Is the White House softening on Snowden?

WASHINGTON — It’s no secret Edward Snowden would like to come home. But the former government contractor who helped disclose details about government surveillance programs is facing three criminal charges that could mean decades in prison.

Yet now there are rumblings that the Obama administration could soften its stance. Former Attorney General Eric Holder hinted as much during an interview with Yahoo News — saying the “possibility exists” that the Justice Department would agree to a plea bargain. “I certainly think there could be a basis for a resolution that everybody could ultimately be satisfied with.”

The Yahoo story, written by investigative journalist Michael Isikoff, also cited three unnamed sources familiar with the Snowden case to report that Robert Litt, the chief counsel to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “recently privately floated the idea that the government might be open to a plea bargain in which Snowden returns to the United States, pleads guilty to one felony count and receives a prison sentence of three to five years in exchange for full cooperation with the government.”

But the Justice Department, which Holder recently left to return to the private sector, says it is still pressing forward.

Ben Wizner, Snowden’s lawyer and the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said that a felony plea wouldn’t be an acceptable resolution. “We don’t think that he should be reporting to prison as a felon and losing his civil rights for an act of conscience,” he said.

Still, Holder’s comments, in which he also credited the Snowden disclosures with spurring a necessary debate, are among the most sympathetic toward the former government contractor from a current or former Obama administration official. And they stand in contrast with some of the administration’s earliest statements about Snowden’s criminal case.