[…] justifications for the Iraq war – now understandably giving way to greater anxieties about the well-being of British troops – has led to widespread public recognition of intelligence failure, without balanced apportionment of blame. This has served to obfuscate one of the real problems: over the years ‘intelligence’ has come to be defined by […]
It is a difficult time for Britain’s security and intelligence agencies. Not only have the old certainties collapsed with the Berlin Wall, Britain’s economy is in increasingly dire shape, and current levels of government funding for the agencies can no longer be taken for granted. (1) As a result, both the major agencies, MI5 […]
[…] the stated title at the end of the piece. A preface: in what follows I use the terms security agencies and secret state to stand for the intelligence and security services – it saves time and endless repetition of a mouthful. Or should I say: I use the term security agencies in place of […]
[…] The Archive. An overview of the archive (over 90,000 records of released documents). Archive publications. Includes NSA index on CD Rom, Nicaragua 1978-90, South Africa 1962-89, US Intelligence Community 1947-89, Military Uses of Space 1945-91, Nuclear non-proliferation 1945-90, Iran-contra, Presidential directives on national security. Collections Database. Searchable database. Freedom of Information Archive. Full text […]
[…] (RIPA), (3) and came into being when the Act came into force in October 2000. It replaces the Interception of Communications Tribunal, the Security Service Tribunal and Intelligence Services Tribunal (4) ; and the complaints function of the Commissioner appointed under the Police Act 1997. The Tribunal’s jurisdiction is set out in RIPA s65; […]
[…] Security Adviser – known in Whitehall and Pall Mall clubs by the nickname ‘Lock-up’ – and will be in charge of security data flowing between the Joint Intelligence HQ at Stormont Castle and reports from MI5’s top secret F3 section which is responsible for Irish affairs. (Sunday World 27th May 1984) …. Number one […]
See also: Part 1: Forty Years of Legal Thuggery (Lobster 9) Part 2: British Spooks “Who’s Who” (Lobster 10) Intelligence Personnel Named in ‘Inside Intelligence’ (Lobster 15) Philby naming names (Lobster 16) First supplement to A Who’s Who of the British Secret State (Lobster 19) Below is a list of spooks, both dead and […]
[…] much of the time and spent most of my days in the library here, educating myself in post-war history, American history, what was available then about the intelligence services – almost nothing – and the post-WW2 geopolitical order, centrally the Cold War and American imperialism. Looking at the reading list for the intelligence and […]
[…] Turner for contributions. Comments and info welcome – my e-mail address is Electronic Privacy/ECHELON Cryptome http://cryptome.org/ http://jya.com/crypto.htm John Young’s acclaimed New York-based website on encryption and intelligence. Constantly updated, John Young and his ISP, Verio, have stood firm against requests to remove material that might be embarrassing to the agencies concerned (cryptome. org/mi5-verio.htm). […]
One of the recurring sub-themes of the literature on intelligence systems in the West in the past decade has been the status of the claims made by KGB defector Golitsyn. Until recently all the book-reading public knew about Golitsyn was (a) that he has exposed some (relatively minor) Soviet operations; (b) made a series […]
