Edward Snowden Quotes

Ensuring that the intelligence community adheres to its responsibilities to report on its activities to Congress is absolutely essential.

Clapper has been straight and direct in the answers that he's given, and has actively engaged in an effort to provide more information about the programs that have been revealed through the leak of classified information.

If we really care about safety we would close down WikiLeaks. We would treat the people at WikiLeaks as enemy combatants. We would declare that the kind of thing this private did is treason. WikiLeaks is not a fun and games event. WikiLeaks undermines profoundly the ability of the United States to work around the world. Why would you, if you were a foreigner thinking about helping the United States, why would you confide anything to an American when you know that it could end up in The New York Times based on some leak?

I don't want to talk about intelligence matters. I will say, however, that intelligence-community estimates should not become public in the way of this city and in the way of Congress.

A significant number of pages and sentences that the administration wants to keep in a classified status have already been released publicly, some of it by public statements of the leadership of the CIA and the FBI.

What we do with the information now is up to us, but certainly I have a lot of respect for the courage and integrity that was required for [Edard Snowden] to take that action.

Some months after [Keith Alexander] made that statement [Edward Snowden cause grave and irrevocable harm to the nation], the new director of the NSA, Michael Rogers, said that, in fact, he doesn't see the sky falling. It's not so serious after all.

At the trial of Chelsea Manning, the government could point to no case of specific damage that had been caused by the massive revelation of classified information. The charges are a reaction to the government's embarrassment more than genuine concern about these activities, or they would substantiate what harms were done.

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.

I wasn't terribly familiar. I had read some of the headlines but didn't quite understand difference between WikiLeaks...[Edward] Snowden. And then watching the documentary, working on the film, you got to see his personal journey through this and sort of understand more about what he went through.

They're mounting a campaign right now with the ACLU and a lot of different organizations advocating for [Edward Snoden] pardoning before [Barack] Obama leaves office. Wouldn't it be incredible to see something like that happen? I don't know what we can expect. I am interested in the different points and perspectives that people have.

My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy.

I'll turn the page on a growing empire of classified information. We'll protect sources and methods, but we won't use sources and methods to hide the truth.

Even the former Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder has come out to say that he believed that [Edward] Snowden performed a public service, and I couldn't agree more.

Chelsea Manning's treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation's most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won't be held accountable for their crimes.

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

The Snowden leaks did cause damage.

I don't see anything that's come out on WikiLeaks that was a legitimate secret.

What Edward Snowden did amounted to the greatest hemorrhaging of legitimate American secrets in the history of my nation.

American political elites feel very empowered to criticize the American intelligence community for not doing enough when they feel in danger, and as soon as we've made them feel safe again, they feel equally empowered to complain that we're doing too much.

President Obama and his successors are dependent on the 100,000-plus people inside the American intelligence community - the people Edward Snowden betrayed.

Snowden's revelations shocked the world and made it very clear why we need to have some way to look over those who look over us. With increasing terrorist attacks, security is critical, but not without any accountability or oversight.

We should stop thinking of Snowden, to the extent that we ever were, as a hero. We should stop thinking of him as a whistleblower.

If Adam Schiff is able to review covert operations and intelligence, and if we have to be able to rely on his representations, our whole system is broken.

I mean, Ed Snowden was basically saying the same things that Bill Binney and Thomas Drake and other U.S. whistleblowers had said before him. But he came out more publicly, and maybe revealed more. He showed that when the U.S. government said, 'We are not surveilling U.S. citizens,' that was a lie.