Truthdig.com, the online news site that takes pride in “drilling beneath the headlines”, has done it again: it has conjured up the most insightful review we’ve managed to uncover yet on what surely will turn out to be one of the most talked-about books of 2014…
We refer, of course, to Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files, which provides an eye-opening overview of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s running battle with the National Security Agency after leaking thousands of classified files to news organizations.
Book reviewer Greg Miller, national security correspondent for The Washington Post, reminds readers via his truthdig.com review of Feb.21 that author Luke Harding is the same LH who is a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, which broke the initial Snowden story.
Miller also reminds us that “the course that Snowden chose…surreptitiously stockpiling thousands of classified files, leaking them…and finally fleeing first to Hong Kong and then Russia has been polarizing. He has been condemned as treasonous and hailed as courageous. Either way, his story is one of the most compelling in the history of American espionage.”
Further excerpts (abridged) from Miller’s review follow:
“The Snowden Files”…is the first to assemble the sequence of events in a single volume. The book captures the drama of Snowden’s operation in often cinematic detail but doesn’t necessarily enhance our understanding of the magnitude and impact of the leaks. It is most successful when focused tightly on its then-29-year-old protagonist, whose youth and low station in the spy world were so at odds with the caliber of the material he accessed that his journalist contacts, upon meeting him for the first time, shook their heads in disbelief. Snowden comes across as almost icily composed. He seems to have been undaunted by the challenge of outmaneuvering his employer, the National Security Agency, the largest spy agency in the world. He choreographed his encounters with journalists and revealed himself to the world largely on his own terms…
…Although the book is billed as “the inside story of the world’s most wanted man,” there is no indication Harding had direct contact with his subject. Instead, it reads more like the inside account of Snowden’s interactions with The Guardian. The details drawn from those encounters are fascinating, if not always illuminating. Snowden was so concerned about security at the hotel where they met that the few times he left his room he placed a glass of water behind the door, positioned to spill on a piece of tissue paper marked with a symbol sketched in soy sauce…
…“The Snowden Files” won’t be the last book on this subject nor likely the best, with Gellman and Greenwald titles already in the works. But Harding has delivered a clearly written and captivating account of the Snowden leaks and their aftermath, succeeding beyond its most basic ambition, which was to arrive in bookstores first.
For the full review go to: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_snowden_files_20140221
Many of the concerns Snowden has raised regarding America’s surveillance programs and its espionage methodologies are highlighted in our top rated conspiracy thriller series The Orphan Trilogy (The Ninth Orphan / The Orphan Factory / The Orphan Uprising). That’s not to say we necessarily sympathize with Snowden or approve of his actions, but we do sympathize with many of the ‘Big Brother’ concerns he and others like him have raised.
The Orphan Trilogy exposes a global agenda designed to keep the power in the hands of a select few. Our antagonists are a shadow government acting above and beyond the likes of the White House, the FBI, the Pentagon and the NSA… Sounds familiar?
Merging fact with fiction, the trilogy illuminates shadow organizations rumored to actually exist. Our three novels explore a plethora of conspiracies involving real organizations like the CIA, MI6, and the UN, and public figures such as President Obama, Queen Elizabeth II as well as the Clinton, Marcos and Bush families.
The Orphan Trilogy is available via Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BGGM05U/
Happy reading! –Lance & James
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Morcan Books & Films 