§ 2. Mr. G. Straussasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what reply he has made to the charges of the American State Department that, on four specified occasions the responsibility for disclosing information which it had been agreed should not be disclosed, rested with the British authorities.
§ Mr. EdenAccording to my information, which does not quite tally with some Press reports, what Mr. Hull said, on the occasion to which the hon. Member presumably refers, was this: That where there has occurred, in the past, prema- 1978 ture disclosure to the Press by unauthorised officials, usually anonymous, on the part either of the United States Government or of His Majesty's Government, each Government has called the attention of the other Government to the infringement of the agreement between the two. The four cases to which the hon. Member alludes were, according to the Press, not mentioned by Mr. Hull but by a "State Department spokesman." I have no authoritative account of what this spokesman said, but I should certainly not agree with any suggestion that information improperly disclosed in such a centre as London has now come to be comes from British official sources.