Spycatcher

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**Title** **Spycatcher**

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

Spycatcher (full title: Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer) is a book by the former MI5 secret service operative and Assistant Director Peter Wright (with co-author Paul Greengrass). It caused a scandal on its release not so much because of its allegations but because the British government attempted to ban it, thereby ensuring its notoriety.[1]

The book primarily details Wright's efforts to uncover a Russian mole in his organisation. Wright alleges that this was Roger Hollis, a former Director General of MI5. He also describes a variety of figures in the intelligence service who might or might not have been the mole, and effectively provides a history of the service via its principal players from the 1930s to Wright's own period.

In addition, the book makes several scandalous allegations, such as that there was an MI6 plot to kill President Nasser during the Suez Crisis, and that MI5 and the CIA joined together in a plot against British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (who had secretly been accused of being a KGB agent by Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, and who, as a left-wing politician, was a natural target for MI5). Wright also says that several high-level Commonwealth conferences were bugged.

The book also provides an examination of the techniques used by the intelligence services, along with a candid expose of their ethics which had until then been mere speculation (notably the "11th commandment" which states that "thou shalt not get caught"). Wright explains many of the technologies used by MI5, some of which he developed himself, and which allowed the agency to bug rooms using a variety of clever electronic techniques.

Wright says directly in the book's afterword that one of the primary reasons for writing the book is to make up for lost income due to the British government deciding that his pension was not transferable from his early work at GCHQ; by this ruling, Wright's pension was severely shortened.

The book was written after Wright left MI5 and when he was living in Tasmania, Australia. The first attempt to publish it was made in 1985.[2] It was immediately banned in the UK although sold overseas. The British government attempted to stop the book being published in Australia, but lost the action in 1987. The government appealed but lost in June 1988. [3] Several British newspapers attempted to report on its principal allegations but were served with gag orders. They persisted and were tried for contempt of court, charges that were later dropped. Throughout all this, quantities of the book were smuggled into the UK for sale. In the summer of 1987, a high court judge lifted the ban on reporting on the book. But in late July, the Law Lords, once again barred accounts of Wright's charges. Eventually in 1988 the book was cleared for legitimate sale when the Law Lords admitted that its publication overseas meant it no longer contained secrets.[4] Additionally, in November 1991, the European Court of Human Rights found that the British government had breached the European Convention of Human Rights in gagging the newspapers.[5] The government's legal cost is estimated at £2m.[6]

The Daily Mirror published upside-down photos of the three Law Lords who sided with the government above the caption 'YOU FOOLS'. British editions of The Economist ran an otherwise blank page with a box explaining that a review of Spycatcher was appearing in all 170 countries where the magazine has subscribers, except one. "For our 420,000 readers there," the editors wrote, paraphrasing Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, "this page is blank -- and the law is an ass."

The lawyer who acted to overcome the British Government's suppression orders on the 'Spycatcher' novel was Malcolm Turnbull, now a Minister in the (conservative) Liberal Government in Australia.

Peter Wright died in 1995, a millionaire from profits of the book.

Spycatcher has sold over two million copies.[7]