NSA leaker Edward Snowden said it would be suicide to keep a “doomsday cache” of state secrets, and claims the agency is fabricating how much information he really possesses.
“Who would set up a system that incentivizes others to kill them?” he told Vanity Fair in an interview published in the May issue.
Of the 1.7 million documents that Snowden was reported to have taken, he said the figure is “simply a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career.”
“Look at the language officials use in sworn testimony about these records: ‘could have,’ ‘may have,’ ‘potentially.’ They’re prevaricating. Every single one of those officials knows I don’t have 1.7 million files, but what are they going to say?” Snowden continues. “What senior official is going to go in front of Congress and say, ‘We have no idea what he has, because the NSA’s auditing of systems holding hundreds of millions of Americans’ data is so negligent that any high-school dropout can walk out the door with it’?”
Snowden, a high school dropout who joined the military in 2004, reflected on his decision to leak the documents.
“Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away, because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating,” he said. “But there’s a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I’m no longer alone.”
“Who would set up a system that incentivizes others to kill them?”
Though NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett, who ran the internal investigation of Snowden, claims that the former NSA contractor made no formal complaints, Snowden says that he addressed his privacy concerns to the NSA multiple times before dropping the bombshell revelations via a self-selected group of journalists and collaborators scattered throughout the world last year.
“The NSA at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the NSA’s lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail,” Snowden says.
He issues a dare, too.
“I directly challenge the NSA to deny that I contacted NSA oversight and compliance bodies directly via e-mail and that I specifically expressed concerns about their suspect interpretation of the law, and I welcome members of Congress to request a written answer to this question [from the NSA],” he said.
The piece contains another denial — Snowden affirms that he is not working for a foreign government, citing the fact that he used his personal credit card when checking into the Hong Kong hotel where he met with journalists to discuss the leaks as evidence of his independence.
“My hope was that avoiding ambiguity would prevent spy accusations and create more room for reasonable debate,” he said. “Unfortunately, a few of the less responsible members of Congress embraced the spy charges for political reasons, as they still do to this day.
“But I don’t think it was a bad idea, because even if they won’t say it in public, intelligence-community officials are regularly confirming to journalists off the record that they know with a certainty that I am not an agent of any foreign government,” he says.
Of his political affiliations, Snowden confesses amusement at being called a right-winger, and says that the label is based on “what seems to be Internet rumors and third-hand information.” Instead, he says, “I’d describe my political thought as moderate.”
He also shares his view on the current political climate in the wake of his leaks, saying, “What we’re seeing today in America is a new political movement that crosses party lines. This post-terror generation rejects the idea that we have to burn down our village in order to save it — that the only way to defend the Constitution is to tear it up.”