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.
This bleak humour is typical of British public servants, and not at all unlikely, e.g. on leaving office after 10 years, a treasury secretary for the Labour government left a note for his successor:
'I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left.'
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/17/liam-byrne-n...
These off-hand comments don't materially change the story any in my view - the important points are that the government insisted on shutting down reporting as much as possible, and destroying any materials in the newspaper's possession.
They visited a newspaper office to destroy evidence - that's the important point here.
I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back."
Would be a direct quote.
The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it.
Would be a paraphrase.
Are you done spreading FUD yet?
That is, by definition, paraphrasing the meeting. I'm not accusing Rusbridger of mischaracterizing the interaction, I'm clarifying that this is probably isn't a direct quote. Note that this is an op/ed.
What's your evidence that it's not a direct quote? Aside, of course, from your personal disbelief that a government official would say something ridiculous.
EDIT: If you must downvote me, go ahead, but I'm not making a statement here. I'm joking. I think HN could use it these days.