Obama's right-hand man says Snowden doesn't deserve forgiveness.
"I believe he clearly violated the law and caused harm to the nation he claims to love," Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview with CNN.
From Agência Brasil*
Washington - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that former analyst Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), does not deserve "clemency" because the mechanisms he used to expose espionage concerns are not worthy of it. "I believe he clearly violated the law and caused harm to the nation he claims to love," Holder added in an interview with CNN.
Along the same lines, in an interview with the newspaper USA TodayThe secretary insisted that "there is no basis" to believe that Snowden deserves to be pardoned.
Edward Snowden recently met with German parliamentarian Hans Christian Ströbele in Moscow and handed him a letter in which he requested clemency from the United States government, arguing that he had initiated a useful debate about whether spies were overstepping their bounds due to the power of technology.
Eric Holder admitted, however, that Edward Snowden's revelations allowed for a "healthy conversation" in the United States about intelligence gathering operations and methods.
"The discussion we are immersed in, I believe, is worthwhile to determine how to act to protect privacy and keep American citizens safe," he recalled, considering that the American government should question whether its massive surveillance system "had gone too far."
He declined to comment, however, on the allegation that a mobile phone belonging to German Chancellor Angela Merkel was included on a list of numbers to be spied on.