After her initial shock, Hayden professionally noted down the details. She promised to ‘take this to her people’. Those people’s mood must have been one of confusion – what precisely was the Guardian and where the hell had these pesky Brits got the leak from?
At 4pm, Hayden emailed and said the White House would like him to speak ‘as soon as possible’ to the relevant agencies, the Department of Justice and the NSA. Ackerman called the DoJ and spoke to NSA press officer Judy Emmel. Emmel betrayed no reaction. ‘My heart was racing,’ Ackerman says.
At Gibson’s instruction, Ackerman now emailed Hayden to say his editor had authorised him to push the deadline back ‘until 5.15pm’.
Hayden then called Gibson herself, direct from the White House. She had a proposal – a 5.15pm conference call. The White House was sending in its top guns. The team included FBI deputy director Sean M Joyce, a Boston native with an action-man resumé – investigator against Columbian narcotics, counter-terrorism officer, legal attaché in Prague. Joyce was responsible for the FBI’s 75 overseas and domestic missions fighting crime and threats to national security. He was now the FBI’s lead on intelligence.
Also patched in was Chris Inglis, the NSA’s deputy director. Inglis was a man who interacted with journalists so rarely he was considered by many to be a mythical entity, like the unicorn. Inglis’s career was illustrious. He had degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science, and had climbed rapidly through the NSA. Before becoming General Alexander’s civilian number two, he was posted between 2003 and 2006 to London as senior US liaison officer (SUSLO), the US’s top-ranking intelligence official liaising with GCHQ and British intelligence. Presumably during his London stint he would have seen the Guardian.
Then there was Robert S Litt – known as Bob – the general counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A Harvard and Yale graduate, Litt knew how the FISA court worked from his six years in the mid and late 1990s at the Department of Justice. Litt was clever, likeable, voluble, dramatic, lawyerly and prone to rhetorical flourishes. ‘He knows what he’s doing. Smart. The smartest of the bunch,’ in Ackerman’s judgement.
On the Guardian side were Gibson and Millar, two British journalists, sitting in Gibson’s small office, with its cheap sofa and unimpressive view of Broadway. Ackerman was routed in as well from DC. But it seemed poor odds – a couple of out-of-towners ranged against a Washington behemoth.
By fielding heavyweights, the White House had perhaps reckoned it could flatter – and if necessary bully – the Guardian into delaying publication of the Verizon story, certainly for a few days, and possibly forever. The strategy was a rational one. But it made a few presumptions. It assumed the White House was in control of the situation. And it perhaps underestimated Gibson. ‘It’s in these moments you see what your editors are made of,’ Ackerman observes.
The general theme of the official representations – all ‘on background’, of course – was that their Verizon story was far from impartial. It was misleading and inaccurate. But the administration high-ups were willing to sit down and explain the bigger picture. The offer, in essence, was that Gibson would be invited for a chat in the White House.
This sort of gambit had worked with US publications in the past, most notably with the New York Times back in 2004 when the paper first discovered President Bush’s warrantless surveillance programs. After ‘the chat’, it was made clear the Guardian might feel less enthusiastic about publishing. The subtext was: you don’t really understand how things work around here. ‘I think they thought they could flannel through me,’ Gibson says.
Her agenda was different. As she saw it, this encounter was a reasonable opportunity for government to raise ‘specific’ national security concerns. She told Bob and co she believed there was an overwhelming public interest in revealing the secret court order. The order, she said, was very general, with no operational detail, facts or findings. It was hard to see a prima facie case where it might cause damage. But she was open to listening to their concerns.
The men were used to getting their own way and seemed nonplussed by Gibson’s manner. Even in moments of high stress such as this, the editor’s tone was convivial and breezy – a disarming mix. In her previous incarnation as the Guardian’s media editor, Gibson had dealt with many other people who tried to throw their weight about. They included the noisy CNN anchor Piers Morgan and the UK Prime Minister David Cameron – back then a mere public relations man for Carlton, a none-too-distinguished TV channel.
As the pressure was piled on, Gibson felt her accent growing more and more starchily British. ‘I began to sound like Mary Poppins,’ she jokes. Millar, meanwhile, Googled ‘DNI’, ‘Bob Litt’, ‘Chris Inglis’, ‘Sean Joyce’. What exactly were their backgrounds? Sitting over in DC, Ackerman was impressed by Gibson’s performance; he sent words of cheery encouragement by G-chat.
After 20 minutes the White House was frustrated. The conversation was going in circles. Litt and Inglis refused to raise any specific concerns on the grounds that even ‘discussing’ the secret Verizon document on the telephone amounted to a felony. Finally one of the team could take no more. Losing his temper, and growling in a thick accent, as if the star of a cop show, he shouted: ‘You don’t need to publish this! No serious news organisation would publish this!’
Gibson stiffened; the earlier grace and lightness of touch disappeared. She replied icily: ‘With the greatest respect, we will take the decisions about what we publish.’
‘It was: “How dare you talk to us like this?”’ Millar says. He adds: ‘It was clear that the administration wasn’t going to offer anything of substance. We were going to publish. It was game on.’
The White House team indicated they might escalate the issue. Gibson replied that the editor-in-chief – half way across the Atlantic – was unavailable. She said: ‘I’m the final decision maker.’ A deflated group wrapped up the conference calclass="underline" ‘We seem to have reached an impasse we can’t get past.’
Gibson had resisted the administration’s attempts to cajole her, keeping her cool while sticking to the legal playbook. Ackerman says: ‘She didn’t budge. She was ramrod.’ He adds: ‘It took the Obama administration a long time to acclimate to the fact that they were not the ones in control, that she was… How often do they interact with people who are not part of their club?’
The encounter demonstrated the difference between newspaper cultures on either side of the pond. In the US, three big newspapers enjoy a virtual monopoly. With little competition, they are free to pursue leads at a leisurely, even gentlemanly, pace. The political culture is different too, with the press generally deferential towards the president. If anyone asked Obama a tough or embarrassing question, this was itself news.
In what used to be Fleet Street, by contrast, the media landscape was very different. In London, there were 12 UK national titles locked in a permanent, exhausting battle for survival, a Darwinian struggle to the death. The rivalry had grown more intense as print newspaper circulations declined. If you had a scoop, you published. If you didn’t, someone else would. It was dog-eat-dog, then grind up its bones.