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IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: "I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY." What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy. In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden's astonishing story - from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story - touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector - while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative - and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.
About the Author
Luke Harding is a journalist, writer and award-winning correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief. In February 2011 the Kremlin deported him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War.
His new book "Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win" is being published on November 16th, 2017, simultaneously in ten countries. Collusion is a gripping, alarming exposé about the biggest political scandal of the modern era, in which Harding reveals the true nature of Trump's decades-long relationship with Moscow.
Drawing on exclusive new material, Harding tells the story of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his dossier. Collusion is an astonishing tale of offshore money, sketchy real-estate deals, a Miss Universe Pageant, mobsters, money laundering, hacking and Russian espionage. It includes the latest indictments by Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor investigating a scandal now engulfing the Trump administration.
Collusion is published by Vintage (USA) , Guardian Faber (UK) Into Kustannus (Finland) , Flammarion (France) , Penguin Random House Germany, Nieuw Amsterdam (Holland) , Mondadori (Italy) , Penguin Random House Spain, Bonniers (Sweden) and Forlaget Press (Norway) . Luke's books have been published in 30 languages.
His previous title was "A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia's War with the West". It tells the story of Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Vladimir Putin's, who was poisoned in 2006 in London by two Kremlin assassins. A public inquiry ruled that Russia's president 'probably approved' the murder operation, done with a cup of radioactive tea.
Luke's other titles include "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man", and "Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia", which appeared in the US as "Expelled". "Snowden", a movie by Oliver Stone, based on Luke's book, was released in 2016.
Luke has co-authored two books with veteran reporter David Leigh: "The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken" (1997) , nominated for the Orwell Prize; and "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy" (2011) . A DreamWorks film based on "WikiLeaks", "The Fifth Estate", starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl, came out in 2013.
Luke lives near London with his wife, the freelance journalist Phoebe Taplin, and their two children
