Impossible Anonymity
by Paul McGoldrick

Since humanity's early days, there have been spies. Some generations were more effective than others, and survived longer. The standouts prior to the Twentieth Century were in the days of Queen Elizabeth I. The spymaster's assets included the unlikely -- who simply fitted into their adopted life, role playing with certainty -- but they were in the right place, at the right time, listening carefully.

We have a lot less true spying than that nowadays. There is such a reliance on technology that human intelligence gathering (humint) has been less effective in the last twenty years and, in some cases, has dramatically altered and fixated the causes of a nation. If there had been enough honest humint on the ground in Iraq it would have been difficult for the Bush White House to come up with any cause for invasion. With, apparently, no decent humint on the ground in Iran, history now seems set to tragically repeat itself.

In Britain there has been, since 1911 (and modified in 1920 and 1989) legislation that is defined as The Official Secrets Acts. One of those Acts, that of 1989 replacing Part 2 of the original, is publicly available, and clearly lays out what a Civil Servant -- or Government Contractor -- can and cannot do with information associated with work for, or with, the Government. The maximum penalties under the published Act are about two years' imprisonment and/or fines.

However, some employees are required to sign another document -- what we used to call Part One -- which is rather less forgiving in the way it treats the transmission, or misuse, of information. At one time the severest penalty was death. Isn't that fun? And those accused under the act will find their trial in camera, with approved legal representatives only, and totally unreported.

Britain was able to keep its secrets very tightly held from before World War I through the 1980s, including the use of the dreaded D Notice which told newspapers when they could not run particular stories for national defense reasons. But, then, there were a number of debacles that poured scorn on the whole process -- all, it seemed, during Thatcher's regime, and brought on probably by the lies that were promulgated during the conflict in the Falklands.

In 1987 Peter Wright, a retired Deputy Director of MI-5 and its first science officer (he was a radio engineer, rather useful for bugging development!) published a book in Australia called Spycatcher, that wasn't particularly good but revealed all sorts of back stories that could, and did, embarrass the service. The most important assertion in the book was that his boss, Richard Hollis, was in fact a Soviet spy -- and, indeed, Hollis fit the pattern of those that were recruited by the Soviets in Cambridge. The book would never have been allowed to be published in Britain and, in fact, the government went to court to ensure that it could not even be distributed there.

In appeal against the publication ban, one of the judges made a brilliant assertion -- that in those days there was no way to prevent the book reaching the UK's shores and a ban was absurd. But his was the minority position and, coincidentally enough, he (Lord Oliver of Aylmerton) died just a couple of weeks ago, on October 14, 2007.

I was reminded of this absurd legal decision (I myself brought two copies of the book back from Australia) by the recent arrest of two gentlemen who appear to have been setting up a blackmail scheme for a minor royal in the UK. (There is no actual offense entitled blackmail in English statutes; the charge is demanding money with menaces.) With a British court imposing a gag order on the press not to name the victim, we have to now recognize how out of touch a judicial institution is in trying to control a newspaper on Fleet Street amidst the realities of the information age.

Within hours one could learn from an Adelaide, Australia newspaper online (and, heaven help us, Fox News) that the royal was Viscount Linley, the 45-year old son of the late Princess Margaret from her disastrous marriage to Lord Snowdon. (Margaret was refused permission by the Queen to marry the true love of her life -- Group Captain Peter Townsend -- because he was divorced -- and ended up with Anthony Armstrong-Jones [later to be ennobled as Lord Snowdon] who is still the Queen's favorite portrait photographer.) But Margaret led a destructive life style from that point on with a heavy combination of booze and tobacco and died February 9, 2002, fifty years and one day after her father, King George VI, also died from self-destruction.

Lord Linley has mostly been able to stay out of the public eye, is married with two children, and is a well-regarded designer of wooden furniture. He seems to be an unlikely source of a scandal.

The metrics of information today and the laws of Victorian Britain show no sensible mating. Law Lords are often portrayed as having little common sense, and Aylmerton seems to have been a major exception. We wish there were more of his ilk to look at history and meld it with today's realities.