1. Ibid. The story that MI5 tried to destabilise Wilson’s government began with Peter Wright in 1987. Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (New York: Viking Press, 1987), pp. 362–372. Wright’s co-author subsequently became a film director, whose credits include The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. According to Stella Rimington, the Director General of MI5 between 1992 and 1996, Wright later retracted this allegation, but she thoroughly investigated it. Stella Rimington, ‘Spies Like Us’, The Guardian, 11 September 2001.
2. See also Stella Rimington, Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5 (London: Hutchinson, 2001).
3. Philip Ziegler, Wilson: The Authorised Life of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993), p. 460.
4. Tony Benn, Against the Tide. Diaries 1973–1976 (London: Arrow, 1990), pp. 267–268.
5. However, as Kate Pyne forthrightly states, ‘There is another reason for the special level of secrecy surrounding Chevaline — it was considered to be of the utmost importance to prevent the slightest detail of any of the hard-won knowledge about hardening and penetration aids from reaching the Soviet Union in order to preserve the deterrent capability of Chevaline. Chevaline was considered to be effective and it had to stay that way as long as possible.’ Quoted in John Baylis and Kristan Stoddart, ‘Chevaline: The Hidden Nuclear Programme, 1967–1982’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3 (December 2003), pp. 124–155.