Snowden leaks harmed US security ‘more than any others’

Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell said Edward Snowden's disclosure of top-secret US surveillance, including spying on allies, harmed national security more than any other leak in modern times.

"The damage here was extensive, the most damage that I have ever seen from a disclosure," Mr Morell, a 33-year veteran of the US spy agency, said today at a forum in Washington sponsored by Bloomberg.

Mr Morell (55), who retired in August after twice serving as acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, declined to say whether spying on allies is necessary or what the damage has been from reports that the US National Security Agency tapped phone calls of allies such as German chancellor Angela Merkel.

This latest round of disclosures based on documents leaked by Mr Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA who has been granted asylum in Russia, has triggered waves of protests around the world and calls by US lawmakers for investigations into spying practices.

“In my mind, this guy is not a hero,” Mr Morell said, because Mr Snowden “violated the law and violated the trust that was placed in him.”

US president Barack Obama has ordered an independent review of NSA operations that is being conducted by former government officials, including Mr Morell.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement yesterday that her panel "was not satisfactorily informed" of the eavesdropping on allies.

"It is my understanding that president Obama was not aware chancellor Merkel's communications were being collected since 2002," said Ms Feinstein, a California Democrat. "That is a big problem."

The committee now plans to conduct an investigation into all intelligence collection programs, she said.

Mr Morell said the one good thing to come from the spying disclosures is that they will force what he described as a healthy re-examination of agency operations.

“It is a good thing for an organisation, or a community organization, to scrub themselves, to take a hard look at what it is they’re doing,” Mr Morell said. “That’s exactly what the president is doing,” he said.

"It's exactly what Congress is doing, and it's what the president has asked the review board to do."

Mr Morell served as acting director of the CIA when Leon Panetta left the post to become secretary of defence and again after retired General David Petraeus resigned in the midst of an adultery scandal.

Bloomberg