Snowden had help, says head of panel

Guardian News Service/New York

Mike Rogers, a Republican representative from Michigan, interviewed by NBC’s Meet the Press, said Snowden was “a thief whom we believe had some help”.

“I believe there’s questions to be answered there,” Rogers said. “I don’t think it was a gee-whiz luck event that he ended up in Moscow under the handling of the [Russian intelligence service] FSB.”

Rogers added: “Let me just say this. I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB agent in Moscow. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia last August, after travelling to Moscow from Hong Kong. Last year, in an interview with the New York Times, Snowden said he did not take any of the documents he obtained to Russia, “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest”.

Snowden said there was “zero-percent chance” that Russia had received any documents and that he had handed all his NSA data to journalists from media outlets including the London-based Guardian, before leaving Hong Kong. “What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?” he said.

Rogers did not give any supporting evidence for his claims, but suggested Snowden “used methods beyond his technical capabilities” and had help with his travel arrangements.

“He was stealing information that had to do with how we operate overseas to collect information to keep Americans safe... and some of the things he did were beyond his technical capabilities,” Rogers said.

Rogers’s comments came after President Barack Obama outlined possible reforms to surveillance practices and a review of the NSA’s programmes on Friday. The speech met with a mixed reaction from privacy advocates and tech and telecoms companies, all of whom said there was too little detail and little clarity on how or if the system was being reformed.