British intelligence agency GCHQ helped prevent 'Harry Potter' book leak back in the day

LONDON -- Anyone who was a Harry Potter fan back when the books were still being written will remember the intense frenzy that greeted each novel's release date.

What people might not know, however, is the extreme lengths that publishing house Bloomsbury went to in order to keep the contents of each new book a secret.

The founder of Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton, spoke to Australian radio station ABC last week to shed some light on the measures that had to be taken.

"It was completely mad and we were at the eye of the storm," Newton said. 

"I remember Jo Rowling phoning me once after she'd delivered a new book and saying, 'Please, Nigel, will you release the name of the title, because I have people outside searching my trashcan looking for bits of paper.'

"At about that time we had to go into a complete security lockdown, because people were trying to steal the manuscript. We had one case where The Sun newspaper sent a journalist -- so the story goes -- with an attache case full of £5000 in notes to circle the printing factory... and they offered a worker this money if he'd go in and nick a copy."

Newton told the station that by the time they'd reached the fifth book in the series -- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix -- they had German Shepherds patrolling the perimeters of the printing works.

Bloomsbury weren't fighting alone, though. Newton went on to tell ABC that the publisher had a number of allies, including judges and even a large British security agency.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"The British spy eavesdropping station GCHQ rang me up and said, 'We've detected an early copy of this book on the Internet'," Newton explained.

"I got him to read a page to our editor and she said, 'Nah, that's a fake'."

The best part of this whole story, though? The response GCHQ sent to The Sunday Times when asked about this.

According to the BBC, the intelligence agency simply replied: "We don't comment on our defence against the dark arts."

Nice.

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