WASHINGTON (AP) – Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has remained in contact with Russian intelligence services since he arrived in Moscow three years ago, according to a declassified report on a congressional investigation released Thursday.
The House intelligence committee released the report to provide what the panel’s chairman called “a fuller account of Edward Snowden’s crimes and the reckless disregard he has shown for U.S. national security.”
In a rare example of bipartisanship, the panel’s top Republican and Democrat joined in castigating Snowden, who in 2013 revealed U.S. government efforts to hack into the data pipelines used by U.S. companies to serve customers overseas. The programs collected the telephone metadata records of millions of Americans and examined emails from overseas.
Snowden fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia to avoid prosecution.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the committee chairman, said it “will take a long time to mitigate the damage” Snowden caused.