-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/freedom/Story/0,2763,391398,00.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/freedom/Story/0,2763,391398,00.html"> Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Comment:�</A> ----- Led by the nose When law officers saw my report, they dropped this secrets trial. But they should never have begun it Special report: freedom of information Duncan Campbell Thursday November 2, 2000 The collapse of the planned Official Secrets Act trial of former Lieutentant- Colonel Nigel Wylde should have been foreseen within days of the ill-thought-out dawn raids on him and former Sunday Times chief reporter Tony Geraghty two years ago. Geraghty's book, The Irish War, contained extracts from classified army documents such as the 1997 Military Surveillance Strategy Northern Ireland. In the sections the army did not like, The Irish War mentioned their Caister/ Crucible computers, which contain intelligence data on most people living in Northern Ireland; the Vengeful computer, which tracks vehicle movements around the province; and the Glutton TV camera system, which scans and automatically reads number plates of vehicles at locations as far apart as Derry, Dover and Gretna Green. But the MoD knew that the passages quoted from army documents would have given no aid to terrorists. Within three weeks, top Ministry of Defence civil servants concluded that the information disclosed was more of an emba rrassment than a serious operational compromise. It presented no threat to lives. The raids were inspired by fears that Geraghty possessed copies of the documents he had cited in his book. These did contain more secrets of Ulster spying. But after a squad of MoD police had turned over his country cottage for an entire day, they knew he didn't have any documents. Instead, they found notes of mere conversations, in which Wylde had given him limited information. At this point, sanity should have prevailed. It didn't. The Labour government allowed the MoD police to push them into sanctioning the first Official Secrets Act charges against a journalist and a source since the last Labour government did so, 22 years earlier. Then, it was I and two others who faced trial for two months at the Old Bailey in the so-called ABC case (we were acquitted or discharged on all counts). The attorney general eventually withdrew his approval for the Geraghty prosecution. But until the plug was pulled yesterday, Nigel Wylde was still facing a long trial. Well into six figures of public money has been wasted in dealing with lurid MoD allegations that what Wylde told Geraghty put both innocent civilians and soldiers' lives directly at risk. The trial judge, Mr Justice Moses, had spotted the likely flaws in the MoD case. At a preliminary hearing in August, he suggested: "It is going to be like the ABC trial, is it not? Actually if you bother to look you can find all this anyway." The prosecution looked mystified. The defendant had to tell them what the ABC case was. The issue that turned the tide in the ABC case was the government's farcical attempt to rename a key army witness "Colonel B". Next week, the Wylde prosecution was due to apply for an order to turn two key army witnesses against Wylde into "Major A" and "Major B". They had also proposed to apply for evidence from them and the defence's expert witnesses to be heard in camera . I was one of those two defence experts. Last week, I submitted a 75-page report and 700 pages of exhibits, explaining why there was nothing in The Irish War that the Provisional IRA did not know or had not worked out for itself, 20 years ago. In a letter yesterday, prosecutors explained that the decision to drop the case was made after reading that report. The Vengeful computer was discussed in the London magazine Time Out as long ago as 1980. The next year, the IRA captured its operational instructions. It obtained an up-to-date set in January 1998. Details about Crucible had been revealed in a 1992 book, Big Boys Rules. Its author, BBC reporter Mark Urban, cleared his book with the MoD. Many people in the army, the MoD and the intelligence services knew all about these compromises and previous disclosures. Yet nobody told the attorney general, until prosecutors took him my report on Tuesday. Why not? After the ABC case, an eager young barrister wrote a monograph for the National Union of Journalists about the mistakes of the government, and the stupidity of the Official Secrets Act. His name was Tony Blair. As a newly elected MP four years later, he called on me at home, seeking copies of classified papers we had been leaked from the Bank of England. Not long after, I was bearded by Arthur Davidson QC, the solicitor general at the time of the ABC case. He apologised, saying: "It was the worst mistake of my career." The government, he said, had been led by the nose by the security services. One consequence of the abandoned case is that, as a court expert, I have had to be supplied with piles of classified paperwork about surveillance in Northern Ireland, plus a safe in which to keep them. They contain more information about the subject than Tony Geraghty ever knew. I am enjoined to silence about information that is not already public - which is exceedingly little. There is more information about surveillance centres in Ireland on Sinn Fein's website than in five volumes of alleged British government secrets. Duncan Campbell (not the Guardian's US correspondent) specialises in intelligence journalism [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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