Wikileaks manipulating Snowden, his father says

THE fugitive intelligence contractor who leaked documents on US spying operations is being “manipulated” by people around him and would return to the US if he were guaranteed a fair trial, his father said this week.

Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong when he released details of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programmes, could come home if allowed to choose where he was prosecuted and was not subjected to a “gag” order, Lonnie Snowden told an interviewer.

His son, 30, is still believed to be in Russia after leaving Hong Kong and booking a flight for Cuba, which he did not take. He is thought to be accompanied by Sarah Harrison, who is a legal adviser for WikiLeaks — the protransparency group that released a vast cache of US diplomatic cables in 2010.

Lonnie told NBC News that WikiLeaks was taking advantage of his son. “I am concerned about those who surround him,” he said. “WikiLeaks — if you look at past history — their focus isn’t necessarily the constitution of the US. It’s simply to release as much information as possible. So that alone is a concern for me.”

Snowden is facing charges of espionage in the US and has requested political asylum in Ecuador. He has not been seen in public since he arrived in Moscow on Sunday last week. Russian officials have said he remains in a transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport.

Moscow has declined to extradite him, but it appears reluctant to risk a diplomatic incident by allowing him to

I don’t believe that he’s betrayed the people of the US

enter the country formally.

Lonnie conceded that he had not been in contact with his son since the weeks before his decision to leave his job as an analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton, a major US defence contractor, at an NSA listening post in Hawaii, and hand a trove of documents to The Guardian and Washington Post.

Amid an ongoing dispute about Hong Kong’s failure to approve a US extradition re- quest before Snowden left for Russia, the Chinese dependency said on Friday that he would not be welcome to return because his passport had been cancelled.

US officials accuse Hong Kong of deliberately stalling when the request was made, giving Snowden time to escape. Chinese officials claim the contractor’s middle name was spelt incorrectly on the US application and so it had to be sent back for corrections.

CY Leung, the Beijing-appointed head of government, said: “It was not a pretext at all. We were just abiding by a very fundamental principle of procedural justice.”

Hong Kong officials are also demanding more information from the US on claims by Snowden that he had proof that US spies had eavesdropped on communications in China.

Lonnie, a retired officer of the US Coast Guard, said he believed the US public would forgive his son, who could face life in prison or even the death penalty if convicted under the Espionage Act.

“He has betrayed his government, but I don’t believe that he’s betrayed the people of the US,” he said. — © The

Daily Telegraph, London