Criminal Records Office computer. Permission was granted and filming took place. The police were informed and the man was subsequently charged under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. The sixth programme would have revealed details of a top secret spy satellite and Alisdair Milne had already decided to cut it from the line-up when The Observer newspaper broke the story on 18 January 1987 with the headline: "BBC gag on £500M defence secret". Combined with this story was a report that the Home Office intended to restrict the broadcast receiver licence fee, the implication being that the government had decided to censor BBC investigative journalism. Soon afterwards, a series of programmes on BBC Radio Four called My Country Right or Wrong was banned by the government because it might have revealed sensitive secrets. The series was censored only a few hours before it was due to start because it dealt with similar issues to the television series concerning the British "secret state". However, it was eventually broadcast uncut, after the government decided that it did not breach any laws or interfere with national security. 1987: Sacked director general controversy On 29 January 1987, Alasdair Milne was sacked by the newly appointed chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, Marmaduke Hussey. He was replaced by a senior BBC accountant, Michael Checkland. Milne later wrote his account of this affair in The Memoirs of a British Broadcaster. 1990–2000 1988–1994: Sinn Féin broadcast ban On 19 October 1988, Conservative Home Secretary Douglas Hurd under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher issued a notice under clause 13(4) of the BBC Licence and Agreement to the BBC and under section 29(3) of the Broadcasting Act 1981 to the Independent Broadcasting Authority prohibiting the broadcast of direct statements by representatives or supporters of eleven Irish political and military organisations. The ban lasted until 1994, and denied the UK news media the right to broadcast the voices, though not the words, of all Irish republican and loyalist paramilitaries, while the ban was targeted primarily at Sinn Féin. Government intimidation and laws before the ban had already resulted in forms of self-censorship. An INLA interview in July 1979 on BBC's Tonight caused a controversy involving Prime Minister Thatcher and was the last time such an interview was heard on British television. The 1980 Panorama film of the IRA on patrol in Carrickmore was seized by police under the