[…] ‘Squidgygate’ then became impatient with their proxies and started sending journalists taped copies of the conversation through the post. Naturally, once the story broke, suspicion fell on MI5. Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke told the House of Commons: ‘The security services are strictly controlled in their telephone tapping and I know of no evidence whatever […]
[…] case ‘doesn’t follow the accepted pattern of burglaries’.(16) But if it was not a bungled theft, by an admittedly very special burglar, what was the intruder’s motive? MI5, Zeus and nuclear protest Some writers believe that it was the determination of the Thatcher government to push through a highly ambitious nuclear power programme which […]
[…] no-one chose them. That is why the FCO can produce specialists in the area. Secondly the ‘stans’, by which I mean principally Pakistan, used to come under MI5 (sometimes army officers seconded from the MOD) and the colonial office, which is again why SIS neglected things. Afghanistan was of interest because of India/Iran/Soviet Union […]
[…] Affairs Research Institute (FARI). John Bruce Lockhart (Obituary, Independent 13 May 1995). SIS officer. Niall MacDermot (Obituary by David Leigh in the Guardian, 26 February 1996). War-time MI5 officer, later Labour MP and Minister in the first Wilson government, whose career was halted by MI5 ostensibly because of his wife’s links with Soviet officials, […]
[…] (HEE Proceedings, vol. 132, Pt. 1, No. 4, July 1989). Viscount Ruthven: Section D (MI6) Cairo with Freya Stark (Sunday Telegraph 5 August 1990). Commander Bill Emmet: MI5 Italy WW2 (Daily Telegraph 2 November 1985). G.J. Deverell: MI6 station chief Budapest 1941 (Letter, The Times, 22 April 1991). Douglas Gordon: British Consul-General Aden, expelled […]
[…] interesting – but isolated – anecdotes is not enough. For example, he flatly asserts that “the ACMA’s (Authorised Competent Military Authorities) were both conduit and catspaw of MI5”, but gives only one example. (Do we even know how big MI5 was at this point?) Part of this national surveillance effort was done by “an […]
[…] community in the United Kingdon believed that unorthodox methods and techniques were required in the war. The intervention of these groupings, which included Special Branch, military intelligence, MI5 and MI6, was uncoordinated. Much has been written about that period, some of it honest journalism, but most of it (emphasis added) propaganda inspired by the […]
[…] having been an informer in Bristol since the mid-seventies – which some of us had guessed – and after 1989 his handling had been taken over by MI5. Apparently he then returned to Belfast under instructions and then moved to Galway, where he again was running a driving school. When he took over an […]
[…] He refers to MI5’s analysis of the “45 minute report” and highlights the original circulation of the document to various departments. The usual suspects are there: SIS, MI5, GCHQ and MOD get between 7 copies for MI5 and 20 copies for MI6. But also listed are 32 (yes 32) copies for the DTI. Why? […]
Hollis again What with the opening of the KGB archives and the testimony of Oleg Gordievsky, you might be forgiven for thinking that the question, Was MI5 Director-General Roger Hollis a Soviet spy? had been answered conclusively and resoundingly ‘No’. You would be wrong – or so says the doyen of British espionage writers, […]
