“In a particularly revealing moment, Rusbridger said he was contacted by an agent of the GCHQ, who said ‘You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back,’ referring to the classified material provided to the paper by Snowden. Rusbridger said he asked the official if the British government intended to shut down the paper. The official said that in the absence of the handover or destruction of classified material, that was indeed the intention. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement.”
