14 DAY TRIAL // US lawmakers are quoting a classified Pentagon paper, claiming that Snowden downloaded 1.7 million files from the NSA, which already pose a threat to the country’s military operations.
Although this is a “secret” report, legislators don’t seem to have any troubles sharing its content. This Pentagon report is supposedly making some serious claims.
First of all, the whistleblower downloaded 1.7 million files, which means that he’s only given journalists a small percentage of the trove. Many of these, as it’s been previously reported, are kept as an assurance of sorts that nothing happens to him. Furthermore, Snowden once said that the files he didn’t share with journalists weren’t necessarily related to mass surveillance and they might contain information that really shouldn’t reach the papers.
“This report confirms my greatest fears – Snowden’s real acts of betrayal place America’s military men and women at greater risk. Snowden’s actions are likely to have lethal consequences for our troops in that field,” Rep. Mike Rogers was quick to claim, the Washington Post reports.
None of the reports published in the media so far had any relation to military operations and no agent names were given in the process. However, it is believed that Snowden indeed has downloaded a bunch of military intelligence files.
The classified report comes just in time, as President Obama is making his final inquiries before coming to a conclusion about the NSA reform.
Ben Wizner, lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union and adviser to Snowden, was quick to slam the US government. “This is straight from the government’s playbook. Remember, the government told the Supreme Court that publication of the Pentagon Papers would cause grave damage to national security. That was not true then, and this report is not true now. Overblown claims of national security rarely stand the test of time,” the lawyer said.