In November 1985 the Scottish investigative journalist Duncan Campbell was commissioned by BBC Scotland to present and research a six part, half-hour documentary series called Secret Society, produced by Brian Barr.
[1] GCHQ became aware that a BBC Scotland crew were filming at RAF Menwith Hill, and when Campbell interviewed the former Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence Ronald Mason in August 1986 he mentioned the Zircon Project (regarded as "exceptionally secret").
[2] Campbell had planned to use an episode of Secret Society to reveal the existence of Zircon, but found while researching the programme in mid-1986 that the head of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Robert Sheldon, knew nothing of the project.
[4][5] The concealment of Zircon, which had an estimated cost of £500 million (equivalent to £1.9 billion in 2023),[6][7] from the committee mirrored the parliamentary secrecy over a previous defence project, the Chevaline programme to enhance the Polaris nuclear missile.
[8] Under the authority of a warrant under section 9 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, Special Branch raided Campbell's London home, those of his researchers Jolyon Jenkins and Patrick Forbes, and the New Statesman's offices.
[8] The matter now becoming public knowledge, opposition MP Robin Cook managed to obtain a video of the Zircon documentary and arranged a screening of it to MPs in the House of Commons.
The Attorney General, Sir Michael Havers, sought an injunction in the High Court to prevent the video's screening, but the application was dismissed on the basis of parliamentary privilege.
In 1989 a New Statesman article by Campbell stated Zircon had been replaced by a U.S. off-the-shelf satellite, under British control, launched by a U.S. Titan 34D on 4 September 1989 (U.S. Labor Day).
[4] The BBC subsequently rejected Campbell's attempt to buy the episode for broadcast on Channel 4 in 1991, in a season of programming about censorship.
[4] In a parliamentary debate on civil liberties and the Bill of Rights on 15 June 1989, Labour MP Alistair Darling, then in opposition, claimed that the true reason for the Zircon affair was to distract from the Cabinet episode of Secret Society.
Darling said that the cabinet episode concerned "the election campaign of 1983, and the fact that the Government sought to undermine and spy on the citizens of this country.