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Spycatcher
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Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (also Spycatcher), is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 secret service officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia. Its allegations proved scandalous on publication, but more so because the British Government attempted to ban it, ensuring its profit and notoriety.
Spycatcher details the author’s work seeking to discover a Soviet mole in MI5, and that the said mole was Roger Hollis — a former MI5 Director General; it also describes people who might have or might not have been the mole; and renders a history of MI5 by chronicling its principal officers, from the 1930s to his time in service.
Moreover, Spycatcher tells of the MI6 plot to assassinate President Nasser during the Suez Crisis; of joint MI5-CIA plotting against left-wing British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (secretly accused of being KGB by Soviet traitor Anatoliy Golitsyn); and of MI5’s eavesdropping on high-level Commonwealth conferences.
Wright examines the techniques of intelligence services, exposes their ethics (speculative until that time), notably their 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught, and explains many MI5 electronic technologies (some of which he developed) allowing clever spying into rooms. In the afterword, he states that writing Spycatcher was motivated principally to recuperate pension income lost when the British Government ruled his pension un-transferable for earlier work in GCHQ, a ruling that severely reduced his pension.
Mr Wright wrote Spycatcher upon retiring from MI5 and while residing in Tasmania, Australia; he first attempted publication in 1985.
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Encyclopedia
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (also Spycatcher), is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 secret service officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia. Its allegations proved scandalous on publication, but more so because the British Government attempted to ban it, ensuring its profit and notoriety.
Spycatcher details the author’s work seeking to discover a Soviet mole in MI5, and that the said mole was Roger Hollis — a former MI5 Director General; it also describes people who might have or might not have been the mole; and renders a history of MI5 by chronicling its principal officers, from the 1930s to his time in service.
Moreover, Spycatcher tells of the MI6 plot to assassinate President Nasser during the Suez Crisis; of joint MI5-CIA plotting against left-wing British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (secretly accused of being KGB by Soviet traitor Anatoliy Golitsyn); and of MI5’s eavesdropping on high-level Commonwealth conferences.
Wright examines the techniques of intelligence services, exposes their ethics (speculative until that time), notably their 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught, and explains many MI5 electronic technologies (some of which he developed) allowing clever spying into rooms. In the afterword, he states that writing Spycatcher was motivated principally to recuperate pension income lost when the British Government ruled his pension un-transferable for earlier work in GCHQ, a ruling that severely reduced his pension.
Mr Wright wrote Spycatcher upon retiring from MI5 and while residing in Tasmania, Australia; he first attempted publication in 1985. The British Government immediately acted to ban Spycatcher in the UK. Since the ruling was obtained in an English court, however, the book continued to be available legally in Scotland, as well as overseas. It also attempted halting the book's Australian publication, but lost that action in 1987; it appealed but again lost in June 1988.
English newspapers attempting proper reportage of Spycatchers principal allegations were served gag orders; on persisting, they were tried for contempt of court, although the charges eventually dropped. Throughout all this, the book continued to be sold in Scotland; moreover, Scottish newspapers were not subject to any English gag order, and continued to report on the affair. Inevitably the British Government's lack of preparation and knowledge of the legal differences between different countries within the UK weakened its standing in the case. Quantities of the book easily reached English purchasers from Scotland, while other copies were smuggled into England from Australia and elsewhere.
In the summer of 1987, a high court judge lifted the ban on English newspaper reportage on the book, but, in late July, the Law Lords again barred reportage of Wright's allegations. Eventually, in 1988, the book was cleared for legitimate sale when the Law Lords acknowledged that overseas publication meant it contained no secrets. However, Wright was barred from receiving royalties from the sale of the book in the United Kingdom. In November 1991, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British Government had breached the European Convention of Human Rights in gagging its own newspapers. The British Government’s legal cost is estimated at £250,000.
The Daily Mirror published upside-down photographs of the three Law Lords, with the caption 'YOU FOOLS'. British editions of The Economist ran a blank page with a boxed explanation that "In all but one country, our readers have on this page a review of 'Spycatcher,' a book by an ex-M.I.5 man, Peter Wright. The exception is Britain, where the book, and comment on it, have been banned. For our 420,000 readers there, this page is blank - and the law is an ass."
Malcolm Turnbull, later a minister in the (conservative) Australian Liberal Government and then in September 2008 Opposition Leader, was the lawyer who overcame the British Government's suppression orders against the Spycatcher. The book has sold more than two million copies.; in 1995, Peter Wright died a millionaire from profits of his book.
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