14 DAY TRIAL // During his interview with NBC, Edward Snowden said that his actions may not have been legal, but they were the only way to do what was necessary, since going through the regular channels to signal wrongdoings wasn’t really efficient.
Now, the NSA is trying to discredit his claims, saying that the emails Snowden claimed to have sent didn’t really exist and that he never really tried to inform any higher-ups of his concerns about the legality of the mass-surveillance programs.
This wasn’t the first time that Snowden mentioned he tried to inform superiors of the moral concerns he had about the reach of the surveillance programs run by the NSA. In fact, he stated before that his claims were dismissed and he was basically advised to shut up about it all, which ultimately pushed him to steal the documents and release them to the media, effectively putting a big bullseye on his back.
The NSA released an email exchange that they had between Snowden and the general counsel’s office, where the whistleblower asks for clarification on some training material he received, asking whether executive orders can override federal laws.
The general counsel responded by saying that executive orders had the force and effect of law but could not override a statute, and invited Snowden to call to discuss things further, if he wanted to.
The statement from the NSA claims that this is the only email they found of Snowden discussing such concerns and that there’s no indication Snowden followed up on the issue.
Snowden was quick to react, telling the Washington Post that things were far from how the NSA was trying to paint them and urged the intelligence agency to release all his correspondence.
“Today’s release is incomplete, and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published. It also did not include concerns about how indefensible collection activities - such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major US internet companies - are sometimes concealed under E.O. 12333 to avoid Congressional reporting requirements and regulations,” Snowden told the publication.
He added that, if the White House was interested in the whole truth, rather than the one the NSA was trying to tailor, it would require the NSA to ask former colleagues, management, and senior leadership team about whether he did in fact raise concerns about the NSA’s overreach.
Even so, the whistleblower points out that it’s interesting that the NSA was able to produce his email records, considering that not too long ago, it claimed they did not exist.
“The bottom line is that even though I knew the system was designed to reject concerns raised, I showed numerous colleagues direct evidence of programs that those colleagues considered unconstitutional or otherwise concerning. Today’s strangely tailored and incomplete leak only shows the NSA feels it has something to hide,” Snowden said.