Gable’s Open Admissions of Working for State Intelligence Agencies

When Gable was convicted of burglary in 1964, his defence counsel told the court that it had been Gable’s intention to “find material they could take to Special Branch". (Daily Telegraph, January 17, 1964, and the Islington Gazette, Jan 17, 1964).

This was just one of many admissions by Gable over many years that he also worked with the state’s intelligence services.

In 1980 the left-wing journal, New Statesman, exposed Gable as a state asset using his own words from the notorious Gable memorandum, a letter from Gable to London Weekend Television in May 1977.

In it, he outlined his spying on radical journalists in a celebrated press freedom case, which involved among others Philip Agee. He concluded with the memorable phrase "I have given the names I have acquired to be checked out by British/French security services... It is now [Page 7] a time of waiting for feed-back and also further checks here." (Gable to LWT, May 2, 1977).

The authors of the New Statesman article discussing the memo, Duncan Campbell and Bruce Page, went down to LWT's offices to confront Gable with the evidence and demand some answers, Gable simply cleared his desk and fled, refusing to talk to them.

In 1983 'Anarchy' magazine reproduced the memorandum and in 1986, Robin Ramsay, editor of the “Lobster” journal, argued that "'Searchlight' is run, if not by, then certainly with the co-operation of, MI5", ('Lobster' No 11 April 1986, p12); and the 'Jewish Chronicle' acknowledged that 'Searchlight' had "a wide range of contacts (including people in the secret services)", ('Jewish Chronicle' 23/10/87).