Some things in life you never forget. And being interviewed on behalf of the security services for a senior job in the same Downing Street department where Andy Coulson would later work, is one of them. The officer came to my home at a prearranged time and asked me a range of questions: about my political affiliations, the state of my finances, whether I drank to excess and what I did for sex. At times he seemed more embarrassed asking the questions than I was answering them.
I had been warned what to expect by colleagues at No 10 who had been through the process. One, a woman, was asked if her glance ever went up to the top-shelf porn mags when she bought a newspaper. I didn't get that one. At the end the officer asked me: "Is there anything else you think we should know?" I racked my brains. "I'm probably a member of Greenpeace," I said, "but I really can't remember." "Don't worry about that," he said. "You'd be surprised how many people are." All he really wanted to know, I suspect, is whether I might be susceptible to blackmail. Once he knew I was solvent and didn't appear to have any guilty secrets, he was satisfied.
Having passed what's called "developed vetting", I was then able to see just about any document inside government, up to and including those marked "top secret". I saw material relating to defence and security issues, sensitive communications concerning the ongoing situation in Northern Ireland and our relations with our allies. I attended cabinet meetings and secure Cobra (Cabinet Office briefing room) discussions about the Kosovo conflict. All of these matters have a communications element to them and without that level of access I would have found it difficult to do my job. My boss, Alastair Campbell, would have laughed at the suggestion that anything was beyond his security clearance as communications director.
Which is why I find it extraordinary, if it's true, that Coulson did not have the same level of vetting as I did in a more junior position. How could he advise the prime minister on handling the media with regard to Afghanistan, Nato, Northern Ireland or mainland terrorism without having access to the full facts?
If he were in the job today, he would need an intimate knowledge of British involvement in Libya, security service assessments of the situation in Syria, the likely developments in Palestine, North Korea and Pakistan. Government communications is a fast-moving business. You can't wait for a crisis to erupt – you need the fullest background detail on all the likely hot spots so you can react quickly and offer the prime minister the best advice when news breaks.
No 10 must have found a way around all this because, by all accounts, Coulson was very effective at what he did. It is simply not credible that a Downing Street communications director didn't have access to everything he needed to see. The more pertinent question, therefore, is why he wasn't vetted at the highest level. If Coulson gave David Cameron all the assurances he needed before the appointment, presumably he could have told the security services what they wanted to hear as well. Except that it's the job of skilled investigators to probe into areas where even prime ministers may not wish to go.
The only possible explanation I can find is that sometimes, if you don't want to know the answer, the best policy is not to ask the question. But what does that tell us about the relationship between Downing Street and the security services? It's one thing for politicians to look the other way sometimes, but the men and women who vet those in sensitive positions should never be asked to do the same.