Glenn Greenwald has delivered a pacy account that is sure to satisfy readers who see things the way he does

THE disclosures of Edward Snowden constitute perhaps the most notorious leak in history. America’s National Security Agency was so secretive that for decades even its existence was classified. Insiders joked that its initials stood for “no such agency”. That a 29-year-old contractor was able to steal tens of thousands of classified documents is not only astounding, but also unprecedented. Only recently had it become possible to fit so much material on an inexpensive digital chip. Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story in the British newspaper the Guardian, has now published an account of how the story landed on his lap. “No Place to Hide”, out today, also outlines the disclosures and considers what they mean.

The tale of how a geeky high-school dropout infiltrated the NSA’s most secretive core makes fascinating reading. The extent of surveillance Mr Snowden unveiled is itself deeply troubling. And the back-story of how Mr Greenwald and others scrambled to make this information public is inspiring.

Mr Snowden spent more than a year collecting material on America’s surveillance activities, much of which he believed was illegal. The book confirms what some have long suspected: that Mr Snowden took his final job as an NSA contractor in order to gain access to more damning documents. To supporters, this was courageous; to critics it cements his role as a saboteur.

“I want to spark a worldwide debate about privacy, internet freedom and the dangers of the surveillance state,” Mr Snowden said, justifying the leaks. As Mr Greenwald tells it: “If disclosing proof that top-level national security officials lied outright to Congress about domestic spying programmes doesn’t make one indisputably a whistle-blower, then what does?”

The first third of the book tells the exciting tale of breaking the story. The second part explores the surveillance programmes themselves and argues why they are illegal. The final part looks at the reaction by the media and officialdom to the revelations.

Mr Greenwald’s co-star throughout the story is Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, who made the initial e-mail exchange with Mr Snowden, helped report the story and shared the Pulitzer prize awarded in April. The villain of the tale is not just the NSA, but mainstream journalists, who Mr Greenwald often criticises (and often with good reason) for being intellectually allied with the very entities they are meant to hold to account.

Fans of Mr Snowden and Mr Greenwald will find much to enjoy in this colourful play-by-play and exploration of classified NSA activities. But critics can expect to come away unmoved. This is because Mr Greenwald is less a journalist than an activist—an écrivain engagé—a bias that he wears as a badge of honour.

As a result, the book is remarkably one-sided: Mr Snowden is the whistleblowing hero; Mr Greenwald righteously fights on the side of the angels. Even sympathetic readers will have a hard time accepting everything Mr Greenwald, a former litigator, argues in his case against American intelligence. Indeed, in some cases a bit of intelligence-gathering seems sensible, such as when the NSA snooped on a handful of UN delegations to find out their positions prior to a vote on sanctions against Iran. Disclosing this also seems unnecessarily harmful. But in Mr Greenwald’s telling, all American surveillance comes out looking badly.

The book is at its best when it shines light on Mr Snowden’s motives. He plainly acted with conviction, and he will likely go down in history as a hero. Yet Mr Greenwald fails to let readers reach their own conclusions about the NSA and Mr Snowden’s conduct, preferring to impose his partisan views. Perhaps that is to be expected when the storyteller is not just a messenger but also a protagonist.