Former vice president Dick Cheney called NSA leaker Eric Snowden a traitor on Fox News Sunday, saying he had done "enormous damage" to the country's national security by revealing sensitive secrets about the agency's surveillance programs. Cheney also questioned his possible connections to China, in addition to how someone in Snowden's position could get access to some of the information he revealed and whether he had additional help inside the NSA.
CHRIS WALLACE: What do you think of Edward Snowden?
CHENEY: I think he's a traitor. I think he has committed crimes in effect by violating agreements given the position he had. He was a contractor employee, but he'd obviously been granted top secret clearance. I think it's one of the worst occasions in my memory of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States.
WALLACE: We believe Snowden is still in Hong Kong and apparently giving the Chinese information about alleged U.S. cyber hacking into Chinese computers. Couple of questions. Do you think he was a spy all along for the Chinese? Do you think he's using this information to try to buy asylum from the Chinese, and how firm should the U.S. government be with the Chinese about turning this guy back to us?
CHENEY: I'm suspicious obviously because he went to China. That's not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this. The other concern I have is whether or not he had help from inside the agency. That is to say, was there somebody else in NSA who had access to a lot of this stuff and passed it to him. That's presumably one of the things to look at in the course of the investigation.