Sunday Times 2
‘Guardian’ threatened with closure over Snowden leaks
March 27, 2014 “Information Clearing House – “Irish Times”- The Guardian newspaper was threatened with closure by the British government over the Edward Snowden spying affair, the Radiodays Europe conference has been told.
The paper’s deputy editor Paul Johnson said Britain’s intelligence agencies visited them and told them they would be closed if they persisted in printing Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance involving the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the UK. Mr Snowden is now in Russia, where he has temporary asylum. He is wanted by the US authorities on espionage charges.
He has been responsible for one of the biggest intelligence leaks of all time, using his access to data systems to reveal the extent to which British and US agencies were spying on ordinary citizens and world leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Intense scrutiny
Speaking at the Conference Centre Dublin (CCD), Mr Johnson said the Snowden material was much more difficult to work on than the WikiLeaks tapes because of the intense scrutiny the newspaper was subjected to by the British intelligence services.
As a contractor working for the NSA, Mr Snowden had access to an enormous amount of classified information.
However, Mr Johnson said he had been told by a senior British government official that 850,000 Americans had the same level of access to classified information as Mr Snowden.
The Guardian became involved with Mr Snowden because of the work the newspaper did in relation to WikiLeaks and the phone hacking at the News of the World .
Mr Johnson told the conference: “It was the most difficult story we have ever done and that includes WikiLeaks, because reporters and editors couldn’t speak to each other. We could only speak using encryption systems.”
The Guardian set up a secure room and used new computers that had no outside access to the internet, with a guard outside the door all the time.
Mr Johnson revealed that a senior civil servant had told the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, that the “prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the foreign secretary, the home secretary and the attorney general have got a problem with you”.
Mr Johnson said the whole attitude in the UK was that national security trumped press freedom and that the newspaper should not publish a word. This was in contrast to the US, where the Snowden revelations had led to a debate about how far intelligence agencies should go to protect the state.
“We were threatened that we would be closed down. We were accused of endangering national security and people’s lives. It left us in a very difficult position,” he said.
Courtesy Irish Times