Clearing the Air
IT is good news that an independent tribunal is to be set up to look into the whole Vassall affair. Lord Radcliffe and his colleagues will have to sift a mass of rumour and innuendo which has grown to vast proportions over the last few days and many examples of which seem fully to merit the Prime Minister's epithets of `preposterous, wicked and vile.' In a case of this sort it is essential that even the most exag- gerated rumours should be probed and that there should be not the least suspicion remain- ing of a conspiracy of silence. To achieve this result an independent judicial tribunal is the proper machinery, which has already shown its
in cutting gossip down to size in the case value of the Lynskey tribunal. The Radcliffe tribunal will have to consider two Main lines of inquiry. First, there is the general question of security, the measures which should be taken to prevent cases of this kind from occurring and the reasons why they were not taken in this particular instance. Then will come an inquiry into what justifica- tion in fact exists for the rumours to which this case has given rise and into the personal re- sponsibility of those Ministers and officials in- volved in it. As Mr. Macmillan has said, this will be a 'trial of the truth,' and it is certainly high time that the truth should emerge. The atmo- sphere surrounding the Vassall case has hardly raised the tone of British political life, and the main criticism which can be made of the estab- lishment ofthe tribunal is that it has come so late to clear the air.
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