Royal official handling press charter won damages over reporter's SAS claim

Off By Sharon Black

Queen’s private secretary Sir Christopher Geidt won high court libel action against John Pilger and Central TV in 1991

This article was amended on 31 May 2013 to remove a number of inaccuracies regarding Sir Christopher Geidt in the article, which overstated his role as the Queen’s private secretary in relation to the royal charter for the press. We have also clarified aspects of his legal action against John Pilger and Central Television. We apologise for the errors.

The senior royal official tasked with handling a royal charter to regulate the press is a former military intelligence officer who successfully sued an investigative journalist who had sought to question his presence in Cambodia in the 1980s.

Sir Christopher Geidt, who is the Queen’s private secretary, won a high-court libel action against John Pilger and Central Television in 1991. Uncertainty around Geidt’s role in Cambodia sparked a debate at the time in parliament that included questions over his possible links to MI6 or the British military.

A court heard that Geidt and another former army officer, Anthony de Normann, had wrongly been accused by Pilger’s documentary of being SAS officers who trained the Khmer Rouge to lay mines.

Pilger, who had claimed he never …read more