Evizda

The National Security Agency and Edward Snowden have entered a public battle over the 30-year-old whistleblower’s claims that he repeatedly raised “official” concerns about surveillance overreach while employed by the government.

Following Snowden’s reassertion in his Wednesday interview with NBC that he did, in fact, attempt to voice objections over U.S. surveillance practices using internal channels with superiors, the NSA responded on Thursday afternoon by releasing a single—and they say “only”—email exchange they can find.

Though the agency has previously said that it could find no record of any such emails, Thursday’s disclosure—made through the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, came less than twenty-four hours after the NBC interview in which Snowden boldly repeated his claim that such documentation did exist.

“If the White House is interested in the whole truth, rather than the NSA’s clearly tailored and incomplete leak today for a political advantage, it will require the NSA to ask my former colleagues, management, and the senior leadership team about whether I, at any time, raised concerns about the NSA’s improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities. It will not take long to receive an answer.” —Edward Snowden

Snowden’s internal email to the NSA’s Office of General Counsel, and dated April 2013, shows him asking for clarification from the office about how Executive Orders do or do not “supersede” the authority of laws written by Congress.

“Hello, I have a question regarding the mandatory USSID 18 training,” writes Snowden in the email which was redacted in places, including the exact addressee.

As the Guardian explains, the Snowden email “goes on to cite a list provided in the training that ranks presidential executive orders alongside federal statutes in the hierarchy of orders governing NSA behaviour.”

“I’m not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply Executive Orders have the same precedence as law,” adds Snowden. “My understanding is that EOs may be superseded by federal statute, but EO’s may not override statute. Am I incorrect in this?”

According to the Guardian, the issue Snowden raises in the email “is an important one in the context of whether NSA surveillance activities were permissible, as it addresses possible conflict between laws passed by Congress and orders given by the White House.”

In the statement from the NSA that accompanied the release of the redacted email exchange, the agency rejected the idea that this proves Snowden was raising a serious challenge to the legality or constitutionality of any programs. The statement read, in part: