[…] counsel of the UK and other similarly-minded allies. This is the very essence of the liberal progressive ‘third way’ model which has been promoted by the British intelligence and security establishment and which was central to the decision to follow the US into Afghanistan and Iraq. This model made one big assumption that seemed […]
‘Britain, 2005. Saddam Hussein, still the ruler of Iraq and possessor of a long-range nuclear missile, seeks revenge on the west. Warned by intelligence reports of Saddam’s plan, the United States deploys a space-based missile shield, which will catch the Iraqi rocket before it gets to Washington. The key installation is based in Yorkshire […]
[…] you where it is. Absolute exemptions are not subject to any public interest test, and include information supplied by, or concerning: the Security Service, MI5; the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6; GCHQ; the Special Forces, e.g. the SAS; tribunals concerning intelligence and interception of communications including the Investigatory Powers Tribunal; and the National Criminal Intelligence […]
[…] Europe. Ingeborg Philipsen spoke of the Danish Society for Freedom and Culture, established in January 1953 by the former resistance fighter Arne Sejr. Sejr operated a private intelligence group called The Firm, formed in 1948 to conduct psychological warfare in Denmark in connection with the Danish Intelligence Service and the CIA. But Sejr’s interest […]
[…] aristocrats and eccentric M.Ps or forces which were much more powerfully rooted in the structure of the British State? What was their relationship with the security and intelligence services? Why did Churchill feel the need to have his own intelligence adviser, Sir Desmond Morton? Costello seems to believe that the pro-appeasement faction was powerful […]
[…] US; but all carried out by Republican governments. Is it possible that on both sides of the Atlantic the professional diplomats and the rational core of the intelligence community are slowly throwing off some of the vile nonsense perpetrated in the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher years? The release of various official US documents which could easily have […]
The clandestine world of surveillance, spying and intelligence from ancient times to the post 9/11 world Ernest Volkman London: Carlton, 2007, h/b, £20 This is a lavishly and creatively illustrated, large format, (i.e. slightly bigger than A4) glossy paper, coffee-table book on the history of espionage. A former journalist with Newsday, and author […]
[…] to reproduce conversations verbatim, a talent that made him a highly prized asset of the CIA station chief, John Hart, in Saigon. Hart and the CIA’s foreign intelligence staff wanted to know what influential Vietnamese citizens and officials were privately thinking, and plotting; so, through his CIA contacts, Ellsberg was introduced into Saigon’s most […]
[…] the history of the Agency, merely a history. Huge areas of the Agency’s activities have been ignored, as Jeffrey Richelson, one of the best informed historians of intelligence points out.(7) Richelson’s complaint is that the author has concentrated too much on the Agency’s covert operations. This is clearly true if we are to take […]
[…] pro quo for the pension he is now receiving, is to bolster the key myth of MI6, that while we may be the junior partner in the intelligence relationship with the U.S., we’re the best, the most subtle and the most reliable — the people to handle those uncouth Yanks, to hold their hands […]
