Home Office official joked I should be jailed for one of my scoops – under new law criminalising journalists, I could be
I WILL never forget the disturbing text message I received from a Home Office official just moments after splashing a story across the front page: “You’re going to chokey for this one.”
Having just revealed leaked intelligence that Shamima Begum sewed suicide vests on to would-be bombers and was far more active in IS than a mere bride, this was no joking matter.
Nor do I have any doubt that my story that a RAF Reaper drone had killed Sally Jones — the British jihadi dubbed the White Widow — caused equal amounts of consternation at the very highest levels in Whitehall.
The Government was also left red-faced and incandescent when I revealed the real reason the boss of spy agency GCHQ had resigned was not the “family reasons” publicly stated at the time, but because he had secretly given a character reference to a paedophile priest spared jail only to reoffend.
All of these stories were undoubtedly in the public interest by any measure — yet had they had the tools to stop their publication, who really believes ministers, officials and intelligence agencies would not have used them?
Forgive me for being sceptical when ministers tell us that journalists have nothing to worry about from a new anti-espionage legislation working its way through Parliament.
READ MORE ABOUT THE NATIONAL SECURITY BILL
Baby out with the bathwater
The sweeping National Security Bill attempts to bring the outdated Official Secrets Act into the modern age.
Last properly updated at the tail end of the Cold War, it is fair enough to argue that the laws governing our national security need to reflect a hostile world almost unrecognisable from the late 1980s.
We understand Britain is under constant threat every day from our adversaries, be that Chinese spies, Russian poisoners or Iranian hackers.
Of course a clampdown is needed, on the industrial scale of bad-guy PR done through London by dodgy financiers, lawyers, lobbyists and estate agents.
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The bill is poorly worded and loosely drafted when it comes to secrets being spilled across the pages of newspapers.
It talks of the “safety and interests of the state”, with little firm definition of what that means not only to this Government but to any government of any stripe in the future.
Within the small print on this new bill it says a criminal offence — one that carries up to 14 years in said “chokey” — will have been committed if secret information was dis-closed or published that “may materially assist” foreign powers and their spies.
So sweeping is this measure that it could be argued it covers almost any story the Government finds unhelpful to its standing on the world stage.
Foreign spies would no doubt have delighted in any of the stories I mentioned above, as they would have with countless other stories from my colleagues and rivals.
Take The Guardian’s Panama Papers probe that dragged then PM David Cameron into a major tax row, or the Daily Mail’s exposé of treatment of female submariners — also useful intel for our enemies.
Or what about “coffin” Snatch Land Rovers that left our troops sitting ducks in Iraq, or the BBC revealing an MI5 agent’s horrific girlfriend- beating?
Who really thinks that The Mail on Sunday could have published incendiary revelations of what our man in Washington really thought about Donald Trump with this sword hanging over them?
All of these stories would have gleefully been wired back to the Kremlin or Beijing — but that misses the point.
The public had the right to know this stuff and should be extremely concerned about handing the authorities even the ability to threaten journalists with jail for revealing it.
Media companies and journalists’ unions are united in believing that handing Government these tools will have a “chilling effect” on public-interest reporting — even if just the threat of them being used becomes the tool of a spin doctor trying to kill off an embarrassing revelation.
I’m glad the Home Office has looked again at this particular clause, but the suggested update to only criminalise information that could “be likely to” help our enemies is still startlingly vague.
Security Minister Tom Tugendhat vows to “protect all legitimate activity” but has not yet explained how that will work — a proper exemption for the recognised Press and TV must be written on to the face of this bill.
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Peers will have the opportunity to debate and scrutinise the bill next week and should be full-throated in their demands for this.
Otherwise, next time I’ll be writing, it could be from behind bars.