{"id":89058,"date":"2024-09-17T06:00:17","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T20:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=89058"},"modified":"2024-09-16T14:27:10","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T04:27:10","slug":"balancing-secrecy-and-transparency-the-value-of-being-a-sceptic-in-a-post-spycatcher-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/balancing-secrecy-and-transparency-the-value-of-being-a-sceptic-in-a-post-spycatcher-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Balancing secrecy and transparency: the value of being a sceptic in a post-Spycatcher world"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

When Peter Wright remarked: \u2018That will fix the bastards\u2019, while leaving the NSW Supreme Court witness box on 8 December 1986, he was firing a salvo in the \u2018Spycatcher<\/em> affair\u2019, a political and legal controversy that is remembered as a defiant win for transparency over secrecy. But the actual lesson of Spycatcher<\/em> is that not all revelations about intelligence matters should be considered uncritically.<\/p>\n

A former senior technical adviser with British security service MI5 turned struggling Tasmanian horse breeder, Wright and co-author Paul Greengrass<\/a> had written an expose of British intelligence, Spycatcher<\/em><\/a>, only to have Her Majesty\u2019s government seek the book\u2019s banning in Australia, as in England.<\/p>\n

The resulting trial was disastrous for Margaret Thatcher. Her cabinet secretary, Robert Armstrong, was humiliated by future Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, representing the defendants. The Court found for Wright\u2019s publishers, as would Australia\u2019s High Court on appeal, albeit on a technicality.<\/p>\n

Spycatcher<\/em> could be sold in Australia, and eventually in England. Legal controversy (\u2018the shocking book of secrets Britain banned\u2019) made it a bestseller and Wright a millionaire. Not bad given that Turnbull\u2019s principal legal defence had been that it was a regurgitation of old news.<\/p>\n

To this day Spycatcher<\/em> remains a watchword for transparency triumphing over bloody-minded secrecy; a victory over bureaucrats being \u2018economical with the truth\u2019. According to Turnbull<\/a>, \u2018We struck a blow for democracy and transparency and openness. And that was a good thing\u2019.<\/p>\n

Battles over the release of Spycatcher<\/em>-related government records continue to the present<\/a>. Journalist Tim Tate\u2019s just-published book, To catch a spy<\/em><\/a>, unearths insights into the Thatcher government\u2019s legal and political strategy, and confirmed that Armstrong committed perjury.<\/p>\n

However, Spycatcher<\/em> also serves as a reminder of the importance of scepticism and balance when evaluating claims of undue secrecy.<\/p>\n

For there was an all-consuming reason Wright wanted the \u2018bastards\u2019 to pay: the conviction that his former boss Roger Hollis\u2014MI5 director-general 1956-65 and contributor to ASIO\u2019s establishment\u2014was a Soviet mole (the \u2018Fifth Man\u2019), whose treason led to failed British counterintelligence efforts against the KGB and GRU (Soviet military intelligence). Or, according to Wright at other times, it was Hollis\u2019 deputy Graham Mitchell who was the mole.<\/p>\n

This was not merely a passing assertion in Spycatche<\/em>r; it was the narrative throughline, principal motivation\u2014along with filthy lucre\u2014and the most alarming allegation made.<\/p>\n

The allegation had been dismissed within MI5\u2019s own ranks by the time it was raised publicly by journalist Chapman Pincher in the early 1980s; this was a majority view before Wright\u2019s retirement in 1976. Younger staff joked about Wright being a KGB illegal sent to disrupt and confound Western counterintelligence.<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s theory was undermined by anti-Soviet success during Hollis\u2019 tenure, namely the Portland spy ring\u2019s uncovering. But Wright\u2019s own flexible logic was that this simply proved his point, as the Soviets would only be willing to sacrifice their operations for such a valuable penetration.<\/p>\n

British civil servant Lord Trend, reviewing the matter independently in 1974\u201375, found no conclusive evidence of Hollis\u2019 guilt. Given the impossibility of proving a negative, Trend estimated, based on the circumstantial evidence, that the possibility of Hollis being a spy was roughly 20 percent.<\/p>\n

Some still question Hollis\u2019 innocence. Like Wright, Pincher went to his grave convinced he was right<\/a>. Tim Tate is sympathetic to Wright\u2019s case against Hollis, albeit his book offers little new information on the Hollis question. Australian intelligence commentator Paul Monk has made his own detailed case<\/a> for Hollis being ELLI, the GRU source alleged to be inside British intelligence during World War II. Some studies<\/a> are ambiguous, while others<\/a> assess the case for Hollis as ELLI to be weak.<\/p>\n

Today MI5 dismisses<\/a> the notion of Hollis\u2019 guilt outright. Christopher Andrew\u2019s official history was scathing: \u2018no credible evidence since there was none to find\u2019, \u2018threadbare\u2019, \u2018a form of paranoia\u2019. Internal MI5 reviews (including post-Spycatcher<\/em>) were damning of Wright, accusing him of fabrication and distortion. KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky claims the Soviets were so confused by the public allegations that they assumed it was some kind of inscrutable double-bluff. No evidence of Hollis\u2019 guilt emerged from the brief post-Soviet archival openings, or Vasili Mitrokhin\u2019s<\/a> haul from the KGB. The actual \u2018Fifth Man\u2019\u2014John Cairncross<\/a>\u2014had been identified and confessed in 1964. Excepting Wright\u2019s confidant James J. Angleton, the CIA\u2019s leadership didn\u2019t believe Hollis was a mole and a 1993 CIA study<\/a> of related literature (including Spycatcher<\/em>) labelled the charges against Hollis and Mitchell as \u2018false\u2019.<\/p>\n

Thus, Spycatcher<\/em> presents an uneasy lesson. For all Wright was correct about, especially that a significant number of Britain\u2019s elite committed treason during the 1930s and 1940s without consequence, he was obsessively wrong in his central thesis. But his whistleblowing spread that thesis, propelled by Thatcher\u2019s quixotic legal strategy (and duplicitous political strategy) and the media\u2019s credulity.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Spycatcher<\/em> had positive, if inadvertent, outcomes.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Thatcher had herself raised public expectations of transparency about the intelligence services. She made a parliamentary statement in 1979 confirming Anthony Blunt\u2019s (\u2018the Fourth Man\u2019) confessed Soviet spying. Although the terms in which she did so helped rouse Wright from retirement.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Armstrong had been compelled to insist openly that he could neither confirm nor deny that Britain\u2019s foreign intelligence service MI6 actually existed. However, he could acknowledge that it existed between 1956 and 1968 when headed by Dick White. The derision with which this insistence was met would be a contributing factor to the acknowledgement of MI6 through the Intelligence Services Act<\/em> in 1994<\/a>, and a Security Service Act<\/em> for MI5 in 1989<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Spycatcher<\/em> prompted introduction of an ombudsman function within Britain\u2019s intelligence services, as well as processes for dealing with intelligence officers\u2019 memoirs.<\/p>\n

There has also been broader recognition, including in Australia, that secrecy remains a fundamental enabler of national security\u2014if justified and justifiable. And that purposeful transparency, such as public statements and official histories, can actually serve the national security mission.<\/p>\n

Spycatcher<\/em> doesn\u2019t repudiate the case for appropriate disclosure and transparency in intelligence and security. But we should all be discerning, even sceptical, when secrecy is assailed in the public square. This includes reflection on the wide-ranging oversight<\/a>, transparency<\/a> and disclosure<\/a> mechanisms<\/a> actually<\/a> in place<\/a> in Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Peter Wright remarked: \u2018That will fix the bastards\u2019, while leaving the NSW Supreme Court witness box on 8 December 1986, he was firing a salvo in the \u2018Spycatcher affair\u2019, a political and legal controversy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1690,"featured_media":89060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[170,3947,3948,934,1706],"class_list":["post-89058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-intelligence","tag-mi5","tag-mi6","tag-transparency","tag-whistleblowing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBalancing secrecy and transparency: the value of being a sceptic in a post-Spycatcher world | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/balancing-secrecy-and-transparency-the-value-of-being-a-sceptic-in-a-post-spycatcher-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Balancing secrecy and transparency: the value of being a sceptic in a post-Spycatcher world | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Peter Wright remarked: \u2018That will fix the bastards\u2019, while leaving the NSW Supreme Court witness box on 8 December 1986, he was firing a salvo in the \u2018Spycatcher affair\u2019, a political and legal controversy ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/balancing-secrecy-and-transparency-the-value-of-being-a-sceptic-in-a-post-spycatcher-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-09-16T20:00:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-09-16T04:27:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/GettyImages-51831330.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"686\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Chris Taylor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Chris Taylor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/balancing-secrecy-and-transparency-the-value-of-being-a-sceptic-in-a-post-spycatcher-world\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/GettyImages-51831330.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/GettyImages-51831330.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":686,\"caption\":\"SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - 1988: (L-R) Lawyer Malcolm Turnbull seats with his client former MI5 spy and author Peter Wright and friend and former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam at his \\\"Spy Catcher\\\" book launch 1988 in Sydney, Australia. 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