“It’s an utter lie”: Glenn Greenwald slams Rupert Murdoch-owned paper’s Edward Snowden smear
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times of London quietly vanished key details in an otherwise baseless report that relied on anonymous sources to claim that Russia and China “have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries.”
The Sun Times attacked Edward Snowden for having “betrayed British spies” and accused the former contractor of having “blood on his hands,” citing anonymous government officials to claim that Snowden’s revelation led to Russia and China gaining access to more than 100,000 encrypted files despite an official at Prime Minister David Cameron’s office telling the Sun Times that there was “no evidence of anyone being harmed.”
Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept first noted the sensationalist headline and story in the June 14 edition of the Sun Times. Citing many unnamed British government officials, the report purported that David Miranda, Greenwald’s partner, “was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 ‘highly classified’ intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow”.
But as Greenwald makes clear, Miranda was never even in Moscow:
It’s an utter lie. David did not visit Snowden in Moscow before being detained. As of the time he was detained in Heathrow, David had never been to Moscow and had never met Snowden. The only city David visited on that trip before being detained was Berlin, where he stayed in the apartment of Laura Poitras.
The Sunday Times “journalists” printed an outright fabrication in order to support their key point: that Snowden had files with him in Moscow. This is the only “fact” included in their story that suggests Snowden had files with him when he left Hong Kong, and it’s completely, demonstrably false
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/its_an_utter_lie_glenn_greenwald_slams_rupert_murdoch_owned_papers_edward_snowden_smear/
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