First with the News by Michael Evans

Author:Michael Evans [Evans, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RowanVale Books
Published: 2016-11-29T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

ROCKETS AWAY

News never stops. You go home after a long day and settle down for the evening when the phone rings. On the 20th of September 2000, the night news desk rang to say that there seemed to have been some sort of explosion near MI6. First reports on the agency wires indicated it was a small explosive device hidden inside a bin outside the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service. Not necessarily a major story, but intriguing.

It was now ten o’clock at night. The first edition had already gone, so I had about half an hour to check it out with my intelligence sources to see if the incident was more interesting than it seemed.

I rang a special contact on his mobile. He told me he was in the back of a taxi. He then uttered the words which dramatically changed the story and my next sixty minutes: ‘No it wasn’t a bomb in a bin, it was a rocket. MI6 has been hit by a rocket.’

Someone had fired Soviet-made rocket-propelled grenades at the front of the building and had struck a window construction on the seventh floor. My contact said the rocket had been launched from a small public park the other side of Vauxhall railway station, which is located alongside the south embankment road that runs in front of MI6. The rockets had caused damage, but nothing of great significance. No one had been injured.

It was a massive story. The IRA — it was assumed to be the Irish terrorists — had brazenly attacked one of the most symbolic targets in London. I thanked my contact and, with huge excitement, rang the night news desk to give them the news.

‘IT WAS A ROCKET!’

I had thirty minutes or so to write the late edition splash, but the story was so dramatic it almost wrote itself. When I finished it and pressed ‘send’, the Press Association, the main UK news agency, was still speculating about a bomb in a waste bin. All the late editions of the rival newspapers also told of a bomb exploding outside MI6 headquarters and quoted police sources suggesting it was some form of explosive device which had been concealed in a bin. The late edition of The Times had the real story: ‘MI6 hit by rocket-launched grenades’.

My faded blue contacts book, a bulging, somewhat disfigured and disorganised accumulation of names and telephone numbers, had, once again, proved invaluable. Ben Preston, the home news editor for The Times, passed on his congratulations the following morning. John Wellman, his deputy, the sort of newsman every reporter needs on a desk, always enthusiastic and excited by scoops, was equally appreciative. There’s nothing like comparing your own paper with all the rivals and seeing that on this occasion we had beaten everyone to the best story. It made the morning editorial conference for the editor and his top executives a time of smiling faces, instead of harsh comments and inquests about why we had missed some story that a rival had published on its front page.

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