Editorially Writing in mid-January… good news is the arrival of The Digger, apparently set fair to replace Private Eye as the major outlet – major above ground outlet – for British parapolitics. (Lobster, as one British academic said to me, is ‘underground’…). The new Kincora-Blunt trail, opened up by Ken Livingstone in the House of […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] years ago that they are now. The two characters who receive this treatment are the brothers Paul and Hume Boggis-Rolfe, together with Carl Aarvold. Paul Boggis-Rolfe, ex- MI6, was allegedly involved in drafting the land deal for which de Courcy was framed. Hume Boggis-Rolf, ex-MI5, was a senior official at the Lord Chancellor’s department […]
[…] one of the first historians to acknowledge the parapolitical dimension in modern British history, from the formation of the Special Branch to the construction of the new MI6 headquarters over a century later. This is allied to a perception that covert forces, including in the 1970s the CIA, have generally worked to protect the […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] Paget MP (Labour — Eton, Trinity College, European Movement); Conservative Cabinet member Duncan Sandys; Patrick Wall MP (founder of the secret 92 Group of Tory MPs);(15) ex MI6 officer Stephen Hastings MP; Lord Salisbury, the Society’s President, and his son Lord Cranborne; Lord Coleraine, Judge Gerald Sparrow, Lord Hinchenbrooke (Victor Montagu), Lord Forester, the […]
[…] subtle than that. In any case, the JIC precisely certified as ‘genuine’ intelligence which was ‘false and dubious’: it has almost all had to be ‘withdrawn’ by MI6. () Indeed, as the Australian analyst Rob Barton has told us, the JIC Chair, John Scarlett was still trying to get ‘false and dubious’ intelligence put […]
[…] going to win, particularly as communist-affiliated groups were attempting to take the initiative on this soon after WWII. As Stephen Dorril has stressed in his book on MI6, the British involvement in these activities was ahead of the Americans in many respects. Aldrich related how the Cultural Relations Department, a forerunner to the more […]
[…] B inquiry. This agency was later revealed to be Zeus Securities, the brainchild of Peter Hamilton, a man with formidable establishment credentials and a long background in MI6. Zeus, then operated by ex-MI5 officer, Jeremy Wetherall, of another security firm, Lynx, was given the contract to organise the surveillance, which they sub-contracted to Sapphire […]
[…] into play some awkward facts. The UK’s largest Muslim minority is from Pakistan. 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 […]
