US fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden “trained as a spy” and worked “undercover overseas” for intelligence agencies, he told NBC News in excerpts of an interview aired Tuesday.
In his first interview in US media, Snowden hit back at claims that he was merely a low-level contractor, saying he worked “at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground, all the way to the top.”
Snowden, who has been charged in the United States with espionage, was granted asylum by Russia in August 2013 after shaking the American intelligence establishment to its core with a series of leaks on mass surveillance in the United States and around the world.
In the interview, taped last week and to air in full on Wednesday, Snowden defended himself against claims minimising his intelligence experience before he stole and leaked a trove of classified documents revealing the NSA’s program of phone and Internet surveillance.
“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,” he said.
He said he had worked covertly as “a technical expert” for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, as well as a trainer for the Defence Intelligence Agency.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
Snowden, who left high school at 15 without graduating, made his revelations three months into his new job with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton as a systems administrator based at the NSA’s threat operations center in Hawaii.