Edward Snowden confessed that Russian intelligence pressured him to cooperate when he first fled to the country after he leaked a trove of documents about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs but insisted he didn’t give them anything.
Snowden has been living in Russia for the past six years. After leaving his job at the NSA in Hawaii in 2013, he traveled to Hong Kong and shared the secrets with several journalists. On his way to Ecuador to apply for asylum, he got stuck in Moscow after the U.S. revoked his passport.
“If I had played ball, I would have left on Day 1 in a limo; I would have been living in a palace; you would have seen them giving me parades in Red Square,” he told NPR.
“The reality is this: I had destroyed my access to all the classified material that I provided to journalists before leaving Hong Kong, precisely because I didn’t know what was going to happen next,” he said.
Snowden said Russia has allowed him to stay there because it’s an easy way for the country to appear as if it’s doing something good and doesn’t fear retaliation from the United States. Germany and Poland both reached out to him about potential asylum, he said, but feared any blowback from the United States.
The 36-year-old also said he would be willing to come back to the United States to face trial, only if the government promised he could tell a jury why he leaked the information to journalists and if they could see the classified material.
“You can’t have a fair trial about the disclosure of information unless the jury can evaluate whether it was right or wrong to reveal this information,” he said.
Snowden’s book, Permanent Record, is set to be published Tuesday.
