R v Aubrey, Berry and Campbell, better known as the ABC Trial, was a trial conducted in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, of three men for offences under the Official Secrets Act 1911. The men were two libertarian journalists of a similar political viewpoint as much of the Labour government, and a resigned GCHQ source seeking to heighten scrutiny of government-authorised wire-tapping and limit the work of the American espionage agency, the CIA, in Britain. These aims were furthered in the following two decades through detailed parliamentary scrutiny into and regular reports as to the work of security services, a Freedom of Information Act and regulation of wire-tapping. Aside from limited reportage from the Central Criminal Court, early analysis of the case comes in the account of one of its investigative-journalist defendants, Duncan Campbell, in the annual journal Socialist Register.
Background
London magazine Time Out, through the writings of the first and third defendants, published in 1976 a two-page account of GCHQ called "The Eavesdroppers". This and other material collected and imparted by the defendants showed how GCHQ operated from year-to-year; they gathered evidence, such as photographs of radio masts, of its physical apparatus. in an era of surveillance to counter ongoing threats due to the Cold War and from Irish and Northern Irish dissident republicans. Conviction of some form was assured as all parties could not deny a small amount of classified information had been communicated and no tenable argument of the law as to freedom of information such as on the basis of freedom of expression was raised.
The Watergate scandal in the US, exposed by investigative journalists, showed the effectiveness of press reporting of the activities of secret government agencies. President Nixon had repeatedly claimed that the requirements of national security overrode the public's right to know, and this had been exposed by the press, Senate and Congress, to have been driven by his desire to cover up criminal activity.
- John Berry, a former Corporal in signals intelligence (SIGINT)
- Duncan Campbell, an investigative journalist
The trial found that the information came almost entirely from open publications, some from the United States, as well as simple information gathering such as noting the units resident at a site from signage posted at the main gate and visible from public roads. He added "'Colonel B' rapidly achieved the position of a national figure of ridicule." Inclusion of a specific public interest defence was considered for the 1989 Act, but rejected as it was deemed that protections under Article 10 (Freedom of Expression) of the European Convention of Human Rights and other legal safeguards provided sufficient protection.