21 May 2000. Thanks to OSA.
Sunday Times UK), March 21, 2000
ONE of Whitehall's top spymasters runs a secret committee that is co-ordinating a wide-ranging crackdown on journalists investigating intelligence scandals.
Michael Pakenham, third son of Lord Longford, the controversial peer, is chairman of the committee, which is so clandestine that the Cabinet Office refuses to disclose its name.
Pakenham's powerful committee is responsible for co-ordinating how Whitehall bosses deal with "unauthorised disclosures" by renegade intelligence service agents such as David Shayler and Richard Tomlinson.
The Sunday Times has established that the committee's members are behind the recent crackdown on the press, which is causing growing concern among civil liberties leaders and newspaper editors.
Pakenham, 56, is probably the most influential spymaster in Britain. It is no secret that he chairs the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which sets priorities for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre. As JIC chief he is responsible for ensuring that Tony Blair and other ministers have advance warning of security threats.
Officially, Pakenham's other, more secret, committee monitors policy on disclosures by members or former members of the intelligence services. But in reality it spends an increasing amount of its time discussing policy on gagging journalists.
The committee meets on an ad hoc basis and has up to 20 members, mainly representatives of the intelligence services MI5 and MI6, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Foreign Office.
Scion of a famous Anglo-Irish family, he joined the Foreign Office, taking up posts as British ambassador in Luxembourg and minister at the British embassy in Paris. He was promoted after the 1997 election to the post of deputy secretary, defence and overseas, a grandiose title which conceals his real job as new Labour's spymaster-in-chief.
One case recently discussed by Pakenham's committee is that of Liam Clarke, Northern Ireland editor of The Sunday Times. Clarke is facing possible arrest by Special Branch over a series of articles about Martin Ingram, a pseudonym for a former member of a covert British Army intelligence unit in Northern Ireland. Ingram alleged that operatives from the unit were complicit in murder and had destroyed police evidence by burning their inquiry headquarters.
Clarke was the latest journalist to face the prospect of a police inquiry for seeking to probe the murky world of Britain's secret services.
This weekend it emerged that another Sunday Times journalist is facing questions from Special Branch over alleged breaches of the secrecy laws by an intelligence services insider.
Detectives from the Yard's financial investigation and special access centre have written to The Sunday Times's lawyers demanding information about an article which reported allegations by Tomlinson, the former MI6 officer, that MI6 had a mole inside the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank.
The article reported Tomlinson's claim that the mole, codenamed Orcada, had betrayed to MI6 Germany's negotiating position on the Maastricht treaty. He was also paid large sums of money to hand over information on Germany's proposed interest-rate movement and other economic secrets.
Last week Yard officers, accompanied by armed Italian police, raided Tomlinson's hotel room in Rimini, Italy, and seized his computer, diary and mobile telephone.
Tomlinson said: "I opened the door and they poured in at gunpoint. All my legal papers have been taken."
In a letter to The Sunday Times's lawyers, police wrote: "A criminal investigation into alleged breaches of the Official Secrets Acts 1911-1989 is being undertaken by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. Part of this investigation revolves around an article in The Sunday Times newspaper."
The article was written in September 1998 by The Sunday Times Insight team. Detectives have asked David Leppard, the Insight editor, to disclose whether he was in direct contact with Tomlinson "for any material relating to this article". The newspaper is resisting the demand.
Insight: David Leppard, Paul Nuki, Gareth Walsh, Nick Fielding