Snowden Tells NBC He was a Trained Spy

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden insisted he was "a trained spy" in an interview with NBC News.

"I was trained as a spy, in the 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 NBC during an interview recorded last week in Russia.

"I'm 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. And I've done that at all levels from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top."

Snowden said his job as a computer network administrator to remove tens of thousands of secret documents from an NSA facility in Hawaii which he then leaked to the media.

He has been charged with espionage and other offences in the US and could face 30 years in prison if convicted.