Clive Sheridan Ponting (13 April 1946 – 28 July 2020)[2][3][4] was a senior British civil servant and historian.
He was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act, but argued that his actions were in the public interest, and was acquitted.
[6] While a senior civil servant at the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (MoD), Ponting sent two documents, subsequently nicknamed "the crown jewels",[7][8][9] to Labour MP Tam Dalyell in July 1984 concerning the sinking of the Argentine navy warship General Belgrano, a key incident in the 1982 Falklands War.
The judge, Sir Anthony McCowan, "had indicated that the jury should convict him",[12] and had ruled that "the public interest is what the government of the day says it is".
[13] In 1985, Ponting came across the one file about Operation Cauldron—1952 secret biological warfare trials that had led to a trawler being accidentally doused with plague bacteria off the Hebrides—that had not been destroyed, and confidentially told The Observer newspaper about it,[4] leading to a story that July headlined "British germ bomb sprayed trawler".
In May 1987, he made an extended appearance on the first ever edition of Channel 4's After Dark discussion programme, alongside among others Colin Wallace, T. E. Utley and Peter Hain.
Shortly after his resignation, The Observer began to serialise Ponting's book The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair.
[15] Following his resignation from the Civil Service, Ponting served as a reader in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Wales, Swansea, until his retirement in 2004.