Keeping secrets

THE PRESS DONALD McLACHLAN

The press, too, has its secrets. A few weeks ago I wrote to newspaper managements asking them to let me know how many coloured people they employed. I thought that this in- formation, having regard to the treatment of the colour bar in most Fleet Street publications, might be interesting. From most of them there came a helpful and courteous reply; but the News of the World wrote: 'it is not the prac- tice of this company to give information con- cerning-staff to unofficial organisations.' I have felt much humbler since learning that a free- lance journalist is regarded by the 'greatest newspaper in the world' as an unofficial organisation.

May I be forgiven this trivial manner of reminding Whitehall that newspaper men are immensely practised in secret-keeping? Editors, city editors, lobby and crime and defence correspondents, racing editors and diplomatic staffs are continually—especially the last-named —hearing and burying away secrets as a dog buries a bone. Some of these are very explo- sive and remain underground, either because editors prefer them that way or because eminent solicitors like Lord Goodman have exerted themselves against their publication. Legal threats and appeals to honour apart—b6th are often resorted to—newspaper men know it does not pay to break confidences. A source let down is a source lost.

I contend, therefore, that editors cannot be d. vied knowledge of national secrets (that is to say, matters recognised as secret by all pos- sible British governments) on the ground that they have been proved unreliable. The war proved them utterly reliable, and it could be argued that we are still 45 per cent at war. I would contend further that newspaper and in- telligence work are remarkably akin : digging for and collecting facts; listening and question- ing; filing and checking; communicating, often in code, all over the world. They have the same language; they have even the same fears.

Is it possible, then, that distrust of the press is no more than dislike of publicity? Is the present head of MIS, for example, merely con- cerned to escape the vulgar publicity which surrounded the job in Sillitoe's day? If so, harmless enough. But that cannot be the ex- planation. Right at the end of the Radcliffe report is an exchange between the chairman and Mr Jack Dicker, Newspaper Proprietors' Association representative for twelve years on the D Notice Committee. He is chief sub- editor of the Daily Telegraph, deeply versed in secrets from his wartime work. He was asked whether the committee received too little information about Security Service work to be able to issue a D Notice about it. 'Yes,' was the reply, `so far we have not seen Mr X.'

This title reminded me at once that Mr X appeared in public before the Vassall Tribunal. where he was seen by over 200 reporters and spectators, one of them Dame Rebecca West, who was writing an article for me and com- mented on his good looks. I cannot see why the D Notice Committee, with fewer than a dozen journalists present, is less safe.

In the current case there is another possi- bility: vendetta at No. 10 against Mr Chapman Pincher, whose intensive specialisation and filing methods have enabled him to work out stories which politicians think must be 'leaks'

—that is to say. indiscretions not emanating

from themselves. I am sure there is something in this. Whitehall is afraid of good reporters;

so, for that matter, is Fleet Street when its own affairs come into question. Indeed, it will be demonstrated when MPS and lawyers get going with their Bills for the defence of pri- vacy that nobody loves a good reporter.

But is it not absurd to pretend that editors can be trusted with the nation's deepest secrets?

With respect to past and present Prime Minis- ters and permanent-under-secretaries, I say it is not. There is all the difference between tell- ing them, on the one hand, what is being done.

who is doing it and where, and, on the other hand, telling them how it is done, what the latest

failure or success is, and what is going to be done next. It is virtually certain that enemies know the former; what they are trying to find out is the latter. Why not, therefore, tell edi- tors what the enemy knows? We might even. after a time, be. able to do without D Notices as they do in the United States.

With matters as they are, an American in- telligence officer or an American newspaper man (I have consulted both) is entitled to say: `Either you British have journalists who can- not be trusted or you have politicians who believe they can't.'

There is a school of thought which says: there are no real secrets; we are a second-rate power; let us drop all this security business. It is not easy to deal temperately with these people.

Do they not know that even neutral Switzerland and Sweden have highly organised intelligence services, and therefore many secrets? Take the Mirror, whose editor resigned from the D Notice Committee. In its comment of 15 June it de- nounced `stoopid [sic] nonsense' and said that, for all it knew, our intelligence might be run by a chimpanzee. This is the paper that boasts of being the best-informed of the populars, the darling of the armed forces. Is it saying that our so'diers in Aden and Indonesia would have been safer if Nasser and Sukarno had read at breakfast each morning a full account of their movements and plans? Or that the

V-bomber squadrons should have a reporter one the airfield covering their alerts? Or that Russian journalists should roam freely round British underwater weapon establishments? Of course not. If a Tory government had given such secrets away, the riiiirror would have de- manded a Tribunal.

I mention this kind of ignorant writing be- cause it is this attitude on the part of the press that undermines in Whitehall the arguments of those who want less security. 'That,' they will be told, 'is what journalists are really like.' Mr Lee Howard would have been acting more usefully if he had briefed his leader- writer to show how each security row we have had—Vassall, Profumo, Blake and now the D Notice—has produced reports which in fact have revealed more and more secrets. That is `stoopid.'

I have no doubt at all from reading be- tween the lines the judgments and reports for which Lord Radcliffe has been responsible that what he has heard and thought has led him away from the Whitehall towards the Fleet Street view. That is why Mr Wilson's difference with him is so important.