SECRETS AND LIES Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:04:31 -0600 (CST) Whistleblowing is right even under the Brit's Official Secrets Act. But the Brit authorities lie to protect themselves ! M. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2238973,00.html National security is being invoked not to protect us but to shield politicians from embarrassment Richard Norton-Taylor *Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor richard.norton-taylor@guardian.co.uk The Guardian (London) Friday January 11, 2008 Years ago, when the Thatcher government reformed the Official Secrets Act after a jury's speedy acquittal of Clive Ponting - indicted for exposing lies about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser (the Belgrano) during the Falklands conflict - we were promised that, in future, prosecutions would be brought only when genuine issues of national security were at stake. New Labour promised less secrecy. More recently, Gordon Brown promised even greater transparency. Wednesday's abrupt collapse of the case against Derek Pasquill, the Foreign Office civil servant charged under the act, shows the pitfalls facing governments when they break their promises. Pasquill's crime was leaking documents about secret CIA rendition flights and contact with Muslim groups. One document included a warning from the FO's top official that the Iraq war and UK foreign policy were fuelling Muslim extremism in Britain. The prosecution should not have gone ahead in the first place. What is now clear is that FO officials admitted almost two years ago the leaks caused no damage within the meaning of the act. That this admission did not come to light until this week smells like an attempt to pervert the course of justice. It would not be the first time FO officials have been implicated in such practices. Official secrecy seems more alive now than for decades. There is more than one case in which government lawyers are trying to suppress information - not to protect national security, but to shield the state from embarrassment or shame. On Monday the Guardian and other papers will challenge an attempt by the prosecution to hold a murder trial in secret. Wang Yam, a financial trader, is accused of murdering Allan Chappelow, an 85-year-old recluse who lived in Hampstead, north London. Yam was arrested in Switzerland. A British customs investigator faces the prospect of an Official Secrets Act prosecution over suspicions that he exposed how US and British intelligence agencies interfered in his attempts to halt a nuclear smuggling ring. Police have searched the home of Atif Amin for evidence that he passed classified information to the authors of a book recently published in the US, America and the Islamic Bomb: the Deadly Compromise. Its authors, David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, say that in 2000, Amin uncovered evidence of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's involvement in establishing Libya's nuclear programme, but was ordered to drop his inquiries and return home at the request of the CIA and MI6. Amin was in charge of Operation Akin, an investigation into links between UK firms and the illegal network run by Khan, who helped build Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence has obtained a gagging order preventing the media repeating allegations of abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers. A high court order bans papers and broadcasters from publishing details of the case reported in the Guardian two months ago. The order follows a legal challenge to the MoD's refusal to set up an independent inquiry into the allegations, which lawyers say is required by the Human Rights Act. Gagging orders are supposed to prevent a jury being prejudiced at an imminent trial, yet the MoD has repeatedly said there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the soldiers and so no prospect of a trial. Indeed, it is precisely the MoD's refusal to prosecute soldiers that lies behind this high court case. There are genuine threats to national security and to our public and personal safety. It is a dangerous abuse if a government hoists the flag of national security and deploys the Official Secrets Act when all it is really trying to do is protect itself from embarrassment.