Lonnie Snowden

Lonnie Snowden is the father of Edward Snowden the former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) employee who leaked details of top-secret US and British government surveillance programs to the press.

He, is a resident of Pennsylvania, was an officer in the United States Coast Guard, and his former wife, a resident of Baltimore, Maryland, is a clerk at a federal court in Maryland.

Speaking to Eric Bolling on June 16, 2013, he made clear his opposition to the surveillance programs that were recently revealed but asked his son to stop leaking and return to the country. “I’m here because I’m really concerned about the misinformation in the media,” he told Bolling. “He is a sensitive, caring young man. … He just is a deep thinker.”

On June 28, 2013 he told NBC News that he was sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder laying out the conditions under which he is “reasonably confident” (NBC’s words) his son would return to the United States to face charges. The conditions included; the Justice Department has to promise not to detain Edward before a trial, promise not to subject him to a gag order, and allow him to choose where a trial would take place. In the same interview Snowden stated that “I don’t want to put him in peril, but I am concerned about those who surround him,” He went on to add that “I think WikiLeaks, if you've looked at past history, you know, their focus isn’t necessarily the Constitution of the United States. It’s simply to release as much information as possible.” He pushed back in the interview against the notion that his son is traitor saying “At this point I don’t feel that he’s committed treason. He has in fact broken U.S. law, in a sense that he has released classified information,” he elaborated. “And if folks want to classify him as a traitor — in fact he has betrayed his government. But I don’t believe that he’s betrayed the people of the United States.”

He co-wrote with his attorney Bruce Fein an open letter praising his son’s contributions in exposing the United States’ surveillance operations.

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