[…] who had declined to sign The Beatles. But even if they had pursued the Wilson steer towards Wallace, in 1976/7 finding him would have been difficult: the MOD has parked him in Preston. Had they found him, Wallace says today: ‘…if I had been made aware that the former PM had asked Penrose and […]
[…] the Thatcher government to push through a highly ambitious nuclear power programme which set the context for this murder. We know from Cathy Massiter (17) that the MoD and Home Office were using MI5 to monitor anti-nuclear war protesters, and from Gareth Parry (18) that an American company, thought to be pressurised water reactor […]
[…] which came in after 1997 which I had not seen before and intelligence got swept up in that.’ During the bombing of Yugoslavia the pressure from the MOD press office to come up with good news was intense. Morrison said: ‘What I did, in effect, was within my crisis staff, set up in effect […]
[…] MI5’s analysis of the “45 minute report” and highlights the original circulation of the document to various departments. The usual suspects are there: SIS, MI5, GCHQ and MOD get between 7 copies for MI5 and 20 copies for MI6. But also listed are 32 (yes 32) copies for the DTI. Why? I wonder. Some […]
[…] Unit (PIU) and Forward Strategy Unit.(5) The PIU reviewed the UK’s energy policy at a 4 July 2001 seminar: Mulgan introduces, hands over to Chair, Kevin Tebbit (MOD). Then there are presentations by Sian Davies (the Henley Centre, which has several Demos members), Bob Tyrrell (Demos) and Ged Davis (Shell, a Demos funder) and […]
[…] Educated at Oxford, Mills was a young civil servant at what became the Ministry of Defence and part of the ‘fast-track’ for promotion intake. He left the MOD after only a few years, taking the bar examination and becoming a barrister. Though not yet a qualified lawyer, during his brief career at the MOD, […]
[…] 24 January 1989). Sir Christopher Chancellor: “Mr Reuter’, died 9 September 1989. (Independent 11 September 1989) Major-General Dick Lloyd: secretary of the Defence Intelligence Staff in the MOD and then deputy head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Unit. (Daily Telegraph 19 April 1991) George Bolsover: known as “Mr Russia’, died 15 April 1990. […]
[…] British-Irish Rights Watch, (23) partly over allegations that phone calls between Britain and Ireland, including legally privileged material confidential to the complainants, were routinely intercepted by an MoD installation at Capenhurst, Cheshire, and later by the Echelon system. The rights groups say that the RIP act fails to provide adequate safeguards to protect individual […]
[…] of 2001. It includes broad-ranging anti-terrorism measures, including the power to require comms service providers to retain comms data (eg email addresses); extended police powers, also for MOD, nuclear and transport police; allowing govt. agencies to share information and, most contentiously, powers to detain asylum seekers suspected of terrorist acts. These powers required the […]
[…] be old news, but here goes. Reading Wensley Clarkson’s book The Valkyrie Operation (1998) recently, I was struck by his remark that: ‘Between 1970 and 1990 the MoD recruited dozens of personnel after they had been discovered at Britain’s most highly acclaimed strategic studies centres, Oxbridge, Lancaster and Aberystwyth.’ (p.19). I don’t know how […]
