The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has admitted that his department received details of a plan to overturn the government of Equatorial Guinea in January. The information came from a foreign intelligence service and Whitehall was bound by a duty of confidentiality not to distribute it. Mr Straw has pointed out, however, that two Spanish newspapers reported on the coup plans days later.
"It was not definitive enough for us to conclude that a coup was likely or inevitable," he told his Conservative shadow, Michael Ancram, last month. "It was passed by another government to us on the normal condition that it not be passed on."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=OJGWCJTGS2BTTQFIQMGSM5WAVCBQWJVC?xml=/news/2004/12/19/wguin19.xml