Judging by the resoluteness of US officials’ tone, the chances President Barack Obama will pardon Edward Snowden appear very slim, and close to none before November’s presidential election.
The former National Security Agency contractor, who released thousands of classified documents in 2013 revealing the vast US surveillance put in place after the September 11, 2001, attacks, currently lives in Russia.
Three prominent human rights groups — Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union — launched a campaign on Wednesday to pressure Obama to pardon the fugitive whistleblower.
Snowden is also the subject of an Oliver Stone movie that hit screens yesterday in the US.
High-profile lawyers and celebrities including the writer Joyce Carol Oates, actors Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon, and musicians Peter Gabriel and Thurston Moore have signed the campaign’s petition at pardonsnowden.org, which urges Obama to grant Snowden clemency before leaving office in January.
It’s not the first campaign organised in support of the 33-year-old, who is a hero to some and a traitor to others.
But it is focusing pressure on Obama with hopes he will feel less constrained at the end of his presidency.
Officials gave no sign they were listening this week, however.
A Congressional report on Thursday criticised Snowden as a “disgruntled employee,” not a “principled whistleblower” protected under law.
“Edward Snowden is no hero - he’s a traitor who willfully betrayed his colleagues and his country,” House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes said. Snowden dismissed the report on Twitter.
“Bottom line: after ‘two years of investigation,’ the American people deserve better,” he wrote. “This report diminishes the committee.”
The White House already rejected a previous petition to pardon Snowden in July after it had attracted more than 160,000 signatures.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Snowden would enjoy legal due process at a trial in the US, where he faces up to 30 years in prison for espionage and theft of state secrets.
“His conduct put American lives at risk and it risked American national security,” he told reporters. “And that’s why the policy of the Obama administration is that Snowden should return to the US and face the very serious charges that he’s facing.”
The Constitution gives the president the authority to grant pardons to those convicted of violating federal law, a power Obama has exercised 70 times since early 2009, significantly less than his predecessors.