Published: 5:45PM Friday May 30, 2014 Source: AP
Edward Snowden bares all in a NBC interview. - Source: NBC
- US Secretary of State tells Snowden to 'man up' and come home video
- Edward Snowden: 'I was a trained spy' video
Edward Snowden says he repeatedly raised constitutional concerns about National Security Agency surveillance internally, but an NSA search turned up a single email in which Snowden gently asks for "clarification" on a technical legal question about training materials, agency officials said yesterday.
Snowden, a former NSA systems administrator whose leaks have exposed some of the agency's most sensitive spying operations, called himself a patriot in an interview this week with NBC News' Brian Williams. He said he felt he had no choice but to expose what he considered illegal NSA surveillance by leaking secret details to journalists.
Asked by Williams whether he first raised his qualms with his bosses, he said, "I reported that there were real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities."
Yesterday, NSA released the email they said Snowden appeared to be referring to, which the agency says is the only communication from Snowden it could find raising any concerns.
It was dated April 8, 2013, three months after Snowden first reached out to journalists anonymously. Former NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said the agency could find no one to whom Snowden voiced concerns verbally either.
In the email to NSA's general counsel's office, Snowden questions an NSA document showing the hierarchy of governing authorities, which appeared to put executive orders on par with federal statutes.
"I'm not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply executive orders have the same precedence as law," Snowden said in the email. "Could you please clarify?"
An unidentified NSA lawyer began his reply, "Hello, Ed," and told Snowden he was correct: Executive orders cannot override federal law. In an email to The Washington Post, Snowden called the official release of the email "incomplete," the newspaper reported.
Snowden said it did not include his correspondence with NSA compliance officials and concerns he had raised about "indefensible collection activities." He repeated claims that he had shown colleagues "direct evidence" of programs that they agreed were unconstitutional, the newspaper said.
"If the White House is interested in the whole truth, rather than the NSA's clearly tailored and incomplete leak today for a political advantage, it will require the NSA to ask my former colleagues, management and the senior leadership team about whether I, at any time, raised concerns about the NSA's improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities," Snowden wrote in response to questions from the Post. "It will not take long to receive an answer."
Snowden told the Post in December that he raised his concerns face to face with colleagues and supervisors for more than six months. Beginning in October 2012, he said, he brought his concerns about widespread agency surveillance to two superiors in the NSA's Technology Directorate and two in the NSA Threat Operations Center's regional base in Hawaii, the newspaper said today.
In the NBC interview - conducted in Moscow, where Snowden now lives outside the reach of pending U.S. criminal charges - Snowden said the reply he got to his email was "more or less, in bureaucratic language, 'You should stop asking questions.'"
In fact, the lawyer's email to him concludes, "Please give me a call if you would like to discuss further." No specific surveillance program was discussed in the email.
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