Holder: Won’t execute leaker

Letter to Russia: Torture out, too

Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter that the United States would not seek the death penalty against Edward Snowden.
Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter that the United States would not seek the death penalty against Edward Snowden.

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter sent to the Russian minister of justice this week that the United States would not seek the death penalty against Edward Snowden and would issue him a passport immediately so he could travel back to the United States.

The letter, dated Tuesday, also offered reassurances that the United States would not torture Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who faces criminal charges of disclosing classified information and is believed to have been hiding in an airport in Moscow to evade U.S. authorities.

“We believe these assurances eliminate these asserted grounds for Mr. Snowden’s claim that he should be treated as a refugee or granted asylum, temporary or otherwise,” Holder said in the letter, which was sent to Justice Minister Alexander Vladimirovich Konovalov.

Snowden has been charged with three offenses in the U.S., including espionage, and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted. The United States would not seek the death penalty “even if Mr. Snowden were charged with additional death penalty-eligible crimes,” the letter said.

Holder’s letter is part of a campaign by the U.S. government to get Snowden back. When Snowden arrived at Moscow’s international airport a month ago, he was believed to be planning simply to transfer to a flight to Cuba and then to Venezuela to seek asylum. But the U.S. canceled his passport, stranding him. Besides applying for temporary asylum in Russia, he has said he’d like to visit the countries that offered him permanent asylum - Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Some Russian politicians, including parliament Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, have said Snowden should be granted asylum to protect him from the death penalty. If Snowden were to go to a country that opposes the death penalty, providing assurances that the U.S. won’t seek the death penalty could remove at least one obstacle to his return to America.

“I can report that the United States is prepared to provide to the Russian government the following assurances regarding the treatment Mr. Snowden would face upon return to the United States,” Holder wrote. “First, the United States would not seek the death penalty for Mr.Snowden should he return to the United States.” In addition, “Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States.”

Bruce Fein, a lawyer representing Edward Snowden’s father, criticized Holder.

“Today the attorney general stated - apparently thinking he was being conciliatory - that if Edward Snowden were returned to the United States we wouldn’t kill him or torture him. Those are concessions only in the mind of someone who’s very biased,” Fein said.

He said an impartial prosecutor would have said that Snowden is entitled to a presumption of innocence and that he would guarantee Snowden a fair trial by ensuring it was held in a venue that wasn’t populated by National Security Agency contractors.

The attorney general said that if Snowden returned to the U.S., he would promptly be taken before a civilian court and would receive “all the protections that United States law provides.”

Holder also said that “we understand from press reports and prior conversations between our governments that Mr. Snowden believes that he is unable to travel out of Russia and must therefore take steps to legalize his status. That is not accurate; he is able to travel.”

Despite the revocation of Snowden’s passport June 22, he remains a U.S. citizen and is eligible for a limited-validity passport good for direct return to the United States, the attorney general said.

Snowden, who is believed to have been staying at the Moscow airport transit zone since June 23, is awaiting a document from the Federal Migration Service that will enable him to cross Russia’s border and exit the airport, his attorney Anatoly Kucherena told reporters in Moscow earlier this week. Snowden applied for a 12-month renewable refugee status in Russia on July 16. Authorities have as long as three months to consider the request, according to Kucherena.

A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said Russia has not budged from its refusal to extradite Snowden. Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that “Russia has never extradited anyone and never will.” There is no U.S.-Russia extradition treaty.

Peskov also said that Putin is not involved in reviewing Snowden’s application or in discussions with the U.S. of his future with the U.S., though Russia’s Federal Security Service had been in touch with the FBI.

Snowden has not overtly threatened to release more damaging documents, though a journalist with whom he has been working, Glenn Greenwald, has said that blueprints detailing how the National Security Agency operates would be made public if something should happen to Snowden.

Putin has said that if Snowden releases any more of the materials, Russia will not grant him temporary asylum.

At the same time, there have been indications that President Barack Obama’s administration’s warning that Obama could cancel a planned meeting with Putin in September if Snowden remained in Russia might be complicating the issue.

Two senators, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have introduced a nonbinding resolution urging Obama to consider recommending shifting the Group of 20 summit to another location if Russia doesn’t turn over Snowden to the U.S.

Peskov said Putin was resolved to avoid a deterioration in relations with the United States.

There’s little chance Snowden will be able to use what information he has as a bargaining chip to negotiate his prosecution or extradition.

“We don’t negotiate with extortionists,” said Michael Chertoff, the former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division and former secretary of homeland security. Chertoff said he can’t recall a case in which the U.S. government has caved under this type of threat.

U.S. officials have said what Snowden already has released will harm national security, though it’s too early to tell what damage has been done. The U.S. intelligence community has a good idea of what other documents he has.

Meanwhile, Snowden’s father, Lon Snowden of Allentown, Pa., said Friday that his son has been so vilified by the Obama administration and members of Congress that he is better off staying in Russia.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Lon Snowden said he has lost faith in recent weeks that his son would be treated fairly by the Justice Department. He now thinks his 30-year-old son is better off avoiding the U.S. if possible until what he termed as an administration that respects the Constitution takes office.

“If it were me, knowing what I know now, and listening to advice of sage people like [Pentagon Papers leaker] Daniel Ellsberg … I would attempt to find a safe haven,” Snowden said.

As a military analyst more than four decades ago, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret study of America’s involvement in Vietnam, to major newspapers.

On NBC’s Today show Friday, Lon Snowden said there’s been a concerted effort by some members of Congress to “demonize” his son.

He said he thinks Russia is probably the best place to seek asylum because it is most likely to withstand U.S. pressure.

Lon Snowden said he has had no direct contact with his son, and knows no more about his son’s day-to-day life in Moscow than anyone else.

More broadly, he expressed frustration that the story has become so focused on his son and his whereabouts and U.S. efforts to get him extradited, while the issues surrounding his son’s disclosures of extensive surveillance programs that he says disregard the Constitution have been swept aside.

Lon Snowden said talking about the issues his son has raised allows him to connect to his son and keep the issues he raised in front of the American people. He and Fein are starting a nonprofit group called the Defense of the Constitution Foundation to promote those ideas.

“In essence, he has passed on the torch of democracy,” Lon Snowden said of his son.

He said he’s also focused on the issues rather than on his son’s personal situation in part because he isn’t sure there is much he can do to help him.

“He sacrificed everything and gained nothing,” the elder Snowden said. “He’s done what he’s done. The consequences are unavoidable, and I don’t know if I can mitigate those.” Information for this article was contributed by Michael S. Schmidt and Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times; by Pete Yost, Matthew Barakat and Eileen Sullivan of The Associated Press; and by Mike Dorning and Roger Runningen of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/27/2013

Upcoming Events