A civil servant accused of leaking a highly classified document about the Government’s policy on Iraq admitted to Scotland Yard that he opposed the war, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. David Keogh, 50, who was employed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but seconded to a Cabinet Office communications centre beneath the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, has pleaded not guilty to breaching the Official Secrets Act 1989.

However, Leo O’Connor, a political researcher who is in the dock with him charged under the same Act, told the police that Mr Keogh handed him the secret document which was entitled “Iraq: Prime Minister’s meeting with President Bush”. Mr O’Connor, 44, who was working for a Labour MP, has also pleaded not guilty to breaching the Act.

The contents of the document are regarded as so sensitive that whenever the details are referred to in court the trial is conducted in camera. To remind the jury that what they are hearing is secret and not open to the public, Mr Justice Aikens has ordered all the barristers to remove their wigs when the in-camera sessions begin.

The meeting between Tony Blair and President Bush in the White House took place on April 16, 2004.

On May 28, 2004, the Old Bailey heard, Anthony Clarke, the Labour MP for Northampton South who employed Mr O’Connor, telephoned 10 Downing Street to let them know that he had found a copy of a secret document about Iraq among a pile of his parliamentary papers at his constituency office.

He was put through to Baroness Morgan of Huyton, the Prime Minister’s director of government relations, and later the police were called. When he was first interviewed by two officers from Scotland Yard Mr Keogh, who had worked as a communications and cipher officer for 25 years, denied any knowledge of the leaked document.

He said that he saw a large number of highly classified faxes as part of his job, but this particular one, sent from Downing Street via Washington for distribution elsewhere, including the British ambassador in Baghdad, “didn’t ring any bells”.

He told the police: “I’m under the Official Secrets Act. What I see I can’t tell anybody, and when I go out of the office, I don’t discuss my work and I try to forget totally what I’ve been dealing with.”

He said that normal Whitehall policy was to shred all copies of secret documents after seven days.

Although Mr Keogh denied to police that he had copied the Iraq document, he said that he was against the Iraq war. “I didn’t think it was right,” he said. He also said that he often wondered why he was still seconded to the Cabinet Office after 6½ years and was “annoyed” that “some people were not pulling their weight”.

Despite his strong denial to police that he had copied the document that was marked “secret, personal”, Mr Keogh was questioned about “a whole series of coincidences”.

The officers from Scotland Yard’s specialist operations department said that the Iraq document sent from Washington by the Prime Minister’s private secretary had gone through the communications centre where he was working on the night it arrived in Whitehall.

The police also asked Mr Keogh about a “five-second” mobile phone call he made to Mr O’Connor at the MP’s constituency office on May 27, 2004, in which he said: “You’ve got it, right?”

Mr Keogh told police he could not remember making a five-second call.

The trial continues today.

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