Government Agents Went to the Guardian Offices and Oversaw Smashing of Hard Drives to Erase Snowden Files 

By Alex Kane

August 20, 2013  |  Two officers from a British intelligence agency oversaw the destruction of hard drives at The Guardian newspaper’s office last month in an effort to stop the paper from reporting on the documents that Edward Snowden gave them. The account was reported yesterday [3] by The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger.

Rusbridger described [3]various attempts at intimidation that the British government made before he agreed to finally destroy the hard drives. In an interview with the BBC [4], Rusbridger explained that "given that there were other copies and we could work out of America, which has better laws to protect journalists, I saw no reason not to destroy this material ourselves rather than hand it back to the government." Rusbridger said that the alternative to destroying the hard drives--a move forced by the government--was a court case with little prospect of winning.