[…] academia are the only real flaw in an ambitious and potentially very useful book. Gill aims to provide the groundwork for an inquiry into the British security intelligence agencies, the Security Service and police Special Branches. To that end he reviews what is known about the operations and the remit of British security intelligence […]
[…] Next could come the representatives, including the religious and corporate ones, of the various communities in this country and the Commonwealth, who are the beneficiaries of political intelligence, including protection from terrorism. If SIS got the external messages wrong, it did not do too well with the internal ones either. For example, had it […]
[…] because of Scott’s essay, was banned by the Indonesian government. Scott’s essay is a classic demonstration of parapolitics as a subject area – the presence of covert, intelligence agency activity beneath the surface account of politics, and as a methodology – reconstituting reality from an extraordinary mass of detail. Robin Ramsay In this short […]
[…] Urban Faber and Faber London 1996 £16.99 The first sentence of Urban’s conclusion to this very interesting and rather important book is: ‘More than anything else, British intelligence is a system for repackaging information gathered by the USA.’ He might have added, ‘information gathered in large part at US bases in Britain’. Urban has […]
[…] known to be imperfect and not the only one available. An inability to offer a trustworthy ‘message’ has had particular impact on America and Britain’s Middle Eastern intelligence product because it has undermined its agents, especially ‘agents of influence’.(9) This is one of many reasons why, today, ‘the allies’ have no agents, cannot ‘sell’ […]
[…] affair. The other links her death to her anti-nuclear activities in the early 1980s. Both schools of thought have produced circumstantial evidence which suggests the involvement of intelligence and security services. This involvement is likely to have been at least one remove, through the use of private security firms, or other more secretive organisations, […]
[…] lines by deception and the non-payment of telephone bills. These false charges are the climax to a bizarre series of events. As a researcher in politics and intelligence I have many times been the target of various intelligence agencies. On two occasions I was asked indirectly to join, or co-operate with, the clan. I […]
[…] to bring closure for the family.’(6) Unofficial histories and authorised versions Described by its publisher as ‘the definitive history of MI5 and MI6’, Gordon Thomas’s Inside British intelligence: 100 years of MI5 and MI6 (London: JR Books), hit the shelves in May, despite the best efforts of the government to block publication. Naming operatives […]
[…] emerged in 1971 with the creation of Information Policy. In early 1972 the Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF) was created. Military chiefs wanted a unit to combine ‘ intelligence gathering’ with ‘aggressive patrolling’ within the Republican areas.(8) The SAS had been sent to Northern Ireland in 1969 (9), and by 1972, with the MRF, they […]
[…] the press would uncover evidence that the leftist founder of the Peoples Temple was for many years a witting stooge, or agent, of the FBI and the intelligence community, where it was feared that Ryan’s investigation would embarrass the CIA by linking Jones to some of the Agency’s most volatile programs and operations. This, […]
