28th October 2021

████████████

Editorial Legal Director

Hachette UK Limited

Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ

Dear █████████

Re: Julian Hayes – ‘Stonehouse Cabinet Minister, Fraudster, Spy’

Will Owen and so-called “Cabinet Discussions”

I wrote to you on 20 October objecting to Julian Hayes’ repeated interjection of the word ‘cabinet’ into his text to misrepresent the documents in my father’s StB file. On pages 46-47 he writes: “Agent Lee, Will Owen, met up with Stonehouse on 1 November 1967 for lunch, at which the conversation centred on the cabinet discussions on NATO. The French had recently withdrawn from the alliance, threatening the very existence of the organization, but Stonehouse informed Lee that he had been involved in discussions that demonstrated it was very much alive and kicking.”  I attach the source document: StB references 21968_43075_021_0017 and 0019 (0018 is the reverse of 0017 and is blank.)

Will Owen admitted in court to handing the Czechs information. I include a note at the bottom of this letter for your information*. His codename was ‘Lee’ and as you can see at the top of this document it says “Od Lee”, meaning ‘From Lee’. The first curious thing about this document is that it states “Lunch meeting with John Stonehouse, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Defence (Air)” when, at this time, my father was Minister of State for Technology. He never had a position in the Ministry of Defence. Hayes does not point out this obvious anomaly. 

As you can see from the document, it does not say the conversation had anything to do with “cabinet discussions” and nor does it say that “Stonehouse informed Lee that he had been involved in discussions …”  It actually says “We exchanged thoughts about NATO.” By linking “cabinet discussions”  with, in the next sentence, “Stonehouse informed Lee that he had been involved in discussions”  Hayes is once again trying to fabricate the narrative that my father was in a position to relay secret information – in this case to a man who, in January 1970, would be arrested for handing information to the Czechs.

At the bottom of the document it says “Stonehouse was seeking to impress, in view of the criticism of NATO at the Labour Party Defence Committee.” It doesn’t say that my father was involved in the LP defence committee, or its discussions. If this meeting even took place, it shows that two Labour and Cooperative Party MPs were discussing what was at the time a very hot topic among all Western politicians following the French leaving NATO’s military command in 1966. In December 1966 a study had been initiated which resulted in the landmark ‘Harmel Report’ in December 1967 which pivoted the focus of NATO onto a dual path of détente with Russia as well as maintaining military strength. 

I don’t expect Hayes to have knowledge of the widespread political discussions of the day, but he has no right to apply sleight of hand to turn this document into “cabinet discussions”. 

At the end of his summary of the “Od Lee” document, on page 47, Hayes writes “This was precisely the type of information that the Czechs had expected to get from Stonehouse, highlighting their concerns that they were not getting intelligence of any quality from the minister.” 

This document is literally the only document in the StB file concerning NATO and other military affairs and it did not come into the file via my father but, presumably, through Will Owen. One has to ask, why is Owen saying that my father was connected to the “Ministry of Defence (Air)” when he was not? And did Owen fabricate this entire “exchange of thoughts”, either on his own initiative to please the London Czechs or at their instigation to please Prague? Did this lunch meeting even occur or has a report been cobbled together from material then widely being discussed in political circles?  

All of that is unknowable. What is knowable from StB file 43075 is that this document is the only one to make its way into the file over the entire period my father was a minister from 1964 to 1970. 

Yours sincerely,

Julia Stonehouse

*In January 1970 Will Owen MP was charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 for communicating information calculated to be useful to an enemy, and receiving money from Czech intelligence agent, Robert Husak, for doing so. Owen pleaded not guilty to all charges, saying that while Husak had indeed paid him £2,300 over a period of nine years, none of the documents handed over to him were classified. For the prosecution, an officer from Special Branch told the court that Owen had confessed that he couldn’t be sure that he’d not told Husak classified information over one of their lunch-time meetings. The prosecution could not provide any documentary evidence, and nothing incriminating was found at Owen’s home. Judge Stephenson told the jury that suspicion was not enough to convict, and Owen was found not guilty in May 1970. Although cleared of passing classified information, Owen had admitted to handing the Czechs non-classified documents.