China News Service, October 1st, according to Bloomberg News, on September 29 local time, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that Edward Snowden had to pay the $4.2 million he received from his memoirs. Because he did not submit the manuscript to the government for review before publication.
Data map: February 2, 2015, local time, Toronto, Canada. At the request of a Canadian high school student, Edward Snowden, a former employee of the US CIA, participated in a middle school meeting through video and told the students about his View of the Prism Gate incident.
U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady said in an order that Snowden must also waive the income from unauthorized paid speeches and the publishing or adaptation of his 2019 memoir "Permanent Record" The potential future benefits.
The US government stated that according to the confidentiality agreement signed by Snowden with the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, Snowden must submit the manuscript of his work for review.
Snowden's lawyer did not respond to this.
But in the documents submitted to the court, Snowden’s legal team argued that the government’s interpretation of the confidentiality agreement was too broad, “requiring former public officials to submit any intelligence-related content they wish to review during their lifetime.”
In December 2019, a few months after the publication of the "Permanent Record", O'Grady ruled that Snowden violated the confidentiality agreement, so the US government asked Snowden to provide evidence and explain how much he earned from paid speeches money.
According to reports, the Snowden case is not the only recent legal battle involving the publication of memoirs by former US government employees.
The Justice Department also sued John Bolton, a former national security adviser, for failing to complete the pre-publishing review of his memoirs.