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Mr Leird
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1. Please see the attached letter from Mr Thorp, Ministry of Defence. The correspondence to which he
refers is flagged on the attached files.
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2.
I spoke to Mr Thorp on the telephone about this matter and asked him how copies of correspondence in question came to be on the Command Secretary's files in Hong Kong since it was of personal correspondence between Sir Leslie Monson and Mr Wilford on the one hand and the Governor on the other hand. Mr Thorp gave me to understand (he was very garrulous on the point) that he thought that copies of the correspondence had been passed by the Governor to CBF Hong Kong and had ended up on the Command Secretary's files.
3.
At this end, we copied three of the four letters to the Ministry of Defence. But we did not send them a copy of the Governor's letter of 7 July 1970 to Sir Leslie Monson (flagged B) instead we sent them the gist of the Governor's reply (in a letter from Sir Leslie Monson to Mr Gwynn). In this case therefore I think that the local military authorities in Hong Kong can only have received their copy from the Governor.
4. In any event, the matter is now water under the bridge. The attached letter from Mr Thorp has been sent to inform us, as a matter of courtesy, of what has been done and does not call for any reply. However,
Mr Thorp did give me an assurance over the telephone that if, in the unlikely event of any query being raised by the Exchequer and Audit Department, there was any possibility of publicity being given to this correspondence the FCO as the originating department would first be consulted. Since we should certainly not want any publicity to be given to the fact that we had been attempting to agree in advance with the Governor on a figure for the defence contribution which he would then seek to negotiate with his unofficial advisers, I think it would be as well to write to Mr Thorp on the lines of the attached draft.
30 April 1971
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