Spycatcher

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Spycatcher

Author	Peter Wright (with Paul Greengrass)
Language	English
Subject(s)	Espionage
Publisher	Heinemann (Australia) Penguin Viking (USA)
Publication date	July 31, 1987
Pages	392
ISBN	0-670-82055-5

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. Its allegations proved scandalous on publication, but more so because the British Government attempted to ban it, ensuring its profit and notoriety.^[1]

Spycatcher details Peter Wright’s work seeking to discover a Soviet mole in MI5, and that 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 'til 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.^[2] The British Government immediately banned Spycatcher in the U.K., despite its open sale overseas. It also attempted halting the book's Australian publication, but lost that action in 1987; it appealed, but again lost in June 1988. ^[3]

British newspapers attempting proper reportage of Spycatcher's principal allegations were served gag orders; on persisting, they were tried for contempt of court, with the charges later dropped. Throughout all this, quantities of the book were smuggled for secret sale in the U.K. In summer of 1987, a high court judge lifted the ban on 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.^[2] Additionally, 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.^[4] The British Government’s legal cost is estimated at £250,000.^[3]

The Daily Mirror published upside-down photographs of the three Law Lords, with the caption 'YOU FOOLS'.^[1] British editions of The Economist ran a blank page with a boxed explanation that a Spycatcher review was appearing in each of the other 170 countries where the magazine has subscribers, except in one: For our 420,000 readers there . . . this page is blank — and the law is an ass. ^[5]^[1]

Malcolm Turnbull, former minister in the (conservative) Australian Liberal Government, was the lawyer who overcame the British Government's suppression orders against the Spycatcher. The book has sold more than two million copies.^[2]; in 1995, Peter Wright died a millionaire from profits of his book.^[6]