Snowden: I’m a patriot

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Traitor or patriot? Low-level systems analyst or highly trained spy?

Slammed by top U.S. government officials and facing espionage charges in the United States, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden defended his decision to leak documents about classified surveillance programs during an interview with NBC "Nightly News" broadcast Wednesday.

"I think it's important to remember that people don't set their lives on fire," Snowden said. "They don't walk away from their extraordinarily, extraordinarily comfortable lives....for no reason."

Speaking to anchor Brian Williams in a Moscow hotel, Snowden said that he considers himself a patriot, and he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to reveal secret U.S. government surveillance programs if he didn't have to.

"The reality is, the situation determined that this needed to be told to the public. The Constitution of the United States had been violated on a massive scale," Snowden told Williams. "Now, had that not happened, had the government not gone too far and overreached, we wouldn't be in a situation where whistleblowers were necessary."

The U.S. government, Snowden said, is using the threat of terrorism "to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up and our Constitution says we shouldn't give up."

Snowden has been living for nearly a year in Russia, where the government has granted him temporary asylum.

But he stressed that he has no ties with the Russian government.

"I have no relationship with the Russian government at all," he told NBC. "I've never met the Russian President. I'm not supported by the Russian government. I'm not taking money from the Russian government. I'm not a spy."

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Snowden: I'm a patriot