[…] their own experts have to tell them. We saw this with Bush and Blair either ignoring or ‘sexing-up’ the evidence on WMD provided by the CIA and MI6. This process can only be fueled by defective intelligence derived from the privatised torture of hapless goat-herders and taxi-drivers who have been flown around the world […]
[…] but, despite the usual shower of interesting fragments, mostly it is junk. Pincher’s primary strategy is clear enough. During the mid 1970s bureaucratic wars between MI5 and MI6, Maurice Oldfield, Chief of MI6, used Pincher to denigrate MI5, notably via a couple of stories supporting Harold Wilson’s claims that he was the victim of […]
[…] (Northern Ireland) Report that the term “agents” is used to refer to informants or sources and not “agents” as it is sometimes colloquially understood to be, “ MI6 spies”. Thus the reference to “agents being involved in murder” was a reference to actions of informants rather than the authorities.’ Paget concludes with the cosmically […]
[…] Chair of British Youth Council. The British Youth Council began as the British section of the World Assembly of Youth, which was set up and financed by MI6 and then taken over by the CIA in the 1950s, created to combat the Soviet Union’s youth fronts. By Mandelson’s time in the mid1970s under a […]
[…] to disguise operations. Brierley retains his connections through his Charter Corp’s holding in Teltherm. Keston College In Lobster 19 we referred to Keston College as a probable MI6 operation. One of our readers had the wit to send our reference to Keston to the BBC, asking for comments. The editor of the Radio 4 […]
[…] was assistant editor of The Economist. Lloyd and Leonard Jr. keep interesting company at the FPC. Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (see above) is ‘senior researcher’ and career MI6 officer Meta (now Baroness) Ramsay is on the advisory council. Alongside Lloyd and Ramsay are Sir Michael Butler, the former British permanent representative to the European […]
[…] of bureaucratic and organisational models of the modern state, concluding that inter-agency rivalry is to be expected — or you can have an overview of the MI5/ MI6 turf wars. You can’t, yet, have both. Which is not to say this book is ‘Parapolitics for Beginners (with sociology degrees)’. Some of Gill’s academic digressions […]
[…] intelligence force, answerable to the Home Secretary, freeing SIS to continue with its core functions, answerable to the Foreign Secretary’. This would avoid a ‘wholesale take-over of MI6 priorities by MI5-led anti-terrorism operations,’ which, he said, many intelligence operatives fear.Note: In the ‘old’ days spook lobbying and territorial warfare were invisible. Given other associations […]
[…] (Mason had threatened Ashdown with a knife in Yeovil in November 1995 and apparently alleged the quarrel was over a massage parlour). Ashdown, a former SBS and MI6 officer, described the episode as ‘absolutely horrifying’: The Ashdown Diaries, Vol. 1, (London 2000): pp. 279, 380, 392. 4 Peter Goodwin, Television Under the Tories, (London […]
[…] Face M.P.’s Questions. (Peter Hennessy T. April 21 1983) The new Select Committees attempted to monitor the intelligence services and question the criteria for classification of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ documents. John Biffen, Leader of the House of Commons, said: “It is by no means clear that the intelligence services should come within the […]
