House Intel Committee Blasts Snowden as Disgruntled Worker, 'Serial Fabricator'

Lawmakers' report comes amid Snowden's push for pardon from Obama.

ByABC News
September 15, 2016, 6:32 PM

— -- After a two-year investigation, the House intelligence committee today released a portion of a report on former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, painting the American fugitive as a disgruntled worker and serial liar who may not have even understood the classified material that he stole from NSA systems.

The report comes as Snowden and his supporters have launched a major push to have him pardoned before President Obama leaves office, and as the Hollywood film "Snowden" hits theaters worldwide.

The full 36-page House committee review remains classified, but the committee released a three-page executive summary slamming Snowden both personally and for the "tremendous damage" the committee said was done to American national security.

"Edward Snowden is no hero - he's a traitor who willfully betrayed his colleagues and his country," House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said in a statement released with the report's summary. "In light of his long list of exaggerations and outright fabrications detailed in this report, no one should take him at his word. I look forward to his eventual return to the United States, where he will face justice for his damaging crimes."

Lawmakers said that in order to avoid interfering with a criminal investigation, the committee did not interview Snowden, who is living in Moscow, or any witnesses who may be called should Snowden face trial. Rather, investigators interviewed people with "substantively similar knowledge as the possible witnesses" as well as those who had reviewed reports of interviews with Snowden's colleagues.

The summary alleges Snowden was reprimanded by his managers just two weeks before he began downloading the massive amount of data he would later leak to reporters in Hong Kong. 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.

"It is also not clear Snowden understood the numerous privacy protections that govern the activities of the [Intelligence Community]," the summary says. It says that Snowden "failed basic annual training for NSA employees on Section 702" -- a controversial part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows for the mass collection of information on foreign communications, which Snowden's later disclosures threw into the international spotlight.

Snowden and an attorney for Snowden did not immediately respond to ABC News' requests for comment, but Snowden mocked the committee's findings on Twitter, challenging several points and concluding by saying, "I could go on. Bottom line: after 'two years of investigation,' the American people deserve better. This report diminishes the committee."

Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who originally received Snowden's cache of documents, also took to Twitter to push back on the committee's report.

"If House Intel Committee had done its job of exercising oversight over NSA, there'd have been no Snowden. He did their job for them," Greenwald said. "If you don't want leaks, don't build a secret, illegal system of mass surveillance and then hide it and lie about it to the public."

Earlier this week Snowden laid out his case for a presidential pardon, saying, "I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed. The Congress, the courts and the president all changed their policies as a result of these disclosures."

So far, the White House isn't budging. Monday White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that Snowden is "charged with serious crimes, and it's the policy of the [Obama] administration that Mr. Snowden should return to the United States and face those charges."