Snowden deserves the best

Julian Assange spreads the book of the journalist The Guardian about the CIA informator: Newsweek

In 2014, the journalist of the British newspaper The Guardian Luc Harding published the book “The Snowden Files”, which, as obviously from the name, tells about the former CIA employee Edward Snowden, who opened the world secret documents of American special services. The rights to film adaptation of the book were already bought by the Hollywood director Oliver Stone - at rumors, 700 thousand dollars were paid for them. The book repeatedly mentioned the ideological ally of Snowden, the founder of the WikiLeaks project Julian Assange. Especially for Newsweek, Assange wrote a review of a book in which both Harding Luke and The Guardian work methods harshly criticize.

Assange is well acquainted with how Harding works - in 2011, the journalist, together with another The Guardian employee, David Lei, released a book about Wikileaks. In it, through the efforts of the co -author of Harding, a secret password was published, which opened public access to hundreds of thousands of non -edited documents of the US State Department. This time, the Harding worked alone, and the printing did not get into any secret passwords, the creator of WikiLeaks is ironic.

Assange recalls: Harding Luke back in 2007, when he worked in Moscow, they were accused of plagiarism. You can’t suspect his new book in the literal quoting of other people's work, but there are few own journalistic work in it. The journalist never met Snowden and did not talk with him; “The Snowden Files” relies on the facts obtained by other people, there is practically no original material in the book. Harding describes computer skills as if it is a magic from Harry Potter's books, Assange writes, which is more eloquent to the work of the work in The Guardian. It said that Harding’s text processor himself deleted entire paragraphs of the book while the journalist wrote it.

““ Is it ANB? The British government center? Russian hacker? ” - It was said in the article. Or maybe let me suggest the reader, a little Devonshire cream fell under the Backspace key? ”

Many episodes of the book simply do not correspond to reality, writes Assange, for example, it says that Assange “tried to contact Snowden” and end up in the center of events, although in reality, according to the founder of Wikileaks, it was Snowden who was the first to contact him. Where Harding did not have enough details, he specified them for Snowden - for example, he wrote that “Snowden would allow himself to grin”, thereby creating a story without facts.

The Guardian newspaper appears in the book a fighter for freedom of speech, Assange writes, although in fact, the publication, for example, allowed the authorities to destroy computers with Snowden files. Moreover, initially The Guardian was not going to publish Snowden's materials, but this was the journalist Glenn Greenwo, who later stopped working with the British publication-by rumors, due to censorship, Assange notes.

The whole chapter of the book is devoted to reasoning whether Russia is holding Snowden in hostage. Outside the alternative reality of Harding, Edward Snowden, a refugee that Russia does not hold in captivity, the Assange emphasizes. Even if Russia does not treat its journalists and dissidents, the decision to give Snowden the shelter deserves praise.

In general, Assange notes, Snowden deserves the best than this book.

“The Snowden Files is a complete fraud written by scammers to be admired by scammers. Michiko Kakutani, the famous literary critic The New York Times, wrote that the book is read as a mixture of the novel by Le Carra and Kafka. Really? It is rather like Tom Clans and Dan Brown, only without a plot pleasing to the masses, a thriller without experiences written by a man who was not at the place of events ”(English.).

Newsweek