Snowden: I Was ‘Trained as a Spy’
Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor who revealed details of the government’s domestic surveillance efforts, says he was “trained as a spy” and worked undercover overseas for the U.S. intelligence community.
In an interview with NBC-TV news anchor Brian Williams in Moscow, Snowden rebutted critics who described him as nothing more than a low-level analyst, saying he pretended “to work in a job that I’m not and even being assigned a name that was not mine.” Excerpts of the interview were released Tuesday.
“I am a technical expert. I don’t work with people. I don’t recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.
Now, the government might deny these things, they might frame it in certain ways and say, ‘Oh well, you know, he’s — he’s a low level analyst.’ But what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to use one position that I’ve had in a career here or there to distract from the totality of my experience which is that I’ve worked for the Central Intelligence Agency undercover overseas, I’ve worked for the National Security Agency undercover overseas and I’ve worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a lecturer at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy where I developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world.
So when they say I’m a low level systems administrator, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d say it’s somewhat misleading,” said Snowden.
Snowden was working as a contractor for the National Security Agency when he flew to Hong Kong last year with computerized documents detailing the NSA’s massive collection of electronic communications of American citizens.
He passed on the documents to journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story for the British newspaper The Guardian. Snowden eventually fled to Moscow, where he has been granted asylum. He faces criminal charges in the U.S. for revealing classified information.
The U.S. House passed legislation last week aimed at ending the NSA’s bulk collection of American’s phone and Internet records.
