◆ SpookStack

Mer. Daines : Wil! the right hon. Gentle- man tell us the status of the chief officer in charge of security at the Foreign Office? Mr, Macmillan : The Permanent Under. Secretary, the Head of the Department. The status of the officer upon whom this would mainly devolve would be that of an Under-Secretary, oie. eres ie Per, Having made that point, there is just one other point that I should like to ‘make before ¥ come to the details. All to through the criticisms which have been 4 on made—} do not complain of them—I have felt a sense of impatience, and, indeed, natural impatience, that action of a pre- cautionary kind was not taken or could not have been taken when it might still have been effective. Tam bound to say that I think some of these complaints are ‘based on a misapprehension of the rights of a citizen in a free society in time of pees: Y shall revert to this pojot at « od stage, but J should like to mark it I would only venture to add this warn- ing. Action against employees, whether of the State or anybody else, arising from suspicion and not from proof may begin with good motives, and it may avert seri- ous inconveniences or even disasters, but, judging from what has happened in some other countries, such a practice soon de- ecnerates into the satisfaction of personal vendettas or a general system of tyranny, all in the name of public safety. --- - Now I should fike to say a word on the question of the handling of publicity. Bt is said that the statements made either by Foreign Office spokesmen or by Ministers during all these years have na disin- genuous and obscure. Why, it is asked, was not more information given earlier in greater volume and spontaneously? Of course, I do not intend to try to con- : vince the House that everything that bas ‘been done by myself os my predecessors has been absolutely right and prudent in = .every detail. Happily, there is ‘very little experience of this sort of thing in our aa country, and successive Ministers have not found it easy to strike just the right balance between saying 100 little and . Saying too much. TO ee, | am sure, however, that they have all been influenced by one over-riding con- sideration. Naturally, the disappearance of the two men opened up a large new MCR 1491 Former tS Office 7 NOVEMBER 1955 --- It is worth Jooking back to the Officials—~Disappearance . 1492 field of investigation for the Security Sex- | vice. These inquiries continued for a Jong time ; indeed, for several years. At any stage while they were in progress a i full statement would have indicated. to + the world the degree to which they were © meeting with success, Consequently. as! anyone with any experience of this kind ; of work knows, the investigation itself A might have been compromised. if one » is working on a line which may lead to t success and perhaps to prosecution, the ; Jess one talks about it the better and that j is what we meant by the paragraph in 4 the White Paper when we said: a5 > 4 a ‘ “~ “Counter-espionage depends for its succes 4° ‘on the maximum secrecy of its methods. Nor is it desirable at any moment to let the other side know bow much has been discovered or guess at what means have been used to - iscover i” of public statements... 3 f Unless we were to pubjish a ki running commentary such as would have been highly prejudicial to the work of the Security Service, we had to decide on ~ the right moment for telling what we knew of the story. Ministers may have decided wisely or unwisely, but the para- = mount consideration—and J want to — emphasise it—wes for facilitating the work + of investigation in its widest sense and, * above all—and perhaps this is the most . important point—of ot endangering valuable sources, ‘ teva este C io which the case developed. When Macleaa ‘ and Burgess fied in May, 1951, the first thought of those responsible had to be pot how much they could tell the public, but what they could do to minimise the harm that had been done. The Security Service still had extensive inquiries to make, not merely to reconstruct the story but to improve the Service, But whea Petrov defected on 3rd April, 1954, a whole new vista on the case was opened up. a ~ On 3rd May. 1954; the Austrafian ~‘ Government set up a Royal Commission and it was clear that the bearing of Petrav’s testimony in many matters—in many - Matters quite unconnected with Maclean and Burgess—was to be a vital part of the work of that Commission. From then on his credibility as a witness was to be under examination. We knew in April. 1954, that the Australian Government in- tended {0 set up a Royal Commission. wou + dae ome