Moscow - XINHUA
Evidence revealed that the key part of NBC's recent interview with Edward Snowden was not aired, Russia Today website reported Sunday.
An analysis of the full interview afterwards showed that the media network condensed four hours' conversation with the former National Security Agency contractor into a 60-minute time slot and did not air it in primetime broadcast.
In the deleted portion, Snowden said Washington, with all the proper intelligence and information, failed to stop the 9/11 terrorist attacks anyhow.
"We had all of the information we needed ... to detect this plot," Snowden said, adding the Central Intelligence Agency had known the identities of these terrorists before the tragedy.
"The problem was not that we weren't collecting information, it wasn't that we didn't have enough dots, it was that we did not understand the haystack that we have," he noted.
Beside questioning the dysfunctional intelligence agency, Snowden also bombarded U.S. intelligence gathering under the guise of a terrorism combating tool.
The authorities "invoke and scandalize our memories to exploit the national trauma ... and justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up and our Constitution says we don't need to give up," he said.