Ryan Chittum, a former
Wall Street Journal reporter, is deputy editor of The Audit, the business section of the
Columbia Journalism Review. At
CJR, he writes
Guardian bombshells in an escalating battle against journalism. (This article is reprinted in its entirety by permission.)
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger filed an astonishing column tonight that shows just how far the British authorities are going to suppress the paper’s NSA/Snowden reporting:
A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.
The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.”
The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred - with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.
Prior restraint is the nuclear option in government relations with the press and unfortunately, the British don’t have a First Amendment. But Rusbridger, having gone through the fire with Wikileaks, was prepared for that. The paper’s journalism is mostly being done in New York and the Snowden documents are dispersed in other countries.
Combine Rusbridger’s revelations with news of the detention of Greenwald’s partner David Miranda by UK authorities and you have a DEFCON 2 journalism event.
Miranda was serving as a human passenger pigeon, shuttling encrypted files on USB drives between filmmaker Laura Poitras and Greenwald because, as the whole world now knows, the Internet is fully bugged by the US and UK governments. So the UK, using an anti-terrorism statute, arrested Miranda on arrival at Heathrow, interrogated him for 9 hours, threatened to arrest him, and took his stuff. The war on whistleblowers has now escalated to disrupting journalists’ communications.
In light of Rusbridger’s disclosures, it’s even clearer that the detention of Miranda is part of an attack on American journalists authorized at the highest levels of the British government, and it’s an attack that is at the very least implicitly backed by the Obama administration.
We have the spectacle of communications between two American journalists-in-exile—reduced to passing information via courier because their government is spying on everything they do online—busted up by the US’s top ally, apparently with no protest from the Obama administration, which was given a heads-up.
On top of that, Greenwald’s paper has been threatened by its own government with prior restraint and had its hard drives smashed in its basement to make a (stupid) point.
This is police-state stuff. We need to know the American government’s role in these events—and its stance on them—sooner rather than later.
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And now that you've read that, I highly recommend reading
Armando's diary:
Why The UK Detention of Miranda Was Unlawful.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—Chickenhawks push war:
But the fools in our country's governing junta see things differently. For them, war is a political tool, to be wielded when expedient. It's no surprise that almost none of the "invade Iraq" cabal have served: Bush, Cheney, DeLay, Wolfowitz, Perle, Fleischer, Rice, Barnes, Hannity, Kristol, Lieberman, and the master tactician himself -- Rove (Rumsfeld is the exception).
On the other hand, the veteran contingent in both parties have led the anti-war effort -- Powell, Hagel, Kerry (MA), Scowcraft, Schwarzkopf, Clark, and the entire uniformed cadre at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Armey is the exception). This is significant.
As Perle has said, this war is no longer about achieving any notable strategic considerations. It's no longer a military campaign. It's a political effort, all about saving face.
"The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism.
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Tweet of the Day:
Quite a mess you've gotten yourself into down there. Good luck with that.
— @TheTweetOfGod
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin on the march to GOP civil war.
RobertRBest tips us to the story of an EMT who treated a heart attack victim, while having a heart attack himself! The shutdown of
Groklaw. Jeffrey Toobin's latest complaints about Snowden. A political/historical justification of my television watching. And
GideonAB throws Harry Reid in the mix. Hope that makes more sense than it does on "paper"! A h/t to
College Humor might save it.
oSivan writes on an unreported GunFAIL incident, then the very much reported story of an AR-15 accidental discharge that burned a house down and killed two. PPP on background check popularity in Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.