14 DAY TRIAL // It wasn’t about changing society, but about giving society a chance to determine if it should change itself, Snowden said in a rare interview.
The NSA whistleblower has told the Washington Post that despite everything that has happened over the past six months and the fact that he is being hunted by the American authorities, his mission has already been accomplished.
“I already won,” he said, explaining that in terms of personal satisfaction, he’s already achieved his goal – letting the world decide how it wants to be governed.
“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals,” Snowden told the publication.
During the interview, which took place over two days, Snowden also addressed the allegations coming from the United States that he had broken his oath of secrecy, the typical nondisclosure agreement that intelligence officers agree to. However, the whistleblower believes that he hasn’t broken the most important oath he made – the one to the American Constitution, which should top anything.
“The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy. That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that Keith Alexander and James Clapper did not,” Snowden said.
The whistleblower has mentioned the Constitution on several occasions thus far and even one of his former colleagues admitted that he had a tendency to keep a copy of the document on his desk.
Edward Snowden also said that, unlike what some are saying, he’s not trying to bring down the NSA, but rather to improve the agency. At the same time, he slammed rumors that he was working for the Russian government just because he had been granted asylum there.
“There is no evidence at all for the claim that I have loyalties to Russia or China or any other country other than the United States. I have no relationship with the Russian government. I have not entered into any agreement with them,” he said.