NSA Officials: Snowden Emailed With Question, Not Concern

The Obama administration on Thursday released an email sent by Edward Snowden to the NSA's general counsel last year - an important document in the debate over whether the leaker of classified government documents attempted to raise questions "through channels" about the agency's domestic surveillance programs.

The email is the lone document found so far, according to U.S. officials, that could be seen as offering support for Snowden's claim that he attempted to alert officials at the NSA to what he considered improper or illegal domestic surveillance by the agency before he began leaking the secret documents.

The document is 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. The lack of context surrounding the email leaves room for interpretation on Snowden's motives for making the inquiry.

In an exclusive interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams last week in Moscow that was broadcast Wednesday night, Snowden said he had warned the NSA, while working as an contractor, that he felt the agency was overstepping its bounds.

"I actually did go through channels, and that is documented," he asserted. "The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks, from me raising concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. The response more or less, in bureaucratic language, was, 'You should stop asking questions.'"

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement on Thursday saying that the email does not support Snowden's account.

"The email, provided to the committee by the NSA on April 10, 2014, poses a question about the relative authority of laws and executive orders it does not register concerns about NSA's intelligence activities, as was suggested by Snowden in an NBC interview this week," she said.

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.

U.S. officials initially disputed Snowden's claim that he had raised such questions, telling the Washington Post six months ago that no evidence of Snowden's alleged objection existed. "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," said the agency in a statement

Snowden sent the email released Thursday to the NSA's lawyers on April 5, 2013, while he was on temporary assignment at NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md.

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NSA Officials: Snowden Emailed With Question, Not Concern