16 March 2000
Source:
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,147668,00.html
The Guardian Online, March 17, 2000
Mark Hollingsworth
Friday March 17, 2000
We were sitting in a secluded office. "Do you have any documents to back up what you are saying?" I asked David Shayler, the since-famous MI5 whistleblower. It was Wednesday, August 20 1997, and I was investigating, with fellow-writer Nick Fielding, the former security service officer's claims of bungling, negligence, secret surveillance and excessive bureaucracy endangering lives. To my astonishment, he admitted there were indeed some papers.
The next day a package of 28 documents arrived. Most were photocopies, although at least one was an original with a circulation sheet still attached. They were mainly internal MI5 reports, marked "Top Secret UK Eyes Alpha Umbra Gamma" ... "UK-US Eyes Only" ... "Confidential", and so on. These included papers about Libyan dissidents by Shayler himself; a report entitled "Investigation of Subversive Organisations; and details of meetings between foreign office and Libyan officials in Cairo.
There was more sensitive material: reports on IRA training in Libya, an assessment of IRA-Libya links and, by far the most shocking, a long, meticulous document describing how the IRA had been procuring arms since the 1995 ceasefire. It was obvious that none of these documents could be published.
Shayler had been careful, however, not to take any "raw" intelligence reports that might identify agents or informers. His exercise was purely to demonstrate his credibility. The whistleblower succeeded and four days later we published his revelations in the Mail on Sunday.
The documents were then stored in the paper's legal department safe. In January 1998, after protracted legal negotiations, they were handed over to a representative of the treasury solicitor.
One important document, however, was absent from that dossier: the intelligence report which specifically links MI6 with the attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadafy. The recent leak of this document, on an American internet site, was devastating because it showed that British intelligence knew of the murder plot two months in advance, although the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, had described Shayler's original allegation as "pure fantasy". An Arab dissident was passing detailed information to his MI6 handler in anticipation of British assistance.
This week's heavy-handed responses- arresting a student friend of Shayler, pursuing the Guardian in court, and now hounding the Observer for alleged official secrets act crimes - are a direct consequence of the publication of that MI6 report.
An Old Bailey judge will rule today on attempts to force the newspapers to disclose their Shayler files.
Clearly, MI5 and MI6 are now terrified about more humiliating leaks. But the really interesting question is: who leaked that MI6 document?
Shayler himself did not have this report in his own dossier in 1997. (If he had hidden it from us all at the time, he would certainly have distributed it 18 months ago when the foreign secretary first denounced him as a fantasist.) The logical conclusion is that the MI6 document may have been separately leaked from within the intelligence community or the foreign office. This has frightening implications for those bodies. It suggests there is another mole and that Shayler has more support in Whitehall than has been realised.
And it corroborates my own information that there are other MI5 and MI6 officers who agree with Shayler's analysis. (The fact that half of the 1991 intake of MI5 officers had resigned by 1996 shows that Shayler was hardly a lone voice.)
The government's repressive reaction crystallises the key issue: that none of Shayler's allegations have ever been investigated.
When the cabinet office launched a review of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in late 1997, it was a perfect opportunity to investigate Shayler's claims officially and in secrecy. Although the inquiry was conducted by John Alpass, MI5's own former deputy director-general, Shayler compiled a 6,000-word submission. Alpass refused to accept his evidence.
The lesson from the Shayler affair is that there is no proper and workable accountability for the security services. The intelligence and security committee is answerable to the prime minister and not to parliament. It is not a select committee and so has limited powers of investigation. It refuses to accept evidence from witnesses critical of MI5 and MI6, and any new information is at the discretion of the agency chiefs. The committee has become absorbed as a creature of the executive rather than parliament.
The government shows by its own actions - threats and injunctions - that it has no interest in addressing the issues. So, is it now so surprising that intelligence documents are being leaked to the internet? As there is no private or public forum for debate, perhaps more embarrassing secrets will shortly be revealed.
• Mark Hollingsworth is the co-author, with Nick Fielding, of Defending the Realm - M15 and the Shayler Affair (Andre Deutsch )
The Guardian Weekly, March 16, 2000. Thanks to CM.
Richard Norton-Taylor
Last week four Special Branch officers armed with warrants turned up at Kingston university in southwest London. The warrants required the college authorities to provide the address of a student and give the police access to her personal computer. The student, Julie Ann Davies, was taken out of a lecture and promptly arrested. She was told she was being held under the Official Secrets Act, once described as "draconian" by Labour in opposition but clearly regarded as a useful weapon now that it is in power.
The writer Tony Geraghty was similarly charged last year for disclosing information about mass surveillance by the army in Northern Ireland. Lord Williams of Mostyn, the attorney general, subsequently saw sense and dropped the charges, though secrets charges against Colonel Nigel Wylde, holder of the Queen's Gallantry Medal for helping to defuse 96 bombs in Northern Ireland, remain.
Ms Davies has been active in the campaign to get the secrets charges against whistleblowing ex-MI5 man David Shayler dropped, and for more accountability of the secret agencies.
Despite official denials, serious questions remain unanswered about MI6 involvement in the 1996 plot to assassinate the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadafy. And we still do not know what MI5 knew about the bombing of the Israeli embassy in London in 1994: the courts will not release the information to the two Palestinian defendants.
Mr Shayler's latest allegation is that the security services bugged an interview between Michael O'Brien, an IRA suspect, and his lawyer, Gareth Peirce, at Belmarsh prison in 1992. O'Brien received an 18-year sentence for attempted murder of a special constable in North Yorkshire, though he has since been released.
It is not an isolated case. The security services also admit bugging a conversation between other defendants and lawyers at Belmarsh. The Guardian cannot yet reveal the names of those involved because of a contempt order by the courts.
The arrest of Ms Davies, who was was released on police bail until June, is a classic tactic of bullies - if you cannot get the big fish, frighten the unwary. It is the latest episode in increasingly desperate attempts by MI5 and MI6 to isolate Mr Shayler. The intelligence agencies have been deeply frustrated by the steady erosion of injunctions designed to shut him up. They appear to be concerned in particular about how a secret MI6 report about the Gadafy plot was placed on the internet last month. That is their excuse to send the Special Branch, traditionally regarded as MI5's footsoldiers, on a disgraceful fishing expedition.
For the police have also served notice on the Guardian that they intend to apply to the courts for an order to require the newspaper to hand over the original of a published letter from Mr Shayler last month.
The letter consisted mainly of abuse aimed at MI5, the parliamentary intelligence and security committee for being so spineless, and the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook.
After failing to get Mr Shayler extradited from France to face a prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, government lawyers are trying to silence him by serving him with a writ claiming damages in the civil courts. But the writ goes much further - it claims that the media is bound by the same duty of confidence, the same contractual obligations and the same copyright rules as former crown servants, including spies, whenever they report allegations deemed to cause "injury to the national interest".
These claims are being tested in a case that came before the Law Lords last week. The former Soviet spy George Blake is challenging the Government's argument that it owns any information, however sensitive, however old, provided by him.
His lawyer, Richard Clayton, told the Lords that the secrets act contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights. What makes the arrest of Ms Davies even more outrageous is that government lawyers privately concede this, too.