This was revealed today when a NSA employee resigned and the reason behind the resignation was cited as stripping of security clearance and allowing its former agency contractor Edward Snowden to use his personal log-in credentials to access classified information.
The memo is unclassified but labeled “for official use only.” This memo is the result of a inquiry conducted into how Edward Snowden managed to access and download the information deemed classified. The inquiry was constituted to find out the breaches in the NSA internal security system which can cause similar damage in future.
The memo printed above contains military jargon but clearly puts one thing in clear. Snowden, contrary to his own statement to the press, did not use his own log-in and password to access and download the tens of thousands of classified documents. The memo clearly states that the civilian employee entered his own log-in id and password “At Snowden’s request” onto Snowden’s computer terminal. The memo does not name the civilian employee who has since resigned from NSA.
“Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information,” the memo states.
However why the employee resigned is not clear. The memo clearly does not blame the civilian employee for Snowden leaks. The exact words in the memo are that the employee was unaware that Snowden “intended to unlawfully disclose classified information.”
Perhaps he may have been pressurised into resigning as after the enquiry, it was found out that he had shared his personal “public key infrastructure” certificate with Edward Snowden, thereby enabling Snowden to compile the biggest leak ever in NSA history. NSA thereafter stripped the employee of any further access to the NSA’s internal computer system because as per the memo “the employee failed to comply with security obligations”
The Snowden saga is indeed getting more and more murkier by the moment.
