Madison, March 13 (RHC)-- Revelations by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden on the massive U.S. surveillance programs show that Washington still has the Cold War-era mentality, a political analyst says.

“…When these [revelations] all first came out, the first attempt of the United States government was to say: Oh, We all do this; they spy on us, we spy on them and that certainly was the Cold War mentality where you saw bugging of the embassies by the old East Bloc and the West…,” Norman Stockwell, a radio host and freelance journalist from Madison, Wisconsin, said in an interview with Press TV.

Since last year, the former National Security Agency (NSA) employee, Edward Snowden, has leaked a cache of highly-sensitive documents about the United States’ global spying programs. He has given interviews on how the U.S. government systematically monitors phone and Internet data worldwide.

Snowden is currently in Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum in August 2013, two months after he leaked documents, showing the U.S. spied on the European Union and monitored up to a half-billion German telephone calls and Internet activities each month.

Stockwell said Washington’s spying in Europe has led to the ‘erosion of trust’ between U.S. and its allies that would undermine Washington's ability to conduct everyday business in the region.