This is a tale of two whistleblowers. Let's begin with Edward Snowden. The former US National Security Agency contractor has been hailed by the liberal left for exposing mass surveillance on an "almost Orwellian" scale (to borrow a line from a US district judge). He was voted person of the year for 2013 by Guardian readers and took the runner-up spot - behind the Pope! - in Time magazine's annual list. On 25 December, Snowden appeared on Channel 4 to give the "alternative Christmas message", warning viewers that the types of surveillance mentioned in Nineteen Eighty-Four "are nothing compared to what we have available today".
On Christmas Day, another whistleblower spoke out - but inside an Israeli courtroom, rather than on British television. "I don't want to live in Israel," declared Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years behind bars for blowing the whistle on Israel's nuclear secrets. "I cannot live here as a convicted spy, a traitor, an enemy and a Christian," he told Israel's High Court, in English, having vowed not to speak Hebrew until he is allowed to leave the country.
Vanunu was jailed in 1988 for leaking details of his work as a technician at a nuclear facility near Dimona to the Sunday Times two years earlier. On 29 December 2013, the court rejected his petition, on the grounds that he continues to possess information that could jeopardise Israel's national security. Andrew Neil, the former editor of the Sunday Times, disagrees. "He told us everything," Neil told me. "We drained him dry."
Neil calls Vanunu's revelations the biggest scoop of his 11-year editorship of the Sunday Times. "Everyone knew Israel had the bomb but what we didn't know was the huge extent of its nuclear facilities and also its ability to make the hydrogen bomb," he tells me. "[The Vanunu story] told the world that Israel was basically the sixth nuclear power." Full story...
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On Christmas Day, another whistleblower spoke out - but inside an Israeli courtroom, rather than on British television. "I don't want to live in Israel," declared Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years behind bars for blowing the whistle on Israel's nuclear secrets. "I cannot live here as a convicted spy, a traitor, an enemy and a Christian," he told Israel's High Court, in English, having vowed not to speak Hebrew until he is allowed to leave the country.
Vanunu was jailed in 1988 for leaking details of his work as a technician at a nuclear facility near Dimona to the Sunday Times two years earlier. On 29 December 2013, the court rejected his petition, on the grounds that he continues to possess information that could jeopardise Israel's national security. Andrew Neil, the former editor of the Sunday Times, disagrees. "He told us everything," Neil told me. "We drained him dry."
Neil calls Vanunu's revelations the biggest scoop of his 11-year editorship of the Sunday Times. "Everyone knew Israel had the bomb but what we didn't know was the huge extent of its nuclear facilities and also its ability to make the hydrogen bomb," he tells me. "[The Vanunu story] told the world that Israel was basically the sixth nuclear power." Full story...
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