Edward Snowden: ‘I was trained as a spy’

Behind the mask: Edward Snowden's revelations forced the issue of court authorisation for surveillance into the open. Photo: Reuters

United States intelligence leaker Edward Snowden said in a TV interview he "was trained as a spy" and had worked undercover overseas for US government agencies.

In an advance excerpt of his interview in Moscow with NBC Nightly Newsthat aired on Tuesday in the US, Snowden rejected comments by critics that he was a low-level analyst.

Snowden worked for Dellas a contractor to the US National Security Agency (NSA) from 2009 to earlier this year, then as acontractor for management consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Previous reports have him working as for the CIAas a security guard from age 19 and as an undercover operator in overseas posts at 23.

"Well, it's no secret that the US tends to get more and better intelligence out of computers nowadays than they do out of people," Snowden told NBC news anchor Brian Williams.

"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."

Describing himself as a "technical expert", Snowden 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."

He said he worked undercover overseas for both the CIA and NSA and lectured at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy "where I developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world."

"So when they (critics) say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading," Snowden added.

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Edward Snowden: 'I was trained as a spy'