Lynn Walsh: ABC Secrets Case – Re-Trial Ordered After Jury Foreman Found to be Ex-SAS Man

[Militant No. 424, 22nd September 1978, p. 2]

The “ABC” secrets trial at the Old Bailey was halted by Mr Justice Willis on Monday following the mention on LWT’s ‘Saturday Night People’ programme that one of the jurors was an ex-SAS paratrooper.

Judge Willis condemned the mention by Christopher Hitchen of the ‘New Statesman’ of this fact as “a piece of gratuitous journalistic gossip”. Fair-minded people, however, may well think that it was a good reason for dismissing the jury.

One of the jurors later told the press that the former SAS man had already established himself as a dominant member, having volunteered to be foreman. This juror claimed that the man had freely talked about the outcome of the trial.

At the beginning of the trial of the two journalists, Crispin Aubrey and Duncan Campbell, and ex-soldier John Berry, on nine charges – which they all deny – under the Official Secrets Act, defence council criticised the pre-trial vetting of the jury by the security services. Later they challenged the impartiality of the ex-SAS juror, but this was overruled by the judge.

Now the trial will have to start all over again, though the prosecution has promised – or threatened? – to present a “more economical” case. The defendants are no doubt wondering whether the prosecution will continue to try to shroud the proceedings in cloak-and-dagger secrecy – almost comical breaches of which have from time to time enlivened the proceedings so far.

Judge Willis, himself an ex-Signal Corps Staff Officer, had ruled that the names of 52 UK and US installations were too hush-hush to mention. Never mind that the sites are well known, that they had featured in countless newspaper articles, were on official information handouts, were listed in the phone book, or that they had been plotted by schoolboys with map and compass. They all had to be referred to through a code of numbers and letters.

Last week started with an attempt to establish in court that the three men were arrested through illegal telephone tapping. But Special Branch Chief Supt. Harry Nicholls said he knew nothing besides his orders from “a senior Special Branch officer” Captain Wade who was acting on information received”. These orders were simply to go to Berry’s Muswell Hill flat and arrest the men as they came out.

Idiotic

Campbell’s defending QC, Jeremy Hutchinson, asked Nicholls why only selected documents found on Campbell at the time of the arrest were presented in court. These dealt with the Post Office microwave communications system – which the jury was told came under the OSA. But Campbell also had on him a book about the system which he was co-authoring for the Open University, which explained the other papers.

The judge’s ruling came on Tuesday after the prosecution complained over the defence naming sites featured in photographs taken from Campbell’s Brighton flat. Earlier, Wing Commander Donald Evans, senior RAF officer at the defunct Orford Ness radar station in Suffolk, admitted the official mystery surrounding his well-known base was “absolutely idiotic.”

On Wednesday, the commander of three RAF stations, Squadron leader Alan Fellows claimed “no knowledge” that one of them, Edzell, was the US’s main British communications centre! “We have a policy in the RAF. If you don’t need to know you don’t ask.”

On Thursday the jury heard that boys from Ampleforth College went on a ‘microwave treasure hunt’ along the East Coast of Scotland. They plotted their way from station to station with a compass. Their teacher, Father Anselm, said he thought they were doing nothing wrong. If the stations were as innocuous as the Post Office claimed, just for improving telephone and TV systems, “there was no harm looking at it.” Lord Hutchinson said: “Microwave tower spotting is no more harm than train spotting.”

A boy was going to write an essay about it. But photographs of these installations form a large part of the evidence against Campbell. Later there was a wrangle over another ‘hush-hush’ spot – the well known tourist attraction in London, the West Drayton air traffic control centre. Campbell had a photograph of this as well.

It will be up to the new jury to deliver its verdict on the serious charges brought by the prosecution. But the wider issues is the way in which the wide net of the Official Secrets Act, which the Labour government formerly promised to amend, can be used to prevent journalists from informing the public about installations and activities which are certainly common knowledge among competent secret agents and well known to any foreign power capable of using spy satellites and electronic surveillance.