Stellar insight from our former MI5 chief: pt 2

When I was a cub reporter in 1974, even when the IRA was on the loose, bombing Britain’s streets, the number of cases held “in camera” in mainland Britain numbered one or two – in the main, they were spy cases. Very occasionally specific elements of a case – the name of an agent or some key piece of intelligence work – were excluded from the record. But a requirement of secrecy was rare indeed.

In the current controversy concerning alleged torture in the Binyam Mohamed case (the UK resident still detained in Guantanamo) I have been shown the redacted papers from the case, which reveal that there are no agents’ names and nothing that appears to compromise the integrity of intelligence gathering, a view shared by the judges in the case.

What they have indicated, and what seems to be the case, is that the government has argued there is a “class” of intelligence which, if disclosed, would allegedly threaten the intelligence sharing which is at the core of the UK’s special relationship with the US.

Make no mistake, some terrible stuff is out there in terms of what it is alleged various criminals want to do to the UK, or have even tried to do. But what evidence is there in history that shrouding the law in secrecy has ever benefited democracy?

I cannot believe that journalists and lawyers will not eventually find a way of exposing the ever increasing secrecy surrounding terrorist cases in Britain. A growing number are moving to end this practice. And they are senior – extending from the higher reaches of broadsheet newspapers and the BBC to law lords.

Is the final coup the extraordinary new law, section 76 in the counter-terrorism act, that prevents photographers from taking a photo of police officers if that photo “is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”? Last Monday the National Union of Journalists picketed Scotland Yard in protest. To coin Stella Rimington’s phrase – is this too a draconian “over-reaction” to 9/11?