Jail for Secrecy

As secrets go, the one that Reporter Desmond Clough confided to 950,000 readers of London's Daily Sketch did not seem like much: Russian trawlers, he wrote, scouted "with uncanny accuracy" top-secret NATO sea exercises. But for refusing to tell a British High Court where he got this information, Newsman Clough earned himself a special distinction last week. He became the first journalist in British history to be sentenced to prison for protecting a source.

Much more was involved in Clough's six-month sentence than a reporter's simple insistence on keeping mum. Clough's story said that the Red trawlers had come snooping because of secrets sold to Russia by John Vassall, a clerk in the British Admiralty and a known homosexual. One of the more scandalous episodes in British officialdom, the Vassall affair did not end with the Admiralty clerk's imprisonment (TIME, Nov. 2). British press stories sparked the official inquiry that nabbed Clough. How could the papers have been so knowing without leaks from the Admiralty itself? Nor was Clough's conviction likely to end the inquiry. A whole squad of other reporters is waiting to appear in the dock.

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