14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA is apparently considering granting Edward Snowden amnesty in return of a big part of the leaked documents, but the agency’s officials are torn about the idea.
Rick Leggett, a man put in charge of handling the Snowden leaks, is going head to head with General Keith Alexander, the NSA chief that is getting ready to retire in early 2014.
A while back, it was believed that Snowden had some 50,000 documents, but then, the estimate jumped to some 200,000. Only a small part of these were actually given out to the media, while a big chunk is still in Snowden’s possession and he doesn’t intend to share them with anyone, unless something happens to him. Now, they are saying that he could have up to 1.5 million classified documents that he has not leaked, which scare the NSA.
Leggett believes that, under the circumstances, it’s worth discussing the idea of granting Snowden amnesty. “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secure, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part,” Leggett told CBS.
Keith Alexander has another stance, however. He believes that people have to be held accountable for their actions, and that pardoning Snowden would give a bad example to the next whistleblower who wants to run off with top-secret files.
Ironically, everyone else believes the NSA should be held accountable for spying on everyone everywhere, but Alexander keeps saying that the agency is doing the right thing.
Edward Snowden has been living in Russia for several months, where he was granted temporary asylum after he was left stranded on the Sheremetyevo airport after the United States canceled his passport, leaving him unable to fly off to any other nation, as previously intended.