SPECTATOR
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SECRET MEANS SECRET
It is, of course, perfectly right, indeed obligatory, that a man should obey his con- science when he finds himself involved in an organisation that does what he believes to be evil. But obeying one's conscience is a duty, not a right; and to demand that one should be allowed to break with impunity the rules one has voluntarily accepted, as Mr Shayler did when he was first employed by MI5, is to demand the martyr's crown without the martyrdom. Mr Shayler appears to accept that. a secret service should, indeed must, exist; therefore he cannot consistently claim the right to free expression, as laid down under the Human Rights Act, soon to come into force. The existence of a secret service and of free expression are completely and ter- minally incompatible; and, in fact, no one genuinely believes in complete freedom of expression. Even the daily newspaper that is most vociferous in its demand for open- ness in government is notoriously secretive about its own affairs and management structure.
The question raised by Mr Shayler's alle- gation that British intelligence tried to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi is not one of openness but of control. Is the secret ser- vice under political control, as the armed forces are, or does it indulge in a little inde- pendent contracting? if it were under polit- ical control, politicians would have to bear the ultimate responsibility for what it did. It is therefore right that Parliament should supervise the secret service, but in the name of accountability, not freedom of information or of openness. And, ultimate- ly, many of the secrets of the secret service will have to remain secret.
Whistle-blowing of the Shayler school, however, has certain advantages: it pro- vides the whistle-blower with a new career as a slayer of dragons when his previous career is in the doldrums or is no longer palatable to him, and — despite the obvi- ous temporary drawbacks — it boosts the whistle-blower's ego and gives him his 15 minutes of fame. Self-righteousness com- bines with self-interest and the prospect of lucrative publishing contracts. It is heroism plus 5 per cent.
Mr Shayler's conceit and self-dramatisa- tion were revealed in the two articles he wrote for this magazine. In successive para- graphs, for example, he went from feeling like a dissident in the Soviet sense to actu- ally being such a dissident. The relevant dif- ferences did not occur to him. And it is highly significant that he did not talk of his duty to criticise an unaccountable depart- ment of state, but of his right to do so. The focus was on himself and on what he was owed: if he had been Luther, he would have said, 'Here stand I. They must let me do no other.' In asserting his rights rather than following his duty, Mr Shayler is an authen- tic product of his age.
While every man must exercise and obey his conscience in what he chooses to reveal about the ill-deeds of his employer, the complete revelatory incontinence dreamed of by theorists of openness would not only render any secret service impossi- ble, but all social and economic life a nightmare. Trust — the assumption that people know when to remain silent would be destroyed, and sincerity would therefore be impossible. No one would ever again say what he thought, much less write it down, and complete openness would thus result in solipsistic diminution, with every person enclosed in the prison of his own thoughts. Like every other free- dom, therefore, freedom of expression must be exercised judiciously, and not as an absolute right that invariably trumps all other considerations.
Moreover, it is obvious that the secret service, by the very nature of its work, will indulge in ethically dubious practices. It is inevitable, for example, that people will be spied and intruded upon who should not have been spied and intruded upon: for the secret service is predicated upon the fact that those who plot and conspire do not do so openly, and, since it is run by ordinary mortals, it cannot be expected to get every- thing right in advance. For a former secret service man to be shocked by this is a little like a surgeon complaining of the sight of blood.
The murk of the murky world of the secret service can never be dispelled entire- ly by the bright lights of publicity. The best that can be hoped for in this imperfect exis- tence is that the politicians control the secret service and that the electorate turfs out the politicians from time to time.
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