Snowden: 'I Was Trained as a Spy'

In an excerpt of an interview set to air in its entirety on NBC on Wednesday night, so-called NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden explained how he viewed his role with the agency prior to his defection to Russia.

“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,” Snowden said.

Snowden explained to anchor Brian Williams that the classification of a “hacker,” which President Barack Obama had referred to him as a year ago, was “misleading.”

“I am a technical specialist. I am a technical expert,” he 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 — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.”

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