Edward Snowden Says He Was a Trained Spy

Tonight NBC released portions of Edward Snowden's big interview with Brian Williams, and the focus seems to be on Snowden's claim that he was actually a trained spy, not a low-level hacker.

"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," Snowden told Williams in the interview, set to air tomorrow evening.

In the clip, Snowden lists his credentials, that include a stint with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA, to establish that he was more than "a low-level systems administrator."

He later clarifies, "I am a technical expert. I don't work with people. I don't recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States."

[image via NBC]