The State of Secrecy: Spies and the Media in Britain PDF
Preview The State of Secrecy: Spies and the Media in Britain
The State of Secrecy ii The State of Secrecy Spies and the Media in Britain Richard Norton-Taylor I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Richard Norton-Taylor, 2020 Richard Norton-Taylor has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Namkwan Cho, nam-design.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7883-1218-9 ePDF: 978-1-8386-0743-2 eBook: 978-1-8386-0742-5 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. ‘Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?’ – John Milton, Areopagitica vi Contents Author’s note viii Acknowledgements ix Preface xi Prologue xiv Introduction 1 1 Heroes and hacks 13 2 Poachers and gamekeepers 35 3 Brussels, city of myths and contradictions 69 4 The culture and language of secrecy 91 5 Secrecy obsessed 115 6 History is an official secret 143 7 Spies: Their uses and abuses 163 8 Spies: More uses and abuses 193 9 Provoking terror 225 10 Chilcot redux 255 11 Defending the past 271 12 Defending the future 301 Notes 313 Index 324 Author’s note Id escribe as the ‘Common Market’ and the European Economic Community (EEC), and occasionally the ‘European Community’, what later became the European Union. I also follow common practice in calling the Security Service, MI5, and the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Acknowledgements Iw ould like especially to thank Iradj Bagherzade who first suggested I write an account of more than fifty years of journalism. He steered me through this book’s journey as it changed shape from a personal memoir to a study of official secrecy, albeit illustrated and I hope illuminated by personal anecdotes. I thank, too, Joanna Godfrey formerly of I.B. Tauris, whose patience and suggestions were crucial, and her colleagues, especially Olivia Dellow and all those at I.B. Tauris and Bloomsbury who contributed to the publication of this book. I owe a big debt to my first Guardian editor, Peter Preston, who set me off on my career as a journalist in Brussels, and to his successor, Alan Rusbridger, who showed the world what committed, brave journalism can achieve. I also have to thank a succession of news editors despite the critical asides I have directed at them here. Among former colleagues at the Guardian I want to thank in particular Ian Cobain, Duncan Campbell, Rob Evans, David Gow, Simon Hattenstone, David Leigh, Ian Mayes, Hella Pick and Ed Vulliamy, for their comradeship and outstanding journalism. For years I have been helped and encouraged by Maurice Frankel, director of the Freedom of Information Campaign, Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), the committed staff of the law charity Reprieve, and in particular Clive Stafford Smith and Cori Crider, by the law firm Leigh Day and especially Sapna Malik, by Gareth Peirce, the indefatigable pursuer of abuse by state agencies, Geoffrey Robertson QC, staff at the National Archives and the National Audit Office responsible for monitoring the activities of the Ministry of Defence, Tony Bunyan of Statewatch, and by David Lowry, an encyclopedic source of information about British defence policy and nuclear weapons.
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