AUTHOR TO DEFY WAR OFFICE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27584, 15 February 1955, Page 7

AUTHOR TO DEFY WAR OFFICE

Intelligence Officer’s Experiences DETECTIVES SEIZE PAPERS ON BOOK (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 prni.) LONDON, February 14. Colonel Alexander Scotland decided to defy the War Office and Scotland Yard by producing a book on his 50 years in counter-espionage and military intelligence, the “Daily Mail” said today.x . Colonel Scotland said last night that as soon as detectives had taken away notes dealing with his banned book, “The London Cage,” he began the draft for a new book. “I shall take out the parts I believe the War Office to be most worried about, but I am going to produce this book.” Colonel Scotland, aged 72, a former British intelligence agent, said that Scotland Yard detectives seized all the papers connected with the book containing his war-time experiences. He said that a detective warned him that he might face charges under the Official Secrets Act. Publication of the book was banned by the War Office last August, but the publishers, Evans Brothers, included it in their list of spring books. “London Cage” was the nick-name of a prison camp in Kensington Gardens where important prisoners of war were sent for interrogation. N.Z. Journalist’s Fart Mr Alan Mitchell, a New Zealand journalist residing in London, who collaborated with Colonel Scotland in writing the book, said today that he had also given his notes on the book to the police. The police have also visited the offices of Colonel Scotland’s literary agents and of the publishers. The book covers Colonel Scotland’s service and civilian life over the last 52 years. It is understood to contain material about Nazi war crimes and the interviewing of German prisoners in London during World War 11. Colonel Scotland was one of Britain’s ace interrogators of German war criminals. Colonel Scotland said that among the papers taken by the police was material on war crimes “which I had got for the purpose of not allowing the war crimes to disappear from the knowledge of the public.” He Said that there was no official document among them on the secret list. Colonel Scotland said that a typed manuscript of the book was delivered to the War Office last July. Later the Army security branch “wrote to my agent saying the book could not be published. From that time I left it in the hands of my agents and publishers to deal with.” Colonel Scotland said that the War Office would not tell him what was wron« with the book “so that I could put it right.” The book discloses nothing which was not brought out in evidence at the trials of German war criminals. He said that the part of the book the War Office objected to was “well known to myself, although they will not say.” “Breach of Secrets Act” A questioner in the House of Commons was told that the book had been banned because it was a “breach of 1 the Official Secrets Act.” Colonel Scotland said that he spent the whole of 1951 going through a mass of documents and “burning everything that had any security or secret inference.”. He blamed the banning of his book i on “a junior officer in the War Office . or Foreign Office, who is in no way informed of the work I did as a soldier.” “London Cage” is not the first of the colonel’s books to be banned by the War Office. When he left the Army in 1951 he wrote “The Kesselring Case,” which argued that the German field-marshal should not have been convicted. He was obliged to abandon publication after several attempts, and after being threatened with legal action. Eventually it was published in pamphlet form in Germany after Kesselring’s release.