David Leigh (journalist)

David Leigh (born 1946) is a British journalist and author who was the investigations executive editor of The Guardian. He officially retired in April 2013, although Leigh continued his association with the newspaper.

Educated at Nottingham High School and King's College, Cambridge, leaving with a postgraduate degree in 1969. He is an investigative journalist who received the first of several British Press Awards in 1979 for an exposure of jury-vetting. He was a journalist for the Scotsman, The Times, and The Guardian, and a Laurence Stern fellow at the Washington Post in 1980. Between 1989 and 1996, he also worked as a reporter for Thames TV's current affairs series "This Week", and a producer/director for Granada TV's investigative series "World in Action".

From 1980 to 1989, he was chief investigative reporter at The Observer. His book The Wilson Plot (1988) increased public interest in alleged attempts by the British security services and others to destabilise Harold Wilson's government in the 1970s. His 1995 TV documentary for World in Action, "Jonathan of Arabia", led after a libel trial to the jailing for perjury of former Conservative defence minister Jonathan Aitken.

With his colleague Rob Evans, Leigh published a series of corruption exposures in The Guardian about international arms giant BAE Systems. After a criminal inquiry by the US Department of Justice and other international prosecutors, the company was eventually required to pay penalties totalling $529 million. In 2006, Leigh became the Anthony Sampson Professor of Reporting in the Journalism department at City University London. His wife's sister married Alan Rusbridger, who later became editor of The Guardian

WikiLeaks

in 2010 Leigh was a member of the team which handled the release of United States diplomatic and military documents which had been passed to WikiLeaks, and which worked closely with Julian Assange. The relationship soured after the Guardian published details of allegations of sexual misbehaviour made against Assange by two Swedish women. This caused David Leigh to tweet: "The #guardian published too many leaks for #Assange 's liking, it seems. So now he's signed up 'exclusively' with #Murdoch's Times. Gosh."

In WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (Guardian Books 2011), written with Luke Harding, Leigh mentioned the password to a set of unredacted classified US State Department cables. WikiLeaks had distributed multiple copies of encrypted files containing these cables, and others had mirrored the data with BitTorrent. Defending himself against criticism for subsequently dumping out all this data, Assange criticised Leigh and the Guardian instead, for unnecessarily disclosing the password. In response The Guardian said "it's nonsense to suggest the Guardian's WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way". According to The Guardian, WikiLeaks had indicated that the password was temporary and that WikiLeaks had seven months to take action to protect the files it had subsequently decided to post online. The book was made into a 2014 Hollywood movie, "The Fifth Estate". Assange's supporters complained that he and Wikileaks were not given any money for it.

In 2011, after Private Eye magazine criticised an allegedly antisemitic Wikileaks associate Israel Shamir, editor Ian Hislop reported that Assange telephoned and complained of a campaign led by The Guardian to smear Wikileaks and deprive it of Jewish donations. Three people involved, including Leigh, according to Assange, were Jewish. Hislop says he pointed out that at least one of the three was not in fact Jewish and that this "Jewish conspiracy" was unconvincing. Assange eventually backed down and told Hislop to, "Forget the Jewish thing." In response, Assange said, "Hislop has distorted, invented or misremembered almost every significant claim and phrase."

In a further spat in 2012, Assange referred in a press release to: "an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks' contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks' U.S. diplomatic cables to Israel." Melman characterised this as a "clumsy smear" attempt.

In 1979, he won a British Press Awards special award for exposing jury-vetting, whilst a reporter at the Guardian. In 1985, he won Investigative Reporter of the Year in the Granada TV What the Paper Say awards, for exposing MI5 vetting of BBC staff.In 2007, he won the Paul Foot Award, with his colleague Rob Evans, for the BAE bribery exposures. The prize was awarded annually by Private Eye and The Guardian in memory of the campaigning journalist Paul Foot. Leigh and Evans were also presented with the Granada TV What the Papers Say Judges' Award for "an outstanding piece of investigative journalism that uncovered a story of great significance". In 2010, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists gave him and five other journalists the Daniel Pearl Award for their investigation of toxic waste dumping by oil traders Trafigura. In 2015, he and a Guardian team he led won Investigation of the Year at the British Journalism Awards for their exposure of tax-dodging at HSBC's Swiss bank.

In February 2013, the Press Gazette listed him as third in their list of the top ten investigative journalists.