Yesterday, the White House denied involvement with the British government’s detainment of David Miranda at Heathrow airport. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the decision to detain Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald in Brazil, was “a law enforcement action that was taken by the British government.”
Earnest did say that the United States was given a “heads-up” by the British government but that it was a “a decision they made on their own.”
Miranda was held for nine hours and had his electronic equipment confiscated by authorities.
“To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ [U.K. Government Communications Headquarters]. The actions of the U.K. pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere,” Greenwald said.
“But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: It will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively,” Greenwald added. Miranda was traveling back to Brazil from Berlin, where he had met with Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who has worked with Snowden.
The White House spokesman said he did not know if the US would be briefed on the information obtained from the interrogation but did not rule out that US had been given information retrieved from Miranda’s electronic devices.
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