Is The Guardian Holding Back The New York Times’ Snowden Stories?
A source at the Times tells The Daily Beast the paper feels shackled over The Guardians total control over the cache of Edward Snowden NSA documentsand how they are used.
The Brits and the Yanks have long enjoyed a special relationship, and the bond between The Guardian and The New York Times is certainly special.
But when it comes to printing stories based on top-secret documents supplied by Edward Snowden, the relationship between the British and American media outlets occasionally seems frayed as well.
In the summer of 2013, as the British government moved to destroy The Guardians classified cache provided by the National Security Agency whistleblower who fled to Russiagoing so far as to dispatch a wrecking crew to the papers London offices to shatter computer hard drives with drills and chiselsGuardian Editor in Chief Alan Rusbridger arranged for the tens of thousands of documents to be shared with and protected by the Times in New York, beyond the reach of British authorities.
The cooperative arrangement initially resulted in several eye-popping stories for both newspapers, including the Timess Snowden-based exposé of how American and British intelligence operatives were data-mining the popular Angry Birds smartphone app to reveal all sorts of personal information about users.
But nine months later, according to Times newsroom employees who spoke on condition of anonymity, some reporters and editors at the U.S. newspaper are unhappy because of the agreement that Times editors struck with Rusbridger in 2013. It gives The Guardian total control over the Snowden cache, including how and when it can be used to develop, pursue, and publish investigations.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/14/is-the-guardian-holding-the-new-york-times-snowden-stories-back.html
More background: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2014-06/02/michael-wolff-the-guardian
If this is true, then the NYT and other "partners" have been getting played like suckers...So much for that free-flow of information among "trusted journalists"...