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 "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," U.S. Representative Mike Rogers told the NBC program
"Meet the Press," referring to the Russian intelligence agency that
is a successor of the Soviet-era KGB.
Snowden last year fled the United States to Hong Kong and then to
Russia, where he was granted at least a year of asylum. U.S.
officials want Snowden returned to the United States for
prosecution. His disclosures of large numbers of stolen U.S. secret
documents sparked a debate around the world about the reach of U.S.
electronic surveillance.
Rogers did not provide specific evidence to back his suggestions of
Russian involvement in Snowden's activities, but said: "Some of the
things we're finding we would call clues that certainly would
indicate to me that he had some help."
Asked whether he is investigating Russian links to Snowden's
activities, Rogers said, "Absolutely. And that investigation is
ongoing."
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said on "Meet the Press" that Snowden "may well have" had
help from Russia.
"We don't know at this stage," Feinstein said.
Feinstein said Snowden gained employment at the National Security
Agency "with the intent to take as much material down as he possibly
could."
On the ABC program "This Week," U.S. Representative Michael McCaul,
chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, also expressed
his belief that Snowden had foreign help.
"Hey, listen, I don't think ... Mr. Snowden woke up one day and had
the wherewithal to do this all by himself," he said.
"I personally believe that he was cultivated by a foreign power to
do what he did," McCaul said.
Asked whether he thought Russia was that "foreign power," McCaul
said, "You know, to say definitively, I can't. I can't answer that."
"TOTALITY OF THE INFORMATION"
Rogers indicated that the nature of the material that Snowden
obtained suggested foreign involvement.
"When you look at the totality of the information he took, the vast
majority of it had to do with military, tactical and operational
events happening around the world," he told the CBS program "Face
the Nation."
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Michael Morell, the former deputy CIA director, said he shared
Rogers' concern about what Russian intelligence services may be
doing with Snowden.
"I don't have any particular evidence but one of the things I point
to when I talk about this is that the disclosures that have been
coming recently are very sophisticated in their content and
sophisticated in their timing — almost too sophisticated for Mr.
Snowden to be deciding on his own. And it seems to me he might be
getting some help," Morell said on "Face the Nation."
Other U.S. security officials have told Reuters as recently as last
week that the United States has no evidence at all that Snowden had
any confederates who assisted him or guided him about what NSA
materials to hack or how to do so.
Snowden told the New York Times in October he did not take any
secret NSA documents with him to Russia when he fled there in June
2013. "There's a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have
received any documents," Snowden told the Times.
In remarks aired on Sunday on ABC's "This Week," President Vladimir
Putin discussed Snowden's freedom of movement in Russia and that the
American would be free to attend the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics.
"Mr. Snowden is subject to the treatment of provisional asylum here
in Russia. He has a right to travel freely across the country. He
has no special limitation. He can just buy a ticket and come here,"
Putin said.
(Reporting by Will Dunham, Toni Clarke and Susan Cornwell;
editing
by Jim Loney and Chris Reese)
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