One Year After Edward Snowden’s Leaks, Government Claims …

A sticker featuring fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden and partially reading 'asylum' is seen on the pavement in a Berlin street, on May 26, 2014. A German panel set up to assess the extent of spying by the US National Security Agency and its partners on German citizens and politicians, and whether German intelligence aided its activities, decided on May 21, 2014 it wants to question Snowden, perhaps via video link or by sending an envoy to Russia where he has been given temporary asylu | ODD ANDERSEN via Getty Images

U.S. officials have not been shy in claiming fallout from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's leaks.

"I think its the greatest damage to our combined nations intelligence systems that we have ever suffered," former NSA Director Keith Alexander told an Australian newspaper. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the revelations caused "profound damage." And House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) claimed the disclosures "are likely to have lethal consequences for our troops in the field.

But the U.S. government has revealed little to back up these catastrophic-sounding generalizations, saying it wants to keep further details about its intelligence sources and methods from the public. So, one year to the day after Snowden's first leaks were revealed, Americans are forced into a strange balancing act -- weighing whatever good the leaks generated in revealing the vast reach of government spying against unsupported official claims of harm to measures meant to protect the nation.

"If after a year, they can't show a single individual who's been harmed in any way by this reporting, is it really so grave? Is it really so serious?" Snowden asked in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams that aired last week. "The possibility exists, and if this has caused some serious harm, I personally would like to know about it."

Getting the facts has been hindered by government agencies whose chiefs made those dire-sounding statements about the Snowden leaks. Contacted by HuffPost, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and State Department all declined to provide additional detail on their claims of damage.

The DIA did release portions of its assessment of how Snowden's leaks affected military operations after a Freedom of Information Act request from the Guardian newspaper. But the document was heavily redacted and the DIA withheld 27 of its 39 pages.

The explanation for those redactions and for the agencies' reluctance to reveal more is relatively straightforward: Laying out what Snowden wrought would risk revealing more sensitive secrets, the agencies say.

"It would not be in the best interest of our National Security and efforts to fight terrorism for us to educate -- thru the media -- terrorist on the changes we might be seeing in their communications," Gene Barlow, spokesman for the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, said in an emailed statement.

"We constantly look for opportunities to share with Americans what collection weve lost, but are wary of doing further damage to collection that we need to regain," Barlow added. "We do however, continue to work with our Congressional oversight to make sure they have visibility into the damage done by the leaker."

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One Year After Edward Snowden's Leaks, Government Claims ...