Snowden Strikes Back at NSA, Emails NBC News

Fugitive Edward Snowden on Friday challenged the NSAs insistence that it has no evidence he tried to raise concerns about the agencys surveillance activity before he began leaking government documents to reporters, calling the response a clearly tailored and incomplete leak ... for a political advantage.

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, Snowden said in an email Friday to NBC News. 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. Snowdens contention that he brought these matters to anyones attention.

Snowdens email followed Thursdays release by the U.S. Office of the Director of Intelligence of an email exchange between Snowden and the NSAs Office of the General Counsel. The Washington Post received and published a similar response from Snowden on Thursday.

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That email, dated April 5 , 2013, and bearing the subject line Question for OGC re. OVSC1800 Course Content, was a request for clarification about a legal point in training materials for a mandatory course regarding policies and procedures restricting domestic surveillance by the NSA. Its primary focus was on the question of whether an executive order issued by the president could trump a federal statute.

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The NSA has said it is the only email or other communication that it has found in which Snowden communicated with agency officials about the NSAs surveillance program, countering his assertion that he had sent multiple emails to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks raising concerns about the NSAs interpretations of its legal authorities, as he claimed in an exclusive interview with NBC News Brian Williams that aired Wednesday night.

The NSA released this Edward Snowden email to the Office of General Counsel asking for an explanation of some material that was in a training course he had just completed, Thursday May 29, 2014.

Two U.S. officials who spoke to NBC News about the email prior to its release noted that it asked a question about how the NSA was interpreting its legal justifications for domestic surveillance, but had not raised concerns about the NSAs practices.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made a similar point in a statement on Thursday, saying that the email does not support Snowdens account.

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Snowden Strikes Back at NSA, Emails NBC News