Trevor Kavanagh said the senior members of staff had been treated like "an organised gang" and the tabloid was "not a swamp that needed draining".
He said money sometimes changed hands while unearthing stories, and this had always been standard practice. The Met Police were unavailable for comment.
The Sun staff were held over alleged corrupt payments to police and others.
A Surrey Police officer, a member of the armed forces and a Ministry of Defence employee were also arrested - and all eight were released on police bail.
'Homes ransacked'
Writing in the Sun, Mr Kavanagh said at any other time the treatment of the journalists would have caused uproar at Parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners.
The paper's former high-profile political editor said they were subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history - bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder inquiry.
He said 171 officers are involved in three separate operations, and claimed two officers on one raid revealed they had been pulled off an elite Olympics anti-terror squad. "Instead of being called in for questioning, 30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked," he wrote.
"Wives and children have been humiliated as up to 20 officers at a time rip up floorboards and sift through intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents."
Sun editor Dominic Mohan has said he was "shocked" by the arrests but pledged to continue to lead the paper.
They were arrested as part of the Operation Elveden probe into payments to police.
The BBC understands they were picture editor John Edwards, chief reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker, reporter John Sturgis and associate editor Geoff Webster.
Meanwhile, the solicitor representing alleged victims of phone hacking is said to be heading to the US to take legal action against Rupert Murdoch.
Mr Murdoch is the boss of News Corporation, the parent company of News International, which runs the Sun.
Mark Lewis, who represents the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, told the Press Association he was not prepared to deny the reports.
He is expected to travel to America within weeks to meet lawyers and is said to be close to bringing at least one case against Mr Murdoch's US company.
@'BBC'
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