Snowden Files (Harding)

Author Bio
• Birth—1968
• Where—Great Britain
• Education—Oxford University
• Currently—lives in London, England


Luke Harding is an award-winning British foreign correspondent with the Guardian. He studied English at University College, Oxford. While there he edited the student newspaper Cherwell. He worked for the Sunday Correspondent, Evening Argus in Brighton and Daily Mail before joining the Guardian in 1996.

He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and has also covered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Mafia State (2011) and co-author of WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (2011). He also wrote The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (1997, nominated for the Orwell Prize) and The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man (2014). The film rights to WikiLeaks were sold to Dreamworks and the film, The Fifth Estate, came out in 2013.

Harding has lived in and reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and has covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. He currently lives in London, England, with his wife and their two children

Russian expulsion
His 2011 book Mafia State discusses Harding's experience in Russia and the political system under Vladimir Putin, which he describes as a mafia state. In February 2011 he was refused re-entry into Russia, becoming the first foreign journalist to be expelled from Russia since the end of the Cold War. The Guardian said his expulsion was linked with his unflattering coverage of Russia, including speculation about Vladimir Putin's wealth and Putin's knowledge of the London assassination of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The director of Index on Censorship, John Kampfner, said "The Russian government's treatment of Luke Harding is petty and vindictive, and evidence—if more was needed—of the poor state of free expression in that country." Harding has said that during his time in Russia he was the subject of largely psychological harassment by the Federal Security Service, whom he alleges were unhappy at the stories he wrote.

Edward Snowden
Harding's 2014 book on Edward Snowden, The Snowden Files received positive reviews from the the Guardian and London Review of Books although a The Daily Telegraph review said, "complexity and nuance are banished. In particular, the real dilemmas of intelligence work are ignored." Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review for the New York Times that the book "reads like a le Carre novel crossed with something by Kafka."

The Snowden Files was initially criticised by Snowden associate, journalist Glenn Greenwald,* when he had only read extracts from Harding's book. Later, after reading the whole book, he conceded that it did not trash Snowden. Nontheless, on February 14, 2014 Greenwald told the Financial Times:

They are purporting to tell the inside story of Edward Snowden but it is written by someone who has never met or even spoken to Edward Snowden. Luke came here and talked to me for half a day without [my] realising that he was trying to get me to write his book for him. I cut the interview off when I realised what he was up to.

The Financial Times has since amended the article stating: "Harding insists that when he spoke to Greenwald in Rio, he made it very clear he was doing research for his book on Snowden." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/6/2014.)

* Greenwald's own book—No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State—was also published in 2014.