Edward Snowden told Brian Williams and NBC Nightly News he is a trained intelligence operative who worked for the CIA, NSA and DIA.

He made the admission during an interview as part of an effort to bolster his credibility. Instead, the revelation has destroyed the claim he is an independent and impartial whistleblower.

An excerpt of the interview aired Tuesday.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D7Fnb7jdl4?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]

“I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word — in that I lived and worked undercover, overseas, pretending to work in a job that I’m not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine,” Snowden said from Moscow.

“Now, the government might deny these things. They might frame it in certain ways, and say, oh, well, you know, he’s a low-level analyst.”

“But what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to use one position that I’ve had in a career, here or there, to distract from the totality of my experience, which is that I’ve worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, undercover, overseas.

“I’ve worked for the National Security Agency, undercover, overseas. And I’ve worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a lecturer at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy, where I developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world.”

“So when they say I’m a low-level systems administrator, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d say it’s somewhat misleading.”

In February, Dr. Steve Pieczenik told David Knight of Infowars Nightly News Snowden admitted during an interview he was recruited by the CIA and the NSA.

“Snowden is very typical of what we in the intelligence community would want to do, and that is to create an avatar or an image of a person who may be a traitor or a whistleblower, so that we allow the American public to play off either part of two figures the intelligence community creates.”

Pieczenik said the CIA and NSA create avatars like Snowden so they can control the narrative.

He also cast doubt on former RAND Corporation military analyst Daniel Elsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. According to Pieczenik, Elsberg was a CIA operative under State Department cover.

“The CIA has nursed and initiated a lot of Elsbergs,” Pieczenik said.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLf5X_IXhJg?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]