ABSTRACT
In the late 1970s and early 1980, Duncan Campbell wrote a series of New Statesman articles revealing then sometimes classified national security information. That about the still publicly unavowed Secret Intelligence and Security Services caused other editors to seek guidance from the new D-Notice Secretary Admiral Bill Ash 83 as to the standing of D-Notices 10 (British Intelligence Services) and 11 (Cyphers and Communications). In February 1980 he therefore sent an apparently routine and innocuous short letter to all editors confirming that the two Notices were still ‘in force’, and that the ‘need to protect the information on the intelligence services covered by these two Notices is unchanged and remains of the first importance in the interests of national security’. He asked that editors continued to be guided by them, adding they were ‘kept under review’ by the DPBC.
