Telling the truth still a dangerous pursuit as Manning trial shows

ON Jul 20, in a basement of the London offices of Britain’s Guardian newspaper, a senior editor and an IT expert used angle grinders and sledgehammers to destroy computer hard drives containing copies of secret files leaked by Edward Snowden, the computer whiz who disclosed details of top-secret US and British government surveillance programmes to the press.

It was, as The Guardian itself put it, “one of the stranger episodes in the history of digital-age journalism”.

It followed a series of events that were stranger still.