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EXCLUSIVE: Edward Snowden Tells Brian Williams: 'I'd Like To Go Home'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told a U.S. television interviewer on Wednesday he was not under the control of Russia's government and had given Moscow no intelligence documents after nearly a year of asylum there.

"I have no relationship with the Russian government at all," Snowden said in an interview with NBC News, his first with a U.S. television network. "I'm not supported by the Russian government. I'm not taking money from the Russian government. I'm not a spy."

The remarks by Snowden, whose leaks about highly classified U.S. surveillance programs shook the NSA and prompted limited reforms by President Barack Obama, were his most extensive to date on his relations with his host government.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials have said it is unlikely Russian security services have not squeezed Snowden for secrets.

"I think he is now being manipulated by Russian intelligence," former NSA director Keith Alexander said last month.

But Snowden - who said he wants to return to the United States - said he destroyed classified materials before transiting to a Moscow airport, where he was prevented from onward travel.

"I took nothing to Russia, so I could give them nothing," he told NBC's Brian Williams in the hour-long interview.

Later in the interview, Snowden briefly criticized the crackdown on freedom of expression under Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Edward Snowden Reveals He Was International SpyPlay Video

Casting himself as a defender of privacy and civil liberties, he deemed it "frustrating" to "end up stuck in a place where those rights are being challenged in ways that I would consider deeply unfair."

Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong and then Moscow last year, is believed to have accessed about 1.5 million secret documents, U.S. officials have said, although how many he actually took is unclear. The leaked documents revealed massive programs run by the NSA that gathered information on emails, phone calls and Internet use including, in many cases, by Americans.

He was charged last year in the United States with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person.

"If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home," Snowden said.

U.S. officials said he was welcome to return to the United States if he wanted to face justice for leaking details of massive U.S. intelligence-gathering programs.

Secretary of State John Kerry invited Snowden to "man up and come back to the United States." "The bottom line is this is a man who has betrayed his country, who is sitting in Russia, an authoritarian country where he has taken refuge," Kerry told the CBS "This Morning" program on Wednesday.

Snowden made clear he would not return to the United States and hope for the best. He said he would not simply "walk into a jail cell," and that if his one-year asylum in Russia, which expires on Aug. 1, "looks like it’s going to run out, then of course I would apply for an extension."

The Guardian newspaper quoted Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and legal adviser to Snowden, responding to Kerry's comments. Wizner said it would be impossible for Snowden to argue that his disclosures had served the common good if he returned home to face the current Espionage Act charges.

He also said Snowden would run the risk of facing numerous additional charges for each document that has been published.

"The exposure that he faces is virtually unlimited under this," Wizner said.

In one odd moment in the NBC interview, Snowden expressed sympathy for working-level NSA employees who have been castigated as a result of his leaks.

"People have demonized the NSA to a point that's too extreme," he said, adding that the problem is with senior-level officials who expand their surveillance powers without public debate.

(Reporting by Peter Cooney and Warren Strobel; Editing by Ken Wills and Simon Cameron-Moore)

Snowden: I want to leave Moscow

In an interview with NBC News, the NSA leaker says, "If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home."
U.S. fires back

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Rebels in eastern Ukraine shot down a government military helicopter Thursday amid heavy fighting around the city of Slovyansk and confirmed they were holding four missing observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The eastern city of Slovyansk has become the epicenter of fighting between pro-Russia insurgents and government forces in recent weeks. Located 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Russian border, it has seen constant clashes and its residential areas have regularly come under mortar shelling from government forces, causing civilian casualties and prompting some residents to flee.

An Associated Press reporter saw the helicopter's downing and the trail of black smoke it left before crashing. It wasn't immediately clear what weapons the rebels used to shoot it down, exactly where the helicopter fell or what happened to its crew.

Gunshots were heard around Slovyansk near the crash site and a Ukrainian air force jet was seen circling above. It was too dangerous to visit the site itself.

The city of 120,000 is in the Donetsk region, one of the two sprawling provinces in eastern Ukraine that have declared independence from the government in Kiev.

The Kiev government condemns the insurgency roiling the east as the work of "terrorists" bent on destroying the country and blames Russia for fomenting it. Russia denies the accusations, saying it has no influence over rebels, who insist they are only protecting the interests of Russian-speakers in the east.

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Children and their mother look through a bus window while leaving the city fearing shelling attacks …

Still, fighters from Russia, including from the battled-hardened region of Chechnya, have been appearing recently in the ranks of the separatists.

Also Thursday, an insurgent leader confirmed that his fighters were holding four OSCE observers and promised that they would be released shortly. Vyacheslav Ponomarev, the self-proclaimed "people's mayor" of Slovyansk, told the AP that the monitors — who are from Turkey, Switzerland, Estonia and Denmark — were safe.

"I addressed the OSCE mission to warn them that their people should not over the coming week travel in areas under our control. And they decided to show up anyway," Ponomarev said.

"We will deal with this and then release them," he said, without setting a specific timeframe.

The OSCE had lost contact with the team in Donetsk on Monday evening. Their teams have been deployed to Ukraine to monitor security situation following Russia's annexation of Crimea and the rise of the pro-Russia separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. They also observed Sunday's presidential vote, won by billionaire candy magnate Petro Poroshenko.

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In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Olga Mikhailova holds her doughtier Maria while speaki …

Poroshenko has promised to negotiate with people in the east but also vowed to uproot the armed rebels.

In the most ferocious battle yet, rebels in Donetsk tried to take control of its airport Monday but were repelled by Ukrainian forces using combat jets and helicopter gunships. Dozens of men were killed — some insurgent leaders said up to 100 fighters may have been killed.

The mood in Donetsk was calm Thursday, although many businesses have stopped opening due to fears of renewed fighting.

The separatists in Ukraine have pleaded to join Russia, but President Vladimir Putin has ignored their appeal in an apparent bid to de-escalate tensions with the West and avoid a new round of Western sanctions.

Putin has supported an OSCE peace plan that calls for ending hostilities and launching a political dialogue and has said Russia would work with new leader Poroshenko. But Russia has repeatedly urged the Ukrainian government to end its military operation against the separatists.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday called for quick international mediation to persuade Kiev to halt what he described as a "punitive operation" in the east.

___

Leonard reported from Donetsk, Ukraine. Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov says rebels used a portable air defense missile to attack the helicopter.
General killed, too

The head of Interpol told ABC News that he has no information to confirm or dispute the assertion earlier this week that top officials in Nigeria know the location of the 200 school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

"Interpol doesn't know where these 200 girls are and, if the Nigerian defense minister knows where they are, it hasn't been shared with Interpol," Ronald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, said in an exclusive intervew with ABC News.

'This Week': The Search for Kidnapped Nigerian Girls

Noble said could understand the logic, as explained by Nigeria's Air Marshal Alex Badeh, that a rescue has not been attempted because of the danger to the girls, though he has no idea if that claim is accurate either.

Fathers of Kidnapped Nigerian Girls Ask World to Pray for Their Return

"I can tell you what everyone knows: That this terrorist group, Boko Haram, is one of the most notorious, vicious terrorist groups out there. And for them to kill these 200 girls or others very easily, very quickly, there's no doubt about it. So, if the Nigerian defense ministry does know where they are, I can certainly understand why they want to be careful before moving in to rescue these young girls."

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Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, pictured in Pretoria, South Africa, on May 24, 2014 (AFP Photo …

In addition to offering technical assistance to Nigerian officials, Interpol has also blanketed the region with warnings and photos of the abducted girls to make it harder for Boko Haram to sell them, as the organization has threatened it would.

Nigeria's Plan of Action: 'War on Boko Haram'

Noble said his organization is trying to "make sure it's difficult for them (Boko Haram) to consummate the end that they want in terms of transferring these girls, selling these girls," Noble said. Distributing alerts, photos and warnings are key, he said, "so if they cross the border and are stopped by police we'll be able to identify them."

On Thursday, the New Republic published a series of photos from a 2006 botched lethal injection in Florida, weeks after the details of a similarly problematic procedure inOklahoma made national news. The 2006 lethal injection death of Angel Diaz was well-reported at the time, but magazine editor Ben Crair's discovery of the photos — submitted as evidence during an appeal of a separate court challenge to lethal injections — adds a new depth to the conversation of the reality of modern capital punishment.

Diaz likely died a painful death. "Angel Diaz winced, his body shuddered and he remained alive for 34 minutes," the Tampa Bay Times reported in 2006. Officials had to administer a second dosage of drugs to the inmate in order to kill him, and the needles that were supposed to be in his veins were actually administering the drug into the tissue around them, as the AP reported. The photos show the result of such a mistake on Diaz's body(warning: graphic image below):

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That image shows a large chemical burn on Diaz's body, created by the drugs flowing into his tissue instead of into his veins like they were supposed to. Here's what the New Republic had to say about this image:

On the right arm, the burn zone was 12 by 5 inches, with numerous blisters (or "bullae," as they're known medically) and a sloughing off of superficial skin. On the left arm, the burn zone was 11 by 7 inches. The blisters, according to the autopsy report, were filled with “watery pink-tinged fluid.” By the time the autopsy began, the medical examiner noted there had been “extensive skin slippage,” revealing white and pink subcutaneous skin.

One professor of clinical surgery who spoke to TNR about these images said that he expected to see this sort of burn when "a kid has fallen in a campfire or set his arm on fire," and not during a state-administered lethal injection procedure.

The autopsy on Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett, whose botched execution temporarily halted capital punishment in the state, is not yet completed. But we do know the timeline of events leading up to his death. His execution was called off 40 minutes into the procedure, after which Lockett died apparently of a hearth attack. Oklahoma corrections officials had trouble finding a vein on the prisoner, and resorted to injecting the drugs through a vein in his groin area, the state said in its timeline.

RELATED: Edward Snowden Would 'Like to Go Home'

Read the rest at the New Republic.

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/05/new-photos-reveal-what-a-botched-lethal-injection-procedure-looks-like/371840/