Edward Snowden not just an analyst: 'I worked as a spy overseas'

The whistleblowing former intelligence worker hasn't run out of shock revelations just yet.

By Dave Lancaster |

17:01 28 May 2014

Edward Snowden has broken his American media silence to debunk claims that he was a low-level contractor, instead stating that he was active among intelligence agencies at "at all levels from the bottom on the ground, all the way to the top".

 

The whistleblower was talking to NBC News whereby he revealed that before he leaked classified NSA documents he was trained as a spy. 

 

Snowden said: "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."

 

Citing his work with the CIA and NSA as a "technical expert" and as a trainer for the Defence Intelligence Agency, Snowden said: "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 the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.

 

"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."