The Snowden Files

March 10, 2014
In this first book published on the controversial whistleblower, Guardian foreign correspondent Harding (Mafia State) chronicles Snowden's emergence, the complicated logistics of his revelations and their publication, and the global political ramifications. The telling is sympathetic towards Snowden, offering at the outset significant background on his upbringing and his personal life, before reporting the rest: Snowden's contact with Poitras and Greenwald, his hiding in Hong Kong, the process and difficulties of publication in the Guardian and then the New York Times, the global repercussions, and his current Russian asylum. The book reads sometimes as a political thriller and the prose itself aims to thrill, too, by building suspense and reminding the reader constantly of the stakes. Altogether it mainly retells what has already been told, drawing on previously published interviews, articles, and press releases. Often, too, the exact sources are unclear. And while the story sometimes lacks in insight from those directly involved and in the analysis that will be possible as we get more temporal distance from the events, Harding provides crucial context and history for the story. His compilation and synthesis of the records is useful for a reader in need of a primer.

Starred review from March 1, 2014
A newsworthy, must-read book about what prompted Edward Snowden to blow the whistle on his former employer, the National Security Agency, and what likely awaits him for having done so. In June 2013, the Guardian published the first of the revelations of the "Snowden file"--a huge trove of data, "thousands of documents and millions of words"--put in its lap by way of columnist Glenn Greenwald. Guardian foreign correspondent Harding (co-author: WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, 2011, etc.) re-creates the curious trail that led Snowden to Greenwald and that led him to leak those documents in the first place. The author casts the prime motivation as a kind of revulsion born of Snowden's experience as an analyst knee-deep in material that--it is very clear--was none of the NSA's business, reinforced by Snowden's time stationed in the relative freedom of Switzerland. It is also clear that Snowden's act was premeditated, though not out of anti-Americanism (he's a Ron Paul-type libertarian, it seems) and not for monetary impulse, though he could have sold the documents to any one of a number of foreign powers. Harding's narrative covers numerous serial stories that developed from Snowden's decision: first, the cloak-and-dagger work that got the files to Greenwald, then the NSA's efforts and those of the larger American government to curb the post-publication damage (sometimes via British proxies), then Snowden's flight into Russian exile in order to avoid the fate of fellow whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Harding closes with the thought that Snowden may have no other home for some time to come--but that even wider implications remain to be explored, including the possibility that British activists might be able to introduce something like the First Amendment to protect its press in the future. Whether you view Snowden's act as patriotic or treasonous, this fast-paced, densely detailed book is the narrative of first resort.

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