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Snowden Says He Was a Spy, Not Just an N.S.A. Analyst Snowden Says He Was a Spy, Not Just an N.S.A. Analyst
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden said he was not merely a “low-level analyst” writing computer code for American spies, as President Obama and other administration officials have portrayed him. Instead, he said, he was a trained spy who worked under assumed names overseas for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden said that he still considered himself to be an American patriot even after leaking thousands of classified documents, and that he was frustrated to be “stuck in a place” — Russia — that did so little to protect individual rights when he was trying to help protect American freedoms.
Mr. Snowden made his claims in a television interview to be broadcast Wednesday evening by NBC News. They added a new twist to the yearlong public relations battle between the administration and Mr. Snowden, who is living under asylum in Moscow to escape prosecution for leaking thousands of classified files detailing extensive American surveillance programs at home and abroad. Mr. Snowden made the comments in an hourlong interview on Wednesday night with Brian Williams of NBC News in which he tried to justify his actions and explain why he had accepted refuge from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He said he was alarmed that the Russian government was cracking down on freedom of the press, calling it “deeply unfair.”
“I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover overseas — pretending to work in a job that I’m not, and even being assigned a name that was not mine,” Mr. Snowden told Brian Williams of NBC News, in an excerpt released in advance of the full interview. He said he had never met Mr. Putin. “I have no relationship with the Russian government,” Mr. Snowden said. “I’m not supported by them.”
The N.S.A., which has described Mr. Snowden as an information technology contractor, has not commented on the new claims. But Secretary of State John Kerry, in a CBS News interview on Wednesday, suggested that Mr. Snowden’s refusal to return to the United States amounted to cowardice. “I am not a spy” for the Kremlin, he added, “which is the real question.”
“The bottom line is this is a man who has betrayed his country, who is sitting in Russia, an authoritarian country, where he has taken refuge,” he said. “He should man up and come back to the United States if he has a complaint about what’s the matter with American surveillance, come back here and stand in our system of justice and make his case. But instead he is just sitting there taking potshots at his country, violating his oath that he took when he took on the job he took.” Even if Mr. Putin’s government asked him to hand over documents, Mr. Snowden said, he had none to give. “I didn’t take anything to Russia,” he said. When Mr. Williams asked if Mr. Snowden could remotely access any of the documents he stole, he replied, “No, I don’t have any control.”
Mr. Snowden suggested that the government was deliberately playing down his role as a spy. The interview added a new twist to the yearlong public relations battle between the Obama administration and Mr. Snowden, who is living under asylum in Moscow to escape prosecution for leaking the files, which detail extensive American surveillance programs at home and abroad.
“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,” he said. Mr. Snowden did not address what other information may be coming from the documents that are still in the hands of journalists. He did not deny that he had taken military secrets, but he implied that nothing would be released that would, in his mind, hurt national security or put American troops at risk.
Mr. Snowden said, however, that he had not been the kind of spy depicted by Hollywood who embeds himself in glamorous overseas locations to extract information through interpersonal connections. “A good gauge of what information was provided to journalists is a representation of what you see in the press,” he said. “I did not want to take information that would be thrown in the press that would cause harm.”
“I am a technical specialist,” he said. “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 a low-level analyst.’ ” In trying to justify his actions to Mr. Williams, Mr. Snowden said he still considered himself to be working on behalf of the American people and government, even if the Obama administration does not see it that way.
According to government officials and former colleagues, Mr. Snowden first went to work as a security guard at an N.S.A.-financed language research center at the University of Maryland. His computer skills evidently attracted attention, and he subsequently worked overseas for the C.I.A. in Geneva and for N.S.A. contractors in Japan, Maryland and Hawaii before flying to Hong Kong last year and handing secret N.S.A. documents to several journalists. “How can it be said that I did not serve my government when all three branches have made reforms as a result of it?” he asked. “Being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all.”
According to his résumé and interviews, he worked in cyber-counterintelligence, searching classified government computer systems looking for intrusions from hackers and foreign spies. In his last job in Hawaii, he was described as an “infrastructure analyst,” which former N.S.A. officials say probably means he was looking for vulnerabilities in foreign telephone and Internet systems that would allow the agency to tap in. He continued, “It means knowing when to protect your country, when to protect your Constitution, when to protect your countrymen from the violations and encroachments of adversaries.” Such adversaries “do not have to be foreign countries,” he added. “They can be bad policies.”
Mr. Williams pressed Mr. Snowden about any regrets he might have almost a year after fleeing the United States. “What don’t I miss?” he said. “I miss my family. I miss my home. I miss my colleagues. I miss the work.”
But he said none of that made him regret his actions, although he would like to come home, as unlikely as that seems to be. He said he did not want his case to discourage whistle-blowers.
“I’m not going to give myself a parade,” he said, “but neither am I going to walk into a jail cell.” He said he did not think he could get a fair trial under American espionage laws.
Mr. Snowden also hit back against government descriptions of him as a “low-level analyst” writing computer code for American spies. Instead, he said, he was a trained spy who worked under assumed names overseas for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.