 After suggestions in the press that Vassall had been shielded by his political masters, the responsible minister, Thomas Galbraith, resigned from the government pending inquiries.Galbraith was later exonerated by the Radcliffe inquiry, which sent two newspaper journalists to prison for refusing to reveal their sources for sensational and uncorroborated stories about Vassall's private life.The imprisonment severely damaged relations between the press and the Macmillan government; the "New Statesman"s columnist Paul Johnson warned