WASHINGTON – Former National Security Agency and CIA head Michael Hayden said Sunday that his opinion of spy-secrets leaker Edward Snowden had sunk to a new low.
“I used to say he was a defector,” said the retired spy chief and Air Force general. “I’m now kind of drifting in the direction of perhaps more harsh language … such as traitor.”
“This is the most serious hemorrhaging of American secrets in the history of American espionage,” Hayden said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” adding that it set back US intelligence capabilities by “years if not decades.”
Snowden’s revelations about NSA programs — that included the mass collection of data on every American phone call and snooping on foreign leaders who are US allies, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel — embarrassed President Obama and prompted him to consider new restrictions on NSA surveillance.
Hayden’s rebuke follows Snowden’s recent boast that “his mission’s already accomplished” and “I’ve already won” in a Washington Post interview from Russia, where for former NSA contractor has taken asylum.
Snowden also released a Christmas video message in which he warned that children today are born into a world of government surveillance where they’ll “never know what it means to have a private moment.”
He said that current government surveillance methods – including tracking people’s cell phone use and Internet activity — far surpass those described in Orwell’s dystopic novel “1984.”
Snowden, who is wanted by the United States on espionage charges, has claimed to have a lot more spy secrets to spill.
“What I’m most afraid of is that he will reveal our sources and methods, our tactics, techniques and procedures to people around the world who will the American nation and the American people harm,” said Hayden.