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 yesterday.
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 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.
“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 as a trainer for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The full interview is to be aired today
