DVolkswagen's kept woman DClive Ponting: Agee on the runo In the Aids slipstream 0 Hilary Wainwright on the postworkersr--

DUNCANCAMPBELL

onZIRCON

PLUS

John Lloyd onwhy the minerslove Arthur

OFFICIAL SECRECY

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Zircon: Why MPs ~idn'twant to knowAs the dust of Zircon settles,DUNCAN CAMPBELL reveals howMPs colluded in being deceived bythe government over the centralissue of democratic accountability.He further argues that the Labouropposition's failure of nerve over'national security' has broughtBritain to a critical watershed forfree speech

IN THE COURSE of just this one year, the BBCand New Statesman endured raids and writsagainst the press unprecedented this century, thegovernment tried to overturn parliament'scenturies-old independence of the courts, and aseries of judicial pronouncements has created anewcivillawof official secrecymore powerful andintimidating than its criminal counterpart.These events did not begin with Zircon, nor

have they ended since the Attorney Generalannounced last month that there would be noprosecutions. But the gag orders of the last twoweeks against me and, separately, the BBC, aretelling evidence of the rapidly growing confidenceof our official censors. After the Labourleadership's first highly-defensive response to theZircon affair, they now feel secure that they maysafely disregard protests on behalf of civil liberty.Very little of the parliamentary debate that has

occurred has taken note that the purpose of theoriginal BBCSecret Society programme disclosingZircon's existence (NS 23 January 1987)was notto'blow' the technology of the planned new Britishelectronic monitoring satellite. Instead, the articledescribed a 'parliamentary bypass operation' -whereby the £500 million cost of the satellite wasentirely concealed from parliament and its PublicAccounts Committee (PAC). This was a directbreach of instructions given by the PAC in 1982.After the concealment of £1,000 millionexpenditure on the Chevaline nuclear missilesystem, all such costly defence projects were to bereported to the PAC in the form ofa (confidential).Major Projects Statement.Neither the government nor Defence Ministry

have formally denied the concealment, takingrefuge instead in the intricate language of theagreement with the PAC, or referring to non-existent 'national security' exemptions. (Non-existent because the exemptions were invented,after the fact, in January 1987;the Major ProjectsStatement procedure was in fact designed to dealwith the most highly-classified projects ofthe day,such as Chevaline.)In 1983,officials from the Defence Ministry, at

the request ofGCHQ, made a specific approach to

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the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir GordonDowney, to request that details of the Zircon plannot be disclosed to the PAC. The very fact that theapproach took place was evidence enough that theDefence Ministry were well aware that the projectshould have been reported. Had the AttorneyGeneral opted to prosecute last month, it wouldhave been extremely difficult for the governmentto have prevented the deception being exposed.A strident, although unsubstantiated, chorus

alleging damage to national security distractedparliamentary attention from the central issue ofdemocratic accountability. So, althoughparliament spent two days debating the raids onthe BBCand the censoring of MPs, there has neverbeen a formal debate about Zircon and defenceaccountability. The two parliamentarycommittees directly concerned in the scrutiny ofdefence accounts - both Conservative-dom-inated - have refused to take evidence from us.But the January police raids on the New

Statesman, the BBC and my and two otherreporters' homes were not part of a proper

, All the Leader of theOpposition could find to sayon day one of the Zircon rowwas to condemn the Prime

Minister for beinginsufficiently timely or

harsh in the speed or qualityof her oppression'

criminal investigation of damage to nationalsecurity. The government had known since July1986 that I was making a programme involvingZircon, following interviews with former defencechiefs. If a police or security investigation wasneeded, it could have been launched then; or, lateron, when they obtained their own copy of the BBCfilm. Even in the week that the BBC ban wasannounced, when it was clear that a row wouldensue, the Special Branch were not alerted. Thisonly happened after the Prime Minister had beenembarrassed and infuriated by the failure of herattempts to prevent the story being reported.When she discovered that the New Statesman

had published the story, and so nullified the effectof the ban on MPs seeing the original programme,she condemned us as 'people more interested intrying to ferret out information which is of use toour enemies than in preserving the defenceinterests of this country . . . people who usefreedom in order to destroy freedom'. That the

New Statesman was a 'left-wing publication' was'very significant'. On Monday the same week, theForeign Secretary and Defence Secretary hadcontented themselves with bickering about whosedepartment was responsible for the leak (if either).But now the temperature inDowning Street rose toincandescence. The next day, the Special Branchwere sent in.The character of the Special Branch inquiry

became all too plain a month later, when thegumshoes called on Jonathan Miller, a mediareporter on The Times. Miller had made his ownquite separate revelations about Zircon. DetectiveSuperintendent Hilton Cole, leading theinvestigation, was asked if he was thinking ofprosecuting The Times aswellas theNS. 'No' ,saidCole, he didn't want to 'have a witch-hunt againstjournalists'. 'Just Duncan Campbell?' saidMiller. Cole concurred, unprepared for AmericanMiller's characteristically terse response: 'Well, Iwant to be a martyr, too'.

Bludgeoning journalistsAfter the Secret Society row was over, the formerBBCAssistant Director General, Alan Protheroe,attacked the government's use of the OfficialSecrets Act against journalists as a 'bludgeon ...[The act] is an affront to contemporary society... an overt intimidation of the concepts whichunderline the ideal of democracy.' If BBCmanagement had been able to hold to this viewfrom the beginning, the Secret Society row,triggered by the BBC's own self-censorship,would not have happened.

In the event, the BBC very nearly did transmitZircon; that the programme came within a hair'sbreadth of being shown as scheduled was much tothe credit of Alasdair Milne, then the DirectorGeneral. From the moment the Secret Societyseries was first announced in the autumn of 1986,he had been put under enormous pressure by someofthe BBCgovernors to ban the entire series. Mostof the pressure came from Somerville principalDaphne Park, Scottish governor Watson Peat,and ex-diplomat Sir Curtis Keeble. Theymaintained that itwas wrong in principle to permita journalist like mel to make BBC programmes.Eventually, Milne himself was ousted. His

sacking did not improve the BBC's ability tohandle conflicts between the state andbroadcasters. Indeed, the Corporation'scentralised journalistic vetting system has beenenormously intensified. A honeymoon period inwhich the incoming DG, Michael Checkland,promised that decentralisation of editorialresponsibility would be a key feature of his reignhas been brief indeed. Since then the governmenthas obliged on the occasions the BBC has notoperated self-censorship, the banning order on theMy Country, right or wrong radio series being themost recent example.

NOT ONLY has the Public AccountsCommittee not held any formal enquiry into

the Zircon issue, the chairman, Robert Sheldon(right), tried to have his interview withdrawn, ineffect cancelling the programme even before theBBC ban took effect. As custodian of the five-year-old agreement about the disclosure ofmajor defence projects to his committee,Sheldon might have been expected to expressrighteous indignation on learning about Zircon.During an interview, he appeared to do this. Butimmediately afterwards, he became angry - notwith the Ministry of Defence for deceiving him,but with me and the BBC for finding out andproposing to announce the news.Until now, it has not been relevant to the

Zircon affair to explain why Sheldon (who hasconsistently refused to meet us or discuss theseissues) may have personal reasons for notwishing to agree with the BBC or the NewStatesman. But it was quite clear to the BBC teamin October 1986 that our uncovering of ProjectZircon had deeply embarrassed Sheldon. Hestarted the interview by boasting, at considerablelength, of how effectively he personally had gotthe Defence Ministry under control: 'We madesure that this [Chevaline] doesn't happen again.I've taken a number of steps to ensure that'.Then when 1 asked him about Zircon, he firstimplied that he did but couldn't talk:

Campbell: Has the committee been informed aboutProject Zircon?Sheldon: Well, I can't go into any detailedindividual projects. These are matters that comebefore us in the normal way and I wouldn't like todiscuss any of those at this stage..Campbell: Is that one that you are aware of,however? .Sheldon: It, it, I, I wouldn't like to go further onthat.'Campbell: ·Can you tell me if (he Committee isaware of this project at all?Sheldon: No, I can't go further on that one at thisstage.

When the camera ran out of film, Sheldonimmediately asked what Zircon was. He'd neverheard of it. Would we agree not to use the firstinterview, and refilm it? We agreed to ask thequestions again. He then gave us a different (andrather more accurate) answer.I asked Sheldon about Zircon in particular,

explaining what the project was, and what itcost. He said that he didn't know about Zircon- and if our facts were right, it was a 'veryserious' matter. But when filming stopped a fewminutes later, Sheldon was embarrassed,eriraged and loudly abusive. He demanded thatthe interview be scrapped entirely, and then tried

The canard of damage to 'national security' wasrepeatedly raised, but never justified, in the courseof the Zircon affair. As the first row broke, on theday theNS went on sale, the government had beentrying to stop MPs from seeing the Secret Societyprogramme, planned for the same afternoon.That morning, there was hectic activitythroughout the Commons as Mrs Thatcher askedNeilKinnock to allow an emergency motion to banthe showing (he agreed without question);.attempted to get the High Court to injunct a pre-lunch Commons showing arranged by !TN (thejudge refused to make the order); cajoled theSpeaker into banning the ITN showing instead

New Statesman II December 1987

The Labourwatchdog

who won't barkto pressurise the BBC to that end - not ongrounds of national security, but because he feltthat it had been conducted improperly, as hewasn't forewarned of the Zircon question.Within a few hours, Sheldon had complained

to Broadcasting House and to Alasdair Milneabout our conduct of the interview. 'Hiscomplaint was rejected. Sheldon angered Milneconsiderably by intervening through the newBBC Vice Chairman, Lord Barnett, a personalfriend, in an attempt to lean on Milne. Soonafter, Sheldon contacted the Controller andAuditor General, Sir Gordon Downey, andestablished that Zircon did exist, as alleged.

(the Speaker agreed but.was reputedly infuriatedthat he was not informed that the Zircon story hadby then been published); and invited Kinnock to aspecial security briefing prior to the afternoondebate (Kinnock agreed).

Rows over 'national security'At llam Kinnock, Healey, Hattersley, and JohnSmith went to the Foreign Office for a briefingwith Sir Clive Whitmore, the Ministry of DefencePermanent Secretary. Whitmore's job was toexplain why the Zircon revelation damagednational security, and to convince the oppositionleadership to support the government's motion to

Naturally resentful that Milne had refused hisdemand to drop the interview, Sheldonsubsequently refused to discuss the issue at allwith the producer of Secret Society, Brian Barr.When the story finally broke, Sheldonassiduously tried to suggest that he had knownabout it all along. On 20 January, Sheldon toldnewspapers that 'I have no evidence thatparliament has been deceived ... I madethorough checks to ensure that the procedureswere being properly carried out, and I wassatisfied.' He told The Times that 'he did knowabout the [Zircon satellite]' - but omitted tomention that he only got details of the projectafter the BBC interview. Later forced toacknowledge this, he asserted that reporting it tohim had not been necessary as Zircon was still inits project development stage. When it waspointed out that projects as costly as Zircon hadto be reported to him as soon as £10million hadbeen spent on project development (and about£70 million had by then been spent), he changedtack again, and claimed that there was a get-outclause in the agreement with the MoD. He toldfellow MPs on 26 January that 'projects may beomitted from [the Major Projects] list ongrounds of national security'.

But during the BBC interview the precedingOctober, Sheldon had said the exact opposite.The MoD, he then confirmed, were not allowedto leave 'anything at all off the list. .. Wemake

~ sure that everything is on that list'. What aboutc secret projects, I asked? 'We know exactly how:~ the money is being spent, and it's quite right that~ we should'. What about a major defence project~ in its initial stages, I asked? 'We are able right at~ the very earliest stage to examine ... how it is

proposed that they be carried out' .But when he learned that Sir Gordon Downey,

with whom he works closely, had indeedconcealed Zircon from him for three years, hechanged his account of events several times, asmore facts emerged. Sheldon's conduct, andthat of the British Public Accounts Committee,thus stands in stark contrast to the normalbehaviour of the US Congress in similarcircumstances, which would have aggressivelychallenged any such government deception. Thefact that Sheldon refused to acknowledge thatProject Zircon raised a real issue ofaccountability directly helped the government todeny legitimacy to the Secret Societyprogramme. But inside the BBC the strongest(and justified) criticism made of the Zirconprogramme was that I and producer Brian Barrhad been 'too kind' to Sheldon by omitting hisevasiveness, embarrassment and contradictoryanswers from the programme. D

ban the film from the Commons. The meeting wason 'Privy Council terms' - meaning that Kinnockand his party had to agree not to discuss what wassaid with outsiders. But at the meeting, Kinnockdid not see the Zircon film (which he has still neverseen). He then refused to have himself or any of hisadvisers briefed on how the relevant security issueshad actually been dealt with.

He thus agreed to hear only the government'sside of the argument - a critical error, since themost important feature of such arguments aboutsecurity is not what is said, but what is omitted.Most importantly, arguments about possibleSoviet countermeasures to a satellite of which they

II

OFFICIAL SECRECY

are forewarned fail when it is realised that the USand USSR have operated dozens of such satellitesagainst each other over the last 14years.But when, from a House of Commons office

and in the presence of many Labour MPs and oneof the front bench defence spokesmen, I offeredthe answers to any criticism GCHQ had made ofthe Zircon programme, I was asked not tocontinue telephoning his press secretary, PatriciaHewitt, in his offices a mere hundred yards away.This was on the grounds that Tory MPs might hearof the calls and criticise him - as they had done inthe Peter Wright affair - for permitting his staffto speak to the country's 'enemies'.Kinnock later announced that he had done what

he could 'to uphold the government view that[showing the film] would prejudice nationalsecurity ... I would have prevented the film beingshown.' But he hadn't seen the film - which was,and is, its own best defence against arguments of'national security'. The film starts with Sir FrankCooper, the former MoD Permanent Secretary,explaining that even schoolkids can spot spysatellites like Zircon. Before giving his interview,Sir Frank had insisted on knowing exactly whatthe programme was about - and was told.Knowing the difference between national securityand political embarrassment, Cooper went aheadwith the interview. But all that the Leader of theOpposition could find to say on day one of theZircon row was to condemn the Prime Minister forbeing insufficiently timely or harsh in the speed orquality of her oppression. Kinnock laterbacktracked and stated that 'whether it [thedisclosure of Zircon] jeopardised national securityis a matter yet to be demonstrated'. But hisincautious acceptance of the national securitycase, presented in a one-sided briefing by a farfrom disinterested government anxious to shieldits own embarrassment, gave Mrs Thatcher farmore room for manoeuvre than she ever.deserved.Before the Commons sat, Labour defence

spokesmen Martin O'Neill and KevinMcNamara,both of whom had seen the film first, freely gavetheir view to the media that they could not see anydamage in its contents. But after Kinnockpronounced, they were silenced, and such viewscould no longer be expressed from the party'sfront bench. It is extremely doubtful that thegovernment would have dared to be so heavy-handed with the New Statesman and the BBC hadnot most of the Opposition been so effectivelymuzzled in advance.

Breach of accountabilityA second, major reason that the breach ofparliamentary accountability never receivedproper public attention was the attitude during theZircon row of Robert Sheldon MP, the (Labour)chair of the Public Accounts Committee. It wasSheldon and his committee who had been deceivedby the concealment of the planned expenditure onthe spy satellite. But he didn't want to know (seebox). The committee subsequently went out of itsway to repudiate the specifics of the NS report,finding in April that although 'a formal process ofaccountability ... is at present lacking':

There are no grounds for supposing that the Zirconproject should have been included in the MajorProjects Statement as submitted to us ...

But the committee added the qualifying words,

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'given the present rulesfor the compilation of thatStatement'. The committee again refused to hearevidence from outside, and quotes no evidence onwhich its viewwas reached. Nor did it publish the'present rules' of the Statement. Indeed, the ruleunder which Zircon was excused disclosure hadnever been heard of prior to January 1987, and iswholly contrary to the letter and spirit of theChevaline agreement. It is probably notinconsequential that two members, WinstonChurchill and Edward Leigh, already knew thatthey were to be accused in another (stilluntransmitted) Secret Society programme ofinvolvement in a ruthless campaign against CND.The Defence Committee thus combined with thePAC in assisting the government to cover up thekey subject-matter of the whole Zircon row - thedeception of parliament.

, Superintendent Colelooked miserable ... It wasevident he would feel much

more at home in TheProfessionals than inbandying words with a

tiresome pinko jounalist andhis clever-clever lawyer'

Perhaps the most chilling memory of theseevents is not of Special Branch raids (nowregrettably, a periodic occurrence) but fromvisiting the House of Commons during the longafternoon debate on the raid on BBC Scotland. Iwatched from an upstairs gallery as David Steeland Roy Jenkins condemned the governmenttactics; Jenkins calling it the work of a 'second-rate police state'. Labour MPs smiled theirsupport; one Conservative came up quietly tooffer his support too.Lord Barnett, Vice Chairman of the BBC

Governors, came into the Commons gallery a fewrows away. The previous summer, at tea in theHouse of Lords, he had been briefed by me aboutthe Zircon programme, and had agreed to takepart. Barnett had preceded Sheldon as the chair ofthe Public Accounts Committee, and had been theinstigator of the Chevaline agreement. He agreedthat deception was serious, but had to withdrawfrom an interview when he became, for a while,the acting chairman of the governors.Now he saw me, and didn't smile. He looked

scared, which was astonishing. Here was a man ofpower, dignity and prestige, whom I had knownamicably for six years. He was now Peer of theRealm, Privy Councillor, Vice Chairman of theBBC Governors, as well as a socialist and theLabour Party Treasury spokesman in the Houseof Lords. He was well-to-do, with nothing to fearfrom the press, and no further need of MrsThatcher's patronage.Yet as I got up he rose quickly, ran up, out

through an arch and down the stairs, leavingbehind as quickly as possible the Chamber of theHouse of Commons. Before and since, he hasrefused all phone calls and letters, and press and

."tv invitations to discuss the importance of theagreement he once made about governmenthonesty to parliament. Barnett was not alone infearing to challenge the Prime Minister. TheGuardian called Kinnock's performance 'pitiful',adding that 'MPs ought to be pressing for detailsand explanations, not scuttling for cover as soonas the Prime Minister starts unfurling the flag'.Failing in courage and judgment, Neil Kinnock,

Robert Sheldon, and others opened the door to theinvasion of their own liberties and rights, as muchas ours. The effective result of the Secret Societyaffair has been that instead of consolidatinginvestigative journalism as an important part oftelevision production and media specialism, it hasonce again been marginalised. In the new BBC,Secret Society has become the history of how notto do things - a failure to control prograrnme-makers and wild-eyed journalists from the far'north, rather than a failure to fight the BBC'sground for independence from government, andagainst such disgraceful events as the unlawfulsearch warrants that were used against BBCScotland. BBC Scotland has still not beenpermitted to take sue the Special Branch fordamages for the search, despite being advised bythe doyen of Scottish lawyers nine months ago thata claim for £50,000 could be pressed.

An absurd sceneAs the great molehunt came to an end last spring inan upstairs room of Kings Cross police station,Superintendent Hilton J. Cole of the SpecialBranch did look miserable. He rubbed his croppedwhite hair in growing frustration, and leanedforward. It was evident that he would feel muchmore at home in The Professionals than inbandying words with a tiresome pinko journalistand his clever-clever lawyer. He sighed. Finally, hesaid that he believed that I was 'on record asclaiming to be a patriot. How do you reconcile thatwith shielding a traitor?'I didn't comment. But Cole's number two,

Detective Inspector Jim Williams, then loosed avolleyof questions that owed more to oratory thanto the gumshoes' search for leakers of governmentsecrets; dare we deny, he asked, that:

Bringing it (Zircon) out into the open was hardlylikely to be in the best interests of the country? Howcan the disclosure of the existence of Project Zirconbe anything but useful to a potential enemy? Do youdeny that the interests of this country were prejudicedby its disclosure?

We do - but Williams moved in for theclincher:

The Leader of the Opposition accepts that Zircon isasecret project affecting national secifrity which has tobe protected. Why do you reject his opinion?

Here, surely, we had one of the more absurdscenes in British socialist history - a left-wingjournalist being harangued by the Special Branchfor failing fully to share the opinions of the Leaderof the Labour Party. The failure of the Oppositionto establish a credible but critical position onnational security issues opened the door, then andsince, to an unprecedented wave of censorship anda diminution of parliamentary authority. Inmaking the Zircon programme, we set out to showhow parliament has been deceived. But weomittedto note that the watchdogs were asleep. 0