Rep. Mike Rogers Keeps Insisting Snowden Is A Russian Spy, Even As NSA/FBI Officials Say No Such Evidence!

• Rep. Mike Rogers Keeps Insisting Snowden Is A Russian Spy, Even As NSA/FBI Officials Say No Such Evidence! 
  by http://www.techdirt.com/ 
  Rep. Mike Rogers sure loves the NSA and really, really hates Ed Snowden.  It’s at the point where Rogers appears to not care at all about the truth, repeating multiple blatant falsehoods in TV interviews when it comes to Snowden.  This past weekend, he went on TV to repeat an old favorite, claiming (without any proof, but just blind speculation) that he thinks that Snowden was a Russian spy all along.  On Meet the Press, David Gregory asked Rogers about Snowden’s comments in his interview with Bart Gellman, in which Snowden pointed to Rogers’ (and Senator Dianne Feinstein’s) failure to uphold their role as overseers of the NSA as for why he had to leak the documents he gave to reporters.  Rogers disagrees and hints that Snowden “had some help.”
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  Well, first of all, I mean, I couldn’t disagree more. That’s like having the janitor at a bank who figured out how to steal some money deciding matters of high finance. This was a thief, who we believe had some help, who stole information the vast majority had nothing to do with privacy. Our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines have been incredibly harmed by the data that he has taken with him and we believe now is in the hands of nation states.
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  Note the insult: comparing Snowden to “the janitor.”  This is nothing more than Rogers being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.  People who worked with Snowden have pointed out repeatedly that he was incredibly smart, with one NSA colleague describing him as “a genius among geniuses.”
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  DAVID GREGORY: Who helped him?
  REPRESENTATIVE MIKE ROGERS: Well, there were certain questions that we have to get answered. Where some of this aid, first of all, if it was a privacy concern he had, he didn’t look for information on the privacy side for Americans. He was stealing information that had to do with how we operate overseas to collect information to keep Americans safe. That begs the question. And some of the things he did were beyond his technical capabilities. Raises more questions. How he arranged travel before he left. How he was ready to go, he had a go bag, if you will.
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  That’s actually not what anyone was saying.  As we pointed out, late last year, the NSA’s director of technology, Lonny Anderson, has admitted that basically anyone who had top secret security clearance could have seen all of the documents Snowden saw and that because of Snowden’s job as a sys admin in charge of moving certain documents around, what Snowden did was part of his normal job.  Others in the NSA have said the same thing.  So it appears that Rogers is, once again, simply making stuff up.
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