The unauthorised disclosure by a trusted civil servant of a secret document detailing a meeting in 2004 between Tony Blair and President Bush about Iraq may have damaged the Armed Forces seriously and even led to loss of life, an Old Bailey trial was told yesterday.

The document, marked “secret, personal” and circulated to top officials in Whitehall and to MI6, was copied by David Keogh, 50, a vetted telecommunications and cipher officer at a Cabinet Office centre that received classified documents from British embassies.

David Perry, QC, for the prosecution at the trial of Mr Keogh and Leo O’Connor, a political researcher for a Labour MP who was allegedly handed a copy of the document, said that the two men were charged under the Official Secrets Act not because disclosure of the meeting was politically embarrassing but because it could have damaged Britain’s defence interests and harmed relations with the US.

“Diplomacy is a delicate and sensitive art and it can’t properly be carried out in our interests if what one government says to another cannot be kept secret or confidential,” Mr Perry said. “We live in a democratic society, not the Wild West. It is not for people to decide they are going to be the sheriff in town.”

He added that in this case the unauthorised disclosure of information was “likely to prejudice the capability of the Armed Forces either to carry out any tasks it has or lead to loss of life or injury”.

The contents of the secret document were revealed to the jury only after members of the press and public were cleared from the court. Both defendants are charged under the Official Secrets Act 1989.

Mr Keogh, from Northampton, faces two counts relating to unauthorised disclosure of a document in his possession as a Crown servant between April 15 and May 29, 2004. Mr O’Connor, 44, also from Northampton, is charged with one count of making a damaging disclosure of a document knowing that it was protected against disclosure by the Official Secrets Act. Both pleaded not guilty.

Mr Perry described how the police tracked down the source of the leak. The meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Bush took place in Washington on April 16, 2004, when Iraq was under the control of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority. The record of the meeting, drawn up by Matthew Rycroft, Mr Blair’s private secretary for foreign affairs, was sent by letter to Geoffrey Adams, private secretary to Jack Straw, then the Foreign Secretary.

The letter was faxed through to the Pindar communications centre, a Cabinet Office facility, where Mr Keogh was on duty when it arrived.

The letter was to be given limited circulation because of its sensitivity. Those on the need-to-know list included Sir David Manning, Ambassador to Washington; Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the Prime Minister’s foreign policy adviser at No 10; John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (now head of MI6); Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair’s chief of staff; and David Hill, Downing Street’s director of communications. It was also sent to the British representative to the UN and to David Richmond, Ambassador to Iraq.

Mr Perry said that the police were alerted to a possible leak when a copy of the secret document turned up in a pile of papers belonging to Anthony Clarke, then the Labour MP for Northampton South.

Mr O’Connor, who worked for the MP, had “slipped” the document into the other papers. Mr Perry said that the document was passed to Mr Clarke in the hope that it would be given wider circulation. The Labour backbencher had voted in 2003 against invading Iraq. The document was passed to the Special Branch.

All copies of the document were traced and retrieved, and scientific examination proved that the copy that ended up in Mr Clarke’s constituency office in Northampton was a copy of the fax that originated at the Pindar communications centre. Further tests revealed Mr O’Connor’s fingerprints and a trace of his handwriting, which had come through as “dents” on the document after it had been placed in an envelope with Mr Clarke’s name written on it.

Contact between Mr Keogh, who was said to be “bored to tears with Iraq”, and Mr O’Connor, who claimed to police that he was “95 per cent behind the military action against Saddam Hussein”, was uncovered when the police examined mobile phone calls and text messages between the two.

The trial continues.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend