Snowden, MI5 and me: how the leak of the century came to be published

Interesting counterpoint to this at [1] which claims the immediate aftermath of The Guardian's Snowden reporting led directly to the effective capture of the UK's leading critical press outlet by the security state.

The newspaper initially ignored national security advisories (D-Notices) which had suppressed and distorted reporting on Snowden in other more co-operative UK press. This independence resulted in a show of force by government where GCHQ staff supervised the (pointless) destruction of Guardian computers which had copies of Snowden's documents. Shortly thereafter The Guardian weakened its stance:

> The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies.

> The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper’s laptops “engagement … with The Guardian had continued to strengthen”.

> Moreover, he added, there were now “regular dialogues between the secretary and deputy secretaries and Guardian journalists”.

[...]

> But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that “the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member”.

1: https://declassifieduk.org/how-the-uk-security-services-neut...