Open Secret

AFTERWORD

This is a straightforward and honest account of my life so far, as I remember it. That life includes some twenty-seven years spent working in the Security Service (MI5). But I have not set out to write a history of British counter-espionage or counter-terrorism during that period, just a recollection of what now, in retrospect, seem to me to be the personal highlights. It has been written without access to any papers or official information and I have never kept a diary.

As the first publicly named Director-General of MI5 and the first woman to hold that post, my career has generated much interest, particularly among other women. It was in response to that interest that I decided to try to write an autobiography, though I realised that it would be difficult to strike the balance between readability and the necessary discretion when I came to write about my time in MI5.1 did not know what the reaction would be when, as I was obliged to do, I submitted my first fairly raw draft to the official clearance process.

Although I had written it very carefully, acutely aware of the needs of secrecy, I did not expect it to be received with enthusiasm. It goes without saying that those in charge of the intelligence community at any given moment will feel that the less former members say, the better. If everyone goes off and keeps quiet it is much easier to keep things under control. No doubt Prime Ministers feel the same about their predecessors and former Cabinet colleagues.

But I did hope that when they saw the sort of thing I wanted to write, they would not think it damaging. I certainly did not expect the ferocity of the reaction I received. Perhaps I was too out of touch by then and not sufficiently aware of the other fish various parts of the intelligence community were trying to fry – the whistle-blowers, the leakers and those accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

I started the book in August 1998, and the writing of the first draft took until Christmas 1999. Then, on 14 February 2000, in truly covert style, I handed my manuscript in a black briefcase to a former colleague, after a pleasant lunch at the Orrery Restaurant in Marylebone High Street. The manuscript was accompanied by a letter asking what omissions would need to be made before it could be published. Looking rather startled, she disappeared with it in her car. Then, apart from a brief letter of acknowledgement, I heard nothing at all for two months.

I now know that during that period Whitehall went into full damage-limitation mode.

The draft was sent to the Cabinet Office and circulated to everyone who could have any angle on it. No-one will ever know how many copies were made. Not surprisingly in the circumstances, everyone did have an angle – mostly, so far as I have gathered, hostile, negative and worried. After enquiries on my part as to what was happening, I was summoned down to Whitehall to see the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. His brief was to deter me and he fulfilled it very well. By the end of an hour or so of being bullied, threatened and cajoled in the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger way the Establishment behaves to its recalcitrant sons and, as I now know, daughters, I was very shaken. My protests that at that stage I had done nothing except submit a draft manuscript for clearance in the proper way seemed to fall on deaf ears. I felt that I had become an outsider, a threat to the established order. I tried to keep my end up, while I waited to see what his fall-back position was, and eventually I was told that if I co-operated on the content (something I had always intended to do) and if we could agree, he would recommend that the book could be published, though he could give me no guarantee what ministers would decide. When at the end of it all he walked me to the door of the building, patted me kindly on the shoulder and said, ‘Never mind, Stella, go off and buy something,’ I did not feel any better.

After that the leaking began. In a rather laddish covert operation conducted presumably by someone in one of the departments which had been consulted, a copy of the draft I had submitted was sent anonymously in a black cab to the Sun newspaper and I woke up in the middle of the night to hear the BBC World Service on my radio, which I had left on when I went to sleep, telling the world that I was wanting to publish my memoirs. Then a version of the record of my meeting with the Cabinet Secretary, which had presumably also been circulated widely, was leaked to a newspaper. Selective briefings were given, including that one department or agency wanted me to be arrested. Everyone had something to say about the issue whether they had read the draft text or not. The story was kept going when the Sun kindly returned the manuscript with much fandango to No. 10 Downing Street. As a result of the premature publicity, I received a torrent of advice from the media, including abuse for even thinking about writing a book and offers to serialise it, sometimes from the same source.

Meanwhile, in a series of friendly meetings over the next year and a half (I was, I can now admit, so shaken I could not bear to look at the text again for some time), while all the leaking and huffing and puffing was going on, I discussed the content with the present Director-General, Sir Stephen Lander. With the best intentions in the world, it is not possible to know, once you are on the outside, exactly what will be regarded as damaging. Some things I wrote appeared to the intelligence community to go too close to the bone. I agreed to accept their judgement and omit them. Any intelligence operations I have referred to are well disguised in various ways.

When we had agreed a final text, which was not difficult, it was submitted for clearance to ministers and eventually, on 6 July 2001, I (and simultaneously the press) duly received the information that I was authorised to publish, though as a matter of principle the government regretted and disapproved of my decision to do so. At the end of it all, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that even I, a seasoned Whitehall insider, was starting to feel the sense of persecution and fear of the main character in a Kafka novel, in the grip of a bureaucracy whose ways and meaning could not be discerned.

As far as I know, I am the first former head of one of the intelligence agencies to ask permission to publish a book since 1955 when Sir Percy Sillitoe published his autobiography, Cloak Without Dagger, and that may account in part for the reaction I received. Intelligence and security services are vital to democracies, and to be effective they must be able to conduct their operational activities in secret. When I first joined MI5 in 1969, that was taken to mean that practically nothing at all could be said in public about the Service, about what it did, where its offices were, the people who worked there. Over the years that has gradually changed. Thinking has moved on, and it will move on further, with developments in the law and in the arrangements for oversight of the secret services. There is already much information publicly available for those who care to seek it out, in print and on the web. But it is clearly still true that revelations about specific operations, details of sources of information, human or technical, or about the precise way in which intelligence is gathered are damaging and risk undermining the effectiveness of the intelligence machinery and eroding the confidence of the human sources of information, who often provide the best intelligence and risk their lives to do so. There are no such revelations here.

The wholly disproportionate fuss stirred up as soon as this book’s existence became known shows in my view that there is still a wish among some parts of the intelligence world to keep too much secret. Excessive secrecy harms the position of our vital security services rather than protecting it. Being more open is a risk that has to be taken in the 21st century, if the support and understanding of the public are to be obtained. Similarly it is neither necessary nor appropriate nowadays to try to hold to total silence people who have worked in the public service, whether as civil servant, diplomat, member of the armed services or intelligence officer. It won’t work and it is better to accept that and focus rather on what it is important to protect. It is clearly essential that what is said or written should be considered and submitted to a clearance procedure and not just uttered off the cuff. But that means establishing a properly run clearance procedure which people are encouraged to use, instead of one that is, as it was in my case, intimidating, conducted in semi-public and confusing to everyone.