Was Edward Snowden a spy? The answer remains classified

On the vital question of whether Snowden worked with a foreign power when he was taking the documents he would eventually leak, the House investigation is a tease. There is a section titled “Foreign Influence.” Yet all but two of its sentences, including supporting footnotes, are redacted.

The two sentences we are allowed to read don’t tell us much. One quotes a fragment of an NPR interview with Frants Klintsevich, a member of the Russian Duma’s defense and security committee. He says Snowden shared intelligence. Snowden himself tweeted that, in its written transcript of the interview, NPR excluded a caveat from Klintsevich that he was speculating about this.

The other sentence seems more tantalizing. “Since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services,” it says. This would stand to reason. After all, Snowden would have invaluable information on the inner working of U.S. signal intelligence collection. Of course Russian intelligence officers would want to talk to him.