Edward Snowden sat down for a long-form interview with "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, who traveled out to Moscow to film the hour-long interview that premiered Wednesday. The conversation was wide-ranging, but one aspect of the interview is getting a lot of attention.

During his conversation with Williams, Snowden talked about his time working as a CIA-trained spy, his wish to return home, how he wanted the public to debate for themselves what they thought of real 21st century surveillance, and the question of whether he views himself a patriot or a traitor. But one claim Snowden made caught the attention of the National Security Agency, the digital surveillance agency he used to do contract work for (and the agency from which Snowden leaked a year's worth of revelations).

When asked by Williams if he had tried every other tactic to raise his concerns about the NSA's programs, Snowden responded that he had tried at least 10 times to get the agency's attention. (Go here for NBC's video of the interview.)

"Yes," Snowden said. "I reported that there were real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities." Snowden also stated, "I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than 10 distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them. As an employee of a private company -- rather than a direct employee of the U.S. government -- I was not protected by U.S. whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking."

And according to Snowden, though those officials gave his concerns lip service, he had basically been told by officials, in officious bureaucratic language, to "stop asking questions" anyway.

As the Washington Post said, it's true that Snowden was outside the protection of a government whistleblower system (under "Presidential Policy Directive 19") because he was a contractor working for a private company, Booz Allen Hamilton, at the time he was at the NSA.

But that's not the disputed part of Snowden's claims. The NSA said that most of the email exchanges never happened, releasing one email that the agency said was "asking for an explanation of some material that was in a training course he had just completed." The NSA statement went on to say, "The email did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse but posed a legal question that the Office of General Counsel addressed." In addition, stated the agency, "there was not additional follow-up noted." Click here to look at a copy of the email the NSA released (via Mashable).

The NSA likely released the email because NBC independently reported from various U.S. officials that they indeed knew of one email raising "policy and legal questions." What Snowden is saying in the email, itself, is up for interpretation.

So is Snowden's legacy.

When asked by Williams, "Do you see yourself as a patriot?" Snowden said, "I do."

"I think patriot is a word that's thrown around so much that it can devalued nowadays. But being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries. They can be bad policies. They can be officials who, you know, need a little bit more accountability. They can be mistakes of government and simple overreach and  things that should never have been tried or that went wrong."

After the interview aired, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner had a different take, saying Snowden is a "traitor." "Edward Snowden is a traitor to our country. He's damaged our ability to keep Americans safe here and abroad. There is no other word to describe other than traitor," Boehner said.

What do you think? Make sure to take a look at the Williams/Snowden interview and then tell us in the poll below.