Re:

👤 Terry Hanstock  

Iraq – fallout continues

‘Five years on from Hutton and we still haven’t been told the truth about the war based on lies’, fulminated Peter Oborne earlier this year. (1) Also less than happy was barrister Michael Shrimpton who unsuccessfully complained to Ofcom about an interview he gave for David Kelly: the conspiracy files, (2) saying it was unfairly edit-ed, used without his consent and made him appear to be ‘a “crank” and conspiracy theorist.’(3) Equally perturbed but using more temperate and measured language, was Lord Bingham, describing the invasion of Iraq as a ‘serious violation of internat-ional law… [undermining]…the foundation on which the post-1945 consensus had been constructed.’(4)

Proving that art occasionally imitates life, Scottish Opera premiered a 15 minute piece, Death of a scientist, ‘inspired’ by the circumstances surrounding David Kelly’s death. Co-authored by Zinnie Harris – one of the writers of Spooks – it met with some acclaim and not a little degree of publicity.(5) And, for the record, it should be noted that the Crufts Friends for Life 2009 winner was Brock, the Australian Shepherd lowland search and rescue dog who found David Kelly’s body and thus ‘helped 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 who have not previously been identified, the book is said to be ‘very graphic, but very responsible in its treatment of sensitive material.’(7)

If you’d rather wait for the authorised history of MI5, Christopher Andrew’s Defence of the realm will be in bookshops from 5 October. Publisher Allen Lane has revealed that the book was written and edited on MI5 premises, with the text not being allowed to leave the building. More of the same next year when the official history of MI6 by Keith Jeffery is published by Bloomsbury.(8) Looking further ahead, Matthew Jones has been appointed to write the official history of the Chevaline project, ‘one of the most controversial programmes of post-war British defence policy.’(9)

Crooke’s tour

An interesting profile of Alastair Crooke who, apparently sacked from MI6 for being too sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, set up Conflicts Forum (<http://conflictsforum.org>), a think-tank with the aim of helping western governments understand Islamist groups and their military resistance to Israel.(10)

Special relationships

When it comes to terrorism ‘Britain is not part of the problem, Britain is the problem.’ According to one former CIA operative, we are ‘an Islamist swamp’. So much so that 40 per cent of ‘CIA activity designed to prevent a new terrorist spectacular on American soil is now directed at targets in the UK.’(11)

Top of the form

One of the by-products of the ‘War on Terror’ has been the increased used of surveillance in British schools to help identify potential suicide bombers – dataveillance, as some would term it. According to one observer, ‘the greater detail now requested for the Pupil Level Annual Schools’ Census and the development of the National Pupil Database (12) provides the state with a mechanism to engage effectively in a panoptic sort of the school population in an effort to render the identity of potential terrorists auditable.’(13)

Radio days

The first full account of the Radio Security Service. Established at the start of World War Two to intercept the wireless messages of enemy spies, it achieved its greatest success through the work of its Analysis Bureau, headed by Hugh Trevor-Roper. This included the production of reports on Axis intelligence activities and resulted in its eventual independence from the SIS as the Radio Intelligence Service.(14)

‘Nation shall speak peace unto Nation’

The role of the BBC during the Cold War is examined in detail in a special issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.(15) Articles include: James R. Vaughan, ‘The BBC’s external services and the Middle East before the Suez crisis’ (pp. 499-514); Alasdair Pinkerton, ‘A new kind of imperialism? The BBC, cold war broadcasting and the contested geopolitics of south Asia’ (pp. 537-555); Alban Webb, ‘Constitutional niceties: three crucial dates in cold war relations between the BBC external services and the Foreign Office’ (pp. 557-567); Marie Gillespie, Alban Webb and Gerd Baumann, ‘Broadcasting Britishness: strategic challenges and the ecology of overseas broadcasting by the BBC’ (pp. 453-458); and Emma Robertson, ‘I get a real kick out of Big Ben: BBC versions of Britishness on the Empire and General Overseas Service, 1932-1948’, (pp. 459-473).

Don’t give up the day job

Some examples of how academics can be inveigled (willingly or otherwise) into less scholarly activities. From the middle of the nineteenth century up to the end of World War Two several lead-ing archaeologists based in the Near East moonlighted as spies, informers and intelligence operatives, lending expert knowledge of Middle Eastern culture, traditions, geography, language and history to the political needs of their respective governments.(16) American anthropologist Jack Sargent Harris was also a clandestine operative engaged in counter-espionage for the OSS in West Africa and in South Africa during World War Two. Declining an offer from the CIA, he also worked for the United Nations before falling foul of McCarthy.(17) And there’s also the example of an American student who, carrying out research in Poland in 1970, was almost signed up by a Polish Security Service agent posing as a journalist.(18)

It was not only academics who were recruited. One of America’s most highly regarded magicians, John Mulholland, was hired to ‘teach intelligence operatives how to use the tools of the magician’s trade – sleight of hand and misdirection – to covertly administer drugs, chemicals and biological agents to unsuspecting victims’ as part of Project MKULTRA.(19)

Privates on the payroll

The increasing use of PMSCs (private military or security companies) in armed conflicts and military occupations was the subject of a symposium co-organised by the European University Institute in Florence and the EU Framework Programme 7 project, ‘Regulating privatisation of war: the role of the EU in assuring compliance with international humanitarian law and human rights’ (www.priv-war.eu). Papers presented there have since been published in European Journal of International Law 19 (5), Novem-ber 2008) and include Carsten Hoppe’s ‘Passing the buck: state responsibility for private military companies’ (pp. 989-1014); Cedric Ryngaert’s ‘Litigating abuses committed by private military companies’ (pp. 1035-1053); and Simon Chesterman’s examination of outsourcing in the intelligence gathering community (‘“We can’t spy if we can’t buy!”: the privatization of intelligence and the limits of out-sourcing “inherently governmental functions”’, pp. 1055-1074), in particular his section on incentives: ‘there are reasonable grounds to be wary of inserting a profit motive into intelligence activities.’(20)

Iops

The US broad doctrine of ‘information operations’ (IO) has put ‘information and media strategies on a par with conventional means of military power and made them pivotal to achieving “full-spectrum dominance.” ’ Although its primary role is to shape ‘the global media ecology….in the battle for hearts and minds…the impact of such operations at home may be their most important legacy. IO “blowback” occurs as surveillance and propaganda campaigns targeting foreign audiences spill back into the US because of the nature of the global media and information flows.’(21)

The miners united…

A former Bedfordshire police superintendent recalls his month-long stint helping keep Cotgrave Colliery open during the miners’ strike. ‘Feelings were running high, and the miners tore into our lines. I found them truly terrifying. They were tough men who were convinced their cause was right and prepared to go to any lengths to further it.’(22)

GB84 author David Peace has a different perspective:

‘Despite growing up in [the Wakefield] area and living there during the strike, I realised I hadn’t truly apprec-iated the sacrifices that the striking miners had made, nor the intimidation and violence that they had been subjected to….There was a “shadowy paramilitary” presence in the…strike – techniques that had been used by the British in Northern Ireland were used in the pit villages. Agent provocateurs and MI5 were present.’(23)

This is a theme currently being explored by journalist Carl Fellstrom.

‘I’m working on a book…which is the story of an undercover police officer. Believe it or not he went undercover to infiltrate the miners during the strike. A lot of people wouldn’t realise that the authorities in Nottingham would use their own police officers to resolve what was a civil law situation, but that’s Thatcher for you.’(24)

All in the mind?

A series of experiments ‘tested whether lacking control increases illusory pattern perception… [defined]…as the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli. Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions.’(25)

For a more a detailed examination, using an empirical study of post-war Italy and France, arguing that any analysis of conspiracy and conspiracy theories should consider their political nature, see Pascal Girard, ‘Conspiracies and visions of conspiracies in France and Italy after the Second World War’, European Review of History, 15 (6), December 2008, pp. 749-765.

Intelligentsia

An article recently released by the CIA describes the rise of intelligence studies as ‘one of the fastest growing disciplines in academia’ despite being ‘one of those odd disciplines that is comfortable in a variety of academic departments, but perhaps never truly at home in any of them.’(26)

Human Security

Based in Canada, the Human Security Gateway (<www.humansecuritygateway.info/index.php>) highlights threats to indi-viduals ‘by one’s own government or rebel forces in civil wars, rather than by foreign armies and other forces’. Containing over 23,000 resources, it includes reports, journal articles, news, and fact sheets.

UFOs

Files containing a wide range of UFO-related documents covering the years 1987–1993 have been released by The National Archives. Also included is a Highlights guide to help users navigate the collection. <http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/>

Notes

  1. Daily Mail, 29 January 2009.
  2. Broadcast by BBC2 on 25 February 2007.
  3. ‘Complaint by Mr Michael Shrimpton…’, Ofcom Broadcast Bulletin, (129), 9 March 2009, pp. 29-38 <http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/obb129/>; Paul McNally, ‘Ofcom clears BBC documentary on David Kelly death’, Press Gazette, 9 March 2009. For a geat deal more on Mr Shrimpton see William Clark’s piece at <http://pinkindustry.wordpress.com/crackpot-realist-manque-part-one/>
  4. ‘The rule of law in the international order’: Lecture on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. 18 November 2008. <http://www.biicl.org/news/view/-/id/109/ >. See also Joshua Rozenberg, ‘Lord Goldsmith’s advice on Iraq invasion “flawed”, says former top judge’, Daily Telegraph, 17 November 2008; Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Top judge: US and UK acted as “vigilantes” in Iraq invasion’, The Guardian, 18 November 2008. Also of interest is Claire Taylor and Richard Kelly, Parliamentary approval for deploying the armed forces: an introduction to the issues. House of Commons Library, Research Paper 08/88, 27 November 2008. <http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2008/rp08-088.pdf>
  5. Charlene Sweeney, ‘Scottish Opera portrays final tragic days of Dr David Kelly, but without a score to settle’, The Times, 7 February 2009; Rachel Devine, ‘Fifteen minutes of pain; half-truths, secrets and death – the writer of Spooks is on familiar ground in her tragic opera about Dr David Kelly’, The Sunday Times, 15 February 2009; Zinnie Harris, ‘Fast and furious: it’s pacy, it’s political – and it’s all over in a quarter of an hour…’, The Guardian, 4 March 2009. (Mordechai Vanunu, accused and convicted of betraying Israel’s atomic secrets, was also given dramatic treatment some years ago in the play Mister V. See Matthew Kalman, ‘Play revives hope of campaign to free Vanunu’, The Independent, 10 August 1997; Anat Gesser-Edelsburg and Moshe Israelashvili, ‘Reshaping the context and personalizing the message penetrate the taboo: a play on a spy who betrayed his state’, Democracy and Security, 5 (1), January 2009, pp. 51–63.)
  6. <http://www.crufts.org.uk/news/friends-for-life-2009-winner>
  7. Richard Norton-Taylor and Chris McGreal, ‘MI5 and MI6 unable to stop Secret War’s publication’, The Guardian, 15 April 2009; Neil Millard, ‘MI5 fails to block book of secret wars’, The Evening Standard, 15 April 2009; Liz Thomson, ‘JR Books steals a march on authorised secret histories’, Book Brunch, 16 April 2009 <http://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1635:jrbooks-leads-the-way-in-a-glut-of-secret-histories&catid=914:books&Itemid=93>; Anna-Marie Julyan, ‘Hot demand for MI5 book’, thebookseller.com, 16 April 2009 <http://www.thebookseller.com/news/2943-hot-demand-for-mi5-book.html> .Originally published in the US in March as Secret wars: one hundred years of British intelligence inside MI5 and MI6 (New York: Thomas Dunne Books), it’s a ‘rollicking, readable…history’ according to Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times (25 March 2009).
  8. Benedicte Page, ‘Penguin readies MI5’s secrets’, The Bookseller, (5374), 20 March 2009, p .6 <http://www.thebookselller.com/news/80357-penguin-readies-mi5s-secrets.html>
  9. ‘Unearthing Britain’s Cold war nuclear history: the secret Chevaline project’, University of Nottingham press release, 25 June 2008 <http://communications.nottingham.ac.uk/News/Article/Unearthing_Britain_s_Cold_War_nuclear_history_the_secret_Chevaline_project.html> See also: Kristan Stoddart, ‘The Wilson Government and British responses to anti-ballistic Missiles, 1964-1970’, Contemporary British History, 23 (1), March 2009, pp. 1-33. For further information on Chevaline see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevaline/>
  10. James Harkin, ‘Middleman in the Middle East’, Financial Times Magazine, 29 December 2008, pp. 30-35. <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99339144-d53f-11dd-b967-000077b07658.html>
  11. Tim Shipman, ‘Why the CIA has to spy on Britain’, The Spectator, (9418), 28 February 2009, pp. 20-21. <http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3387866/why-the-cia-has-to-spy-on-britain-.thtml>See also Eric Rosenbach, ‘The incisive fight: recommendations for improving counterterrorism intelligence’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 618, July 2008, pp. 133-147; Richard J. Aldrich, ‘US-European intelligence co-operation on counter-terrorism: low politics and compulsion’, British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 11 (1), February 2009, pp. 122-139 and the series of articles under the heading ‘Change, crisis and transformation: challenges for western intelligence in the twenty-first century’, in Intelligence and National Security, 24 (1), February 2009.
  12. This has been identified as one of the databases within the Transformational Government programme (<http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/e-government/strategy/>) posing ‘significant problems’. Full details of the others can be found in Ross Anderson et al, Database state (York: Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, 2009. <http://www.jrrt.org.uk/uploads/database-state.pdf>) See also Liz Lightfoot, ‘At risk from the registers? Among a proliferation of government databases, the three causing greatest concern over legality, privacy and consent were set up to protect children’, The Guardian, 24 March 2009; Ben Russell, ‘Are there illegal government databases and what can we do about it? The big question’, The Independent, 24 March 2009; Shami Chakrabarti and Michael Wills, ‘Are government databases excessive?…’, The Times, 27 March 2009.
  13. Shaun Best, ‘Terrorism and the role of the school in surveillance’, Education, Knowledge and Economy, 2 (2), June 2008, pp. 137–148.
  14. E.D.R. Harrison, ‘British radio security and intelligence, 1939–43’, The English Historical Review, CXXIV (506), February 2009, pp. 53–93.
  15. ‘BBC World Service, 1932–2007: cultural exchange and public diplomacy’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 28 (4), 2008.
  16. Tobias Richter, ‘Espionage and Near Eastern archaeology: a historiographical survey’, Public Archaeology, 7 (4), Winter 2008, pp. 212-240. (Some of the better known individuals were Leonard Woolley, Gertrude Bell, and T. E. Lawrence.)
  17. Kevin A. Yelvington, ‘A life in and out of anthropology: an interview with Jack Sargent Harris’, Critique of Anthropology, 28 (4), December 2008, pp. 446-476. See also Linda Melvern’s obituary of him in The Independent, 6 November 2008.
  18. ‘He commissioned an autobiographical account of my life “on the road to a doctorate” for which I was paid. But the actual goal was to recruit me as an informer concerning professors at Columbia, particularly Zbigniew Brzezinski, and my fellow students and their connections with the FBI and the CIA. When my suspicions were finally aroused…..I returned the money and broke off contact. This ended my career as an informer, while the agent pocketed the money.’ John J. Kulczycki, ‘My experience as a paid informer of the Polish Security Service’, East European Politics and Societies, 23 (1), February 2009, pp. 126-134.
  19. Michael Edwards, ‘The sphinx and the spy: the clandestine world of John Mulholland’, Genii: the conjurors’ magazine, 64 (4), April 2001 <http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Articles/Mulholland.html>
  20. For more on the profit motive see Jeremy Scahill, ‘Blackwater’s private spies’, The Nation, 286 (24), 23 June 2008, pp. 12-16. <www.thenation.com/doc/20080623/scahil>
  21. Dwayne Winseck, ‘Information operations “blowback”: communication, propaganda and surveillance in the global war on terrorism’, International communication gazette. 70 (6), December 2008, pp. 419-441.
  22. Roy Gough, ‘Striking back’, Police Review, 117 (6019), 6 March 2009, pp. 26-27. Expressing sentiments possibly too strong for that organ, Gough acknowledges on his website that ‘not only the striking miners but those men who loyally stuck to their jobs were eventually betrayed by the authorities.’ <http://emissarytothegods.com/perso/en/perso.php5>
  23. ‘GB84’s shadowy forces ranged against miners’, Socialist Worker, (2142) 14 March 2009 <http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?i=17311>
  24. Jared Wilson, ‘The gangs of Nottingham’, Left Lion, (27), February-March 2009, pp. 12-13. <http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/id/2427>
  25. Jennifer A. Whitson and Adam D. Galinsky, ‘Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception’, Science, 322 (5898), 3 October 2008, pp. 115–117.For a brief account of current thinking on the subject see David Sharp, ‘Advances in conspiracy theory’, The Lancet, 372 (9647), 18 October 2008, pp. 1371-1372.
  26. Michael S. Goodman, ‘Studying and teaching about intelligence: the approach in the United Kingdom’, Studies in intelligence: journal of the American intelligence profession, 50 (2), 2006. <https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/ studies/vol50no2/html_files/Studying_Teaching_6.htm>.For a dated but still useful list of where the subject is being taught, see Paul Maddrell, Intelligence studies at UK universities: an expanding subject <http://users.aber.ac.uk/rbh/iss/uk.htm>. For details of US courses see National Counterintelligence Executive, NCIX 2007 listing of selected institutions and courses teaching counterintelligence. <http://www.ncix.gov/publications/reports/NonGovernmentOnly.pdf>

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