United States officials believe that classified intelligence taken out of the country by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has been compromised by agencies in Russia and China.
Snowden, a 30-year-old former employee of intelligence contractor
Booz Allen Hamilton, fled the US for Hong Kong last month and
then supplied journalists with classified information pertaining
to vast surveillance operations conducted by the American
government’s National Security Agency.
Both Russian and US officials have made claims that Snowden is
now in Moscow, likely arranging for possible asylum in another
country. In the meantime, though, US sources speaking with the
Washington Free Beacon say that China and Russia have gained
access to “highly classified US intelligence and military
information contained on electronic media” held by Snowden.
“The exact compromise of the secret data held on Snowden’s
laptop computers remains unknown but is the subject of an ongoing
damage assessment within NSA and other intelligence
agencies,” Bill Gertz of the Free Beacon wrote on Wednesday.
According to Gertz, those officials fear that Snowden may have
accessed recently created nuclear war plans that could pose as
future embarrassment for the US in the wake of disclosures
already attributed to Snowden.
Previously, Snowden supplied The Guardian newspaper with
documentation showing how the NSA routinely collects the phone
records pertaining to millions of Americans every day. On
Thursday this week, The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and Spencer
Ackerman published their latest installment in the NSA leaks,
exposing further surveillance under the administration of
President Barack Obama that put Internet records directly into
the hands of government officials.
Snowden has said that he’s personally reviewed the trove of
documents supplied to The Guardian and other outlets, carefully
evaluated every single one “to ensure that each was
legitimately in the public interest.” Glenn Greenwald said
that Snowden brought “thousands” of files with him to Hong
Kong, “dozens” of which he believes are newsworthy.
What exactly Snowden knows remains a mystery, however, and he
reportedly has four laptops in his possession right now that
contain classified intelligence.
Earlier this month, the Washington Post cited an anonymous former
intelligence official who claimed that Russian authorities were
almost certain to seize any computer files Snowden brought into
the country.
In a separate article earlier this month, the Post quoted another
former senior US intelligence official who predicted that any
intelligence compromised by Russia would have seen a similar fate
en route from Hong Kong.
“I guarantee the Chinese intelligence service got their hands
on that right away. If they imaged the hard drives and then
returned them to him, well, then the Russians have that stuff
now,” the source said.
“The Chinese already have everything Snowden had,” a
separate source added to the Beacon’s Gertz this week.
This article originally appeared on: RT