STUPENDOUS ARROGANCE

By risking lives, I say again, the Guardian is f loundering far out of its depth in realms where no newspaper should venture

LIKE most journalists, I am often somewhat suspicious of our security services. They are forever trying to persuade politicians to give them greater powers, supposedly vi t al to protect the public.

Senior spooks were behind the Labour Government’s attempt in 2005 to introduce detention without trial for up to 90 days, which was draconian. A compromise of 28 days was finally agreed, later reduced to 14 days. The State does not seem to have fallen apart.

Similarly, the security services have been pressing the Government to introduce the so-called snoopers’ charter, which would give them more powers to spy on emails and internet usage. Largely owing to Lib Dem opposition, this scheme has fortunately got stuck in the sand.

And then there was the performance of spy chiefs before the Iraq War. They were leant on by Tony Blair and his crew to make more of their very meagre intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction than was warranted. We now know that these weapons did not exist.

So it is reasonable sometimes to entertain doubts about the security services. They’re not saints, and they will always seek more powers than either Parliament or the majority of people are likely to want to give them.

But we can’t ignore the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker, who s ai d in a s peech on Tuesday that the publication in the Guardian newspaper of confidential files leaked by U. S. fugitive Edward Snowden has caused ‘enormous damage’ to t he capabilities of our security services.

Protect

One senior Whitehall source went even further, telling the Mail that the l eaks to the Guardian have caused the greatest damage to Western security in history. The newspaper is accused of helping to produce a ‘ handbook’ for terrorists.

According to Mr Parker, there are several thousand Islamic terrorists in this country who ‘see the British people as a legitimate target’. The publication of top- secret information about GCHQ surveillance has given these people the knowledge to evade detection when planning an atrocity.

Mr Parker dismissed as ‘fanciful’ the Guardian’s suggestion that MI5 wants ‘to operate intensive scrutiny of thousands’. MI5 is interested only in the bad guys, and thanks to the Guardian — though Mr Parker did not actually name the newspaper — it’s going to be much more difficult to apprehend them.

Oliver Robbins, Britain’s deputy national security adviser, has been no less forthright. He says that the Guardian has ‘already done real damage’ to Britain by its revelations, and that information still held by the newspaper could lead to a ‘widespread loss of life’.

In August, police at Heathrow seized at least 58,000 documents from Edward Snowden carried on memory sticks and hard discs by the Brazilian David Miranda on behalf of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been at the forefront of the newspaper’s disclosures.

Mr Robbins has previously suggested that these documents, which have probably been replicated many times, are so sensitive that British agents have had to be moved for their own safety.

These are grave charges. The Guardian is being accused of putting at risk not only the lives of agents but also potentially the lives of ordinary British people, whom MI5 will now find it more difficult to protect. Divide the accusations in two, and then halve them again, and they are still mind-boggling.

So what is the response? At the time of writing, the allpowerful BBC has only parenthetically mentioned that the newspaper faces very serious charges, and has made the most feeble attempts to hold the paper or its editor, Alan Rusbridger, to account.

You might have thought that Mr Rusbridger would be quaking in his boots. Or at least apologetic. Or perhaps ruminative. Not a bit of it.

In a BBC radio interview yesterday, he loftily insisted that his newspaper had been justified in publishing Snowden’s leaks — and intended to go on doing so.

This is the same Mr Rusbridger who has previously ignored pleas from the security services to stop publishing the revelations, and who has proudly declared that his newspaper has held back stories which it deemed potentially damaging.

Incendiary

But, as Mr Robbins has pertinently asked, how would he know? He is a newspaperman, not a security expert. The highhandedness i s amazing. Mr Rusbridger thinks he can determine which stories might harm national security — and which will not. According to the experts, he is hopelessly unqualified to make such a judgment.

Needless to say, I don’t accuse Mr Rusbridger of any lack of patriotism. I am sure he loves his country as much as anyone. But he does stand accused of the most stupendous arrogance and presumption.

Seven weeks ago, after David Miranda had been arrested at Heathrow, and the hard discs and memory sticks removed from him, I suggested that the Guardian appeared ‘to have entered very dangerous waters where journalists who care for t heir country should not venture’.

Far from turning back, Mr Rusbridger has steamed full ahead, and is now in even more dangerous waters. And if his patriotism is beyond question, the same cannot be said of Glenn Greenwald, his l ead journalist in this operation.

Mr Greenwald is an American citizen based in Brazil with no ties whatsoever to Britain — and no affection for it. After his partner, David Miranda, had been held for nine hours at Heathrow, Mr Greenwald threatened this country.

‘I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now,’ he said. ‘I have many documents on England’s spy system. I think they will be sorry f or what they did.’

How can Mr Rusbridger associate himself with such a man, let alone continue to employ him? Almost unbelievably, he has admitted that he had no idea what Mr Miranda was carrying when he was arrested at Heathrow, though the Guardian was paying for his ticket.

Well, now we know what Mr Miranda had on him — information so incendiary (though he was probably unaware of it) that British agents have had to be moved. Isn’t it clear that the Guardian is floundering far out of its depth, in realms where no newspaper should ever venture?

Secret

Never forget that Edward Snowden, who remains holed up in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, stole the information he has handed on to the Guardian. He has probably also passed it to Russia and China ( he was earlier in Hong Kong), both of which powers are not very friendly to Britain.

More even than WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose occasionally damaging and often embarrassing revelations the Guardian published, Snowden is a menace to British, and Western, interests. A small proportion of what he revealed may have been in the public interest, but it is greatly outweighed by the damage he has done.

The fact is that states do have necessary secrets, and the best interests of Britain are not served by sharing those secrets with our enemies, be they foreign powers or home-grown Islamic extremists.

Mr Rusbridger won’t be made to answer for his actions by the BBC. The security services have been pretty indulgent to him, even if they did insist during the summer that the hard drives of some Guardian computers containing secret information be destroyed.

No, my only hope is that he will f i nally consult his own conscience. Despite everything, I believe he is a decent man. I urge him to descend from the misty slopes of Mount Olympus which he inhabits, and to put an end to this shameful business.