Despite British Ban, Paper Prints Parts of Ex-Spy’s Book

LONDON —  A newspaper today published an excerpt from the memoirs of a retired counterintelligence officer in defiance of a government ban upheld last week by Britain’s highest court.

Another paper published material from Peter Wright’s “Spycatcher” but did not use direct excerpts.

Newspapers have published excerpts from the book before, and the government has begun contempt-of-court prosecutions. If found guilty, the papers are liable to unlimited fines or possible jail terms for the editors.

The weekly News on Sunday headlined that last week’s ruling by the Law Lords preventing publication of excerpts from the book was “A Law Made To Be Broken.”

The excerpt in the Manchester-based tabloid outlined alleged attempts by a group of MI-5 counterespionage agents to persuade Wright to leak information aimed at destabilizing the Labor governments of Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Sunday Times published some of Wright’s other allegations but without using direct excerpts from the book. It called its story “a summary of what the government would prefer you did not know.”