Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 leaked thousands of classified documents showing U.S. surveillance of private data, argues in a new interview that retired Gen. David Petraeus was responsible for mishandling far more sensitive information than Snowden himself.
Petraeus, a former director of the CIA, is reportedly up for consideration as secretary of state under President-elect Donald Trump.
“We have a two-tiered system of justice in the United States, where people who are either well-connected to government or have access to an incredible amount of resources get very light punishments,” Snowden told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview, parts of which were published Sunday.
“Perhaps the best-known case in recent history here is General Petraeus,” he went on, “who shared information that was far more highly classified than I ever did with journalists.”
Petraeus pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information after disclosing state secrets to his biographer Paula Broadwell, with whom he was having an affair.
He handed Broadwell a black book of highly classified “code word” documents that included the identities of covert officers and notes of National Security Council meetings, according to court records. Petraeus retrieved the information three days later, and Broadwell never made the information public.
Petraeus was sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
Snowden, who leaked classified information to journalists to expose the NSA’s massive surveillance of Americans and others around the globe, also criticized the general’s motives, claiming that Petraeus leaked agents’ identities to impress his lover.
“His desire to sleep with his biographer was greater than his concern for agents’ safety,” Snowden tweeted on Sunday. “He did get laid, though.”
Snowden told Yahoo’s Katie Couric that Petraeus “shared this information not with the public for their benefit, but with his biographer and lover for personal benefit — conversations that had information, detailed information, about military special-access programs, that’s classified above top secret, conversations with the president and so on.”
He added that Petraeus “never spent a single day in jail, despite the type of classified information he exposed.”
Snowden spoke to Couric in Moscow, where he now lives as a fugitive.
Petraeus hasn’t responded to Snowden’s comments, but he apologized again for the leaks after meeting with Trump late last month to discuss a possible role as secretary of state.
Petraeus said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that the FBI “acknowledged that nothing that was in my journals that I shared — certainly improperly — ended up in the biography or made it out to the public. I think that’s a fairly significant point.”
“Five years ago, I made a serious mistake,” he went on. “I acknowledged it, I apologized for it, I paid a very heavy price for it and I’ve learned from it.”
Snowden, who has been charged with treason, is seeking a pardon or a plea deal from the Obama administration before Trump steps into the White House.
The “idea here,” he explained to Couric, is that “when most people who are involved in government or the intelligence community are involved in some sort of case where the government goes, ‘This person was acting in good faith, they were trying to do right by the American people, but they did break the law’ ― no charges are ever brought.”
Snowden’s full interview will be available for viewing Monday night.