The Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday against Edward Snowden and will seek to confiscate all the proceeds from the National Security Agency leaker’s book.
In its lawsuit, the government argues Snowden “damaged and irreparably harmed” the CIA and NSA’s ability to protect national security information by violating his nondisclosure agreements with the spy agencies.
The U.S. government alleges Snowden published his memoir, Permanent Record, without submitting it to the CIA and the NSA for pre-publication review. Releasing the book without prior approval is “in violation of his secrecy agreements and non-disclosure obligations to the United States,” the lawsuit says.
The U.S. is not seeking to prevent distribution of the book, which was released Tuesday, but is seeking to obtain all profits Snowden makes from the deal. The government is also seeking to seize any money Snowden has made from the speeches he has given since 2014, alleging he did not submit them for prior approval.
“Snowden owes to the United States, the CIA, and NSA a fiduciary duty of loyalty to protect from unauthorized disclosure information pertaining to intelligence sources and methods, including signals intelligence activities and information; to submit to the CIA and NSA for review any materials subject to his pre-publication review obligations; and to not publish or disseminate those materials or information unless and until the CIA and NSA completed their pre-publication review processes and provided written approval of public disclosure,” the lawsuit says.
Snowden, 36, formerly worked for the CIA and was a contractor for the NSA, giving him access to the trove of documents on surveillance programs he leaked to journalists in 2013.
He has lived in Russia for the past six years, and said last week Russian intelligence pressured him to cooperate when he first fled to the country, but insisted he has not cooperated.
Snowden initially went to Hong Kong after leaving Hawaii in 2013. He was on his way to Ecuador to apply for asylum when he got stuck in Moscow after the U.S. revoked his passport.
He said he would be willing to come back to the U.S. to face trial for the disclosures, but only if the government promised he could tell a jury why he leaked the information and if jurors could see the classified material.
“You can’t have a fair trial about the disclosure of information unless the jury can evaluate whether it was right or wrong to reveal this information,” he said.
Snowden’s lawyer Ben Wizner argued the book contains no information that has not previously been made public.
“This book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations,” Wizner said in a statement. “Had Mr. Snowden believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would have submitted it for review. But the government continues to insist that facts that are known and discussed throughout the world are still somehow classified.”
Snowden added, “It is hard to think of a greater stamp of authenticity than the US government filing a lawsuit claiming your book is so truthful that it was literally against the law to write.”
It is hard to think of a greater stamp of authenticity than the US government filing a lawsuit claiming your book is so truthful that it was literally against the law to write.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 17, 2019
