Who is behind the extraordinary run of Whitehall scoops in the Sunday Times?
For the past 15 months the Sunday Times has carried a string of exclusives about the inner workings of Whitehall. The deliberations of the honours committee were uncovered in minute detail. Another story revealed the ways in which the government was hoping to forge links with the Muslim community. The newspaper's most recent exposure cast light on the plans of civil servants to award themselves an enormous pay rise. Some of the stories carried by the paper highlighted deep divisions between ministers. So great was the consternation in Downing Street that Tony Blair ordered an inquity. Some internal Cabinet memos about this investigation were in turn leaked to the paper.
Eventually it dawned on No. 10 that the leaks must have come from the Cabinet Office since no other single department would have had access to so wide a range of information. Last month Claire Newell, a 23-year-old working as an agency temp in the Cabinet Office, was arrested by Special Branch police. She was not charged, but was bailed to return to a London police station next month.
To some it may seem a preposterous idea that a 23-year-old temp could have been the source of so many detailed and damaging leaks. (The bylines on the stories carried by the paper were usually those of the political editor, David Cracknell, and David Leppard, an investigative reporter.) But it turns out that Ms Newell worked as a very junior journalist at the Sunday Times in the summer of 2003 after completing a postgraduate journalism course at the London College of Communications. Police are now operating on the theory that Ms Newell had an accomplice in the Cabinet Office, and we can probably expect a further arrest.
This could turn out to be an extraordinary affair. I doubt that any newspaper has ever carried so many exclusives from the bowels of Whitehall over so long a period as has the Sunday Times. But, most unusually, the source may not be a conventional whistle-blower driven by high idealism, such as Clive Punting or Sarah Tisdall, with a particular axe to grind. Of course, Ms Newell may have had nothing to do with this. But what if the Sunday Times has infiltrated Whitehall by getting one or more aspiring journalists to work as secretaries, maybe even paying them? The point about such people is that they do an awful lot of typing and confidential documents have to be typed.
If this turns out to be the case, certain questions will be asked. In the first place, security in Whitehall will have been shown to be laughably lax if a journalist can pass herself off as a secretary. Proper checks cannot have been made about Ms Newell's background; the Cabinet Office would not knowingly have employed someone who had recently completed a degree in journalism. Someone has been incompetent.
As for Ms Newell (if she was responsible) and the Sunday Times, I have mixed feelings. If she were involved, she would have shown herself to be a very enterprising young journalist who should be snapped up immediately. Many of the leaks did not show Whitehall in a very good light, and we should he grateful for them. On the other hand, it would be difficult not to have a few qualms if it turned out that the Sunday Times had paid money for these stories. I repeat that I will have nothing but admiration for Ms Newell if she emerges as the Source of the leak. To keep going for 15 months without detection would be quite a feat even if you were surrounded by a lot of half-witted civil servants with the investigative skills of Inspector Clouseau. But should the Sunday limes, which still likes to think of itself as at least a semi-respectable newspaper, have paid money (if it did) for information of this sort? I have a strong sense that we have not heard the end of this affair.
If an American publisher or broadcasting organisation were to canvass in a British general election, there would be an outcry, and the Guardian would be in the forefront. It is therefore a little difficult to understand
how the newspaper can justify its involvement in the US presidential election. It has targeted Clark County (population 143,000) in the crucial swing state of Ohio, bought a list of registered voters, and extracted those names listed as undecided. Some 14,000 people have registered with the Guardian to write letters to these electors recommending that they vote for Kerry.
If I were to receive a letter from an American correspondent sponsored by a US media outlet urging me to vote for A, I might very well plump for B in a mood of some outrage. So the Guardian jape may backfire. But it is surely not the business of any newspaper to try to affect the outcome of an election in a foreign country. The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, would have to be tranquillised, and his energetic columnist Jonathan Freedland roped down, if Murdoch's egregious Fox News attempted to persuade British voters to support Michael Howard.
T have already written at some length in 1 the Daily Mail about L'Affaire Spectator, and I will not risk boring readers by repeating the arguments I set out there, with which I do not believe the editor of this magazine is in total agreement. However, for those who never look at the Mail, this is what I think. (1) The references to Hillsborough and Liverpool in the editorial were misjudged, as Boris Johnson has conceded. But many British people do indulge in public demonstrations of grief which would have surprised our fathers and grandfathers. This grief often turns out to he short-lived and shallow, as proved to he the case after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. (2) It is deeply shocking that the leader of a political party should feel able to admonish, and issue instructions to, the editor of a national publication. (3) Michael Howard considerably over-reacted to the editorial. (4) He was, however, strictly within his rights in asking Boris Johnson to go to Liverpool, since Boris is a Tory front-bench spokesman. (5) Whatever we may have thought of the editorial, we should defend the right of Boris to publish what he believes irrespective of the electoral considerations of the Tory party leadership. (6) Nothing would make me happier, as a believer in a free press and a Spectator columnist, than to see Boris making this point to Michael Howard.
Previous page
