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440 INTO THE THATCHER ERA
part of six months to transpose this deeply technical data into
layman's language so that my colleagues on the JIC could understand
its impact, which I believed to be profound.' However, at
the last moment senior scientists persuaded the Cabinet Secretary
to have intelligence reports criticising the Chevaline decision
withdrawn from circulation. The chairman of the Joint
Intelligence Committee was reportedly 'almost prostrate with
hysteria'.7 In protest, on 17 July 1974 Le Bailly handed in his
resignation to the Cabinet Office Intelligence Coordinator.
Chevaline was quite simply the hottest defence issue of the
decade. 8
It was also very secret. In March 1974, when a Labour government
took over from Edward Heath, Harold Wilson was anxious
to hide the project from his own backbenchers, who were not
at all sympathetic to nuclear weapons. Indeed, Wilson even hid
it from some of his Cabinet Ministers. Therefore, despite the
huge sums involved, the existence of Chevaline was not revealed
to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, or indeed
reported to Parliament in any way.
Meanwhile, the super-secret programme was not going well.
For years Chevaline, which was effectively a mini-space capsule
that provided a new front end for Britain's Polaris missiles, was
test fired but failed to work properly. The cost escalated from
an initial £175 million to £600 million, and then £800 million.
In 1982, when the highly secret programme was finally exposed,
there was an almighty row, not least because both front benches
had been involved in an elaborate deception of Parliament.
Officials had to confess that they had conspired to spend close
to a billion pounds in complete secrecy on a failed project. This
was a major public scandal, since Parliament was supposed to
control major expenditure. Shortly afterward, a special 'Never
Again' agreement was drawn up, with officials promising faithfully
not to hide large defence projects from Parliament. 9
The 'Never Again' agreement did not last long. The cause of its
demise was GCHQ's desire to venture into space. By late 1983,