What To Do If You Find Top Secret Intelligence Documents

I won­der why the per­son who dis­covered two intel­li­gence assess­ments on a train gave them to the BBC rather than hand­ing them over to the police?

Remem­ber, these doc­u­ments were TOP SECRET.

So secret, that they were marked “for UK/US/Canadian and Aus­tralian eyes only”. (Read­ers in New Zea­l­and will be dis­ap­poin­ted that des­pite their con­tri­bu­tion to the coali­tion their eyes aren’t secret enough.)

Of course, had any­one at the BBC who saw the doc­u­ments been

(1) A per­son who is or has been—

(a) a mem­ber of the secur­ity and intel­li­gence services

then they would have been obliged to hand them over, or else found them­selves com­mit­ting an offence under the 1989 Offi­cial Secrets Act.

Although the OSA is so all-encompassing that any­one hand­ling the docs might be liable, even the per­son who failed to hand them over in the first place.

Still, you could cer­tainly make a case that present­ing them to FG is a cast-iron sig­nal that you didn’t want the con­tents made public.

So what should you do if you spot top secret doc­u­ments in your car­riage? Here’s my pro­fes­sional advice. Place them care­fully in a freesheet.

No one will ever find them.