Edward Snowden responds to release of e-mail by U.S. officials

The Washington Post reports: Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden responded to questions from The Washington Post following the release of an e-mail he had sent while working for the National Security Agency.

Q: How do you respond to today’s NSA statement and the release of your email with the Office of General Counsel?

The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers – after more than a year of denying any such contact existed – raises serious concerns. It reveals as false the NSA’s claim to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in December of last year, that “after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention.”

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.

If the White House is interested in the whole truth, rather than the NSA’s clearly tailored and incomplete leak today for a political advantage, it will require the NSA to ask my former colleagues, management, and the senior leadership team about whether I, at any time, raised concerns about the NSA’s improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities. It will not take long to receive an answer. [Continue reading…]

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One thought on “Edward Snowden responds to release of e-mail by U.S. officials”

  1. pabelmont

    Glad there was THIS email. Asking his colleagues puts them in a difficult position, because they wish to be (and to seem) loyal to NSA, but also to tell the truth. They are said to have refused to run his complaints “up the flagpole” when he originally mentioned his concerns, on teh grounds that whistleblowers never got anything but trouble for their pains. But they may have been under orders — orders widely understood not to be “operative” — to report such things. I pity them.

    It is the leaders of the NSA, and those who advised our presidents, and our presidents themselves, whom I do not pity.

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