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This article has been substantially modified: An earlier version of this article committed precisely the errors that Greenwald criticizes the Sunday Times to have made.
Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald strongly criticized the UK daily The Sunday Times on Sunday, for blithely reporting the previous day that UK intelligence agents have been removed from operations after claims that Russia and China gained access to classified information held by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The entire report was based on an anonymous UK government source, which claimed, "We know Russia and China have access to Snowden's material and will be going through it for years to come, searching for clues to identify potential targets.”
The Sunday Times article also quoted an official from the UK Interior Ministry as saying, Russian President, “Putin didn't give him [Edward Snowden] asylum for nothing".
Greenwald attacked the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times for being an example of how journalists “treat self-serving decrees by unnamed, unseen officials – laundered through their media – as gospel, no matter how dubious are the claims or factually false is the reporting.”
The Sunday Times presents no other verifiable source for a government official’s claim that Snowden has “blood on his hands” for having leaked classified documents.
Snowden, the former U.S. security contractor who is now in Russia, has previously said that crucial data in the material could not be accessed by foreign powers.
Snowden fled to Russia after leaking the documents to the press in 2013 exposing the mass collection of online data by national security agencies in both the United States and the UK.
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