U.S. intelligence chief, James Clapper declared on Wednesday that the leaked National Security Agency documents by Edward Snowden are "the most massive and most damaging theft of intelligence information in our history" publicly for the first time, the Associated Press reported.
"Terrorists and other adversaries of this country are going to school on U.S. intelligence sources, methods and tradecraft," Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee this past Wednesday, according to the AP.
Shortly after Clapper issued the statement, historians and researchers said there were many other incidents that caused far greater threats against the country's national security that surpass the damage Snowden's leaks could cause, the AP reported. Others say only time will tell the true consequences of Snowden's acts.
Richard Rhodes, who is the author of three volumes of history about the atomic bomb and the consequences of its creation, claims there is no bigger breach than that of the theft of the nuclear bomb designs, according to the AP.
"There is no more dangerous intelligence breach across American history than the passage of the designs of our secret nuclear weapons to our worst enemy at the time," Rhodes told the AP. "Those spies gave the Russians the knowledge they could use to destroy us."
Other historians claim three Russian spies in the 1980s and 1990s named Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen and John Walker who "caused immense intelligence damage that led to the loss of vital secrets and the deaths of American informants," is a bigger breach of security than Snowden's leaks, the AP reported.
Rhode's insists, the nuclear designs which were stolen by Russia created greater "political and cultural" ripples" than any other breach of intelligence and had lasting effects on American politics for more than 10 years, according to the AP.
"The NSA secrets so far revealed, however painful they may be to the NSA, hardly come up to the standard of Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall," Rhodes said, according to the AP.
Pete Earley, another author who wrote about Walker and Ames, said the betrayel of Ames as a former CIA counterintelligence officer which led to the death of 10 U.S. informants cost the country in human lives, the AP reported.
"Ames' betrayal was quantifiable not only in lives but in the loss of critical intelligence sources," Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, told the AP. Earnest once supervised Ames is a 35-year- CIA veteran.
Because of this, Earley insists Walker and Ames both "outdid" Snowden in the amount of harm they truly caused, the AP reported. Earley also said comparisons between past intelligence breaches and the Snowden leaks will be "tricky" and the public and the government may not see how the leaks truly affected the nation for another decade.
