BRITAIN’S military censor has crossed swords with his predecessor in a Whitehall feud over the publication of the official history of government censorship.
In what some officials perceived as a public snub last week Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance, secretary of the government’s D-Notice committee, failed to attend the launch of a book detailing its history after rowing with its author, his former friend and colleague, Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson.
The committee advises the media on whether publication of a story risks endangering national security.
The spat began when Vallance dismissed a draft of the book as “immature” in a private Cabinet Office review.
The clash of egos intensified when Vallance said the book’s final chapters must be removed. They told the inside story of some of the best-known intelligence dramas of the Blair years, including the unmasking of Stakeknife, MI5’s high-level mole in the IRA, and secrets of the spy agency’s role in the war on terror.
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Vallance sent his deputy to the book’s launch at the Savile club in Mayfair, London, which Wilkinson took as a slight. Vallance then accused him of writing an autobiography at taxpayers’ expense.
Wilkinson, who ran the D-Notice committee from 1999 to 2004, said he was baffled by the behaviour of Vallance.
“He does seem to have a real bee in his bonnet about this,” he said. “I haven’t spoke to him since April last year. I’m a grown-up and I invited him to the book launch. But he’s obviously decided not to come.”
Vallance said he had been on holiday in France and had sent his deputy to attend on his behalf.
“It shouldn’t have been a spat at all,” he said. “All I tried to do was to help him but he does seem to have cut up rough about it. We were friends, that’s why it’s so disappointing. I really can’t understand why he’s reacted so badly.”
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The origins of the D-Notice committee go back to the first world war when the War Office issued censorship orders to newspapers to prevent them publishing details of military operations that might tip off the Germans.
The committee is made up of senior civil servants from the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Foreign Office as well as newspaper and television news editors.
Wilkinson was commissioned by the Cabinet Office to write the book Secrecy and the Media five years ago. As part of the Government Official History series, it was not expected to create ripples. The book was published late last month, without the final chapters to which Vallance objected.
The two men were close friends until last year when MI5, MI6 and other security departments cleared his 300,000-word manuscript for publication.
Vallance, in a confidential four-page review for the Cabinet Office, then said the book was so badly written it should not be published in its current form. “I said it was a very immature product which required further presentational refinement and a deeper analysis,” he said last week.