[…] saying: “It’s impossible to say how many phones are being tapped at one time. The RUC Special Branch tap a lot … others, including Box 500 ( MI5), Six (MI6) and 12 Int (Military Intelligence). Sometimes you get a local ‘research cell’ (Brigade or Battalion Intelligence) doing their own tapping on a particular target..a […]
[…] the island some ten years later around the time the most recent bout of troubles began. This was Julian Faux, a then recently retired Deputy Director-General of MI5. Faux was working for a private Australian security firm and had been given the job of writing a report on Fiji’s own security service. He recommended […]
[…] two striking Yorkshire miners; an account of the crucial role of the senior administrative officer of the NUM, based on the widely-held view that Roger Windsor was MI5 agent; and a brutal portrayal of the machinations and skulduggery which characterise the black underbelly of state politics. Most of the leading actors in this drama […]
[…] Scott and Iain Macleay’s Britain’s Secret War: Tartan Terrorism and the Anglo American State (Mainstream, Edinburgh, 1990. With only the slightest acquaintance with the ‘Anglo-American state’ (calling MI5 ‘DI5’, for example, and confusing its role with that of ‘DI6’), the authors blunder about in what is potentially a very interesting and under-reported area. Its […]
[…] trail, opened up by Ken Livingstone in the House of Commons (12/1/88) will run for years. The Cavendish book is an unprecedented public manifestation of the MI6- MI5 wars, and more is bound to follow. (And it’s quite an interesting book, though perhaps not for the reasons Cavendish intended.) Wallace and Holroyd seem to […]
[…] and should inform 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 […]
British traditions in decline include a sense of the ridiculous as a weapon of state, jingoism and understatement. The last of these was always a brilliant British con: you only have to look at the gothic majesty of the palace of Westminster (Parliament) to realise we have never really done understatement. ‘A sense of the […]
[…] not, he is the referee and he can send any man off the field and call our man on at any time he likes’. Presumably an exaggeration, MI5 felt strongly enough about the comment to have it excised from a 1981 Panorama programme, presented by Tom Mangold, the first ever made about ‘British intelligence’. […]
[…] Western engagement against Islamism in Western Asia would naturally create conflicts of loyalty. While MI6 might enjoy itself understanding the intricacies of Pathan tribal politics, it was MI5 that was going to have to pick up the pieces. As we move towards 2008, the last Prime Minister’s over-speedy insertion of expensive military collateral into […]
[…] the police and army stepped beyond the law, in terms of indigenous collusion, is understandable if not to be condoned. What matters more to historians is how MI5, as an example, intervened in this process to service various agendas, some of which had little to do with fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland. The attempted […]
