Snowden denies NSA claim of single email

Edward Snowden said late Thursday the National Security Agency isn’t telling the whole story with its release of one of his emails showing concern about the agency’s legal authority.

“The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers — after more than a year of denying any such contact existed — raises serious concerns,” Snowden told The Washington Post.

Snowden said the agency’s release of the email is “incomplete.”

{mosads}He said it “does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published.”

Snowden said he’s glad the NSA showed it has access to records of communication with him.

Earlier in the day, the NSA released an email Snowden had sent to the agency’s Office of General Counsel just a month before he left.

In an NBC News interview that aired Wednesday, Snowden claimed he sent multiple emails to the office questioning how the NSA interpreted its legal authority. 

The released email indicated Snowden did ask the agency for legal justification about a recent training course he took, but he didn’t explicitly condemn NSA activities.

The NSA said Thursday that the released email is the only record of exchange it has with Snowden.

“There are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistleblower allegations,” the agency said. “We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims.”

Snowden began leaking highly classified documents he stole from the NSA nearly a year ago. He has been living in Russia since August, after its government granted him temporary asylum.