Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told Parliament Tuesday that the UK-based newspaper has only released one percent of the documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
“There is no doubt in my mind … that newspapers have done something that oversight has failed to do,” Rusbridger said in The Washington Post.
Rusbridger accused the British government of using national security as a “trump card” to squash the conversations about privacy and civil liberties the leaks have raised from the U.S. to Europe.
“I would not expect us to be publishing a huge amount more,” Rusbridger said.
The testimony comes one day after U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said evidence now indicates Snowden did not act alone in downloading some 200,000 classified documents that detail surveillance programs.
“We know he did some things capability-wise that was beyond his capabilities. Which means he used someone else’s help to try and steal things from the United States, the people of the United States. Classified information, information we use to keep America safe,” the Michigan Republican told Fox News.
Rogers stated the investigation into Snowden raised questions about how the former contractor had access to documents he didn’t have clearance for, if he met with a contact in Hong Kong after fleeing the U.S., and how he managed to obtain a Russian visa on such short notice.
Former Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA story for the UK newspaper and has maintained ongoing direct contact with Snowden, denied Rogers’ claim in an email to Fox.
“Until he offers actual evidence, rather than his empty assertions, everyone should treat this claim as the unreliable and unconfirmed propaganda that it is. Defenders of domestic surveillance can’t keep their story straight: one minute they say Snowden is a brilliant mastermind … and the next minute they say he is a dunce who must have had help,” Greenwald said.
“I contacted Snowden, who confirms that he ‘acted alone and without outside assistance of any kind,'” Greenwald said in a follow-up email.
The Guardian editor’s Tuesday hearing included a letter to Parliament from the U.S.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, saying it would be “unwise and counterproductive to react to the reporting on disclosures from Edward Snowden by reflexively invoking security concerns to silence the press or to accuse a news organization of aiding terrorists simply by providing citizens with information they need to know.”
