In his first interview with a major US network news organization since leaking a treasure trove of documents related to the US national security apparatus, former US intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden told NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams that he has been misrepresented by the mainstream media outlets and aimed to set the record straight.

In early 2013, Snowden disclosed thousands of top-secret US government documents to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald. The documents revealed that the US government has established phone and Internet dragnets to sweep up data en masse, sparking a global debate about government surveillance ever since.

Further Reading Edward Snowden tells Brian Williams he’d like to go home

During the filming of the hour-long special "Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden" in the Kepinski Hotel in Moscow last week, which aired on Wednesday night at 10pm ET, the two spoke at length about a wide range of topics that included a discussion of Snowden’s technical training and work as an undercover “spy,” his reasons for continuing to reside in Russia under a temporary asylum agreement, and what he describes as the US government's exploitation of the national trauma in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

While Snowden hasn’t been camera shy this past year, having taken part in an encrypted chat interview with The New Yorker and having spoken to a crowd of tech enthusiasts at the SXSW conference via a heavily encrypted video link “behind seven proxies,” for example, the logistics of executing this in-person interview were quite tricky, Williams told The New York Times.

“We were worried about a number of things... [like] competitive concerns. And we didn’t know how much the Russians knew about the reasons for our travel,” Williams explains of the back-story of the interview. What's more, Williams describes how he nearly missed a connecting flight in London, how his luggage did not arrive until moments before Snowden appeared at the hotel room, and how NBC attempted to conceal their identities and motivations for visiting the country from Russian authorities.

Williams also told the Times that the "blindingly smart" and "enigmatic" Snowden received no remuneration for the interview other than "half a chicken sandwich from the room service cart."

"Man up" and "face the music"

During the interview, Snowden discussed his motivations for releasing the documents to journalists, explaining, "The intelligence capabilities themselves are unregulated, uncontrolled, and dangerous. People at NSA can actually watch internet communications and see our thoughts form as we type. What's more shocking is the dirtiness of the targeting. It's the lack of respect for the public and for the intrusiveness of surveillance."

Snowden also recalled his reaction to the 9/11 attacks and his belief in the importance of combatting terrorism. "I've never told anybody this, but I was on Fort Meade on September 11. I was right outside the NSA, so I remember the tension of that day... I take the threat of terrorism seriously. I think it's disingenuous for the government to exploit the national trauma that we've all suffered to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe but cause us to give up liberties our Constitution does not let us give up."

The whistleblower also took the opportunity to comment on how the mainstream media’s depiction of him as a low-level “systems administrator” and President Barack Obama’s own description of him as a "hacker” are “somewhat misleading.”

Instead, the 30-year-old Snowden characterized himself as a “technical expert” who has served as a “spy” for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency, living and working undercover, overseas, “pretending to work in a job that I'm not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine."

What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels, from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top. Now, the government might deny these things; they might frame it in certain ways and say, 'Oh, well, you know, he's a low-level analyst.’ But what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to use one position that I’ve had in a career here or there to distract from the totality of my experience.

Snowden also addressed critics of what he characterized as his non-decision to continue to live in Russia, under a temporary asylum agreement. “The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia,” he explained. “I had a flight booked to Cuba onwards to Latin America and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow Airport. So when people ask why are you in Russia, I say 'please ask the State Department.'"

Responding to a question regarding his relationship with the Russian government, Snowden told Williams, "I have no relationship with the Russian government. I have taken no money from the Russian government... The best way to avoid doing that is by destroying the information I had before coming to Russia. I took no documents to Russia, so I could give them nothing."

Responding to Snowden’s comments on his reasons for staying in Russia (which was aired as an excerpt on NBC TODAY on Wednesday morning), Secretary of State John Kerry fired back: "For a supposedly smart guy, that's a pretty dumb answer, frankly... Edward Snowden is a coward,” Kerry told Chuck Todd on MSNBC. “He is a traitor. And he has betrayed his country… and [should] face the music.” Kerry continued to challenge Snowden to "man up and come back to the United States."

What's more, Kerry made the case that Snowden’s leaks of classified documents revealing the extent of NSA spying programs has given valuable information to terrorists and has thrown a wrench in US counter-terrorism efforts. “If this man is a patriot, he should stay in the United States and make his case,” Kerry said. “Patriots don't go to Russia, they don't seek asylum in Cuba, they don't seek asylum in Venezuela, they fight their cause here.”