I recently had a conversation with someone who works IT for the Air Force. Apparently, it is now the OpSec position that Snowden's story of how he got the data is mostly a lie and he was almost certainly acting as a Russian asset.
And regardless, the data Snowden leaked are important. Even if Russia caused it to be leaked, it's still useful to us. Now if only we could do something about it.
This was coming from a low level IT guy who joined during the Obama administration. He had no particular attachment to the Bush Era programs.
But as he explained it, Snowden's story of how he got the documents makes no actual sense and that other assets were involved (he may have not known Russian involvement at the time).
And now that we know more about the state of Russian intelligence, it was probably always the plan to have him lay low in South America indefinitely. But Russia realized things were getting pretty botched and just extracted him directly.
Contrast that with your message from a vested interest that it's "a lie." You'll need a lot more than that to be convincing.
Snowden joined the CIA in 2006.