Biggest anti-mass surveillance event in the U.K.

[Magda Hassan]

Rusbridger never has made clear what he was threatened with - what would've happened if he refused to destroy the files?

The fact that they made him do it rather than simply taking possession of them, which would be the normal procedure, suggests that legally they didn't have a leg to stand on. In other words, he had to destroy the files because, legally, there were his.

I think it is incumbent on him to speak more openly about this as that sense of some sort of collusion lingers, imo anyway.

Agrees. Understandably there is a lack of trust between Wikileaks and the Guardian. Also the SIS (and the Guardian) would have to have assumed there were other copies elsewhere as well. The whole thing looks like theatre.