Find a way to “gag the blabbers” was the blunt instruction issued by David Blunkett in his day as Home Secretary when he struggled to stem the flow of unauthorised disclosures about the conduct of the war in Iraq and the response to terrorist attacks in Britain.
Two years later Blunketts edict has finally produced a response and the Home Office has now revealed how the Government intends to tighten the Official Secrets Act. A bill to crackdown on security and intelligence officials who breach the secrecy laws is expected to be announced in the Queens Speech on 15 November 2006.
Ministers want to close a loophole which the Government believes might be used to defend future whistleblowers. There would be also be tougher penalties: the maximum jail sentence for such disclosures is to be increased from two to possibly four years.
Moves to tighten the secrecy laws look like coinciding with the first significant prosecution under the Official Secrets Act since February 2004 when the case against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun collapsed.
In the latest case, due to start at the Old Bailey on 9 October, very little is likely to emerge publicly because the judge has already indicated that reporting restrictions will apply during the trial of a former civil servant and a political researcher who have both been charged under the Official Secrets Act with offences relating to the leaking of a transcript of a conversation in April 2004 in which President Bush appeared to suggest bombing the headquarters of the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera.
David Keogh and Leo OConnor have both pleaded not guilty to the unauthorised disclosure of a memo in which Bush was apparently only talked out of bombing Al Jazeera after Tony Blair warned it would “spark horrific revenge”.
Keogh, who had been a communications officer at the Cabinet Office, is accused of passing the document to OConnor who was, at that time, a political researcher for Tony Clark, Labour MP for Northampton South.
In November 2005, five days after the pair were remanded on bail by Bow Street magistrates, it emerged the leaked document containing the transcript was stamped “top secret”.
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, did his best to play down the story, insisting the news reports saying the President wanted to bomb Al Jazeera were “outlandish and inconceivable”; an anonymous Downing Street official suggested Bushs remark was simply a joke.
Whatever was being said publicly, the Governments law officers responded with alacrity. The next day the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, warned editors they would be liable for prosecution under the Official Secrets Act if they published “any further details” from a document which had been “unlawfully disclosed by a Crown servant”.
At a court appearance in July 2006, in preparation for the start of the trial of Keogh and OConnor, an Old Bailey judge, Mr Justice Aikens, ruled that any discussion about the leaked transcript would have to take place behind closed doors; the public and news media would be banned from hearing the prosecutions arguments on the grounds of national security.
The conduct and outcome of the case could have a direct bearing on future legislation. What campaigners against the secrecy laws are waiting to discover is whether lawyers for Keogh and OConnor try to take advantage of the so-called “defence of necessity”.
This was established as a result of an appeal to the House of Lords by the former MI5 Intelligence Officer, David Shayler, who was sentenced to six months imprisonment in 2002 for leaking classified information. Liberty would have used the same line of defence in support of Katharine Gun had the case against her not been abandoned by the prosecution.
Ms Gun, a translator at the GCHQ eavesdropping centre, was charged with disclosing classified security and intelligence information, revealing that the US was planning a “dirty tricks” campaign to swing a United Nations vote in the lead-up to the war against Iraq.
Although relieved the case against her was dropped, she has subsequently said she regrets missing the opportunity to argue, in court, that her action had been “necessary to prevent an illegal war”. If the case had gone to trial she feels she may have set a precedent which would make it harder for the Government to amend the Law Lords ruling.
It is the “defence of necessity” which would be curtailed by the proposed tightening of the secrecy laws. According to the annual report of Intelligence and Security Committee, published in June 2006, the Home Office intends to “remove the common law defence of duress of circumstance”. This is considered to be the only way to clamp down on the growing number of illicit disclosures by members and former members of the intelligence and security agencies.
Find a way to “gag the blabbers” was the blunt instruction issued by David Blunkett in his day as Home Secretary when he struggled to stem the flow of unauthorised disclosures about the conduct of the war in Iraq and the response to terrorist attacks in Britain.
Two years later Blunketts edict has finally produced a response and the Home Office has now revealed how the Government intends to tighten the Official Secrets Act. A bill to crackdown on security and intelligence officials who breach the secrecy laws is expected to be announced in the Queens Speech on 15 November 2006.
Ministers want to close a loophole which the Government believes might be used to defend future whistleblowers. There would be also be tougher penalties: the maximum jail sentence for such disclosures is to be increased from two to possibly four years.
Moves to tighten the secrecy laws look like coinciding with the first significant prosecution under the Official Secrets Act since February 2004 when the case against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun collapsed.
In the latest case, due to start at the Old Bailey on 9 October, very little is likely to emerge publicly because the judge has already indicated that reporting restrictions will apply during the trial of a former civil servant and a political researcher who have both been charged under the Official Secrets Act with offences relating to the leaking of a transcript of a conversation in April 2004 in which President Bush appeared to suggest bombing the headquarters of the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera.
David Keogh and Leo OConnor have both pleaded not guilty to the unauthorised disclosure of a memo in which Bush was apparently only talked out of bombing Al Jazeera after Tony Blair warned it would “spark horrific revenge”.
Keogh, who had been a communications officer at the Cabinet Office, is accused of passing the document to OConnor who was, at that time, a political researcher for Tony Clark, Labour MP for Northampton South.
In November 2005, five days after the pair were remanded on bail by Bow Street magistrates, it emerged the leaked document containing the transcript was stamped “top secret”.
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, did his best to play down the story, insisting the news reports saying the President wanted to bomb Al Jazeera were “outlandish and inconceivable”; an anonymous Downing Street official suggested Bushs remark was simply a joke.
Whatever was being said publicly, the Governments law officers responded with alacrity. The next day the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, warned editors they would be liable for prosecution under the Official Secrets Act if they published “any further details” from a document which had been “unlawfully disclosed by a Crown servant”.
At a court appearance in July 2006, in preparation for the start of the trial of Keogh and OConnor, an Old Bailey judge, Mr Justice Aikens, ruled that any discussion about the leaked transcript would have to take place behind closed doors; the public and news media would be banned from hearing the prosecutions arguments on the grounds of national security.
The conduct and outcome of the case could have a direct bearing on future legislation. What campaigners against the secrecy laws are waiting to discover is whether lawyers for Keogh and OConnor try to take advantage of the so-called “defence of necessity”.
This was established as a result of an appeal to the House of Lords by the former MI5 Intelligence Officer, David Shayler, who was sentenced to six months imprisonment in 2002 for leaking classified information. Liberty would have used the same line of defence in support of Katharine Gun had the case against her not been abandoned by the prosecution.
Ms Gun, a translator at the GCHQ eavesdropping centre, was charged with disclosing classified security and intelligence information, revealing that the US was planning a “dirty tricks” campaign to swing a United Nations vote in the lead-up to the war against Iraq.
Although relieved the case against her was dropped, she has subsequently said she regrets missing the opportunity to argue, in court, that her action had been “necessary to prevent an illegal war”. If the case had gone to trial she feels she may have set a precedent which would make it harder for the Government to amend the Law Lords ruling.
It is the “defence of necessity” which would be curtailed by the proposed tightening of the secrecy laws. According to the annual report of Intelligence and Security Committee, published in June 2006, the Home Office intends to “remove the common law defence of duress of circumstance”. This is considered to be the only way to clamp down on the growing number of illicit disclosures by members and former members of the intelligence and security agencies.