Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been labeled many things since he leaked a massive cache of top secret NSA documents. He claims that the NSA's description of his role with US government agencies is actually quite misleading and that he is not just a low-level analyst, but rather a traditionally trained spy who has conducted several international and undercover espionage operations.
In a recent interview with NBC, Snowden says he has been "trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word" and has conducted operations for both the CIA and the NSA overseas. He pointed out that he is a technical expert and that he has "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." Snowden claims to have even lectured at a counterintelligence training academy for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
"I am a technical specialist, I am a technical expert," Snowden said in the interview. "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."
The government is trying to focus on just a small portion of his career to distract from the reality of his experience, according to Snowden. "So when they say that I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading."
The full interview will be airing tonight on NBC but you can catch a brief preview of what to expect below.