Two jailed for trying to leak details of Blair's talks with Bush

Tony Blair's ill-fated war with Iraq claimed two more victims yesterday when a civil servant and an MP's researcher were convicted of disclosing details of a secret conversation between the Prime Minister and President George Bush.

Last night, MPs, lawyers and civil rights groups described the prosecution as a "farce" and accused the Government of misusing the Official Secrets Act to cover up political embarrassment over the war.

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David Keogh, 50, a Cabinet Office communications officer, was today jailed for six months. He passed on an "extremely sensitive memo" to Leo O'Connor, 44, a political researcher who worked for an anti-war Labour MP, Anthony Clarke. O'Connor was today sentenced to three months in jail after an Old Bailey jury found them guilty yesterday of breaching Britain's secrecy laws.

At the centre of the trial was a four-page Downing Street document which recorded discussions about Iraq between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, held in the Oval Office in April 2004 in the run-up to the handover of power to the Iraqi government.

Keogh, who copied the document to O'Connor while he was working in the Cabinet Office, said that he acted out of conscience because he believed the document showed Mr Bush to be a "madman".

O'Connor passed the document to Mr Clarke, but the Northampton MP alerted Downing Street who in turn handed it over to the police.

But Mr Clarke's action won him the gratitude of the Prime Minister, who is expected to announce that he is standing down today. Mr Blair wrote a letter to the MP in which he said: "Tony, I know we differ over this issue but I just wanted to thank you for doing the right thing. Sometimes the good stuff has to be done privately."

Mr Clarke said yesterday that justice had "not been served" and urged his former researcher, to appeal against the verdict.

He said O'Connor - with whom he stayed in touch today by text messages - did not have a bad bone in his body and had acted honestly at all stages.

Asked what the impact of revealing the contents of the memo would be today, he said: "In respect of the personal relationship between President Bush and the Prime Minister, I think it would simply give a better insight into what was happening between the two leaders at the time and may challenge a few misconceptions that were held in the media during that period."

Throughout the trial, the public and press were excluded from parts of the hearing which referred to the contents of the highly sensitive memo. It is a contempt of court to publish details of the memo.

The prosecution allege that the leaking of the document could have cost lives and insisted that in this case "secrecy is not the enemy of democracy".

David Perry, prosecuting for the Crown, told the jury: "We live in a democratic society, not the Wild West. It is not for people to decide they are going to be the sheriff in town."

But Keogh's barrister, Rex Ted QC, said there was nothing in the document that related to British troop action in Iraq. He told the judge that Keogh had not acted for a political motive but had been following his conscience.

Last night the Government was accused of making examples out of the two men in order to protect Tony Blair's embarrassment about what he had said to Mr Bush. The eminent human rights lawyer, Sir Geoffrey Bindman, said: "The amendment to the Official Secrets Act was supposed to limit prosecutions to cases where harm to the public interest could be proved and it's not clear whether in this case any damage to the public interest has been done."

Peter Kilfoyle MP, who was also investigated by police, but later cleared, after he was told about the leaked memo's contents, said the ban had more to do with "political embarrassment" than national security.

"I think we live in a society and operate under a system that values secrecy to an excessive degree."

He said of Mr Blair's letter: "He is obviously grateful on behalf of his friend George Bush. It makes you wonder what he is grateful for."

Keogh was found guilty of two counts of making a damaging disclosure, O'Connor of a similar single count. The two men were granted bail and made no comment as they left the court but Keogh's solicitor, Stuart Jeffery, said that his client would be "shell-shocked".

Sentencing him this morning, trial Judge Mr Justice Aikens said Keogh's "reckless and irresponsible" actions could have cost British lives.

BREACHING THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT

George Blake

A double agent working for MI6 who passed on secrets to the Soviets, Blake was charged on five counts of espionage under the Official Secrets Act in 1961. At the end of his trial he was sentenced to the maximum of 14 years on each of three counts, to run consecutively. It was the longest jail term handed down to an individual for spying. However, he later escaped from prison. Blake is believed to have betrayed the names of more than 40 British agents to the Soviets. Many disappeared and were thought to have been executed.

Klaus Fuchs

A German-born atom scientist and civil servant, Fuchs was charged in 1950. He had fled to Britain in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution, but was a committed Communist who used his position at the Harwell atomic research centre to pass secrets to the Soviets. Jailing him for 14 years, Lord Goddard, the Lord Chief Justice, said: "You have betrayed the hospitality and protection given to you by this country with the grossest treachery." Fuchs died in 1988.

THE PORTLAND SPY RING

In 1961, five people went on trial charged with passing secrets to the Soviets. They were Gordon Lonsdale, Henry Houghton, Peter Kroger and his wife, Helen, and Ethel Gee, a civil servant. At the end of the trial, the Krogers were revealed to be Morris and Lona Cohen, wanted in America on spying charges. Lonsdale was identified as a Russian, Konon Molody, and sentenced to 25 years. In 1966 he was exchanged for Greville Wynne, an Englishman accused of spying in Russia. Houghton and Gee were each sentenced to 15 years.

Michael Bettany

Bettany, an intelligence officer with MI5, was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1984 of passing sensitive documents to the Soviet embassy in London. His role as a Soviet spy was uncovered by Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer turned MI6 agent, who was working inside the KGB residency in the Soviet embassy in London. Bettany was sentenced to 23 years in prison, and was released on parole in 1998.

Richard Tomlinson

In 1997, Tomlinson, below, a former MI6 officer, was sentenced to a year in prison for passing secrets to a publisher. He later claimed MI6 had plotted to assassinate the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. He also said that he had information about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

David Shayler

The former MI5 officer gave a newspaper interview 10 years ago accusing MI5 and MI6 of mismanagement and illegal activities, including a claim that MI6 was involved in a failed assassination attempt on the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi. Shayler fled to France but was arrested and held in a French jail for four months. The case was dropped, but in 2000 Shayler returned to the UK. He was arrested and held on remand before being charged with three counts of breaching the Official Secrets Act. He was sentenced to six months in jail, but released after seven weeks.