WASHINGTON (AP) — Edward Snowden says he repeatedly raised constitutional concerns about National Security Agency surveillance internally, but an NSA search turned up a single email in which Snowden gently asks for "clarification" on a technical legal question about training materials, agency officials said Thursday. On Thursday, in an email sent to Mother Jones, NSA spokeswoman Marci Green Miller said that the NSA has “found one email inquiry by Edward Snowden to the office of General Counsel asking for an explanation of some material that was in a training course he had just completed. "The e-mail did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse, but posed a legal question that the Office of General Counsel addressed. "There were and there are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistle-blower allegations," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday. We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims.” 
 
 She noted the NSA will make the email public later today. In a speech on April 15 in Tampa, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that “Snowden isn’t a whistleblower.” He asserted that Snowden “could have reported [concerns] to seniors at NSA…he chose not to go to any of those places.” 
 
 Now that NBC has confirmed that Snowden did contact the NSA legal brass—undermining the NSA’s previous claims—the agency is acknowledging that it heard from the contractor before the leaks. "The NSA is releasing a single part of a single exchange after previously claiming that no evidence existed.” 
 
 The email, dated April 5, 2013, which was sent shortly before Snowden departed Hawaii for Hong Kong and released thousands of NSA documents to journalists, asks a question about the agency's mandatory USSID 18 training and Executive Orders – orders that come from the president. "I'm not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply executive orders have the same precedence as law," Snowden said in the email. Three days later, the general counsel’s office replied that EOs “cannot override a statute” and that DOD and ODNI regulations “are afforded similar precedence.” The email noted, “please give me a call if you would like to discuss further.” 
 
 The National Security Agency is firing back against former contractor Edward Snowden, who insists he reported his concerns about illegal surveillance activity directly to the agency in writing before leaking his treasure trove of super-secret documents. An unidentified NSA lawyer began his reply, "Hello, Ed," and told Snowden he was correct: Executive orders cannot override federal law. He also wanted to know which of Department of Defense regulations and regulations from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have greater precedence. In this image taken from video provided by NBC News on Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, right, speaks to NBC News anchor Brian Williams, left,... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this image taken from video provided by NBC News on Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, speaks to NBC News anchor Brian Williams during an NBC... (Associated Press) 
 
 Snowden, a former NSA systems administrator whose leaks have exposed some of the agency's most sensitive spying operations, called himself a patriot in an interview this week with NBC News' Brian Williams. Last night, as part of its interview with Snowden, NBC reported that two US officials confirmed that Snowden had sent at least one email to the NSA’s general counsel raising “policy and legal questions.” The network’s revelation drew attention; the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald called it the “biggest news” from the interview. In the NBC interview — conducted in Moscow, where Snowden now lives outside the reach of pending U.S. criminal charges — Snowden said the reply he got to his email was "more or less, in bureaucratic language, 'You should stop asking questions.'" One of my final official acts in government was continuing one of these communications with a legal office.” 
 
 Snowden told the Washington Post previously that he had raised concerns with the NSA more than 10 times before he resorted to leaking documents to journalists. In the one email the NSA did release, Snowden's question about Executive Orders is a relevant and important one, however, even if he did not directly register his concerns. In the email to NSA's general counsel's office, Snowden questions an NSA document showing the hierarchy of governing authorities, which appeared to put executive orders on par with federal statutes. Update 2, Friday, 8:35 AM EDT: In an interview published in the Washington Post, Edward Snowden said the NSA’s email release “is incomplete and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance [or] concerns about how indefensible collection activities such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major US internet companies – are sometimes concealed.” He added, “The fact is that I did raise such concerns both verbally and in writing, and on multiple, continuing occasions – as I have always said, and as NSA has always denied.
– In his recent interview with NBC, Edward Snowden reiterated that he raised concerns with his superiors at the NSA and went to the media only after getting brushed off. But the NSA today is disputing that, saying that it can find only one email from Snowden, on a relatively technical matter, reports Wired. "The e-mail did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse, but posed a legal question that the Office of General Counsel addressed," says an agency statement. It adds that Snowden could have aired his worries via "numerous avenues," but “we have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims.” Nonsense, says Snowden's legal adviser from the ACLU. “Snowden raised many complaints over many channels,” says Ben Wizner. “The NSA is releasing a single part of a single exchange after previously claiming that no evidence existed.” You can read the newly released email in full here. In it, Snowden asks for clarification on whether executive orders issued by the president supersede laws. A government lawyer responds that Snowden is correct in his observation that "E.O.s cannot override a statute." After addressing another matter, the lawyer ends with, "Please give me a call if you would like to discuss further," notes AP. This may not settle much of anything, but at least "Snowden's claim and the NSA's response are now good material for his next interview," observes a post at Mother Jones.