Classified

Abstract

Classified is a fascinating account of the British state's long obsession with secrecy and the ways it sought to prevent information about its secret activities from entering the public domain. Drawing on recently declassified documents, unpublished correspondence and exclusive interviews with key officials and journalists, Christopher Moran pays particular attention to the ways that the press and memoirs have been managed by politicians and spies. He argues that, by the 1960s, governments had become so concerned with their inability to keep secrets that they increasingly sought to offset damaging leaks with their own micro-managed publications. The book reveals new insights into seminal episodes in British post-war history, including the Suez crisis, the D-Notice Affair and the treachery of the Cambridge spies, identifying a new era of offensive information management, and putting the contemporary battle between secret-keepers, electronic media and digital whistle-blowers into long-term perspective.

Dudley Clarke’s official history of military deception, 1944–1945

“…Indeed, in July 1945, just as Clarke was revising his proposal, the JIC reported that most aspects of deception had to remain hidden, including the role that Ultra played, that it was a coordinated endeavour, and that double agents were integral in misinforming the enemy. 40 Even though Clarke, strictly speaking, would have respected these boundaries, the very idea of an official history contradicted the defensive approach to information control. What the JIC and others wanted was an impenetrable barrier erected around wartime intelligence.…”

“…50 Amazingly, because of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's reaction to the unmasking of Anthony Blunt in 1979, Howard's volume would remain unpublished until 1990, thanks to a fitful and brief return to defensive information control. 51 That method had been cast aside for reasons Dudley Clarke had foreseen in 1945. Although incorrect about the lengths the state would go to distort the historical record and how long it could keep its secrets, he was correct to say that the truth would get out eventually, often in an embarrassing manner.…”

“…60 As both Aldrich and Moran have argued, these insiders posed the greatest threat to intelligence secrecy. 61 The manner in which the authorities preferred to handle these cases, though, was not a legalistic one. Instead, they used the old boys' style, through which many of them had entered the intelligence world in the first place.…”

“…Potential agitators were taken aside and asked informally to reconsider their planned memoir or other publication, sealing many potential leakages before they could form fully. 62 Even so, that method could not stop Clifton James, Duff Cooper, or Ewen Montagu. It did, however, stop Dudley Clarke.…”

“…The British government, unwilling to stop the book and become embroiled in further humiliations, allowed him to proceed. 69 Even before 1972, though, important officials in Britain had been coming around to the idea of an official history, and the concept of offensive information control for intelligence secrets. The difficulty of preventing leaks from insiders, and stopping breaches by effective outside researchers, convinced Cabinet Secretary Burke Trend and Dick White -now the first Cabinet office Intelligence Coordinatorthat an official history of intelligence in the Second World War was the best option.…”