-----Original Message-----

Dear Editor

News Editor telephoned me this morning to propose the following: that I could return to the newspaper if I accepted a written warning from yourself and admitted to several inaccuracies in the Rear Admiral article.

I cannot do this - there was, to the best of my knowledge, nothing wrong with the piece, and I therefore cannot accept a written warning.

As you know, I feel passionate about the newspaper, and would dearly like to start working for it again. However, your aggressive and capricious behaviour over the past two months and more has offended me. I believe we would have to clear the air before I returned.

I propose that you withdraw in writing the various offensive and defamatory statements you have made to me about my work and repeated to the board and my former colleagues on the newspaper. I propose that this also be done verbally in an appropriate forum - where I am present.

Further, before I could consider starting work again I would like your explanation as to why you have refused to run various stories of mine.

The example that immediately springs to mind is also the most offensive - your pulling my piece on how an NIA tracking device was found on an arms deal informer's car.

As you will recall when you met me last time in Home City you said this was done: "on behalf of a friend from the old days from state security". You said this was done: "for reasons I could not guess at and that you could not explain".

Alternatively, I will proceed with my application to the Arbitration and Mediation Council and to any other appropriate forum.

Senior Journalist

----- Original Message -----

Dear Senior Journalist

Thanks for your email. I've just phoned your home and spoken to your Mum, asking her to ask you to call me when you get in. Please do so.

I am keen to move forward on a different basis from the confrontations of the past few weeks. If we are to do so, it is going to require of both you and me some maturity and flexibility. We will have to leave behind us grandstanding, demands and threats. I have been very angry at times over this matter, and it is quite clear that you have been, too. I hear your anger, and I understand at least a little of what lies behind it. I do not think, however, that our anger is going to serve either of us well in our attempt to settle this matter. We can each, in our different ways, consider ourselves chastened by what has gone before. You have things you need to learn from what has happened; I most certainly do. But what is most urgent now is that we adopt a new kind of approach if we are to secure the best outcome. We will need to be able to speak to each other -- as I am now trying to do to you -- in a way that is driven by a desire to get you again fully active on the newspaper and to address, in a low-key way that involves no humiliation at all for you, the problems, actual and/or perceived, about aspects of your work. Our approach must be to find a solution, not to solidify or worsen an already complicated problem. We will each have to take the risk of trusting each other enough to go some way down this road, where, barring mishaps, our mutual confidence will increase of its own. I am willing to take that chance in relation to you, as the rest of this letter should make plain. It seems from your email to me today that you have been left with the wrong impression of what I am proposing. I ask you now to read what appears below, and to listen as much to spirit of what I am saying as to the detail.

Arising out of discussions I had with senior colleagues here at the office and with the company lawyers yesterday, I am proposing the following :

1 That you revert to fully active work for the newspaper with what could be immediate effect. We would have to decide a date.

2 That you accept from me a formal letter of warning. This letter will be written in a way that clearly conveys my constructive intent in relation to you: that we overcome the root causes of any problems of the past, rather than dwell on them. The letter would inform you of the need for you to address problems of inaccuracy that have occurred in some of your reports. There would be no reference in this letter to my concerns that you had no source/s of the kind you specified for the Rear Admiral article. Nor would you be required to make any admissions.

3 The letter would lay out what steps the newspaper proposes taking to help you improve on accuracy. Among other things, it would state that it plans to transfer you to Financial Capital for a period to be decided between you, News Editor and me (probably seven months) during which you would be mentored directly by News Editor, work closely with other members of the investigative team, achieve deeper integration into the paper and, possibly, go on one or two courses outside the paper. The details are something I would expect us to work out jointly. I would envisage the company paying a form of relocation allowance, plus your rent for the first month or so, at the end of which you would be responsible for your own accommodation here; and, at the end of the period, the company would again pay your relocation costs back to the Home City.

4. I would hope to be able to provide you with a draft of such a letter by about Wednesday next week.

5. You would return to full participant status without shame or humiliation. The existence of the letter of warning will be something known only to you, me, News Editor, other Senior Journalists and to any members of the Board if they asked.

6. I would give you an undertaking that I would not allow our dispute of recent weeks to colour my dealings with you in any way. I am capable of fulfilling such an undertaking. I am not someone who bears grudges. I would keep my word. And I would expect the same from you. In addition I would, of course, expect you to fulfil the obligations of any normal employee.

That, basically, is my offer. It can be refined in discussion with you, and I look forward to hearing any proposals you might have. I hope it is clear to you what I am trying to achieve. And I hope you will accept that you need fear nothing from what I am offering.

There are a number of related issues you raise in your letter to which I want to respond.

I am very pleased to hear of your continued commitment to the newspaper. I am happy to meet you to allow both of us to express our hurt or anger over what has transpired. Your description of my behaviour as "aggressive and capricious" is a description I would far prefer to see you use in relation to some bastard featured in a future story in the Newspaper! I have certainly been aggressive, yes -- because I, too, am committed to the newspaper and, in light of the view I developed over the Rear Admiral sourcing, I felt aggression was appropriate. "Capricious"? I think not. I do not think it is helpful to demand my withdrawing any allegation I have made about your work in the course of the dispute that I want us now jointly to bring to a close. I could make a similar demand about statements you have made, but I do not think it is going to get us, or keep us, in positive territory if I do.

But, in the proposal I have outlined above, you will notice that all reference to the Rear Admiral sourcing falls away. The inference anybody with knowledge of this dispute, among them your colleagues, is likely to draw from the absence of any such reference is that either I was talking nonsense in challenging your sourcing or that I could not prove my challenge. Either way, they are likely to deem you innocent. If, as a result of their conclusion, I appear to have egg on my face, so be it; it is a personal cost I am willing to carry to reach a satisfactory settlement in this matter.

As regards my not running the car-tracking story, I have explained this to you once before. As I think you know, I was in Party Intelligence, during the early-mid 1980s. As a result I know and used to work with a number of the individuals now serving in the Central Intelligence Agency, Secret Service, Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, etc. I should, for the record, state that I no longer have any kind of professional relationship with these individuals or any organs of state security.

You are clearly very concerned about what may have lain behind my decision not to publish your car-tracking story. And I will now tell you what I can in terms of undertakings I have given. What happened -- and I am trusting you to treat this with sensitivity -- is the following. I was contacted about the car-tracking story by a senior individual in state security I once worked with during my Party intelligence days -- one of the few people I worked with of seriousness and judgement. He said he needed to see me urgently. He seemed what was, for him, very agitated. It was a Thursday, and I therefore suggested that we rather speak over the phone. He said the matter he needed to discuss with me was of a kind that he did not feel he could discuss over the phone. This was highly unusual behaviour on his part.

He asked me please to meet him near the Capital. This I did. He said he knew of our intended story and he said he was asking me, if possible, to ensure the story was not used. He then provided a comprehensive explanation for this request. I apply three questions in a case of this kind. One, can I believe what I am being told? Two, would publication of the planned story mount a real danger to state security? And, three, if it does mount a real danger to state security, is there an overriding public interest in publishing the story nonetheless? I answered these questions thus: Yes, I can believe what I am being told; Yes, publication would mount a real danger to state security; And, no, there was no overriding public interest in publishing the story.

What was the nature of the threat to state security? That is not an issue on which I will not talk; I have given my word to the individual concerned. You are, I think, unlikely to work out the risk to which I am referring. I am not individually disposed or politically inclined to favour dropping a story on national security grounds. This is the first time I have done it, and I hope it is the last. But, if the three questions again line up in the way they did in the car-tracking case, I will do so again. I will take full responsibility for doing so, and I will, as far as is possible, be frank with my senior colleagues about what I am doing and why. Our country has legitimate national security interests. These are interests that people like you and I will always interpret narrowly. But they exist, and I think it can, under certain circumstances, be our duty as journalists to ensure they are protected. There is nothing sinister in what I did and, putting myself in your shoes to the extent that I can, I do not think you have anything to worry about.

You are working with an editor who has most of the same instincts that you do on matters of this kind. I am instinctively anti-authority; anti-spook: contemptuous of suits and those who try to ingratiate themselves with the powers that be, of whatever description; anti-secrecy; anti-corruption; anti-bullshit and disingenuity. Whether you accept my good faith in the car-tracking matter or not, you must accept, Senior Journalist, that as your editor I can publish or not publish any story by any reporter on my staff, yourself included. That is the nature of print journalism: the editor takes the final wrap for what goes into the paper, so he has the final word on what goes into the paper. But I would expect of myself -- and, certainly, others on the Newspaper would expect of me -- that I have cogent reasons for what goes in or not. Newspaper staff are not going to let me play fast and loose with the paper, and I would not want them to. I think that anyone on the Newspaper will tell you that I have structured the operation in such a way that strong individuals -- like your Senior Colleagues -- have a great deal of freedom on how they and their sections work, and I have a more background, oversight and broad-direction role. I have structured things in this way because I do not believe I have all or even most of the answers. You will also hear -- and I hope you will see for yourself when you spend six or so months up here -- that I run a very open operation in which I actively encourage criticism and debate on how and why we, or I, do certain things. You are, in me, not dealing with some sort of sinister control freak who makes a habit of second-guessing his journalists with the spooks or the auditor-general. You have been exposed to two instances -- in quick succession -- which have, evidently, given you this impression. Any such instance is, I imagine, highly unlikely to occur again.

I have been frank with you and I have asked you to be sensitive about the account I have given you of the car-tracking case -- I hope not to my cost.

But I think it is worthwhile to take this risk. I want you back working energetically for the paper. And I want us, as my proposal lays out, to design a set of arrangements that will offer you an opportunity to sharpen some of your skills (it will entail nothing approaching humiliation), to achieve deeper integration into the fabric of the Newspaper and secure a better career for yourself in journalism. The proposal should also enable us to move towards confidence in each other.

I sincerely hope we can take this perspective forward.

Please get in touch with me.

Best wishes Editor.

P.S. I am taking the liberty of copying this to the Representative of the Union of Journalist.