IMAGE: BARTON GELLMAN/GETTY IMAGES
Edward Snowden denied ever stealing any passwords or persuading his former NSA colleagues to surrender him their credentials.
Reuters in November reported that Snowden had tricked between 20 and 25 of his former colleagues at an NSA base in Hawaii to give him their logins so he could access the trove of top-secret documents that revealed countless surveillance programs over the past few months.
“I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers,” he said during a live chat, directly refuting the Reuters story that alleged the contrary. Snowden referred to the report as “simply wrong.”
An NSA source inside the Hawaii base already questioned the Reuters article, telling Forbes that Snowden didn’t fool his colleagues to get their passwords.
Snowden took part in a live Q&A chat, run by the Courage Foundation, on Thursday. Anyone was allowed to ask questions via Twitter, using the hashtag #AskSnowden. This is his second public chat since June 17, when he answered questions on The Guardian website.
