Word: blunts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Blunt's self-serving recollections raised numerous questions: How was it possible this confessed spy had been allowed to remain as a trusted adviser to the Queen, even though his expertise was in artistic rather than political matters? Did Her Majesty know of his espionage activities and, if not, why not? Sir Alec Douglas-Home, now Lord Home, who had been Tory Prime Minister when Blunt confessed, allowed that he had not been informed or even consulted when the security service decided to grant Blunt immunity from prosecution. His Attorney General had approved the deal and informed the Home...
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried to answer some of these questions during an extraordinary debate in the House. She said Britain's intelligence chiefs had not wished to tip off Blunt's former employers in Moscow that he had been caught by removing him from his royal curatorship. The security service had told the Queen's private secretary that Blunt was thought to be a Soviet agent; the secretary, however, was also advised that the Queen should not seek to remove him. Beyond that, Thatcher said, "the immunity was offered to Blunt to get information on Soviet...
...position was upheld by two of her predecessors as Prime Minister in what Callaghan called "a calm and rational debate." Speaking from the corner Commons seat once occupied by Winston Churchill during the '30s, Edward Heath strongly denied that there had been any "coverup" and insisted that Blunt's disclosures about other Soviet spies had provided "a great deal of valuable information." Callaghan agreed with Heath, but allowed, with hindsight, that "the advice at the time about Blunt being allowed to stay in a palace post was wrong." And Callaghan added the icy comment: "I am bound...
...feeling was clearly shared by British newspapers excluded from the cozy press conference arranged by the Times for Blunt. Huffed the Daily Express: "Professor Blunt would not have been offered so much as a stale kipper at the Express office, he is such a phony old humbug." Maureen Bingham, who spent 30 months in prison for violating the Official Secrets Act, charged, "It is one law for the rich and one law for the poor...
...will be harder to cover up similar scandals in the future: last week, as a result of the Blunt debate, the House scuttled a proposed Protection of Official Information Act, whose stringent security regulations would have made the expo sure of the art historian as a spy all but impossible...