London - Edward Snowden is a serial liar who endangered millions of lives by leaking secret documents, an official report said.
The self-styled whistleblower, who is in exile in Russia, took more than 1.5million classified documents and put them online, causing “tremendous damage” to American security, it said.
Following a two-year inquiry, the House of Representatives intelligence committee released a summary of its secret report.
Snowden – pictured on a video link from Moscow this week – was a National Security Agency computer contractor when he leaked the documents to journalists, who revealed massive domestic surveillance begun after the 9/11 attacks.
But the report disputes his motives, saying he was “not a whistleblower” but got into a “workplace spat” with bosses in June 2012. He was reprimanded, and began downloading information two weeks later.
The US surveillance programme collected telephone records of millions of Americans and examined emails from overseas. However, the committee said most of the material he stole was not about privacy. Chairman Devin Nunes added: “He put service members and the American people at risk after perceived slights.”
Snowden, 33, fled to avoid prosecution and now wants a presidential pardon for whistleblowing.
In the video on Wednesday, Snowden said whistleblowing was “democracy’s safeguard of last resort, the one on which we rely when all other checks and balances have failed and the public has no idea what’s going on behind closed doors”.
His lawyer, Ben Wizner, said: “The committee can’t point to any remotely credible evidence that Snowden’s disclosures caused harm.”
The publication of the report coincides with the release of the Oliver Stone film Snowden, which portrays him as a hero.
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