Snowden supporters claim document destruction; concerns NSA breach may have left secrets in Russia and China

146 Snowden’s supporters, to be sure, disputed this view. If only as an act of faith in Snowden’s personal integrity, they continued to believe his avowal to Senator Humphrey that he had acted to protect U.S. secrets by shielding them from adversary intelligence services after he took them abroad. They also continued to take him at his word when he said he had destroyed all the NSA documents before going to Russia. Despite such protestation of Patriotic loyalty, U.S intelligence officials could not so easily dismiss the possibility that the missing documents still existed. After all, a U.S intelligence worker who is dedicated to protecting American secrets from its adversaries does not ordinarily takes them to an adversary country. The NSA, CIA and Department of Defense therefore had little choice but to assume the worst had happened: Russia and China had obtained access to the “keys of the kingdom”. Whatever the extent of the actual damage, it was up to General Alexander’s replacement, Admiral Michael Rogers, both to restore morale and rebuilding the capabilities of America’s electronic intelligence in the wake of the massive breach. According to a National Security staff member in the Obama White House, that job would take more than a decade. Meanwhile, Whoever now held the keys to the kingdom, one thing was certain: the NSA had failed to protect them. This intelligence failure did not happen out of the blue. Meanwhile, Putin added insult to the injury by awarding the alleged perpetrator sanctuary in Russia. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020298