Report puts Snowden-like leaks as the No. 2 threat to U.S. security

WASHINGTON Insiders like Edward Snowden who leak secrets about sensitive U.S. intelligence programs pose a potentially greater danger to national security than terrorists, America's spy chiefs warned Wednesday in their annual report to Congress on global security risks.

For the first time, the risk of unauthorized disclosures of classified material and state-sponsored theft of data was listed as the second-greatest potential threat to America in a review of global perils prepared by the U.S. intelligence community. The risk followed cyber attacks on crucial infrastructure but was listed ahead of international terrorism.

U.S. officials previously have said it will cost billions of dollars to repair or revamp communications surveillance systems in the wake of the disclosures by Snowden, a former contract employee at a National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii who began leaking classified documents to the media in June and who later fled to Russia.

Appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said the leaks represent the "most damaging theft of intelligence information in our history." He urged Snowden to return the material, saying he made "the nation less safe and its people less secure."

"We've lost critical foreign intelligence collection sources, including some shared with us by valued partners," Clapper said. "Terrorists and other adversaries of this country are going to school on U.S. intelligence sources, methods and tradecraft, and the insights that they are gaining are making our job much, much harder."

Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who directs the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the leaks had endangered the lives of intelligence operatives and troops. Matt Olsen, heads of the National Counterterrorism Center, said they had made it tougher to track Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

"What we've seen in the last six to eight months is an awareness by these groups of our ability to monitor communications and specific instances where they've changed the ways in which they communicate to avoid being surveilled," Olsen said.

Investigators believe Snowden copied 1.7 million documents from NSA servers, the largest breach of classified material in U.S. history, although only a fraction have been disclosed so far. Last summer, a military judge sentenced Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who was born Bradley Manning, to 35 years in prison for sending 750,000 classified diplomatic cables, military field reports and other material to WikiLeaks.

Both Snowden and Manning have been condemned by critics as traitors and hailed by supporters as whistle-blowers who exposed government wrongdoing.

Only critics spoke at the hearing. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), said the classified documents Snowden downloaded, if printed out, would form a stack more than three miles high.

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Report puts Snowden-like leaks as the No. 2 threat to U.S. security