Edward Snowden and top Obama administration officials continued lobbing intercontinental taunts at one another Wednesday, showing little sign of an end to the hostilities between Washington and the former contractor who leaked some of the National Security Agency's most guarded secrets.

Mr. Snowden told NBC News this week that he was a true spy and that the administration was unfairly diminishing his qualifications. "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," Mr. Snowden said.

He also blamed the State Department for his current exile in Russia.

"I had a flight booked to Cuba and onwards to Latin America and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in the Moscow Airport," Mr. Snowden said in the portion of the interview released Tuesday night. "So when people ask 'Why are you in Russia?' I say, 'Please ask the State Department.' "

Secretary of State John Kerry, in a round of television appearances Wednesday, reiterated the administration's position: Mr. Snowden is no patriot, should come home and face justice and that there is no honor in what he has done.