CIA Say Edward Snowden 'taught ISIS to avoid detection'

Ex US secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta stands with Michael Morell, CIA deputy director at the time.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been blamed by the CIA for making it easier for the ISIS masterminds behind the Paris terror strikes to plan their atrocities that killed at least 132 people under the radar.

John Brennan, CIA director, claimed "unauthorised disclosures" on how the US security services operated, such as Snowden's infamous leaks have led to their snooping techniques being hampered.

He said it was now "much more difficult" to track down terrorists and work out what they are planning and when and where because of curbs introduced on surveillance in the wake of Snowden's exposures.

Mr Brennan said the Paris attacks would have needed weeks or months of planning, but none of this had been picked up by French or other allied spies.
He said: "ISIS has clearly gone to school on what they need to do in order to keep their activities concealed from the authorities."

The intelligence chief stopped short of naming Snowden, but has previously been heavily critical of his "outrageous" actions.

He said previously: "He has hurt this country and has helped our enemies". 

But former CIA deputy director Michael Morell goes one step further by directly implicating Snowden in the rapid expansion of ISIS in the months after the first leaks in 2013.

Morell, who makes the claims in a new book, says the most damaging revelation was the existence of a spying program that collects foreigners' e-mails as they move through equipment in America.

He said the jihadists subsequently switched their messaging systems to more 'secure' platforms, encrypted them or 'avoided electronic communications altogether'.

This is not a consensus view within the US intelligence community, where officials have been divided over how much ISIS really learned from the Snowden leaks that it didn’t already know. The group didn’t begin seizing territory in Iraq until a year after the leaks began. 

And last year, a US intelligence official with access to information about ISIS’s current tactics have said that while the group had “likely learned a lot” from the Snowden leaks, “many of their forces are familiar with the US from their time in AQI, and they have adapted well to avoiding detection.”

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