Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is a "crook," not a whistleblower, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is only giving him Russian citizenship now to taunt the United States, Fred Fleitz, the vice-chair of the America First Policy Institute Center for American Security, said Wednesday on Newsmax.
"It is an act of defiance," Fleitz, a Newsmax contributor and former chief of staff to the National Security Council, told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "[Putin] knows that the United States wants him back to put him on trial. My hope is that when Putin is overthrown, I hope that one of the first things the new Russian government does is to deport Edward Snowden to the United States so we can try him and put him in a supermax prison cell."
Snowden, now 39, was given asylum in Russia, where he eventually landed after fleeing the United States when he leaked secret files in 2013 revealing domestic and international surveillance operations being carried out by the National Security Agency, where he had been working. He is facing a criminal trial on espionage charges in the U.S.
Fleitz acknowledged that Snowden is a "hero and a whistleblower stud" to many people, but Fleitz doesn't see it that way.
"He was a disgruntled employee," said Fleitz. "He was a criminal. He stole 1.5 million classified documents, many of them very sensitive intelligence programs. Lives were lost. The U.S. government probably spent billions of dollars to repair the damage he did."
Further, Fleitz said, the "so-called NSA domestic spying" leaked by Snowden "could have been dealt with if he went to the [congressional] intelligence committees.
"Instead he stole this huge amount of information because he's a narcissist and because he's a crook," said Fleitz. "[There is] strong information that he had been recruited by the Russians, and I think the fact that he's accepted Russian citizenship probably proves that."
Fleitz also noted that a bipartisan House Intelligence Committee report, led by Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff and then-Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican, shows that Snowden wasn't a whistleblower.
"If you don't believe me, read the bipartisan House Intelligence Committee report," said Fleitz. "There's a link to it in an article I wrote in National Review. There's a proper way if you think there are abuses in intelligence to report what's going on. You can go to Congress directly. Actually, I know that. I've done that. That's how you do it without breaking the law."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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