[…] this account of MI5’s adjustment to the post Cold War world is one of the best books on the UK’s intelligence services, up there with Stephen Dorril’s MI6 book, Paul Lashmar and James Oliver’s book on IRD and Richard Aldrich’s The Hidden Hand. Rereading it, I was struck by the following. Although we now […]
[…] civilians increased from 87 in 1974, to 96 in 1975, to a peak of 110 in 1976.(28) The truce with the IRA had been secretly negotiated by MI6 in the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings. Ambush has scant details of this, although it confirms that the Army were ‘furious’ with the secret talks […]
[…] news of his demise would appear first in the morning edition of The Times and not in some ‘lesser publication’ later in the day.(1) And it wasn’t MI6. This assumes that, as former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove would have us believe, Secret Intelligence Service service personnel follow the rules. A less trusting Michael […]
[…] us…. Tatler (June 1984) Robert Harris reports on the spy recruitment procedures. There was some talk of prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act for naming MI5 and MI6 premises. They are: MI5 recruitment (positive vetting) – 140 Gower St., London WC1 and 14-17 Great Marlborough St., London WC1 MI6 recruitment – 3 Carlton Gardens, […]
[…] acquitted and died in 1962 as a result of an air accident in South-East Asia. Faulks, in reporting this tale, suggested that Bodington may have been an MI6 agent before the war (he had been a journalist) and that the connection between him and Dericourt involved more than friendship. Curiously, Faulks left it there. […]
[…] away from truth. We know the secret world has biases towards certain personality traits and it is not always the case that stability is preeminent. (18) (Did MI6 make Richard Tomlinson what he is or was MI6 attracted to Tomlinson in the first place in part because of those attributes which were later to […]
[…] it would become illegal to claim that any individual is an officer or agent of either the Security Service (MI5) or of the Secret Intelligence Service ( MI6). It was also made known that the publication of British Intelligence and Covert Action last year was considered provocative in this respect. The book contains an […]
[…] MI5 botch a surveillance of an IRA operation and £300 million’s worth of damage is done to the City of London; and nothing happens, no heads roll. MI6 gets involved in trying to use Muslim fundamentalists to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi; and nothing happens; nothing, that is, other than then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook standing […]
[…] turn to cracking crime?’ by David Rose in the Observer, 18 September 1994. Rose concluded; ‘We will need an agency – possibly a subordinate, domestic wing of MI6 – to deal with foreign spies and terrorists. Whether it will take 2000 staff and 160 million is a very different matter.’ See also Rose’s piece, […]
[…] of surprise Last, but by no means least: nobble the opposition. No messy fiddling with the votes – go straight to the voters themselves. Hats off to MI6, who proved themselves the masters of this tactic in 1924, when the UK’s first-ever Labour government was seeking to be returned to power. With the Russian […]
