Edward Snowden Sought Booz Allen Job To Expose NSA Surveillance Program
Edward Snowden sought a job at Booz Allen for one purpose — exposing the NSA’s top secret surveillance program on Americans. The revelation came during an interview the NSA whistleblower gave to the South China Morning Post on June 12.
Snowden has been on the run since May 20, when he flew to Hong Kong after secretly stealing data from the NSA’s servers in Hawaii. He admitted in an interview almost two weeks ago:
“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked. That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”
Snowden’s admission for why he secured a job contracted to the NSA comes as US officials expressed anger and frustration with Hong Kong and Moscow. Governments of both countries allowed the whistleblower to leave the country on Sunday.
The former NSA contractor is believed to be flying to Ecuador with the assistance of WikiLeaks. Once there, Snowden will seek political asylum. He first alerted documentary maker Laura Poitras in January that he may have sensitive information about the intelligence community. But it wasn’t until a few months later that he became a computer systems administrator at Booz Allen Hamilton.
He spent the next few months gathering a cache of classified documents in Hawaii. Along with spy programs on millions of Americans, Edward Snowden also allegedly gathered information proving that the NSA hacked into computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.
The paper also asked Snowden if he went to Booz Allen on purpose to gather surveillance evidence, the whistleblower responded, “Correct on Booz.” Reuters reported laqst week that the contracting company hired Snowden even though it found some possible discrepancies in his resume.
Edward Snowden has also said that he plans on leaking more NSA documents in the coming weeks. For now, the NSA whistleblower’s location is unknown. He was supposed to be on a plane to Cuba on Monday. However, he did not make the flight. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated on Monday that Snowden is “safe and healthy.”
