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UK: Secret email that freed the mole at the Foreign Office

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Previous articles:

"Rendition: The Use and Abuse of the English Language" Jan 7, 2008
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20080107/073770.html

"Secrets and Lies" - Jan 11, 2008
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20080107/073957.html

sent by Tim Murphy


The Observer - Jan 13, 2008
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2240085,00.html

Secret email that freed the mole at the Foreign Office

The case against Derek Pasquill, accused of handing a journalist secret
papers, collapsed dramatically as it became clear it could embarrass the
government. 

by Peter Beaumont

The bundle of documents delivered to the Crown Prosecution Service by
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 6 December last year should have
contained few nasty surprises. The files told the alarming story of
Derek Pasquill, a civil servant in a hitherto obscure new unit set up
to improve relations with the Islamic world, who had broken one of the
golden rules of a Crown servant.

Pasquill, 48, had handed over confidential documents to an Observer
journalist after becoming concerned about Foreign Office contacts with
Islamic groups and individuals who backed violence. Now he was facing
trial for six breaches of Section 3 of the 1989 Official Secrets Act
that, according to Mariot Leslie, the Foreign Office's director of
defence and intelligence, had seriously damaged UK interests abroad and
endangered the life of a colleague.

The CPS and Special Branch officers who put together the case at the
behest of the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, were convinced that
the secrets case against Pasquill was watertight.

They were wrong. Included among the documents being prepared for
disclosure to Pasquill's defence team was a bombshell. It was an email
that should have been handed to both the defence and the CPS many
months before.

What it showed was that far from unanimity existing among the mandarins
at the Foreign Office's imposing King Charles Street headquarters - as
expressed forcefully in Leslie's witness statement - other voices were
cautioning strongly that the Official Secrets Act was not appropriate
for charging him. They also argued - according to one source who was
familiar with the email - that 'under no circumstances was national
security threatened'.

When the current Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, became aware of the
email's contents in December, and the fact that it was on its way to the
defence, he told colleagues there was 'no longer any chance of a
prosecution'. Last week at the Old Bailey the case against Pasquill was
dropped.

Suddenly, attention turned from the prosecution of a shy man who had
risked his career and future - not for money, but for something he
believed was fundamentally wrong with the government's policies - and
towards the Foreign Office, which was accused of being 'malicious' and
politically motivated in prosecuting Pasquill.

In the words of Labour MP and former Foreign Office Minister Denis
MacShane last week, the law had been used as a 'steam hammer'. Now it
is the Foreign Office that seems increasingly likely to be called to
account, facing the threat from Pasquill's lawyers of a suit against
them for malicious prosecution.

At the centre of the argument, not for the first time in the Pasquill
affair, is the controversial figure of Mockbul Ali, an ambitious young
civil servant accused by his critics of being an apologist for extreme
Islamist views within Whitehall.

With the backing of Straw, Ali, Pasquill believed, had soft-soaped
organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its spiritual leader,
the controversial Islamist preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who had
expressed his support for Palestinian suicide bombers and whom Ali
suggested should be allowed to visit the UK. He had offered similar
support for Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, a Bangladeshi MP who preaches
violent hatred against the West, proclaiming him to be 'mainstream'.

One source familiar with the thinking behind the prosecution alleged
that Straw wanted to take 'revenge' - embarrassed by the exposure of
Ali as being too close to the Islamists, and worried at the failure to
prosecute, at a time when Whitehall was awash with documents about the
war in Iraq whose leaking could prove damaging.

Discussing the case in detail last week, for the first time since the
charges were dropped, Pasquill admitted he was at first impressed by
Ali, a bright young man in his mid-twenties with whom he shared an
office. 'It would be fair to say that I came into that unit with not a
great deal of knowledge about British Muslim politics or some of the
issues being discussed. So I had no particular reason at that time to
have an opinion opposed to what the unit was doing.'

But while Pasquill may have been at a disadvantage at first, he was an
assiduous and committed reader. And as he researched the background to
political Islam he says he developed serious misgivings about a policy
he felt was being pushed by Ali that had opened the door of the Foreign
Office to a group of Islamists with whom Ali shared sympathies. 'I
think acceptance [of the policy] was diluted in my mind. And you can't
get away from the effect of the London bombings.'

Reading an article by Observer journalist Martin Bright, now with the
New Statesman, about how more moderate groups had been prevented from
participating in an Islamic arts festival, Pasquill contacted Bright, at
first to find out more of what he knew about what was going on. By the
end of the meeting he had decided to begin leaking material to Bright,
exposing the failings he believed existed in the government's policy of
engaging with Islamists who had a record of supporting violence.

The sense of anger at the top of the Foreign Office over the leaks was
quickly communicated to the unit. Oddly it came not from its titular
head, Francis Guy, now ambassador to Lebanon, but in a briefing from
Ali. 'I was at the meeting that discussed the first leaks,' said
Pasquill. 'I was sitting next to Mockbul. He said that [Sir] Michael
Jay [Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office] was exceedingly
upset. He said something like: "Jay wants whoever leaked this stuff
boiled in oil." '

It is what happened next that is at the heart of accusations that
Pasquill was singled out to be punished for blowing the whistle on what
was going on inside his unit. Pasquill admits he was naive in not
realising that Bright would see other stories in the documents,
including the British government's knowledge of the American policy of
extraordinary rendition; discussions over whether or not to proscribe
groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah; and the view of officials that the
Iraq war had in fact radicalised British Muslim youth, contrary to the
then Prime Minister Tony Blair's claims.

Around June last year, five months after Pasquill's arrest but before he
faced any charges, senior officials discussed what to do about the case.
Despite what the Foreign Office would later claim in the witness
statement prepared by Leslie when the Foreign Office presented the
'official' complaint against him, they were not unanimous that the
Official Secrets Act was the best way to proceed.

The dissent expressed in that email was not minor. 'Part of the argument
contained in that email,' said a second source, 'is whether the case
should have proceeded under different charges.' 'This was not a threat
to the realm,' said a third. 'It was like leaking the car parking
plans.'

But instructions from on high were to push ahead regardless.

The Foreign Office, however, displaying a lack of understanding of
English criminal proceedings, which requires all such discussions as
that contained in the email to be disclosed to the defence (as well as
the CPS), continues to insist that what was important was the 'settled
view' reached at the end of the process.

Others explained last week that the Foreign Office was not clear that it
needed to hand over the material until a year and a half into the case.

It is an explanation that has been met with incredulity by Pasquill's
solicitor Neil O'May who believes it is 'inconceivable that no one on
the Special Branch' investigation would have asked senior officials at
the beginning of the case if documents existed that undermined the case.

Which in O'May's mind leaves the crucial question unanswered: whether
the email was lost as the result of incompetence or whether - more
seriously - the views contained in it were suppressed for well over a
year. The latter would suggest the decision to prosecute Pasquill under
the Official Secrets Act, rather than dealing with him on lesser
charges or through a disciplinary panel, was based not on a genuine
analysis of 'damage' caused to UK interests, but on political reasons,
to make an example of him.

'It is important to have mechanisms to be able to protect confidences. I
know that as a lawyer. But this is the second time where a major
Official Secrets case collapsed at the door of the court,' said Shami
Chakrabarti, director of Liberty last week. 'It brings back bad
memories of the Katharine Gun case [where a GCHQ employee leaked a memo
on the bugging of UN delegations to this paper]. They have done it
twice now.

'I think to do it between arrest and charge is one thing, but for
people to go to the Bailey ... It is a scandal that it has happened
twice in a row at the discovery stage. They now have to honour their
promise to the review the Official Secrets Act, and introduce a robust
mechanism that allows civil servants who have concerns about government
policies to be able to raise them.'


SIDEBAR: How the secrecy law works

What is the Official Secrets Act?
It is a law which forbids government employees from disclosing
information formally classified as secret. It was last revised in 1989.

Who does it apply to?
The first section of the act applies to members of the security and
intelligence services, who face jail if they disclose sensitive
information. Other sections refer to 'Crown servants' and cover civil
servants, diplomats and members of the armed forces - but anyone could
breach the act.

What does it mean to sign it?
People working with sensitive information are commonly asked to sign a
contract saying they will abide by the act. However, this has no
effect. As the act is law, individuals are bound by it whether they
have signed it or not.

Is it difficult to prosecute using the act?
Tony Blair ordered a reform of the secrecy laws in 2006 to stop
situations like that of Katharine Gun, the GCHQ whistleblower whose
case collapsed.

Anushka Asthana


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