When Reporters Cross the Line

by Stewart Purvis

  The difference was, however, that editors might be prepared to print allegations if they helped to help move the story along, and there was a defensible chance that they were accurate. For Radcliffe, it was a matter of national security and full standards of legal proof were needed. Moreover, the press had clearly found out things that the officers of MI5 and Special Branch either had not or, if they had, did not want to become public knowledge or could not be proven. The allegations had caused government considerable difficulty, had already damaged one ministerial career and could harm others. For Radcliffe, bluntly, the press had to put up or shut up.

  Over the following two months the tribunal interviewed dozens of witnesses. A six-page internal document named around two dozen journalists whose stories were of interest to the Radcliffe team. They all had to give statements and were placed on standby to give oral evidence. There was no escape.

  The late autumn and winter of 1962–63 were bitter for Macmillan’s government. It faced repeated allegations of incompetence and ineptitude. The shine had gone off Supermac’s image in the three years since his general election victory. Perhaps in some cruel joke played by the weather gods it was also bitterly cold in the country too. The UK was experiencing its longest cold spell in decades: snow had fallen and was, weeks later, still lurking as dirty ice in the gutters around the building where the tribunal was holding its hearings. As the journalists trooped in to give their evidence the press was, in one of those rare occasions, not only reporting the story, but was the story.

  Radcliffe’s style was taciturn. There was no real repartee of the sort that sometimes erupted in Lord Justice Leveson’s equally serious inquiry five decades later. There were no Paxman-esque ripostes. Radcliffe was looking into very serious matters and it showed from the questioning. Journalists were asked about their facts, how they got them, how they interpreted what they got, and what validated them. In its own way Radcliffe was questioning the journalists’ methods and modus operandi, just like Leveson. It was not so much press ethics that concerned Radcliffe, but rather the facts and whether there had been leakage from official sources. Had civil servants, service personnel and others spoken too freely; had the press somehow been complicit in infringing the Official Secrets Act?

  Reg Foster was called into Lord Radcliffe’s court mid-afternoon on 15 January, 1963, and returned the next day to complete his evidence. He had come to the Vassall story late, he said, only becoming involved a week before Vassall’s trial. He had written material that ended up in a background piece about Vassall.

  His written statement said that his information ‘that Vassall was known to have bought women’s clothing in the West End came from sources outside the office. I am unable to reveal the sources of this information.’413

  Looking back all these decades later it is interesting to note that Foster said his information was that Vassall ‘bought women’s clothing in the West End’, whereas the Daily Sketch article had said Vassall ‘sometimes wore women’s clothes on West End trips’.

  It is not possible to read all of Reg Foster’s opening verbal testimony because it has been lost. The file containing the relevant transcript, long thought to have been retained by the Treasury Solicitor’s department for some legal reason, is now known never to have been released to the National Archives, unlike the other transcripts. Working with TNA archivists, Jeff Hulbert established that the file had been lost, and the catalogue has now been amended. Sadly, part of Vassall’s testimony was also in the same file, along with three other days’ transcripts.414

  The transcripts that do survive show that on the next morning the session opened with a series of submissions made by his and other lawyers, arguing why he should and should not refuse to name his source. R. V. Cusack QC, for Foster and his newspaper group, argued that journalists should not name their sources, the Attorney-General argued the opposite. Ultimately, Radcliffe said that the tribunal was required to act like a court, journalists had no special privileges, and he had no flexibility. It was a case of revealing the sources or facing the consequences for contempt.

  Counsel for the tribunal, John Donaldson QC, asked where Foster’s information came from.415 Details pieced together from what survives in the archive show that he said he didn’t know the name or names of his source(s). That was not a problem, came back the reply, because if you could tell us what they did, or describe them for us, we might just be able to find them for ourselves and ask them. But crucially, when asked for this help he refused: ‘Could you help us by telling us the type of source from which it came?’ Foster replied, ‘No, Mr Donaldson, I could not.’416

  In a further one-and-a-half pages of tribunal transcript Foster was taken step by step through a series of questions that highlighted the fate that awaited him if he continued to refuse. Radcliffe wanted to make sure that he fully understood the implications. In reply Foster cited his professional and personal ethics – values which he shared with many Fleet Street colleagues. Some of them had given their lives fighting in the last war to preserve those very ethics that Radcliffe was now challenging, he said. He refused and would take the consequences.417 In order to let those consequences sink in, Radcliff instructed Foster to go home and sleep on it and to come back the following morning to say whether he had changed his mind. Foster replied that it would be a waste of time as he would not have a change of heart. But Radcliffe assured him that it really would be necessary.418

  Journalists were trained to respect their sources, but equally to beware the consequences if they did not. ‘The journalist who blabs … will soon find he is trusted by no one. His sources will dry up and he will be useless in the job;’ so said a contemporary legal handbook for journalists.419

  One of Foster’s Sketch colleagues, Desmond Clough, then took the stand and was asked where he got a story that, as a result of Vassall’s spying, Soviet ‘trawlers’ bristling with aerials and radar – aka electronic surveillance ships – had tracked NATO ships on manoeuvres. He also refused to name his source. He was then taken through a familiar series of questions by the Donaldson–Radcliffe duo and arrived at exactly the same point as had Foster earlier: he too would take the consequences, he said.420

  The next day Foster duly appeared bright and early and told Radcliffe that he had not changed his mind. So, rather than prolong the agony Radcliffe stiffly informed him that a report would be sent to the High Court. There would be consequences. Next, Clough told Radcliffe the same and was given the same curt response.

  Later it was Percy Hoskins’s turn. Daily Express chief crime reporter Hoskins had made allegations about Lord Carrington knowing of another anonymous Admiralty spy as a result of the Portland case, but doing nothing about it. That amounted to accusing Carrington of treason. Hoskins’s story of 8 November 1962 said that that conclusion had been reached when a document found in the possession of the Portland Spies’ KGB controller, Gordon Lonsdale, after his arrest could not be traced to the Portland naval establishment.421 The Express’s political editor and chief lobby correspondent, Douglas Clark, had repeated the allegation the following day, adding detail that Carrington had been summoned by Macmillan and asked why he had not told him. The allegations also appeared elsewhere. Radcliffe eventually tracked down the source of all the reports to Percy Hoskins’s original story. So where did he get it from?

  It is tempting to picture the rotund Percy Hoskins, standing before the judge very much like the little Cavalier boy who was asked by the Roundhead, ‘And when did you last see your father?’ Was he going to face the same consequences? He endured a long, searching cross-examination by some legal toughs, including Lord Carrington’s QC, Helenus ‘Buster’ Milmo. Milmo had a reputation for being more than a little pugnacious. Asked where he got his facts, Hoskins told the tribunal that he had simply done his research: the details had all been published before, mostly in his own paper. He ‘had not regarded it as making any sensational revelations; and that, although he had said in the article that he was making new disclos
ures, this was inaccurate as he was only seeking to put previously published material into proper perspective’.422 So, it wasn’t new, it was just the way he’d written it. In terms that would come to acquire a very different meaning in another judicial tribunal forty years later, he’d ‘sexed it up’. Made the old seem fresh and exciting; had aroused his readers’ interest and curiosity.

  He took the tribunal through his sources and there indeed were all the relevant facts, published up to eighteen months before. He had got some from stories published in other newspapers. Had he checked those in particular? ‘No, I am afraid that does not happen in Fleet Street,’ he said, probably with a slight air of resignation. He also pointed out that his stories had been dictated and that while he had corrected the errors they were never re-set because the stories were printed on ‘features’ pages and so all editions had carried the errors. Only news pages were re-set and corrected, he told the tribunal.423

  Hoskins admitted having a secret ‘official source’ who confirmed his spy story for him, but Lord Radcliffe did not press him to reveal the identity. The source had been used solely to confirm that Hoskins was on the right track, much as Deep Throat had done in the Hollywood film All the President’s Men when in one dramatic scene not hanging up the telephone indicated that the reporters were on the right track.424 Only in Hoskins’s case it probably would have happened over a pint, or a cup of tea, and if there was any music it would have been a juke box rumbling in the background. Dismissing the reporter Radcliffe said, ‘Well, Mr Hoskins, that is all, unless it becomes necessary to recall you at a later date with regard to the name of the person you spoke to.’425 But Hoskins was never called back to collect a ball and chain.

  The next day it was Brendan Mulholland’s turn. He had published several facts of interest to the tribunal, including that ‘Vassall had keys to all kinds of cupboards and doors in the Admiralty. His colleagues wondered, but nobody asked.’426 He had written that Vassall had, in his £10-a-week Dolphin Square apartment, nineteen suits, over 100 ties, twelve pairs of shoes and over three dozen shirts, but that did not interest Radcliffe. But other background facts did: Mulholland had written some ‘colour’ material about Vassall, including his school career, his indifferent performance while in the wartime RAF, an office nickname (‘Auntie’), his plans to transfer from the Admiralty to the Foreign Office, and that Vassall’s biggest coups were passing on information about submarine detection, radar and radio warfare. Mulholland had also written about Vassall’s visits to deliver papers to the home in the Scottish Highlands of his minister, Thomas Galbraith. Mulholland had also published an interview with Galbraith.

  Where did all of this come from? Mulholland was cross-examined by Ramsay Willis QC for Galbraith and the Attorney-General, Sir John Hobson QC. The questioning was hostile. Willis first sought to establish that Mulholland had not interviewed Galbraith at all, but instead had simply had a conversation. He and Mulholland argued the semantics but were unable to agree exactly what the difference was. They also could not agree how long the meeting had lasted: Willis said five to ten minutes, Mulholland thirty minutes to an hour. One or two inaccuracies, Mulholland said, were down to transcription errors made when the stories were typeset and they were never corrected; and some of the words used were those of the Daily Mail’s sub-editors, not his. Evidence submitted shows this was accurate.

  Mulholland irked Radcliffe and his interrogators because he could not show his near-contemporaneous notes: he had lost them. But Mulholland’s meeting with Galbraith had been conducted together with the Daily Telegraph reporter Harry Miller, who in later evidence supported much of what Mulholland said.

  However, Willis did establish that some of Mulholland’s interview story had included material that was either ‘journalistic licence’ or taken from material supplied by Daily Sketch reporter Louis Kirby. Kirby had spoken to Galbraith by telephone from London at roughly the same time that Mulholland and Miller went to Scotland. But, in what had clearly been an unusual arrangement, the editors of the Associated Newspapers stablemates, the Daily Mail and the Daily Sketch, had agreed to tell their reporters Mulholland and Kirby to compare notes about their discussions with Galbraith before going into print. The reporters spoke over the lunch recess during the Vassall trial.427 Daily Sketch assistant editor Donald Todhunter and Louis Kirby both confirmed this to Radcliffe.428

  However, when pressed to name the sources of some of the information about Vassall’s visits to Galbraith’s home in Scotland, Mulholland refused. He said some had come from anonymous local estate workers – he did not even know, he told Radcliffe, if they worked on Galbraith’s estate or that of his neighbour, Lord Strathclyde. Other information came from anonymous local pub customers and residents.

  The Attorney-General cross-examined Mulholland about Vassall’s background, his spying activities, the nickname, allegations that Vassall had ‘sponsors’, or protectors in the Admiralty, and the transfer to the Foreign Office. Mulholland passed to Radcliffe a piece of paper naming the source of details about Vassall’s school career: it was the Daily Mail’s Cardiff correspondent. But as regards his other sources, his lips remained firmly sealed.

  In all, Mulholland’s testimony came to over fifty pages of transcript, which probably equates to around three to four hours in total. It was split over two days. His testimony was just about the longest given by any of the journalists called. He made one more appearance: just after lunch that day he was told that his refusals meant he would be visiting the High Court in the company of Reg Foster and Desmond Clough.

  So what were the consequences for Clough, Foster and Mulholland? Unlike Hoskins, and a couple of other journalists who had also declined to name their sources but got away with it,429 Lord Radcliffe wrote a note and passed it to the tribunal’s secretary. The journalists, who would later be dubbed ‘the silent men’, were to be sent to the High Court, charged with contempt.

  A few days later each was brought before a judge. Desmond Clough was first. His judge was Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Justice. He was asked if he would consider naming his official source, but he declined. Lord Parker considered that there was no option other than to threaten a prison sentence. Six months was the term he pronounced. However, he thought it best if the defendant was given ten days to mull it over. He also hoped that Clough’s source would do the honourable thing and come forward. It is also just possible that the thought was going through Parker’s mind that the threat, like most forms of torture, might actually have the desired effect without the need to carry it out and get messy.430 Moreover, it might also influence Reg Foster and Brendan Mulholland. So while Clough was allowed time the proceedings against the others were adjourned, just in case.

  In the intervening period two things happened. The first concerned Reg Foster, and the second Desmond Clough.

  Colonel’s widow

  Mrs Ivy Pugh-Pugh (née Popple) was a 61-year-old widow living in Herne Bay, Kent. She preferred to be known as Jeanne. Widowed in 1938, she had married Colonel Thomas Pugh-Pugh two years later. He had actually been born Thomas Pugh Pugh (without the hyphen). He was around eight years her senior and, she said, involved in the theatrical business.

  When she read in the Sketch that Foster was threatened with prison she was outraged. She believed she had evidence that could keep him out of jail.

  She called the paper straight away and managed to speak to Foster personally. Intrigued by what she told him he sent a colleague, John Austin, to see her. She told how during the war her husband had introduced her to a young man called John Vassall.

  As Brendan Mulholland was finishing his own testimony to Radcliffe she repeated her story to the Sketch’s assistant editor, Donald Todhunter, reporter Louis Kirby and another person whom she believed to be a lawyer.

  Having heard her story the journalists contacted the publisher’s QC, Mr Cusack, who quickly told Radcliffe in open session that a new witness had come forward. Radcliffe decided to hear her evidence in secret, and
a special ‘in camera’ session was hastily arranged for 30 January 1963.

  With only the tribunal members, the lawyers and John Vassall present, Mrs Pugh-Pugh took the stand. Radcliffe warned her never to discuss with the press what happened during the session.

  The lawyers took her through her written evidence. The file, which Jeff Hulbert discovered in the National Archives marked ‘secret’, consists of three statements and typed lists of clothes with their sizes and prices. At the bottom in handwriting were six names, and one of them said ‘John Vassall £5’. There was also part of a handwritten letter to her daughter, Mrs Cook, from a gentleman with a Bude address.431

  During the next hour or so she confirmed that she had not been offered any money by the Sketch.432

  The lawyers cut to the chase: ‘Shortly after your wedding [to the Colonel] did you discover something about your husband’s character?’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, telling how, arriving back home early one day she saw in the hall a ‘beautiful coat and some gloves’. At first she thought that her husband was entertaining, but no one was in the house apart from him. So where did they come from?

  It took a little time until the Colonel reluctantly admitted that the clothes were his. She told the tribunal: ‘After the first sort of revulsion I took a philosophical view of it, and thought whatever I do, whatever I say, he is still going to dress like this.’ The Colonel told her there ‘was nothing in it. I just dress up like other girls wear trousers, I just wear this. There is no harm in it…’433 But the thought of it made her ill.

  The couple often held cocktail parties. She remembered one where ‘four ladies’ attended: ‘One was Brenda … Another gentleman was known as Dolores, one as Carrie and one Suzanne.’434 It is tempting to picture the reactions in the room as the stiff and sober lawyers heard these revelations.