371 Peet, The Long Engagement, front-cover sleeve note.
372 Ibid., p. 101.
373 Ibid., p. 102
374 Ibid.
375 Ibid., p. 230
376 Ibid., p. 231
377 Berger and LaPorte, ‘John Peet’, p. 52
378 Documents in Thomson Reuters archive
379 TNA Foreign Office file FO371/85097
380 TNA PREM 11/264, Liddell to Hunt, 28 April 1952
381 Berger and LaPorte, ‘John Peet’, p. 67
382 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 231
383 Ibid., p. x
384 ‘Aber wo ist das Omelett?’, Zeit Online, http://www.zeit.de/1989/08/aber-wo-ist-dasomelett/seite-1; Moor wrote the article in German for Die Zeit and quoted the letter in German. We have translated the letter back into English.
385 ‘A Reporter You’d Trust’, Daily Mail, 29 November 1994, p. 10
386 Ibid.
387 Ibid.
388 ‘Obituary: Reg Foster’, The Times, 27 January 2000, p. 27
389 Susanna Gross, ‘Obituary: Brendan Mulholland’, Daily Mail, 21 May 1992, p. 39
390 ‘On This Day: 14 July 1962 – Seven Ministers out of Cabinet’, The Times, 14 July 1992, p. 17; Harold Macmillan (Peter Catterall ed.), The Macmillan Diaries, Volume II, 1957–1966: Prime Minister and After (London: Pan, 2011), pp. 483–485
391 That scandal had seen Royal Navy Portland base employees Harry Houghton and his lover, Ethel Gee, jailed along with their KGB contacts, Peter and Helen Kroger, and KGB controller Gordon Lonsdale; see The Times, 17 January 1961, p. 7; The Times, 24 March 1961, p. 3. They had been caught as the result of a tip-off by a Polish defector, Michael Goleniewski. Superintendent Smith and Chief Inspector Smith had arrested them, too.
392 George Blake, an MI6 officer, was jailed for forty-two years after a trial held in camera: ‘42-year Sentence on Man Who Spied For Russia’, The Times, 4 May 1961, p. 12.
393 ‘US and British Tanks Out in Berlin’, The Times, 26 October 1961, p. 12; Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years, 1960–1963 (London: Faber & Faber, 1991), pp. 333–335; Macmillan, The Macmillan Diaries, Volume II, p. 423 (27 October entry)
394 Alistair Horne, Macmillan: 1957–86, Volume II (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 457
395 The news had been broken to Macmillan by Defence Minister Peter Thorneycroft and First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Carrington on 12 September. Macmillan recorded, ‘What they had to tell me was indeed distressing in the present nervous atmosphere’: Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961–63 (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 429. Macmillan’s published diaries first record Vassall on 28 September 1962; see The Macmillan Diaries, Volume II, p. 501: ‘There will be another big row, worked up by the Press, over this …’
396 Alistair Horne, Macmillan: 1957–86, Volume II, p. 461
397 Ibid. Macmillan held a dim view of the head of MI5, Sir Roger Hollis, thinking him insignificant.
398 Vassall had been caught as a result of information passed on by a Soviet defector, Anatoly Golitsyn; see Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 (London: Allen Lane, 2010), p. 492.
399 ‘Obituary: Reg Foster’, The Times
400 ‘Vassall Sentenced to 18 Years Imprisonment’, The Times, 23 October 1962, p. 6. Vassall served ten years. He was released on parole on 25 October 1972.
401 Daily Sketch, 23 October 1962
402 Macmillan, At the End of the Day, p. 430
403 The Romer report was published in June 1961; see for instance, ‘Security Breach Report Blames Admiralty’, The Times, 14 June 1961, p. 12.
404 Security Procedures in the Public Service, The Radcliffe Report, April 1962, Cmnd 1681
405 John Vassall (Committee of Inquiry), HC Deb 1962, 8 November 1962, vol. 666, cc. 1148–1152
406 TNA TS 58/658, Minutes of the first meeting held on 25 October 1962
407 Macmillan, At the End of the Day, p. 431
408 Peter Hennessy, ‘The Eternal Fireman Who Always Answers the Call to Duty’, The Times, 30 January 1976, p. 16
409 ‘Obituary: Viscount Radcliffe’, The Times, 4 April 1997, p. 14
410 Ibid.
411 Report of the Tribunal Appointed to Inquire into the Vassall Case and Related Matters (hereafter called Radcliffe report), Cmnd 2009, April 1963, para 9, p. 3
412 Radcliffe report, Appendix
413 TNA TS 58/643, P 39, Written statement by Reginald Foster
414 Transcripts for sessions 16, 17, 18 and 19, all in TNA TS 58/652, are lost.
415 There is an interesting point here about records held in archives. The photocopy of the article that is lodged in Foster’s file held at TNA is clearly marked up to show what was of interest to Radcliffe. The words ‘women’s clothes’ appear in the first of three bulleted paragraphs on page 10 of the Daily Sketch, 23 October 1962. They are clearly marked in red and black ball-point pen. The edition that is available on microfilm at the British Library’s Newspaper Library at Colindale is different. In that version the words from the three bulleted paragraphs appear on page 1, under a different banner headline and with no by-line. The three ‘bulleted’ paragraphs in fact are not bulleted at all, but are marked by bold capitals, ONE … TWO … THREE … instead. Paragraphs 244 and 251 of the Radcliffe report suggest either that the paper’s assistant editor, Donald Todhunter, or its lead Vassall reporter, Louis Kirby, would have helped Radcliffe identify who had supplied those words. Foster had told Radcliffe, his trial and his appeal that he had not supplied the word ‘wore’. See [1963] 1 All ER 767, Denning MR.
416 TNA TS 58/704, the case against Reginald Foster, extract from transcript, Writ of Summons, 21 January 1963, Queens Bench Division papers
417 Ibid.
418 TNA TS 58/653, Session 20, p. 34
419 L. C. J. McNae (ed.), revised by R. M. Taylor, Essential Law For Journalists, 3rd edn (London: Staples Press, 1967), p. 76
420 TNA TS 58/703, the case against Desmond Clough
421 Radcliffe report, p. 77
422 Radcliffe report, p. 78
423 TNA TS 58/653, P. H. Hoskins testimony, day 21, p. 50 and p. 45
424 ‘“Express” Crime Reporter at Vassall Tribunal Refuses to Disclose Who Confirmed Story’, The Times, 18 January 1963, p. 12
425 ‘I Won’t Tell Man Allowed to Keep his Secret’, Daily Sketch, 18 January 1963, p. 14
426 TNA TS 58/705, the case against Brendan Mulholland, TNA. See Brendan Mulholland, Alfred Draper and Gilbert Lewthwaite, ‘Epitaph on a Spy’, Daily Mail, 23 October 1962, p. 13
427 TNA TS 58/654, Mulholland transcript, session 22, 18 January 1963, p. 34
428 TNA TS 58/566, Todhunter transcript, session 30, 31 January 1963, p. 14
429 See Andrew Roth, ‘Obituary: Ian Waller: A Progressive Voice on the Sunday Telegraph’, The Guardian, 2 September 2003, p. 25
430 See ‘Sentence on Journalist’, The Times, 26 January 1963, p. 5; ‘6 Months’, Daily Sketch, 26 January 1963, p. 1
431 TNA TS 58/643, P54 and P54a
432 TNA TS 58/655, Day 29A, p. 10
433 Ibid., p. 2
434 Ibid., p. 3
435 Ibid., p. 3
436 Ibid., p. 5
437 Ibid., p. 6
438 Ibid., p. 9
439 Ibid., p. 8 and p. 14
440 Ibid., p. 12
441 Ibid., p. 15
442 Ibid., p. 21
443 The Times, 8 July 1947, p. 1
444 ‘Vassall’s Denial in Evidence before Tribunal’, The Times, 30 January 1963, p. 10; TS 58/655 Day 29, WJC Vassall, oral evidence, p. 23
445 See The Times, various reports, 11–27 July 1961
446 For her OBE see Supplement to the London Gazette, 8 June 1950, p. 2787
447 ‘Two Years for Woman Information Official’, The Times, 8 December 1962, p. 5. The £3,800-a-year director of the Central Office of Information’s Photographic Division, she had been trapped by a ‘Romeo spy’.
449 ‘Three Unexpected Witnesses at Vassall Inquiry’, The Times, 9 February 1963, p. 6
450 ‘Police See Students about “Isis” Article’, The Times, 20 March 1958, p. 5; ‘Official Secrets Act Summons’, The Times, 3 May, 1958, p. 3; ‘Three-month Sentence on “Isis” Case Undergraduates’, The Times, 19 July, 1958, p. 4. The editor of Isis at the time was the future playwright Dennis Potter.
451 [1963] 1 All ER 767
452 Brendan Mulholland, Almost a Holiday (London: Macmillan, 1966)
453 Radcliffe report, paragraph 17, p. 5
454 Ibid., paragraph 184, p. 56
455 Ibid., paragraph 187, pp. 57–58
456 Ibid., paragraph 226, p. 68
457 Ibid., paragraph 64, p. 20
458 ‘The SKETCH Says’, Daily Sketch, 8 May 1963, p. 20
459 Court of Appeal: ‘Press against State’, The Times, 13 February 1963, p. 15; ‘Appeals by Journalists Dismissed’, The Times, 14 February 1963, p. 6. In the judgment Denning said, ‘How is anyone to know that this story was not a pure invention, if the journalist will not tell the tribunal its source? Even if it was not invention, how is anyone to know that it was not the gossip of some idler seeking to impress? … He must remember that he has been directed by the tribunal to disclose it as a matter of public duty, and that is justification enough.’ [1963] 1 All ER 767, p. 772.
460 See D. R. Thorpe, Supermac (London: Chatto & Windus, 2010), p. 791, fn. 70: Anthony Howard to Thorpe, 3 March, 2008; private information.
461 Private information
462 Betty Williams, with addendum by Matthew Engel, ‘Obituary: Reg Foster: Crime Reporter Jailed in the Aftermath of the Vassall Spy Case’, The Guardian, 12 January 2000
463 Richard Davenport-Hines, An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo (London: HarperCollins, 2012), Kindle location 3968
464 Geoffrey Levy, ‘Sex, Lies and the Smearing of a Brave Man: Why is a Historian Blackening the Name of this Mail Reporter who went to Jail Rather than Betray a Source?’ Daily Mail, 27 December 2012, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2251958/Why-historian-blackening-Mail-reporter-went-jail-betray-source. html#ixzz2I3eEQgvx. Graham Lord’s book Lord’s Ladies and Gentlemen: 100 Legends of the 20th Century (Fern Hill Books, 2012) is dedicated to Brendan Mulholland: ‘In memory of Brendan Mulholland, a fine reporter and a great friend.’
465 ‘Three Unexpected Witnesses at Vassall Inquiry’, The Times, 9 February 1963, p. 6
466 Address by Mark Thompson, then director-general of the BBC, at the memorial service for Charles Wheeler held at Westminster Abbey on 20 January 2009
467 ‘Berlin Wall Archive: “Pure Monty Python”’, Newsnight, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8359845.stm
468 ‘Charles Wheeler in His Own Words’, BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2008
469 ‘National Monument’ quote from Francine Stock in ‘A Roving National Monument’ by James Rampton, Sunday Times, 2 August 1992
470 Sir Charles Wheeler, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/100220 (last accessed 12 June 2013)
471 ‘Representing Reality’, BBC document on impartiality, 1989
472 John Bridcut, ‘From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century’, BBC Trust, 2007, p. 25
473 Joseph Trenaman and Denis McQuail, Television and the Political Image (London: Methuen, 1961), p. 67
474 Ibid., p. 26
475 Sir Charles Wheeler, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
476 Catherine Hurley (ed.), Could Do Even Better, More School Reports of the Great and the Good (London: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 55
477 ‘Charles Wheeler in His Own Words’, BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2008
478 Sir Charles Wheeler, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
479 Interview with Michael Peacock, ‘Charles Wheeler in His Own Words’, BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2008
480 Stephen Brant, translated by Charles Wheeler, The East German Rising: 17 June 1953 (1957, 1979), p. 11
481 ‘Charles Wheeler in His Own Words’, BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2008
482 Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), p. 33
483 Ibid., p. 34
484 Michael Evans, ‘MI6 Fed Cold War Propaganda to BBC’, The Times, 20 October 1997
485 Michael Nelson, Castro and Stockmaster (Leicester: Matador, 2011), p. 169
486 ‘Hungarian Revolution of 1956’, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7498495.stm
487 ‘Obituary: Sir Charles Wheeler’, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7402172.stm
488 Martin Bell, ‘Charles Wheeler: An Inspiration’, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/04/bbc
489 ‘Los Angeles Race Riots 1965’, Newsnight, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7502600.stm
490 ‘Charles Wheeler in His Own Words’, BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2008
491 ‘Charles Wheeler’s Finest Moments’, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7489866.stm
492 ‘From Managed Media to Active Representation: The Gulf War and the Kurdish Refugee Crisis’, Part 3 of Martin Shaw, Civil Society and Media in Global Crises: Representing Distant Violence (London: Pinter, 1996), pp. 71–124
493 ‘Charles Wheeler in His Own Words’, BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2008
494 ‘A Tribute to Charles Wheeler’, Newsnight, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/charles_wheeler/default.stm
495 Ibid.
496 ‘Broadcasters to Fight Plans for Impartiality Rules’, The Independent, 27 August 1990, p. 5
497 See John De St Jorre, The Brothers’ War (London: Faber & Faber, 2009); Chibuike Uche, ‘Oil, British Interests and the Nigerian Civil War’, Journal of African History, vol. 49, no. 1 (2008), pp. 111–135; TNA, FCO 38/202, Sir David Hunt (British High Commissioner, Lagos) to Sir Eric Norris (Commonwealth Office), 23 June 1967: ‘We have reached the stage where whatever we do one or other parties will stop the flow of oil. Perhaps the companies can drag things out and perhaps they will drag them out long enough for the Federal Government to invade the East and put down the rebellion quickly…’
498 Sir David Hunt to Charles Curran (BBC), 24 February 1969, BBC WAC R78-690-1, Nigerian Civil War, vol. 1
499 BBC WAC, News Divisional Meeting, 26 January 1967, minute 25
500 Frederick Forsyth, ‘The BBC Has Never Been Neutral on Anything’, Daily Express, 2 November 2012
501 TNA FCO 25/199: Nicol Morton (British Consulate, Buea, Cameroon) to G. D. Anderson (British High Commission, Lagos), 4 August 1967
502 TNA FCO 25/199: Anderson to Morton, 14 August 1967
503 TNA FCO 38/253, Telegram 1747, 16 August 1967, British High Commission, Lagos to Foreign Office, London
504 BBC WAC, ENCA Minute 481, 18 August 1967
505 BBC WAC, ENCA Minute 491, 1 September 1967
506 John Simpson, ‘My Part in the Fall and Rise of Freddy Forsyth, a Writer of Great Fiction Foreign Affairs’, Sunday Telegraph, 2 March 2003, p. 27; Frederick Forsyth, ‘Forsyth Bites Back at John Simpson…’, Sunday Telegraph, 9 March 2003, p. 30
507 BBC WAC, ENCA Minute 510, 5 September 1967
508 BBC WAC, News Divisional Meeting, minute 329, 2 November 1967. Two weeks later, the News Divisional Meeting learned that ‘Frederick Forsyth would be joining the News Reporting Staff on 4 December 1967’ (minute 353).
509 TNA FCO 65/448, Sir David Hunt (High Commissioner, Lagos) to Sir John Wilson, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1 May 1969
510 BBC WAC, R 88/690/1, Nigerian Civil War, vol. 1, letter from Charles Curran (possibly to Sir David Hunt), 7 August 1968. Unfortunately, the letter shows to whom it was copied, but not to whom it was addressed.
511 TNA FCO 95/225; St Jorre, The Brothers’ War
512 ‘Biafra: Fighting a War Without Guns’, Timewatch, BBC, 3
0 July 1995
513 Michael Nicholson, A Measure of Danger: Memoirs of a British War Correspondent (London: Fontana, 1992), pp. 25–6 and p. 32. Nicholson repeated the claims about Forsyth in the Sunday Telegraph (9 March 2003). Forsyth dismissed them (Letter, Sunday Telegraph, 16 March 2003). For an earlier claim, see A. B. Akinyemi, ‘The British Press and the Nigerian Civil War’, African Affairs, vol. 71, no. 285 (October 1972), pp. 408–426; and Peter Sissons, When One Door Closes (London: Biteback Publishing, 2011), pp. 96–98
514 TNA FCO 65/446, H. J. Arbuthnott (British High Commission, Lagos) to E. G. Lewis (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), 23 August 1969. See also TNA FCO 65/448, Lewis to Wilson (West Africa Department) and Haydon (News Department), 2 May 1969.
515 TNA DO 186/9, Sir Eric Norris to Sir David Hunt, 18 July 1968. Norris: ‘Forsyth’s first call was, as you know, on Paul Gore-Booth [Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign Office] to deliver a message from Ojukwu. I was present…’ Hunt’s reply (26 July 1968) included: ‘I am reluctant, however, to believe Forsyth, who has not been very truthful in the past…’
516 Walter Schwarz, The Ideal Occupation: A Memoir (Brighton: Revel Barker Publishing, 2011), pp. 148–9
517 Sissons, When One Door Closes
518 Sandy Gall, Don’t Worry About the Money Now (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982), p. 304
519 Not all accepted that the starvation was as bad as depicted: see TNA FCO 65/446, John Wilson [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] to E. G. Willen, British High Commission, Lagos, 24 November 1969.
520 Schwarz, The Ideal Occupation
521 Maurice Chittenden, ‘Forsyth: My Real Life Dogs of War Coup’, Sunday Times, 11 June 2006, p. 7
522 HARDtalk, BBC, Wednesday 18 August 2010 – BBC News Channel at 0230 and 0430 BST; BBC World News at 0330, 0830, 1530, 1930 GMT
523 Ibid.
524 Forsyth was invited by David Cameron to chair the Conservative Party’s Military Covenant Commission in 2008. See Restoring the Covenant, Conservative Party, September 2008.
525 Peter McKay, ‘Bosnia, Let’s Go’, Evening Standard, 11 February 1993
526 Bell, In Harm’s Way (London: Penguin, 1996), p. 116
527 Ibid. p. 120
528 Bell speech at Frontline Club, London, 27 September 2011
529 Martin Bell, In Harm’s Way, p. 122
When Reporters Cross the Line Page 38