Britain's spy agency originally refused to block Snowden's leaks

How Britain’s spy agency originally refused to block Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass data collection being published despite a frantic late night call from NSA

• A new book claims the NSA tried to pressure GCHQ to censor Snowden’s leaks
• Head of British spy agency took a frantic early morning call from the NSA
• Sir Iain Lobban refused despite the potential damage and danger to lives  
• The book lays out number of disagreements between Five Eyes spying partners 

The NSA failed with a frantic late night phone call to pressure their British spook counterparts to spike publication of Edward Snowden’s infamous 2013 leaks, a new book has claimed.

Sir Iain Lobban, the head of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), received a phone call making the request that would strain relations between the Five Eyes partners in the early hours of June 6, 2013, the Guardian report.

The British newspaper the Guardian were set to reveal that the NSA and GCHQ had secretly been collecting mass phone and internet communications, including the embarrassing revelation that they had been spying on G20 allies and partners.

But Lobban refused to give in to US pressure to use his agency to censor the press regardless of the potential damage it could do and lives it could put at risk. 

These are the claims to be published in a new book on Thursday, The Secret History of Five Eyes, by film-maker and investigative journalist Richard Kerbaj.

Edward Snowden, a NSA contractor, leaked highly damaging and embarrassing information to newspapers in 2013 and then fled to Russia

GCHQ chief Sir Iain Lobban, pictured before a parliamentary committee in 2014, refused to use his agency to sensor the newspaper stories that were publishing Edward Snowden’s leaks, a new book has claimed

The incident was one of many disagreements between the Five Eyes partners that strained relations and caused rifts as they clashed over principles, methods and national security.

The book claims that Lobban, well aware of the importance of the ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the US intelligence agencies, nonetheless thought the ‘the proposition of urging a newspaper to spike the article for the sake of the NSA seemed a step too far’.

‘It was neither the purpose of his agency nor his own to deal with the NSA’s public relations,’ Kerbaj writes.

However, pressure was evidently applied at other points of government, as then-Prime Minister David Cameron in October 2013 threatened to stifle the story through injunctions or other ‘tougher measures’ to stop further publication of Snowden’s leaks about the activities of the NSA and GCHQ.

Among Snowden’s blockbuster leaks were claims that US and British intelligence agencies had successfully cracked much of the online encryption that millions of people relied upon to protect their personal data and communications. 

The book reveals other moments of tension between the allies, such as when Gen Keith Alexander, Lobban’s counterpart as the head of the NSA, did not even inform the British that Snowden was the source of the Guardian’s stories.

Lobban, who had instigated a mole hunt within  his own organization, GCHQ, found out only after Snowden, a Hawaii-based government contractor, voluntarily went public.

Britain’s signals intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which was found to have participated in the mass of private data and communications 

‘It was a chilling reminder of how important you are, or how important you’re not,’ a senior British intelligence insider is quoted as saying in the book. 

The other Five Eyes members, the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand signals intelligence agencies, were also exposed by the leaks, and also incriminated in the spying on allies such as then-Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel.

There was outrage among the Five Eyes that a contractor such as Snowden, working as a computer systems administrator, could have access to their embarrassing secrets.

It was also revealed that, because of US government outsourcing, there were 1.5 million Americans with top security clearance like Snowden.

In a rare interview on his retirement in 2014, Lobban declared that there would never be a British version of Edward Snowden because GCHQ treats contractors ‘as if they are people’.

When Five Eyes officials met in Australia in the summer of 2013, it was only the British representative who dared to question the US practices which had resulted in the Snowden leaks.

But the power dynamics between the five countries was clear as they were all afraid of being cut off from the vital flow of NSA funding and intelligence.

Sir Kim Darroch, the former UK national security adviser, is quoted in the book as saying: ‘The US give us more than we give them so we just have to basically get on with it.’

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