US former vice president Cheney calls Snowden a 'traitor'

Former vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday defended recently revealed US spy programmes, saying they were needed to prevent attacks and calling the man who leaked details about them a “traitor.”

Cheney had played a key role in former president George W. Bush’s administration when it developed and approved the National Security Agency surveillance tactics in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“The reason we got into it was because we’ve been attacked - and (a) worse attack than Pearl Harbor,” he told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

The worry, he added, was that future attackers would turn to “deadlier weapons than ever before” - including nuclear and biological arms.

“When you consider somebody smuggling a nuclear device into the United States, it becomes very important to gather intelligence on your enemies and stop that attack before it ever gets launched,” he said.

Asked about critics of the programmes, Cheney countered: “The allegation is out there that somehow we’ve got all this personal information on Aunt Fanny or Chris Wallace or whoever it might be and reported through it,” he said.