Letter: MI5 opens the files

Sir: I am grateful to Anne Crawford of the Public Record Office for confirming that some of MI5's historical files will begin to appear in the PRO next month (letter, 10 October).

After five years of rumours and unattributable hints from the spooks we have at last been favoured with a formal announcement just weeks before the files are to be opened. And this was only forthcoming because I provocatively quoted off-the-record comments by a PRO official. It's an incongruous way to launch a new era of openness.

This transfer of records, we are told, is "in line with the process routinely followed by other government departments", but it's no ordinary department that gets away with not depositing so much as a paper clip in the PRO for 88 years.

Ms Crawford assures us that this exercise is not a "sop", but it's hard not to see it as another episode in MI5's "charm offensive", as it tries to justify its existence after the Cold War. I intend to be first in the queue next month to see how much glasnost we're being allowed.

DAVID TURNER

Borden, Kent