The Guardian, the newspaper behind the Edward Snowden leak reports, has come face-to-face with angry UK agents who were hellbent on destroying the hard drive that contains all the juicy details of NSA spying along with info on the British spy plan, as well. At the end of the day, the hard drive was destroyed, which should be proof enough how damaging and truthful the Snowden leaks are.

According to The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, the relationship between the newspaper and the British government began to take a turn for the worse a month ago. He claimed agents contacted him and requested he returned the information, or destroy the material.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.”

Rusbridger went on to state:

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

It is clear the contents of those hard drives were valuable assets that could have caused more damage to the U.S. and UK, hence the need to destroy all material. If the Guardian is wise, copies of the damaging materials should be on another hard drive that is safely tucked away somewhere.

We wait patiently for more NSA reports from the Guardian, and hope government officials harm no employee in any way.

[The Guardian]