Spy indictment: Official Secrets Act

It may not be known to the readers of my blog what was actually involved in my case and trial, and exactly what I had been accused of doing that led to my conviction for espionage. The Indictment was worded as follows:

The Crown Court at Central Criminal Court
The Queen -v- Michael John Smith

Michael John Smith is charged as follows:

COUNT 1
Statement of Offence
Communicating material to another for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, contrary to Section 1(1)(c) of the Official Secrets Act 1911.

Particulars of Offence
Michael John Smith on a day between the 1st day of January 1990 and the 1st day of January 1991, for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, communicated to another a sketch, plan, model, article, or note, or other document or information which was calculated to be or might have been or was intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy.

COUNT 2
Statement of Offence
Communicating material to another for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, contrary to Section 1(1)(c) of the Official Secrets Act 1911.

Particulars of Offence
Michael John Smith on a day between the 1st day of January 1991 and the 1st day of May 1992, for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, communicated to another a sketch, plan, model, article, or note, or other document or information which was calculated to be or might have been or was intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy.

COUNT 3
Statement of Offence
Making a sketch or note for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, contrary to Section 1(1)(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1911.

Particulars of Offence
Michael John Smith between the 30th day of April 1992 and the 8th day of August 1992, for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State made sketches or notes which were calculated to be or might be or were intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy.

COUNT 4
Statement of Offence
Obtaining or collecting material for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, contrary to Section 1(1)(c) of the Official Secrets Act 1911.

Particulars of Offence
Michael John Smith between the 30th day of April 1992 and the 8th day of August 1992, for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State obtained or collected sketches, plans, models, articles, or notes, or other documents or information which were calculated to be or might have been or were intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy.

There was no evidence at all about what scientific material was involved in Counts 1 and 2. I volunteered information that it related only to obsolete and unclassified commercial documentation, concerning silicon-on-sapphire and gallium arsenide technology. HRC (Hirst Research Centre) abandoned these technologies at Wembley in the late 1980s, and it would not be useful to an enemy. However, the Prosecution claimed, without any evidence, that the material must have been militarily sensitive - it is difficult to see how they arrived at such a conclusion.

Count 3 related to my handwritten notes:
JS/16 Rugate Filter Project (pp. 176-178)
JS/17 Micro-Machining Project (pp. 179-181)
JS/18 Quasi-Optical Car Radar Project (pp. 182-185)
JS/19 Micron-Valve Project (p. 186)
JS/20 Olfactory Research Project (p. 187)

I could go into great detail about the type of material found in Count 3, and the long prosecution and defence arguments about whether the “Russians” would have found it useful or not, or whether it was prejudicial to the UK. In the end these projects were potentially capable of dual commercial or military use (as is almost anything if you think about it), but there was insufficient evidence that I had either intended to hand this information to a Russian, or it was of real technical value to an enemy. After deliberation the jury used their common sense, and they rejected the prosecution claims.

Although all the scientific exhibits were in the same bag in the boot of my car, I was found not guilty of Count 3, but guilty of Count 4.

Count 4 related to GEC components and printed documents:
JS/14 Old surface acoustic wave, silicon-on-sapphire and gallium arsenide components (p. 1)

JS/15 Surface acoustic wave documents (pp. 2-175), including a RESTRICTED “ALARM” document (pp. 51-59)

JS/21-38 Bulk acoustic wave documents (pp. 188-269J), including an UNCLASSIFIED Rapier document (pp. 190-196)

SR/4 Infra-Red Imager documents (pp. 269/1-269/9)

SR/4 Silicon-on-sapphire documents (pp. 269/10-269/69)

SR/4 Gallium arsenide documents (pp. 269/70-269/87)

The components of JS/14 were old and obsolete examples (some labeled as non-working rejects) that had been lying around in my office. Since they would probably have been thrown away in any case, when the company moved site a few months later, I took them as souvenirs of my time at the company. The prosecution made the case that these components would have been useful to the Russians (for reverse engineering). However, as my expert Dr Eamonn Maher quite correctly pointed out, far more advanced and current examples of these devices were on open sale commercially - so why would a Russian be interested in obsolete material?

The documents in JS/15 was a collection of information from an approval exercise to qualify Hirst Research Centre to commercially produce similar surface acoustic wave devices, and to earn the company a certificate to meet a British Standard for this manufacturing capability (BS9450 Capability Approval Exercises in 1984). There was nothing apparently of significant military interest in this collection of documents, or so the defence was led to believe by the lack of any evidence from the prosecution, until the moment Dr Meirion Francis Lewis stepped into the witness box on 7 October 1993 and delivered his radically different view using undisclosed evidence. The issue revolved around whether one 9 page document related to the ALARM missile project. Readers of this blog will be aware that more than 12 years later the Ministry of Defence has yet to officially confirm the document was used on ALARM (Mr Andrew Mackinlay, my MP, asked a question in the House of Commons recently, but failed to get an answer). As I have stated previously, the conclusions of the Security Commission’s report were that 'at the time the document was created it was not specifically linked to a particular weapons system’ (HMSO Cm 2930, Annex A.5, July 1995). Apart from the link to ALARM there were many errors and inconsistencies in Dr Lewis’s testimony about that document, and this is also awaiting resolution.

Documents in JS/21-38 related to a small bulk acoustic wave delay line, and some of that information referred to a component from a piece of test equipment used to test the Rapier system - a sort of “go/no-go” test. However, this documentation was also part of a BS9450 Capability Approval application in 1984. The documents gave details of the frequency band used by Rapier, but did not reveal the actual spot frequencies of any installation, as each Rapier system has a different operating frequency. The sensitivity of this information can be judged from the fact that it was openly published in Janes Land Based Air Defence Review, which printed how a version of Rapier, called Possum, uses the frequency band 3.1 to 3.3 GHz and that Rapier works in the ‘F-Band’ frequency range. Many other technical points were published about Rapier in this Janes book, which can be purchased or read in a public library by any Russian who cares to look for it.

The 5 page UNCLASSIFIED Rapier document, dated 11 January 1984, was a procurement specification for a BAW (bulk acoustic wave) delay line. BAW delay line technology is well known, and at the trial it was stated that the component was to become obsolete. It is interesting that delay line specifications were openly published by GEC Marconi in a “Techbrief”, a glossy hand-out for customers, which states that typical delay lines can be manufactured with a 3.1 to 3.4 GHz frequency band. Any potential customer could request this leaflet, or buy a similar component.

It is also significant that the main “expert” called to give evidence about the technical aspects of Rapier, ex-Squadron Leader Colin Bagley, was not himself particularly well-qualified to give that evidence. My own expert Dr Eamonn Maher made a comment that the prosecution expert whose qualifications least impressed him was Colin Bagley. It is a strange and inexplicable fact that, despite ALARM and Rapier being the two specific weapons referred to at my trial, there were no witnesses called who were authoritatively expert on the design and performance of those weapons. Perhaps the prosecution was afraid of asking experts who might actually know the true significance of the documents used as exhibits at my trial?

If we are to believe the hawk-like vision of experts like Dr D.I. Weatherley, ex-Squadron Leader Colin Bagley and Dr M.F. Lewis, then Rapier and ALARM can be jammed by using some pretty basic information from Janes Land Based Air Defence Review (in the case of Rapier), and the specification of one commercially available component (in the case of ALARM). It seems incredible, if true, that Rapier and ALARM are so easy to jam, and that the UK has wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on such vulnerable systems. From my technical viewpoint I believe more than a little exaggeration was going on here, but unfortunately I am prevented from telling you more due to the gagging orders governing the “in camera” nonsense used at my trial.

The SR/4 Infra-Red Imager documents involved an overview of the assembly of the T.I.C.M. (Thermal Imager Common Module) using SPRITE Infra-Red detector devices. So much information is already published about Infra-Red Detectors (10,000 papers), that my own expert (Dr Eamonn Maher) said the Russians would be far more interested in the information already available in the public domain, than the simple and limited information in the few pages in my possession. Dr Maher should know what he was talking about, because he was a specialist in this area himself, but the Crown insisted on going into every tiny detail, as they did in everything else. The prosecution tried to make insignificant details look highly damaging to the Nation, even though Britain allows the U.S. and Japan (a former enemy) to manufacture these detectors under licence. Most of the information only concerned the detector’s assembly into its cooling jacket and could not be sensitive.

The remaining parts of SR/4, concerning silicon-on-sapphire and gallium arsenide documents, was shown by Dr Eamonn Maher to be of commercial interest and already available in the public domain.

So, in my opinion, the prosecution case boiled down to one 10 year-old RESTRICTED document (claimed to be from the ALARM project), and one 8 year-old UNCLASSIFIED document for a component used on a piece of Rapier test gear. To a person educated in electronic engineering, such as myself, it was quite shocking to hear allegedly well-qualified “experts” making claims that material already in the public domain was “sensitive”. There were some extraordinary things said in court.

At the end of my trial the sentences passed were as follows:

Charge 1: Passing information 1st January 1990 to 1st January 1991 - 8 years
Charge 2: Passing information 1st January 1991 to 1st May 1992 - 8 years
Charge 3: Making Notes and sketches 30th April 1992 to 8th August 1992 - Not Guilty
Charge 4: Obtaining material 30th April 1992 to 8th August 1992 - 9 years

Rather than, as is usually the case, making the sentences run concurrently, the judge (Justice Blofeld) made them consecutive. It was clear that it was only possible to find me guilty of counts 1 and 2 because of the material involved in Count 4, but that material was mostly in the public domain or of low scientific value.

There was no evidence of what material I passed on charges 1 and 2 and so it is impossible to prove that it was useful to an enemy and prejudicial to the interests of the State. However, the learned judge sentenced me on the basis that he was “bound to assume” that, having regard to the payments received for the documentation passed over, that the material passed over was sensitive. At my appeal these sentences were both reduced to 5½ years each.

The sentences can be seen to be excessive when it is considered that I only had security clearance to CONFIDENTIAL level, although there is no evidence I had access to anything above RESTRICTED status. The sentences are more appropriate to the Cold War period for a high level member of the armed forces or government services who had disclosed SECRET or TOP SECRET material to a hostile and active enemy. At the time of my trial, due to the recent political changes, Russia was no longer considered a potential enemy (according to Margaret Thatcher).