MEDIA STUDIES
They had their motives, but I do not judge these editors by those
STEPHEN GLOVER
It seems years ago — before Christmas and the Mandelson drama — that I ended my last column wondering why Fleet Street was not showing more energy in tracking down the mysterious editor said to work for MI6. The ink was barely dry, the presses had scarcely rolled, when the Labour MP Brian Sedgemore named Dominic Lawson, a former editor of this magazine and now editor of the Sunday Telegraph, as the guilty man. The hullabaloo could not have been greater had Mr Lawson been revealed as a senior KGB officer.
The Guardian and the Times, foremost in the hunt, had differing reasons for wishing to damage Mr Lawson and The Spectator. Readers will be aware of the criticisms which contributors to this magazine have made of the Guardian over the past couple of years. Here was a heaven-sent opportu- nity for the newspaper to question The Spectator's integrity as its own had been questioned. The newspaper had also nursed a grievance against Mr Lawson. When edi- tor of this magazine, he had published an article about Richard Gott, the Guardian's literary editor, revealing that Mr Gott had accepted two 'freebies' from the KGB. Mr Gott was forced to resign.
After Mr Lawson's name had been whis- pered, the Guardian hit on the old ruse of encouraging a co-operative MP — Mr Sedgemore — to ask a question under the protection of parliamentary privilege. On the morning after the bombing of Iraq began, the newspaper found space to put the Lawson story on page one, and to fill the whole of page three with it. Its main allegation was that, while editor of The Spectator, Mr Lawson published three arti- cles about Bosnia by Kenneth Roberts who, though identified as working for the UN, was in fact a pseudonym for an MI6 officer. The Guardian also repeated the allegation that Mr Lawson was on MI6's payroll.
All this explains where the Guardian is coming from. It hopes to put The Spectator and Mr Lawson on the spot. The Times has no particular animus against this magazine. But it hopes to embarrass the owner of the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator. There is a spirited rivalry between the Conrad Black-owned Telegraph Group and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times and its sis- ter titles. The Daily Telegraph threw mud pies at the Times when it became clear that one of Mr Murdoch's publishing companies had vetoed a book written by Chris Patten because it might have disconcerted the Chi- nese government. The allegations against Mr Lawson provided an opportunity for my old friend Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, to turn the tables.
But the paper rather forgot that before Mr Stothard had grasped the full possibili- ties of this story it had distanced itself from the allegation, made by the renegade ex- MI6 agent, Richard Tomlinson, that Mr Lawson worked for British intelligence. On 12 December, the paper's 'defence editor, Michael Evans, had written that 'the For- eign Secretary himself' would be required to approve any such recruitment, and implied that such approval was unlikely in the case of a British newspaper editor, though conceivable with a foreign one.
Such are the less than wholly pure moti- vations of Mr Lawson's chief persecutors. Are we then to conclude that everything they suggest is without foundation? There is no reason to credit Mr Tomlinson's alle- gation that Mr Lawson was a paid MI6 agent. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest he was, and it is inherently implau- sible. Mr Lawson has denied the allegation in unequivocal terms. Even Mr Tomlinson, an unreliable character if there ever was one, is having second thoughts, and now accepts that the suggestion that Mr Lawson is a spy was 'hearsay' and 'based on conver- sations with colleagues'.
But it is usually a mistake to judge the truth of an allegation only by the presumed motives of those who make it. Mr Lawson, so far as one can tell, has never been paid a penny by MI6. But it is clear — indeed Mr Lawson has virtually admitted it — that `Kenneth Roberts', the author of three arti- cles in this magazine, was an MI6 agent. His real name is known to me, as it is known to the Times, but cannot be repeat- ed because a D-notice has been served. Mr Roberts was not who he said he was, and not who Mr Lawson's magazine said he was.
This being the case, it seems to me that the readers of this magazine, and perhaps the world at large, are entitled to a fuller explanation than has been provided by Mr Lawson. At the very least he was rather credulous in accepting the word of 'Ken- neth Roberts' that he was a United Nations employee when he was in fact an MI6 oper- ative peddling views helpful to the British government. Mr Lawson has more work to do to convince us that he had no idea as to the identity of Kenneth Roberts.
In my book, co-operating with our own security services is no crime. Far, far worse to have helped out the KGB. But for a jour- nalist to have any contact with our own people, in however peripheral a way, is liable to cause confusion. Mr Lawson has issued a denial that convinces me he was never an agent, paid or otherwise, of M16, but his association with the real 'Kenneth Roberts' has not yet been fully explained. Until he offers us a more detailed account, suspicions are bound to remain that his relationship with MI6 was more intimate than he says it was. Mr Lawson no longer works for this magazine, and it is not in my power or anyone else's to force him to say anything, but it is almost certainly in his own interests.
Iobserved the downfall of Peter Mandel- son from the perspective of a Swiss Alp. Whatever one thinks of the man, it was impossible not to respond to the tragic ele- ments of this story. But I can't agree with the columnist Robert Harris, a friend of Mr Mandelson, who thinks that the press in general behaved discreditably. One can understand that he may not have liked reading some of the things written about his mate. But in most ways, it-seems to me, newspapers showed themselves in their finest colours — and none more so than the Guardian, which broke the story.
Exactly how its reporter Seumas Milne learnt about Geoffrey Robinson's loan to Mr Mandelson is still a matter of dispute. In a way, it doesn't matter. The point is that he got the story — without any assistance from an Egyptian tycoon — and that the paper published it without fear of the con- sequences it might have on the party that it loosely supports. Newspapers publish so much useless gunge these days. It is good to see them, and the Guardian in particular, running real news that causes a political sensation. I can't believe that Mr Harris would disagree with that.
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