The real-life ‘whistle-blowing’ dossier that inspired ‘Vigil’
The BBC One thriller owes much to the case of an able seaman who went AWOL, reports
THe alleges that some of his colleagues had ‘alarming personalities’
o commanders at HMNB Clyde, the Navy base at Faslane, Able Seaman William Mcneilly seemed ideal for manning Britain’s ultimate line of defence. After coming top of his training class, the quiet, studious 25-year-old was fast-tracked into a technician’s role on HMS Victorious, one of the four Trident-armed submarines that patrol the oceans continuously.
Then, in 2015, at the end of his first patrol, Mcneilly went AWOL, emailing a 19-page “whistle-blowing” dossier to media outlets. Security on HMS Victorious was laxer than at most airports, he claimed. He said it was only “a matter of time before we’re infiltrated by a psychopath or a terrorist”. And even if that didn’t happen, a Russian spy could make use of the top-secret documents that were lying unguarded around the vessel. The Navy said that the dossier constituted the “subjective and unsubstantiated personal views… [of ] a very junior sailor”; anonymous naval sources described Mcneilly as a “delusional self-publicist”.
Earlier this month, Tom Edge – writer of the BBC murder-mystery drama Vigil, set on board a Tridentarmed submarine – told the Radio Times that he had been inspired by reading about Mcneilly’s actions. Edge described the ex-seaman as “a whistle-blower” and his document as an “interesting insight”. Mcneilly, then, seems to have been a partial inspiration for Petty Officer Craig Burke (Martin Compston), murdered after passing information to a peace activist, while his view that Trident is vulnerable to foreign infiltration was echoed in Sunday’s episode, when Lt Matthew Doward (Lorne Macfadyen) was revealed as a Russian spy.
Rather than being jailed for breaching the Official Secrets Act, Mcneilly was dishonourably discharged. This was less than many – including Mcneilly himself – had expected, leading many to believe that his claims contained some truth and the Navy wished to draw a line under the affair. His current whereabouts are unknown; attempts by The Telegraph this week to track him down were unsuccessful. But his dossier remains available to read via Wikileaks. In it, Mcneilly claims that sailors’ bags were not checked when boarding HMS Victorious, enabling him to smuggle in a smartphone and photograph a document codenamed CB8890, which he describes as “the instructions for the safety and security of the Trident II D5 strategic weapon system”. He also alleges that some of his colleagues had “alarming personalities”. One (he says) enjoyed killing small animals and watching extreme pornography; another smoked an e-pipe on board, flouting a ban; a third attacked a colleague and threatened to kill two others.
Critics of Trident have championed Mcneilly as a principled whistleblower, but some ex-naval officers take issue with his claims. “He describes Trident as a broken system, but it’s served us for 25 years, which is testament in itself,” says Commander Ryan Ramsey, who captained HMS Turbulent (a Trafalgar-class submarine) from 2008-2011. “I have worked at Faslane, and it’s exceptionally secure – there’s no real prospect that someone who didn’t have business on a sub could get on one.”
Ramsey’s opinion is shared by former naval rating Richard Humphreys, author of Under Pressure, an account of life on a Polaris submarine in the 1980s. “I was in charge of external security on my sub,” he says, “and if Prince Charles turned up and his name wasn’t on the list, he wouldn’t have been allowed on. We’d also have our bags routinely searched – you couldn’t take cameras in.” He adds that all submariners are put on probation to see whether they can cope with life underwater. (One of his colleagues could not, and attempted to open a hatch after just two days.) Loose cannons are thus weeded out. “Vigil portrays the crew as being all over the place, but the people I served were very level-headed.”
Whatever the truth of Mcneilly’s claims, his own actions demonstrate that no security system is foolproof. As he put it in his dossier: “I could have sold this information for millions.” We might all be thankful that the worst Mcneilly did is inspire a few racy plotlines on a BBC show.