Ewen MacAskill (born 1951)Bryan Burrough, Sarah Ellison and Suzanna Andrew
"The Snowden Saga: A Shadowland of Secrets and Light"
''Vanity Fair'', May 2014 is a Scottish journalist. He worked for 22 years on ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', ending his career in September 2018 as the newspaper's defence and intelligence correspondent. MacAskill was involved in preparing the publication disclosures from Edward Snowden of the activities of the American

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...

(NSA).

Career

MacAskill was a political editor for ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its pare ...

'' for six years (1990–96) before becoming chief political correspondent for ''The Guardian''. In 2007, he was named Washington DC bureau chief. While based in the United States, he was involved in preparing the Edward Snowden revelations concerning the NSA for publication liaising with Snowden and his contact,

Glenn Greenwald Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author and lawyer. In 2014, he cofounded ''The Intercept'', of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020. Greenwald subsequently started publishing on Substac ...

, who had brought the story to the attention of then ''GuardianUS'' editor

Janine Gibson Janine Victoria Gibson is a British journalist who has served as assistant editor of the ''Financial Times'' since May 2019. Before then, in the summer of 2014, she became deputy editor of Guardian News and Media and editor-in-chief of theguard ...

. As a result of his reporting on Global surveillance disclosures, he was named co-recipient of the 2013

George Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...

. The same reporting also contributed to the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service awarded jointly to ''The Guardian'' and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' in April 2014. MacAskill's retirement from The Guardian was announced on 22 September 2018. MacAskill is portrayed by British actor

Tom Wilkinson Thomas Geoffrey Wilkinson (born 5 February 1948)Born January–March 1948, according to the ''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at ancestry.com is an English actor of film, television, and stage. He has rece ...

in the Edward Snowden biopic '' Snowden'', directed by Oliver Stone and starring

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (; born February 17, 1981) is an American actor. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his leading performances ...

as Snowden. He wrote a reportage book with the journalist

Luke Harding Luke Daniel Harding (born 21 April 1968) is a British journalist who is a foreign correspondent for ''The Guardian''. He was based in Russia for ''The Guardian'' from 2007 until, returning from a stay in the UK on 5 February 2011, he was refus ...

on the

PRISM Prism usually refers to: * Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light * Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron Prism may also refer to: Science and mathematics * Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...

program, a secret

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

project of massive recording of the

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

and

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

servers, combined with the main digital platforms. at minute 9.37.

References

1950s births Living people British male journalists George Polk Award recipients Place of birth missing (living people) Scottish political journalists Year of birth missing (living people) {{UK-journalist-stub