White House Rejects Snowden Amnesty

The White House has ruled out the idea of an amnesty for fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

A top National Security Agency (NSA) official had suggested that a deal could be reached if Mr Snowden stopped leaking documents.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr Snowden still faced felony charges for leaking classified data.

It came as a federal judge ruled that the NSA’s snooping on telephone calls is likely to be unconstitutional.

US District Judge Richard Leon wrote that the programme probably violated Americans’ right to be free of unreasonable searches.

He stayed his own ruling pending an expected appeal by the government.

Hostage-taker analogy

In Monday’s daily press briefing, Mr Carney said government officials continue to press Russia – where Mr Snowden has been granted asylum – to return him to the US.

“There’s been no change in our position,” he told reporters.

Mr Snowden “faces felony charges here, he ought to be returned to the United States, again, where he will face full due process and protection under our system of justice, that we hope he will avail himself of”, Mr Carney added.

In comments aired on Sunday, Richard Ledgett – who is head of the NSA’s task force investigating damage from Mr Snowden’s leaks – discussed the possibility of an amnesty deal on the US television channel CBS.

“My personal view is, yes it’s worth having a conversation about,” he said.

“I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high, would be more than just an assertion on his part.”

Mr Carney said on Monday that the proposal represented Mr Ledgett’s “personal opinion” and such decisions were ultimately made by the Department of Justice.

Earlier, NSA Director Gen Keith Alexander also dismissed the idea.

“This is analogous to a hostage taker taking 50 people hostage, shooting 10, and then say, ‘if you give me full amnesty, I’ll let the other 40 go’. What do you do?”

Earlier this month, a UK newspaper editor told UK MPs only 1% of files leaked by Mr Snowden had been published by the newspaper.

The US has charged Mr Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence.

Each of the charges carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

At the weekend, the NSA allowed a CBS television crew into its headquarters for the first time, in an effort to be more open about what the agency does with the data it collects.