Anarchy in the UK: Guardian Editor Admits Endangering British Agents

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OK, that’s not the headline at the Daily Mail, but their headlines are always so ponderously long, aren’t they?

We love Britain, insists Guardian editor
as he is accused by MPs of breaking the law
for leaking secrets which endangered UK spies

And then the stack of bullet-point subheads:

• Debate rages about dangers of Edward Snowden leaking US secrets
• MI6 said terror groups in Afghanistan and ‘closer to home’ are using leaks
• But Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger tells MPs only 1% of files published
• Insists the left-wing newspaper’s staff are ‘patriots’ who ‘loved this country’

Leaving aside the Daily Mail‘s weird approach to headlines, Louise Mensch points out that Parliament got the editor to admit what he had previously denied, that the Guardian shipped abroad the names of agents at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters:

MPs today got Alan Rusbridger to admit a number of things he, and his paper had previously denied.
Firstly, that he shipped the names of GCHQ agents abroad to newspapers and bloggers. Mr. Rusbridger was reminded that this was a criminal offence, and said he had a public interest defence. He also, however, kept arguing that he hadn’t published any names, which rather blows up his public interest defence — it’s self-evident that you don’t need the names of intelligence agents to report on GCHQ spying, so why not redact them? . . .
Perhaps worst of all, Rusbridger confirmed my very worst suspicions, which were that he hadn’t even read through the top secret files before shipping them. He redacted no names; he redacted no operational details; he didn’t even read them. And by “he” I mean any employee of the Guardian. Nobody at that paper read the 58,000 documents through, not even once, before sharing them in bulk. . . .
Because no Guardian journalist even read the files, they do not know how many agents’ names are now out there.

Look on the bright side, Louise: The Guardian‘s losing $50 million a year, so maybe they’ll go bankrupt in the process.

 

30 comments

  7. If they had a shred of honour left, they’d take that walk at Beachy Head… at night… without a torch…

  10. Okay, the situation is a little more clear cut in the US. But there’s still an important question here.

    If your government breaks the law, is it illegal to call them on it by any means you can?

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