IN BRITAIN, OFFICIALS CAN NEVER TELL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706850005-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 14, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706850005-4
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE / -
Government Secrecy
In Britain, ,
Officials Can
Never Tell
By WILLIAM TUOHY,
Times Staff Writer
LONDON-If you want to get
your hands on information consid-
ered secret by the British, you
might try, prying it out in the
United States.
The two countries have radically
different attitudes toward official
secrecy, and on more than, one
occasion, research data classified as
confidential in Britain has been
made public in the United States by
means of the Freedom of Informa-
tion Act.
The U.S. Foodand Drug Admin-
istration, for example, has been'
forced to disclose the results of
British research that had been
classified as secret here, at least
temporarily, because it dealt with
something Britons wished to sell in
the United States.
And plans to put a pressurized
water reactor in a British nuclear.
power plant were frustrated for a
time when it was learned, by means
of a report obtained in the United
States, that safety conditions were
not exactly as advertised.
Uncommon Knowledge
These incidents are simply the
latest reminders that official secre-
cy is almost a way of life in Britain.
Because of the Official Secrets Act
and at least a hundred other stat-,
utes that deal with the subject, the
British people are often kept in the
dark about what is common knowl-
edge around government offices
and the clubs of Pall Mall and St.
James.
So great is the official penchant,
for secrecy that a public servant
can be sent to prison for disclosing-
the sort of information that is
handed out routinely in Washing-
LOS ANGELES TIMES
14 March 1985
ton. Not long ago, Clive Ponting, an
official in the British Ministry of
Defense, was accused of violating
the Official Secrets Act, and his
case has rekindled an old contro-
versy here over the evils-or mer-
its-of secrecy in government.
Ponting was charged with pass-
ing to an opposition member of
Parliament classified material
dealing with the Falkland Islands
War of 1982. A jury acquitted him,
finding, in effect, that a civil ser-
vant is responsible primarily to
Parliament, not the executive
branch.,
Ruling Party Afraid
This has generated fear in the
ruling Conservative Party that
other officials may be encouraged
to leak sensitive information, to the
opposition or to the press. They say
this could destroy the relationship
of trust between elected officials
and the civil service, and without
this relationship the process of
government would be severely im-
paired.
The case against Ponting, 38,
stemmed from the most disputed
act of the Falklands war, the
British sinking of the Argentine
cruiser Belgrano, with the loss of
368 lives.
To justify. the act, the British
government said the Belgrano was
steaming toward the Royal Navy
task force in the South Atlantic and
posed a direct threat. Subsequent-
ly, it was learned that at the time
the cruiser was torpedoed by a
British submarine, it was actually
headed away from the British ships
and was outside the zone in which
Britain had declared all Argentine
vessels enemy targets.
Under pressure from the Labor
Party, Defense Secretary Michael
Heseltine ordered an investigation
of the sinking. Ponting, who was
put in charge of the inquiry, said he
found documents that indicated
that "everything the government
had said for the past two years was
not, in fact, correct."
{ Later, when a parliamentary
committee began its own inquiry,
Heseltine and his aides suppressed
information and sent a "highly
misleading" memorandum to the
committee, Ponting said. Ponting,
acting anonymously, gave the doc-
uments he had uncovered to a
Labor Party lawmaker. The docu-
ments were turned over to the
committee, and the committee
promptly sent them on to Hesel-
tine. Defense Ministry detectives
traced the documents to Ponting,
who resigned.
Government critics say Ponting
trial's points up how a ruling party
can use the secrets laws to suppress
embarrassing and politically dam-
aging information.
Pro and Con
Secrecy, according to Desmond
Wilson, chairman of the Campaign
for Freedom of Information, "is the
enemy of rational decision-making
and the friend of political preju-
dice.... It allows governments to
cover up errors, suppress dissent-
ing views and conceal the fact that
their politics may not be working
or may even be having the opposite
effects to those intended." .
? . On the other hand, said Bernard
Ingham, Prime Minister Margaret '
Thatcher's press secretary, "you
can't run a government if there's
no confidentiality.... Completely
open government is not good gov-
ernment."
Ponting's acquittal last month
was acclaimed in some circles, and
it brought renewed demands for
scrapping the Official Secrets Act,
or at least for revising it to make it
more enforceable.
But people have been calling for
change almost since the. law was
enacted-in 1911, at the time of a
German spy scare-and down
through the years the authorities
have been reluctant to do anything
about the law. They have found it a
useful tool for keeping civil ser-
vants in line.
Ancient Oath
. All government employees ? are
required to sign the Official Secrets
Act, and senior ministers must take
the oath of the Privy Councilor as
well. The latter dates back to about
1250 A.D., and it binds one to keep
"secret all matters committed and
revealed to you."
As Wilson, the chairman of the
free information campaign, sees it:
"If every civil servant took the act
literally, the bureaucracy and soci-
ety would come to a complete halt.
It would mean that civil servants
could hardly talk or write to each
other, let alone anyone else. (Cabi-
I"Rued
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706850005-4
net) ministers . . . would spend
their entire lives taking decisions
about what documents should or
should not be made available and to
whom."
Government officials and the
press are kept in line not only by
the Official Secrets Act and related
statutes, but by stiff libel laws and
something called the D-Notice
("D" for defense), under which
news organizations can be told to
not report certain information for
security reasons. Moreover, many
government documents are pro-
tected by the so-called 30-year
rule, which keeps them private and
which can be extended to 60 years
in the case of intelligence docu-
ments.
However, incidents that are sup-
pressed in the British media often
make their way into the foreign
press. The story of the notorious
British spy Kim Philby first ap-
Research indicates
that many government
findings on hazardous
materials and sites
have been suppressed.
peared in newspapers abroad, as
did the truth about King Edward
VIII's love affair with the Ameri-
can divorcee Wallis Warfield
Simpson, though all Fleet Street
editors were aware of it.
In intelligence matters the cloak
of secrecy can a carried to ex-
tremes. The - government tries to
keep secret the names of the heads
of the domestic security service
(MTh) and the overseas intelli-
gence service it even de-
nies, officially, the existence of
these services.
Britain's concern for secrecy at
the national level has spilled over
to the regional and local levels as
well, and critics contend that the
public is being denied important
information that affects their lives,
their health and their pocketbooks.
Environmental Protection
For example, they say that if the
facts about the development of the
Concorde supersonic airliner had
been known, the British Treasury
could have been saved billions of
pounds.
Critics also charge that the fail-
ure of the government to publish
information has increased the risk
of environmental pollution, along
with the possibility of having poor-
ly built nuclear power stations.
Prof. Richard Southwood, chair-
man of the Royal commission on
Environmental Pollution, said in a
recent report that government se-
crecy is the chief obstacle to better
environmental protection. He said
1 .
research indicates that many gov-
ernment findings on hazardous ma-
terials and sites have been sup-
pressed.
'Many Britons feel that, at the
least, the Official Secrets Act
should be rewritten to sharpen the
penalties for outright espionage but
to reduce those for the leaking of
less sensitive material. Some have
suggested that minor offenses
might be made subject to adminis-
trative rather than criminal pro-
ceedings.
Study Urged Change
In the early 1970s, a committee
was established under Lord
Franks, a former ambassador to the
United States, to study the law.
The committee found that a key
section of the law was "a mess,"
and,added that "people are not sure
what it means or how it operates in
practice, or what kinds of action
involve real risk of prosecution
under it."
They committee said it was es-
sential that the law be changed,
and outlined a relatively narrow
range of material it considered
sensitive enough to be covered by
the secrecy laws.
Since then, various British gov-
ernments have paid lip service to
the Franks report, but the law
stands unchanged.
The Labor Party, now the oppo-
sition party in Parliament, has
called for rewriting the secrets act
and also for enacting a freedom of
information law.
However, Prime Minister Mar-
garet Thatcher, who as a young
member of Parliament supported
permitting greater public access to
local government meetings, as not
tht
spoken out for any etings,
secrecy laws.
Some members of her Conserva-
tive Party have expressed the view
that the official Secrets Act
it, is tstrong enough. Diluting it, they
of
say or enacting a freedom would greatly
in ,rmcaate n complicate business of govern-
ing.
Change unlikely Soon
So long as the Conservatives and
Thatcher are in power, it seems
unlikely that there will be any
substantive change in the secrecy
f or
laws , though the
change is increasing. well,"
"We are doing pretty
Wilson said, "and we're in fo,o the
long haul. We've opened up
the secrecy
d
uce
government to re
there. And I think that the govern-
ment ment now accepts our point
secrecy in the environmental field
is damaging to the public.
"We're trying to mobilize sup-
port and to make freedom versus
secrecy an issue at the next general
election. I have no doubt that this
legislation will one day be intro-
duced. And after these reforms are
=e nted, men and had allowed
at the way
information in Britain to be so
restricted.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706850005-4