice issued Friday cited Shahzad’s case and mentioned last year’s theater shooting in Colorado, where authorities found consumer fireworks components in the main suspect’s apartment.

Fireworks are available for purchase in most U.S. states, but they are banned in Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, the notice said.

A bearded U.S. Navy SEAL, his tan pants smeared with bright red blood on one leg — apparently not his own — and with a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol on his hip, dropped the ammo can into the hole and knelt in the grass holding a small card, which he read aloud.

“In memory of Sara Manley Harvey, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, on behalf of her husband Bill Harvey, and in memory of Lt. Cmdr. Erik Kristensen, on behalf of his friend, Arianne Harvey, who is Bill’s sister,” the SEAL said quietly.

This was how a small SEAL team on the front lines of U.S. counter-terrorism paid tribute to one American lost on 9/11 and another American killed in action eight years ago today during an ill-fated attempt to rescue an ambushed team of fellow SEALs in Operation Red Wings.

I had carried these mementos of the war for a month in my backpack during combat embeds in Afghanistan the summer of 2005, only a few weeks after one of the worst losses of life in combat during the now 12-year war.

Lt. Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL, had led a manhunt in Kunar province on June 28, 2005, but his team was discovered and attacked by Al Qaeda-linked insurgents. Murphy and two of his SEALs were killed, but the fourth, Marcus Luttrell, was eventually rescued by Afghan villagers and wrote the bestselling memoir about the ordeal called “Lone Survivor.” Murphy was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, posthumously by President Bush.

Kristensen led the mission to come to the aid of Murphy’s team. The SEALs’ Army MH-47 helicopter, “Turbine 33,” was shot down, however, killing eight more SEAL operators and eight Army Nightstalker crewmen.

Before leaving for Afghanistan in July 2005 to embed with U.S. Special Operations Forces and infantry for the New York Daily News, my friend Bill Harvey and his sister Ariann Harvey had given me the wood urn filled with Ground Zero ash, which the City of New York had given him because his wife Sara’s remains were not found in the rubble of the Twin Towers. A neighbor at the Pentagon gave me pieces of the Pentagon from the side struck by hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 on Sept. 11.

Each asked me to bury these mementos in Afghanistan in honor of those lost. But Bill had a more complicated request.

“We’d appreciate it if you could find SEAL Team 10 and give them this urn to bury near Erik’s crash site,” Bill said to me.

Arianne had grown up with Erik Kristensen and his death had been a double blow to the Harvey family after Sara’s loss, he explained.

Finding a SEAL team conducting covert missions in Afghanistan was not easy. But during a stay at a Green Beret outpost on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in Paktika province, I met a SEAL who gave a me a phone number at Bagram Airfield north of Kabul.

“They know who you are and why you’re coming,” the SEAL informed me.

Inside Camp Ouellette at Bagram a few days later, the SEALs welcomed me as a messenger, not a journalist. They accepted the piece of the Pentagon and the small wood urn, which was engraved, “09-11-01.”

“We’ll take care of this,” a commander assured me, offering Team 10′s gratitude for the delivery.

They showed me their team room, where operators received pre-mission briefings. On the wall over the door to the outside were framed photos of each of the 11 SEALs lost weeks earlier in Operation Red Wings, including Lt. Murphy in an FDNY t-shirt and Lt. Cmdr. Kristensen.

“We face the guys” — meaning the fallen’s faces — “every time we step out that door on a mission,” one SEAL told me.

As I walked outside the camp gate, I was greeted by a senior public affairs officer from a different U.S. military command at Bagram, who began screaming at me for “violating the media ground rules” by “entering a classified area” of the base (I had not). I was told that my photographer and I were to be immediately expelled from Bagram, and 45 minutes later we were stranded on the wrong side of the barbed wire-laced gates of the massive U.S. air base.

But six months later, Bill Harvey received a small U.S. flag in the mail and photos of a burial ceremony on the banks of the Kunar by two SEALs. The flag had flown over the tiny SEAL base overlooking the spot where on Jan. 16, 2006 they dug a hole and dropped the ammo box in containing the urn and sliver of the Pentagon.

The blood-stained operator shoveled sod over the can and piled four smooth river stones atop it.

“We lay to rest the ashes and remains of those who died on 9/11 along with a piece of the Pentagon here in Naray, Afghanistan, in memory and in hope that we will prevent this from happening again in the future,” the SEAL had said, looking down at that hostile but now hallowed ground. “It’s a peaceful location alongside the river within the shadow and in the sight of the American flag that flies over the firebase in Naray.”

Eight years has passed since Operation Red Wings ended in disaster as a team of SEALs sought an insurgent leader tied to Al Qaeda on a mountainside.

The seven-page diary, published with redactions today on the special operations website SOFREP.com, was originally found on the floor of the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi by a reporter from CNN days after that facility and a nearby CIA annex were targeted in separate sustained attacks by militants on Sept. 11, 2012. Stevens was killed in the attack along with State Department computer specialist Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who were working as contractors with the CIA.

READ: Remembering the Fallen in Libya | American Was on Intel Mission to Track Weapons

The journal shows Stevens was grateful to be back in Benghazi and eagerly watching democracy slowly sprouting in the northern African nation. He had last visited Benghazi nine months before when he snuck in the country in the midst of the popular uprising against dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

“Back in Benghazi after 9 months,” he writes. “It’s a grand feeling, given all the memories.”

Stevens is generally optimistic in his descriptions of Libya and its people, but he notes the “dicey conditions” on the ground there, where he said militias rule, and references previous attacks on diplomats. That didn’t stop Stevens from doing his job, detailing the many meetings he had the day he died.

CNN reported on the contents of the journal — including Stevens’ security concerns and his belief he was on an al Qaeda hit list — in the days after the attack to some controversy, but did not publish it at the request of Stevens’ family.

Today State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell confirmed the diary on SOFREP.com did appear to be Stevens’ and repeated the family’s wishes that the journal not be published.

“Ambassador Stevens was a cherished member of the State Department community who was clearly deeply committed to U.S. diplomacy and to the people of Libya, and he is profoundly missed here at this department and here in this government,” Ventrell told reporters.

Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL who founded SOFREP.com and wrote their report on the diary with ex-Special Forces soldier Jack Murphy, told ABC News they chose to publish the document “because it has value in the continued national conversation regarding senior State Department leadership’s negligence regarding security, and their lack of integrity and accountability since the attack.”

“Seeing Ambassador Stevens’ handwritten notes adds a level of intimacy previously not seen,” said Webb, who was best friends with Glen Doherty before he was killed.

Following an investigation into the assault, the State Department released an unclassified version of their Accountability Review Board report. The report said the investigation found “systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department [that] resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.” Four State Department employees were relieved of their duty as a result, including the assistant secretary for Diplomatic Security.

DOWNLOAD: State Department Benghazi ARB

Today Jan Stevens, Christopher Stevens’ father, penned an op ed for CNN in which he discusses his son’s service.

“Chris was not willing to be the kind of diplomat who would strut around in fortified compounds. He amazed and impressed the Libyans by walking the streets with the lightest of escorts, sitting in sidewalk cafes, chatting with passers-by. There was a risk to being accessible. He knew it, and he accepted it,” Jan Stevens writes, without mentioning the diary. “What Chris never would have accepted was the idea that his death would be used for political purposes. There were security shortcomings, no doubt. Both internal and outside investigations have identified and publicly disclosed them. Steps are being taken to prevent their reoccurrence.”

“So rather than engage in endless recriminations, his family is working to continue building the bridges he so successfully began,” he adds.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the J. Christopher Stevens fund.

ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

PIERRE THOMAS (@PierreTABC), MIKE LEVINE (@mlevinereports), JACK DATE (@jackdate), LUIS MARTINEZ (@LMartinezABC) and JACK CLOHERTY (@jjclo) report:

As the U.S. intelligence community struggles to complete a damage assessment over the secret information allegedly stolen by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, sources told ABC News there is a growing consensus within the top circles of the U.S. government that the 30-year-old contractor could deal a potentially devastating blow to U.S. national security.

RELATED: In Their Own Words: Edward Snowden a Hero or Traitor?

Several officials warned the amount of compromised material may be much broader than even Snowden has suggested and that officials are not sure they know everything he may have pilfered. Another official said even the damage assessment won’t be finished for some time.

Among the chief concerns, according to those officials:

Technical Roadmap of the U.S. Surveillance Network

Before he fled Hawaii for Hong Kong in late May, Snowden allegedly downloaded significant amounts of information about some of the country’s most sensitive secrets — specifically how the U.S. government does surveillance abroad. One source told ABC News that as an information specialist with security clearance “he understood the framework of how the whole U.S. surveillance network works.”

In short, Snowden’s stolen material would help America’s adversaries understand how we use electronics to spy.

Another official said Snowden had access to a particularly important computer server in the government’s system “which contained ridiculous amounts of information” totaling hundreds of pages worth of secrets. He is suspected of storing stolen material on computers and making copies of documents. At risk is the effectiveness of billions of dollars worth of supercomputer and clandestine spying resources.

What Snowden May Know About Human Ops

Beyond technical systems, U.S. officials are deeply concerned that Snowden used his sensitive position to read about U.S. human assets, for example spies and informants overseas as well as safe houses and key spying centers.

They worry this recent quote from Snowden was not an exaggeration: ” I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are, and so forth.”

So it’s not just about what he took, but what he knows, officials emphasize. Officials describe Snowden as a walking treasure trove, a dream for foreign  intelligence services. One intelligence official called Snowden and his cache an “entire U.S. government problem.”

Known Damage Already

A senior intelligence official said: “The intelligence community is already seeing indications that several terrorist groups are in fact attempting to change their communication behaviors based on what they’re reading about our surveillance programs in the media.”

In an interview with CNN today, Secretary of State John Kerry said that “people may die as a consequence of what this man [Snowden] did.”

“It is possible that the United States will be attacked because terrorists may now know how to protect themselves in some way or another, that they didn’t know before,” he said.

How Urgently Does the U.S. Want Snowden Back?

Attorney General Eric Holder called his counterpart in Hong Kong last week to lobby for Snowden to be arrested and extradited. Hong Kong failed to apprehend Snowden, however, claiming today they had no legal basis to do so. Now the U.S. government is sternly calling on Russia to “examine all options available to them” to expel Snowden to the U.S.

How the System Failed, and How to Fix It

On “This Week With George Stephanopolous” Sunday, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said the system to keep classified information from leaking out “did not work as it should have” and said he didn’t understand why it failed.

Today James Clapper, the Director of National Security, is seeking “more specificity” about IT professionals like Snowden used by the government as contractors to the intelligence community. The DNI annually makes an inventory of contractors in the spy community, but “in view of recent unauthorized disclosures of classified information,” Clapper is focusing on IT personnel, according to a DNI spokesperson.

In a wide-ranging interview with ABC News, Snowden’s attorney, Albert Ho, described his client’s request. Snowden knew if the U.S. succeeded in getting him arrested, he would be facing a long extradition battle in the Hong Kong courts. His only other choice was to flee. He asked Ho to make a direct appeal to the Hong Kong government. Would Hong Kong welcome him if he chose to stay or not?

“If the Hong Kong government was going to fight very vigorously to get him out of Hong Kong then it would not be good for him to fight against the Hong Kong government, the Chinese government and the United States government, standing together,” said Ho.

Ho described a focused, intelligent and calm young man. As the circle around him grew to include human rights activists, WikiLeaks representatives and others, Ho said, Snowden kept his head and made his own decisions.

Snowden wanted some kind of guarantee from the Hong Kong government to help him make his decision now that he knew the U.S. wanted him arrested on charges of espionage. He asked Ho to get something in writing. Ho said he relayed the message to a top Hong Kong official on Friday afternoon. Hours passed. Saturday morning came and turned into afternoon.  He heard nothing back.

At some point, Ho said, Snowden was paid a visit by a person Ho described as an ‘intermediary’ with a degree of authority from the Chinese side. Whether that person was in direct contact with the Hong Kong government, or Beijing, or working with yet another third party was unclear. His message was not: Snowden was told to leave.

“He was assured he could leave without interruption,” said Ho. “But he was really concerned whether or not this assurance was reliable. He wanted to see confirmation. He didn’t want to end up being in a trap at the airport.”

Saturday night, according to Ho, Snowden was booked on a flight for Moscow. But, afraid he would be ambushed, he stayed put. Edward Snowden spent his 30th birthday considering his options.

Snowden, Ho said, had only one fear. If he were arrested in Hong Kong and made an appeal against extradition, there was no guarantee that he would be granted bail. In that scenario, it was plausible that Snowden would be living day to day in detention without access to his computers or the internet.

“The worst situation would be that he was locked up in a detention center with the computer taken away from him,” said Ho.

Sometime Saturday evening, Snowden made the decision to leave Hong Kong. Ho received a phone call from Jonathan Man Ho-ching, a lawyer with his firm working closely with Snowden, who relayed the news. With the verbal assurance from the ‘intermediary’ Snowden and his team reasoned that even if he was ambushed at the airport and arrested, he would be in the same position – fighting extradition through the Hong Kong courts – as he would eventually be if he stayed.

According to his legal team, Snowden considered several final destinations.

“He knew that if he sought asylum in China he would certainly be welcome but he won’t do it,” said Ho. “Because he knows he is in possession of valuable information. So of course the Chinese, the Russians would welcome him. But that is not the place he wants to go.  And he is not prepared to offer any service to any government. He had a sense of mission.”

The route through Moscow to Havana to Ecuador was agreed upon.

His flight to Moscow was booked for Sunday morning. A member of the legal team accompanied Snowden to the airport, reporting back to Ho as he made his way through immigration. Despite the fact the State Department said it revoked Snowden’s passport Saturday, Ho believes he had it in hand as he passed through Hong Kong immigration. On Monday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Snowden also carried refugee travel documents from Ecuador, but Ho was unaware of those.

The man whose face was plastered on posters in Hong Kong and broadcast for the past several weeks on newscasts around the world, managed to blend in just long enough to avoid notice.

“No problem at the airport,” said Ho. “He got through the country smoothly like any other passenger.”

Snowden boarded the plane. In the terminal, the legal team member who accompanied Snowden to the airport waited anxiously for takeoff. He wasn’t alone.

“My associate noticed other people, three to four people, keeping a distance,” said Ho, “and close surveillance of the situation.”

Were they government officials? Immigration officers? Ho does not know. He waited for his own phone to ring, to get the all clear that Snowden made it out. Once he did, he says he felt relieved.

Throughout the process, Ho says he never spoke or dealt with any legal or government entity in Beijing, where the mainland Chinese government under Xi Jinping is headquartered. Hong Kong and Beijing maintain separate legal systems under the “two systems, one country” rule, but Beijing maintains a degree of authority. His dealings, he said, were solely in Hong Kong. But he does not discount the influence Beijing may have had.

“I think Beijing is the backseat driver, and the Hong Kong government just pretends to be in control of the wheel sitting on the front seat,” said Ho. “But on the backseat, actually, Beijing is responsible for driving the car.”

Published by the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, a pair of documents reportedly filed to the super secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court spell out first the steps the NSA takes to avoid spying on its own citizens individually — extensive protocols it calls “minimization” — and then what the agency must do with the information it may get anyway. The documents are both stamped 2009 and one shows the signature of Attorney General Eric Holder.

The NSA is allowed to target and spy on non-American individuals who are outside the U.S., but the methods by which the NSA determines someone’s “foreignness” are hardly an exact science. As the documents show, during its “minimization procedures,” NSA analysts look at a number of factors, including information from the communications themselves, information about the device used to communicate or publicly available information, until they have a “reasonable belief” one way or the other about the person’s location and citizenship.

One quick way to find out, according to the documents, is for the NSA to check the phone number or email address of the potential target against a database the agency keeps containing information on known American phone and electronic communication information “in order to prevent the inadvertent targeting of a United States person.” If the numbers or addresses match, the person cannot be spied on under current circumstances, the documents say.

If the NSA analysts still cannot tell if the person is a U.S. citizen or is inside the country, the person is “presumed to be a non-United States person” unless new information indicates otherwise.

DOCUMENTS: NSA Minimization Procedures | Procedures to Target Non-U.S. Persons (The Guardian)

If a target of the surveillance is later found to be inside the U.S., the NSA is required to stop spying on them immediately. But as the documents show, the information the agency has already collected on the now-illegitimate target doesn’t necessarily disappear.

The documents say the acquired communications will not be destroyed if there is a “reasonable belief” they contain “significant foreign intelligence information,” “evidence of a crime,” or are encrypted or pose a “threat of serious harm to life or property.”

ABC News was unable to independently verify the documents and spokespersons for the FBI and the Department of Justice declined to comment. Previously, DOJ and FBI officials have said they are not allowed to view leaked secret documents, even if they are posted publicly online, if the officials are not directly involved in a related investigation.

The Guardian report is the most recent in a string of stories revealing the inner workings of the NSA, formerly nicknamed “No Such Agency.” Though his name does not appear in The Guardian’s report today concerning the secret documents, previously the newspaper’s scoops allegedly have been based on information provided by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who fled to Hong Kong before revealing his old employer’s secrets. Snowden confessed to being the leaker in a previous interview with The Guardian, calling the NSA’s surveillance programs “horrifying.”

The first in the series of stories concerned a secret FISA document that compelled Verizon to hand over records of millions of is customers in the U.S. — part of a separate NSA program that U.S. officials maintain is not individualized targeting. At the time, it was a mystery to U.S. law enforcement officials as to how Snowden had access to the closely held FISA documents while working as a systems manager with the NSA, prompting fears he may have been working with another person.

Earlier this week the head of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander, solved the mystery when, shortly after a congressional committee hearing, he told reporters that Snowden accessed a classified web server containing the FISA document as he was undergoing specialized network training.

TIMELINE: Edward Snowden’s Life as We Know It

Today it was also revealed during a congressional hearing that USIS, the contracting firm that conducted a background check for Snowden, a 29-year-old high school drop out, has been under investigation for two years by the Inspector General for the Office of Personnel Management for apparently failing to adequately conduct investigations. The IG for OPM also told a congressional panel today that there may have been problems in the way that USIS conducted Snowden’s background check in 2011.

In order to get a security clearance to access classified information federal employees and contractors must first clear background checks and over 90 percent of the background checks are  conducted by OPM.  USIS is  one of the three major contractors that conducts  background checks for the U.S. government and conducts 45 percent of the overall contract workload. The company received $200 million in federal contracts last year.

ABC News’ Luis Martinez and James Gordon Meek contributed to this report.

The report, published this afternoon by the Defense Department’s Inspector General (IG), is a departure from an undated draft version of the same report that was obtained and published last week by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). In addition to regular revisions, changes were made in part “to avoid compromising concurrent inquiries,” a Defense Department IG spokesperson Bridget Serchak  told ABC News.

The original draft version of the report said that Panetta identified the unit that took down al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the unit’s on-the-ground commander during an address at a CIA ceremony in June 2011 that was attended by Mark Boal, writer for “Zero Dark Thirty.” It had been reported months before that the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six was responsible for the mission, even down to the specific squadron, but the commander’s name has not been disclosed publicly. At the time the draft report surfaced, a source close to Panetta did not deny the disclosure occurred, but told ABC News it was likely Panetta didn’t realize Boal, a civilian, was in attendance at the large ceremony at CIA headquarters.

The final IG report released today discusses the ceremony in the same language as the draft report, but makes no mention of Panetta’s remarks. Both versions of the report note the evident surprise of the special operations personnel who attended the ceremony — while wearing nametags with their real names — that a civilian was allowed in. One commander told the IG that after learning Boal was there, his men “all tried, you know, to get as much distance as possible,” the report says.

DOWNLOAD: Department of Defense Information to the Media

Serchak office told ABC News today that “the working draft was edited and revised during a rigorous internal review process” and, when it came to Panetta’s remarks, the “DOD IG determined that certain matters identified in conjunction with our review pertained to events at the Central Intelligence Agency [and] accordingly, we referred these matters to the CIA’s Office of Inspector General.”

The CIA, whose Inspector General is conducting its own investigation into the cooperation the agency gave Bigelow and Boal, confirmed they received the Defense Department’s referral and opened their own investigation. There is no scheduled completion date for the CIA IG’s report and it is unclear if it will be made public once it’s finished.

The Defense Department IG report also shortens a description of a meeting between Boal, “Zero Dark Thirty” director Katherine Bigelow and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers in July 2011 to omit the line, “Vickers provided the name of the Special Operations Planner to Mr. Boal and Ms. Bigelow,” as seen in the draft report. The planner is identified as a member of the special operations community who was supposed to be provided by the Defense Department to Boal and Bigelow for help in making the movie more realistic on the condition that his name not be released. Both versions of the report say the filmmakers never met the planner.

Serchak would not directly address the reasoning behind leaving out the line about Vickers giving out the planner’s name to civilians, but said the Defense Department “has an ongoing investigation of Dr. Vickers.”

The publication of the final report ends a nearly two-year investigation by the Defense Department’s IG, which was originally requested back in August 2011 by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. Last December, allegations arose that the report was being delayed for political reasons – allegations strongly denied by a senior defense official at the time.

When asked why the final report showed up without warning on a Friday afternoon, Serchak said that the “release date for every report is not always known” and that “no third parties, to include anyone from the Office of the Secretary of Defense or the Executive Office of the President, attempted to influence the content of the report of its release date.”

CLICK HERE to return to the Investigative Unit’s homepage.

Snowden, the man who claims to have given top secret documents on the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance programs to two major newspapers, briefly discusses the scheme in an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, saying it was a “formative” moment that led him to question the “rightness” of U.S. intelligence.

In an attempt to learn secret financial information, Snowden alleged that undercover CIA agents would get the banker drunk and “encourage” him to drive home in his car. When the banker was eventually arrested for drunk driving, the CIA operatives offered to help him out of the jam, paving the way for recruitment as a source.

“Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world,” Snowden told The Guardian. “I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”

A spokesperson for Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs told ABC News the department had “taken note” of Snowden’s claims and has sent a “diplomatic note” to the U.S. Embassy in Bern asking “for clarification of the matter.”

“In accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Switzerland expects the members of the diplomatic missions in Bern and the members of the permanent mission in Geneva to comply with the laws and rules of the country of residence,” a statement from the foreign ministry read.

At the time of the alleged incident, Snowden said he was working undercover for the CIA in Geneva maintaining computer network security. The CIA has declined to comment on Snowden’s case, but the Swiss foreign ministry confirmed that he publicly held the position of “an attaché” with the permanent U.S. mission to the United Nations in Geneva from March 2007 to February 2009. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this report.

Snowden said he left the CIA in 2009 to work in the private sector for Dell and then with the technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. He had only been working for Booz as a contractor at an NSA facility in Hawaii for a few months when he skipped town for Hong Kong, allegedly taking secret NSA documents that he said revealed the U.S. government’s “horrifying” surveillance capability.

Snowden has not been seen since he checked out of a Hong Kong hotel room earlier this week, but today an English-language Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post, published a preview of a new interview the paper said they conducted with Snowden. In the preview, Snowden addresses the raging debate over whether he is a hero or a traitor for his actions. He said the answer is neither, but rather, “I’m an American.”

Snowden told the Hong Kong newspaper he has no plans to leave.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions,” he said. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality… My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate.”

READ: U.S. Prepares Charges Against Alleged NSA Leaker, Sources Say

While he said he had no intention of hiding — despite running to Hong Kong — Snowden also told U.K.’s The Guardian newspaper he did not want to be in the media spotlight as the stories based on his information broke.

“I don’t want public attention because I don’t want the story to be about me,” he said. “I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing.”

But public attention is exactly what he’s gotten since he revealed himself as the source of the leaks Sunday, with top U.S. officials personally calling him out, claiming he broke the law or betrayed his country, and high-profile activists declaring him a hero for the cause of liberty.

So which is it? Is Edward Snowden a whistleblower hero, here to save the American public from its own government? Or is he a criminal, or potentially, a traitor to the nation he claims to want to protect? That all depends on who you ask.

See some quotes below from some high-profile figures in the lively debate. (To read about the NSA programs Snowden allegedly unveiled, click here and here and here.)

If Snowden’s Claims Are True, He’s Helping Those That Want to Harm the US

• Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, Speaker of the House: “He’s 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.” (From an exclusive interview with ABC News broadcast today on “Good Morning America”)

• Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee: “Taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign person[s] on foreign lands, and putting just enough out there to be dangerous is dangerous to us. It’s dangerous to our national security and it violates the oath [that] that person took. I absolutely think they should be prosecuted.” (From ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday)

• Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Chairman on the Senate Intelligence Committee, after being asked if she agreed with Rogers’ statement: “I do.” (From ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday)

• James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence: “[W]e all look upon it no matter what his or her motivation may have been, the damage that these revelations incur are huge. And so I hope we are able to track down whoever is doing this because it is extremely damaging to, and it affects the safety and security of, this country… The NSA has filed a crimes report on this already… There are legitimate outlets for anyone within the Intelligence Community who feels that some law is being violated… And for whatever reason, a person or persons doing this chose not to use those legitimate outlets.” (From a June 8 NBC News report, before Snowden publicly confessed to the leaks)

• Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary, after being asked about those calling Snowden a hero: “Leaks of classified information that cause harm to our national security interests are a problem, a serious problem, and they’re classified for a reason… When you divulge information that provides a playbook, if you will, to efforts that this government undertakes to counter the efforts of those who would kill Americans or attack the United States in some ways, or our allies, you’re assisting them in evading those measures.” (From Monday’s White House press briefing)

Snowden Is a Patriot, Standing Up to the Powerful for the Public

• Glenn Greenwald, author of The Guardian NSA reports based on Snowden’s information, before calling Boehner’s comments “pathetic”: “It’s really remarkable, moving and extraordinary to watch somebody who’s 29-years-old [Snowden], who knows that they’re probably going to be spending decades in a small cage… to be so completely at peace with what it is they’ve done because they really are convinced in the bottom of their soul that it’s the right thing to do… People in power hate it when you shine a light on what it is they do. They’re like cockroaches, they like to operate in the dark.” (To ABC News Monday)

• Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the 1971 Pentagon Papers: “I’m very impressed by the civil courage that Edward Snowden has shown and I think that he gives me hope that we may actually gain our Bill of Rights back… To me, he’s a hero and I think to very many Americans. As for being called a traitor, that’s part of the price of telling the truth that the President doesn’t want told. I paid that price myself.” (To ABC News Monday)

• Julian Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks: “Edward Snowden is a hero who has informed the public about one of the most serious events of the decade, which is the creeping formulation of a mass surveillance state.” (To Britain’s Sky News)

• Birgitta Jonsdottir, Icelandic lawmaker who has offered to help Snowden find asylum in her home country: “In relation to releasing this information to the public domain, [it's] very much in the spirit of making a safe haven for freedom of information, expression of speech, such [as] we’re working on in Iceland… In my opinion, the persecution of whistleblowers in the United States in the last few years is alarming.” (To ABC News Monday)

• Anonymous, loose collective of hacktivists: “Sometimes doing the right thing = breaking the law. Snowden has accepted his fate. Worth it to expose massive constitutional violations.” (From Twitter Tuesday)

• 50,000-plus White House petitions signers, more than halfway to the 100,00 mark at which the White House must formally respond: “Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a full, free and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.” (From the White House’s We The People website)

As the debate rages over Snowden, a senior law enforcement source told ABC News Monday that investigators aren’t completely convinced he worked alone.

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