Edward Snowden, Ex-C.I.A. Worker, Says He Disclosed U.S. Surveillance

During a 12-minute video interview that went online Sunday, Edward Joseph Snowden calmly answered questions about his journey from being a well-compensated government contractor with nearly unlimited access to America’s intelligence secrets to being holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room, the subject of a United States investigation, with the understanding that he could spend the rest of his life in jail.

The revelation came after days of speculation that the source behind a series of leaks that have transfixed Washington must have been a high-level official at one of America’s spy agencies. Instead, the leaker is a relatively low-level employee of a giant government contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, that has won billions of dollars in secret government contracts over the past decade, partly by aggressively marketing itself as the premier protector of America’s classified computer infrastructure.

The episode presents both international and domestic political difficulties for the Obama administration. If Mr. Snowden remained in China, the White House would have to navigate getting him out of a country that has been America’s greatest adversary on many issues of computer security.

Then the United States must set up a strategy for prosecuting a man whom many will see as a hero for provoking a debate that President Obama himself has said he welcomes — amid already fierce criticism of the administration’s crackdown on leaks. The court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who released a vast archive of military and diplomatic materials to WikiLeaks, resumes Monday.

Mr. Snowden, who said he was seeking asylum abroad, perhaps in Iceland, gave the interview to The Guardian, the British newspaper and global Web site that during the past week published a string of articles about classified National Security Agency programs. Both The Guardian and The Washington Post, which also published articles disclosing the surveillance programs, identified Mr. Snowden on Sunday as the source for their articles.

In his interview with The Guardian, Mr. Snowden said his job had given him access to myriad secrets that the United States government guards most jealously, including the locations of Central Intelligence Agency stations overseas and the identities of undercover agents working for the United States.

But he said he had been selective in what he disclosed, releasing only what he found to be the greatest abuses of a surveillance state that he came to view as reckless and having grown beyond reasonable boundaries. He was alternately defiant and resigned, saying at one point that the C.I.A. might try to spirit him out of China, and speculating that it might even hire Asian gangs to go after him.

“If you realize that that’s the world you helped create and it is going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation and extend the capabilities of this architecture of oppression, you realize that you might be willing to accept any risks and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is,” Mr. Snowden said.

Some outside experts said the push in recent years to break down barriers between spy agencies and share information across the government had greatly expanded the universe of government employees and outside contractors with access to highly classified intelligence.

“In past years, someone like Snowden may not have had access to briefings detailing these collection programs,” said Cedric Leighton, a former deputy director of the National Security Agency, “but now with the push from a ‘need to know’ to a ‘need to share’ philosophy, it’s far more likely for an I.T. contractor like him to gain access to such documents.”

Mr. Snowden’s disclosures prompted some calls from Congress on Sunday to hold hearings about the surveillance programs or reopen debate on portions of the Patriot Act.

Reporting was contributed by Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong, Nicole Perlroth from San Francisco, and Emmarie Huetteman and David E. Sanger from Washington.

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