McCaul: Snowden didn’t have the ‘wherewithal’ to act alone

A top House Republican said Sunday that Edward Snowden was not acting alone in revealing secrets about U.S. intelligence gathering.

{mosads}Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he doesn’t think that Snowden woke up one day and had the “wherewithal to do this all by himself,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“He was helped by others,” McCaul said.

“I personally believe that he was cultivated by a foreign power to do what he did,” he said.

The Texas Republican said he could not give a definitive statement as to what country may have helped Snowden reveal specifics of the National Security Agency’s program to collect metadata from U.S. residents and foreigners.

But Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was more specific n NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Rogers, said Snowden was “a thief whom we believe had some help.”

“I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms of an FSB [Russian intelligence service] agent in Moscow,” Rogers said.

“I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

Snowden sought asylum in Russia and is living in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week” that Snowden has no travel restrictions within the country and could even travel freely to the Sochi Olympics.