Red-herring "inquisition": Guardian editor robustly defends Snowden leaks to UK MPs

He cited four officials closely connected with security in the UK and the US, whom the Guardian asked if what the newspaper was publishing was a genuine security risk.

Norman Baker, a Home Office minister, a member of the US Senate intelligence committee who asked not to be named, a senior Obama administration official and a UK Whitehall official all said the material published by The Guardian had caused no damage to national security, Rusbridger said.

With reference to the Tor website, Rusbridger defended The Guardian's actions. Tor, software that hides the identity of the site's users and owners, has been used by dissidents to communicate with each other, but also by pedophiles. Rusbridger said that the newspaper talked to the White House for three weeks about whether publishing would damage security, and that there was nothing that the Guardian published that wasn't on Tor's own website.

When asked if he was better placed to judge what should be public than the heads of the security services, Rusbridger replied he was not better placed, but in a democracy national security should not always be used as a trump card.

At the beginning of the hearing, Rusbridger said that only 1 percent of the information in the Snowden files had been made public so far.

British MP Jeremy Corbyn told RT that the Guardian's actions have been responsible and that the grilling by British MPs appeared to be a witch-hunt.

"It seems to me it's "Hunt the Guardian' time and "Hunt Alan Rusbridger' time -- this is ridiculous. Alan Rusbridger's Guardian is a very responsible paper with a great record of investigative journalism and liberal reporting," he said.

Glyn Moody, a writer and journalist specializing in IT, said that Rusbridger's inquisition amounted to little more than theater.

"I think what we are seeing is theater to a large extent, in that the UK government is trying to present things in a certain way for appearances," he told RT.

Carl Bernstein, one of the two Washington Post investigative journalists who broke the Watergate scandal, has written an open letter of support to Alan Rusbridger before his interrogation by UK MPs. The letter was published on the Guardian website. 

Bernstein said the press had been admirable and responsible in reporting the Snowden NSA and GCHQ spying revelations and that the articles published by The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post had not helped terrorists or enemies of national security. 

"You are being called to testify at a moment when governments in Washington and London seem intent on erecting the most serious (and self-serving) barriers against legitimate news reporting -- especially of excessive government secrecy -- we have seen in decades," Bernstein wrote to Rusbridger. 

"As we learned during our experience with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, it is essential that no prior governmental restraints or intimidation be imposed on a truly free press," he continued. 

It was a dogged, years-long investigation by Bernstein and his Washington Post colleague Bob Woodward that eventually broke the scandal over the Watergate break-in, which led to US President Richard Nixon having to resign in 1974. 

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