No imminent pardon seen for Snowden
WASHINGTON: Judging by the resoluteness of US officials’ tone, the chances President Barack Obama will pardon Edward Snowden appear very slim, and close to none before November’s presidential election. The former National Security Agency contractor, who released thousands of classified documents in 2013 revealing the vast US surveillance put in place after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, currently lives in Russia.
Three prominent human rights groups - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union launched a campaign Wednesday to pressure Obama to pardon the fugitive whistleblower. Snowden is also the subject of an Oliver Stone movie that hit screens Friday in the United States. High-profile lawyers and celebrities including the writer Joyce Carol Oates, actors Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon, and musicians Peter Gabriel and Thurston Moore have signed the campaign’s petition at pardonsnowden.org, which urges Obama to grant Snowden clemency before leaving office in January. It’s not the first campaign organized in support of the 33-year-old, who is a hero to some and a traitor to others. But it is focusing pressure on Obama with hopes he will feel less constrained at the end of his presidency.
‘Very Serious Charges’
Officials gave no sign they were listening this week, however. A Congressional report on Thursday criticized Snowden as a “disgruntled employee”, not a “principled whistleblower” protected under law. “Edward Snowden is no hero he’s a traitor who willfully betrayed his colleagues and his country,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said. Snowden dismissed the report on Twitter. “Bottom line: after ‘two years of investigation,’ the American people deserve better,” he wrote. “This report diminishes the committee.”
The White House already rejected a previous petition to pardon Snowden in July after it had attracted more than 160,000 signatures. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Snowden would enjoy legal due process at a trial in the United States, where he faces up to 30 years in prison for espionage and theft of state secrets. “His conduct put American lives at risk and it risked American national security,” he told reporters. “And that’s why the policy of the Obama administration is that Mr Snowden should return to the United States and face the very serious charges that he’s facing.”
The Constitution gives the president the authority to grant pardons to those convicted of violating federal law, a power Obama has exercised 70 times since early 2009, significantly less than his predecessors. However, he leads in commuting the sentences of prisoners already serving time, many for non-violent drug offenses.
Although the majority of previous presidential pardons have gone to those convicted in court, some have benefited those only under threat of prosecution including former president Richard Nixon.