Edward Snowden said the “point of no return” in his quest to reveal NSA surveillance programs, was when it came time to tell journalists what he knew.
“It was a really intimidating moment,” Snowden told Brian Williams about meeting Glenn Greenwald, who sat for that part of the interview with Williams in Moscow last week. “It was the most real point of no return because the minute you start talking to a journalist as an intelligence officer on camera, there is really no going back from that,” Snowden said.
Snowden says he has an agreement with Greenwald, and other journalists for whom he is a source. “I demanded that they agreed to consult with the government to make sure no individuals or specific harms could be caused by any of that reporting.”
Williams said that includes NBC News, which has done its own reporting based on Snowden’s documents. Williams also revealed that NBC has a “reporting relationship” with Greenwald, which explains how the Williams interview was helped along, and is interesting given Greenwald’s past with another NBC Newser.
Williams closed the hour by teasing that Greenwald’s next story based on the Snowden documents “may be the biggest yet in terms of impact.”