Annie Machon

Interview on Russia Today TV, 30 June 2010

And here's an interview I did yesterday for Russia Today TV about the the spy story:

From Russia with Love (to the USA)

I've been following with interest the retro, Cold War spy saga currently unfolding in the USA.  The headlines being that 10 alleged Russian sleepers ("illegals" in spy lingo) have been arrested by the FBI and are now charged with "working as agents of a foreign power", which carries a sentence of five years in prison.

These Russian "illegals", some of whom reportedly have been living openly as Russian immigrants, some as other foreign nationals, have allegedly been infiltrating the US since the mid-1990s, and were tasked to get friendly with American power-brokers, to glean what information they could about the thoughts of the US great and the good about Russia, Iran, defence plans etc.

Whatever the truth of this case, and the charges are detailed, I find the timing and media attention given to this story interesting for three key reasons:

From what has been reported of the court papers, the FBI investigation has been going on for years.  Apparently they have known about the spy ring since 2000, and have included communications intercept material in the indictment dating from 2004 and 2008, as well as sting operations from the beginning of this year.  So it's curious that the FBI decided to swoop now, in the immediate aftermath of a successful and, by all accounts friendly, meeting between the Russian and American presidents in Washington DC. 

Many people are commenting on this aspect of the timing.  And, indeed, one might speculate about wheels within wheels - it appears that there are still hardline factions within the US administration that want to ensure that a warmer working relationship cannot develop between Russia and the USA. A strategy of tension is good for business – especially companies like Halliburton and Xe (formerly Blackwater) which profit from building vast US military bases in Central Asia.

But what also intrigues me is the possible behind-the-scenes action. 

This story is getting blanket media coverage.  It's a good, old-fashioned, Cold War-style coup, hitting all the jingoistic spy buttons, just at a time when the US spooks are under pressure about their performance in the nebulous and ever-shifting "war on terror", the shredding of constitutional rights, the illegal surveillance of domestic political activists, and complicity in extraordinary rendition and torture. It's a useful "reminder" that the bloated US security infrastructure is worth all the money it costs, despite the dire state of US national finances. Pure propaganda.

I'm also willing to bet that there is a more covert aspect to this story too - some behind-the-scenes power play.  There are, at the last count, 17 acknowledged intelligence agencies in the US, all competing for prestige, power and resources.  By making these arrests, the FBI will see this as a step up in the spy pecking order.  It reminds me inevitably (and perhaps flippantly) of the classic spy novel by former intelligence officer Graham Greene, "Our Man in Havana".  In this no doubt entirely fictional work, a British MI6 asset invents a spy ring to increase his standing and funding from London HQ.

Also curious is the role played by one Christopher Metsos, allegedly the 11th man, not initially arrested, who is reported to have passed money to the spy ring.  He was caught yesterday in Cyprus trying to board a plane to Hungary, and inexplicably granted bail - inexplicable at least to the Greek police, who always worry that their suspect will flee over the border into the Turkish segment of the island, never to be seen again.  And this has indeed happened, according to The Guardian newspaper this evening. Perhaps he has some urgent appointments to sell vacuum cleaners north of the border.....

Dirty Tricks in Iraq and UK Media

An interesting example of press manipulation appeared today in the UK media.  Britain is in the throes of a general election and many pundits are saying that the result is too close to call - the feeling being that the UK's third party, the Liberal Democrats, may hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.  The Daily Mail, one of the most rabidly right-wing of the national newspapers, chose today to print a story about the arrest and subsequent rescue of two UK soldiers in Iraq in 2005. 

The general thrust of the piece was that the Labour government was willing to sacrifice our soldiers by refusing to authorise their rescue, in order to avoid political embarrassment.  This story appears to be a fairly obvious attempt by The Daily Wail to encourage military personnel and their families to vote against the incumbent government, which was willing to sacrifice our boys' lives for political expediency.

However,I would suggest that there is another level to this story.  Many remember when the news first broke: how two SAS soldiers, working under cover and disguised as Arabs, failed to stop their car at a checkpoint and engaged in a shoot-out that killed one Iraqi and injured three more.  The SAS operatives were arrested and taken to a police station where the authorities discovered that their car contained weapons and explosives. The SAS launched a rescue, ploughing into the police station with tanks, and then tracking their targets to a local militia house nearby, fighting their way in and saving their comrades.  All heroic stuff.  However, the obvious follow-up questions are:

1) What the hell were these two soldiers doing in disguise, and with a car-load of weaponry?

2) Precisely why was the government so embarrassed about the potential political fall-out?

I think these two questions are inter-dependent.  Dirty tricks and collusion are a standard methodology for the SAS and the intelligence community - a well-documented tactic they used in the war in Northern Ireland over three decades.  So just what was the intended destination of the weaponry?  Would they have been used for an attack subsequently blamed on "insurgents" or "Al Qaeda"?

As for the potential political embarrassment, the Daily Mail's excuse - that the British government didn't want to undermine the perceived sovereignty of the Iraqis at that time - is just too feeble to stand up.  The issue of political embarrassment makes far more sense if seen in terms of UK government awareness of the use by the British military of dirty tricks, collusion or false flag terrorism in Iraq. 

Of course, this is a perfectly standard tactic used by many countries' military and intelligence infrastructures.  It would be naive to think it does not happen, but it is a retrograde, risky and counter-productive tactic. 

In the 21st century it is more naive to think that such activity is either effective or acceptable in a world where the spread of democracy and the application of international law and human rights are the way forward.

Vers la Verite, Paris, October 2009

So the Vers la Verite events in Paris earlier this month were a great success.  I've organised a few international tours and events in my time, but this was one of the most concentrated series of different happenings I've been involved in.  Thanks go to Debora Blake for all her work in situ in Paris, and also to the ReOpen posse, who offered a lot of practical support and were major sponsors of the weekend.

Vers la Verite was a gathering of campaigners and activists from across Europe and North America, who met to discuss "geopolitically incorrect issues" (as Debora likes to call them!), such as the illegal wars in the Middle East, media spin, intelligence manipulation, the erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the unending "war on terror" - and the need for a new, independent enquiry into the tragic events of 9/11, the nexus of so many of these issues.  It was fantastic to see so many old and new friends in Paris - what a show of commitment to making the world a safer and more equitable place.  It gave me hope.

We were also privileged to have campaigners of the calibre of the 2008 US Green Party presidential candidate Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, journalist and  recent MEP Giulietto Chiesa, Professor Niels Harrit of Copenhagen University, and French actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz at the events. 

The weekend started with a press conference on Friday 9th October at the Mairie of the 2nd arrondissement in Paris, kindly hosted by the Mayor, himself a Green Party politician.

In the evening, while the activists met up at the all-night watering hole, Cafe L'Etincelle on the Rue de Rivoli, Cynthia was the guest of honour at a sponsors' dinner at the famous Le Procope brasserie.  This is the oldest restaurant in Paris, and has hosted Benjamin Franklin (who reputedly worked on the draft of the American Constitution there), as well as Voltaire.

The Saturday was the main day of events, starting with a light lunch for  international activists at Les Halles des Oliviers at La Bellevilloise, with impromptu music from Dr Jazzz.  In the afternoon we convened for a planning session, followed in the evening by a public meeting.  Debora ably hosted the event with Cynthia McKinney, Giulietto Chiesa and Niels Harrit and myself as the speakers, discussing different aspects of government cover-ups and lack of accountability, all drawn from our own experiences.  The film "Zero", directed by Giulietto Chiesa, was screened, as well as excerpts from "American Blackout" featuring Cynthia, and the work of wonderful French comedian and campaigner, Jean Marie Bigard.

A surprise and very welcome attendee was Mathieu Kassovitz, who successfully bid in the auction for the collector's edition of the excellent "Global Outlook" research publication, signed by Cynthia.

The weekend wrapped up with a demo on Sunday morning, marching from Place de la Republique to Place Bastille - two resonant locations - before an informal farewell Parisian lunch.

It was fantastic to meet so many inspiring people, who are committed to changing the world for the better. Thank you all for taking the time and trouble to get to Paris for the weekend  - it was great to see so many old and new friends!

And thanks once again to Debora, AtMoh, Marc, Jean Marc, Christophe (x2!), Arno and the rest of the Paris posse. Also to Cynthia, Giulietto and Niels for their professionalism, dedication and sheer joy, all in the face of adversity. 

Cynthia McKinney Event in Paris, 10th October

Here's my latest effort.  It should be an amazing weekend in Paris, with Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the 2008 US Green Party presidential candidate, headlining our "Vers la Verite" event on the Saturday night.  Have a look at the website for the full line-up.

Alan Johnson's MI5 File?

I wonder what information, if any, MI5 has on file about new-ish UK Home Secretary, Alan Johnson?  Or, more pertinently, what HE thinks the spies might have......

How else explain his recent comments in The Daily Torygraph? He said that he will be the voice of those who cannot defend themselves - ie those poor, anonymous intelligence officers in MI5.  He even drags out the hoary old chestnut that a criminal investigation into prima facie evidence that the spooks have been involved in serious crime - the torture of another human being - would damage national security. 

I'm surprised he managed to bite back Tony Blair's infamous line, that an investigation into possible spy incompetence and crime would be a "ludicrous diversion"

Ever since Labour came to power in 1997, we have had a series of Home Secretaries straining to avoid doing their job vis a vis the spooks in Thames House: the job being that of political master of MI5, thereby providing a modicum of democratic oversight to an extremely powerful and secretive organisation, holding it to account and ensuring it obeys the law. 

The role of Home Secretary is not to be the champion of unaccountable spies who are protected from investigation and oversight by a whole raft of secrecy legislation.

More and more evidence is emerging that MI5 assisted the USA's extraordinary rendition plan, that it  was complicit in torture, and that its officers have lied to cover their tracks.  Under this avalanche of scandal, some MPs have finally woken up to the fact that the Home Secretary should be ensuring MI5 obeys the law.  Some are even daringly suggesting that there should be proper Parliamentary oversight of the spies, rather than the fig leaf that is the Intelligence and Security Committee - hand-picked by and only answerable to the Prime Minister, and powerless to question intelligence officers under oath, demand papers, or look at anything more serious than policy, finance or administration.

The Metropolitan Police have even begun a criminal investigation into MI5's complicity in torture.  While I doubt any case that could, ahem,  "damage national security" will ever come to court,  a few junior officers may be asked to do the decent thing and quietly walk the plank. 

But the real issue - the closed, self-perpetuating group-think culture, where officers should just follow orders and not rock the boat - will continue unchallenged, resulting inevitably in yet more scandals.

It is time we had a Home Secretary who is up to the job and who has the backbone to initiate some meaningful reform of MI5. 

The Case of Gary McKinnon

I've been following the extraordinary case of Gary McKinnon for years now in a long range kind of way, but we are now in the final throes of his prolonged fight against extradition to the USA, and he needs all the support we can give him.  The Daily Mail recently started a campaign against his extradition:  it's not often I agree with the Wail, but I'm wholeheartedly in favour of this initiative. 

For those of you who have been living in a bunker for the last 7 years, Gary McKinnon is the self-confessed geek who went looking for evidence of UFOs and ETs on some of America's most secret computer systems at the Pentagon and NASA. 

And, when I say secret, obviously I don't mean in the sense of encrypted or protected.  The Yanks obviously didn't feel that their national defence warrants even cursory protection, as Gary didn't have to hack his way in past multiple layers of protection.  Apparently the systems didn't even have passwords.

Gary, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, is no super hacker.  Using a basic PC and a dial-up connection in his bedroom, he managed to sneak a peek at the Pentagon computers, before kindly leaving a message that the US military might like to have a think about a little bit of basic internet security.   Hardly the work of a malignant, international cyber-terrorist.

UK police investigated Gary soon after this episode, way back in 2002.  All he faced, under the UK's 1990 Computer Misuse Act, would have been a bit of community service if he'd been convicted.  Even that was moot, as the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute.

And that, as they say, should have been that. 

However, in 2003 the UK government passed yet another draconian piece of law in response to the "war on terror" - the Extradition Act.  Under this invidious, one-sided law, the US authorities can demand the extradition to America of any British citizen, without presenting any evidence of the crime for which they are wanted.  Needless to say, this arrangement only works one way: if the Brits want to extradite a suspect from the US they still have to present prima facie evidence of a crime to an American court.  The Act also enshrines the questionable European arrest warrant system in British law.

So how on earth did the half-wits in Parliament come to pass such an awful law?  Were they too busy totting up their expense fiddles to notice that they were signing away British sovereignty?  This law means that it is easier for a US court to get a Brit in the dock than it is for them to get a US citizen from another state.  In the latter case, evidence is still also required.

Let's get this straight.  The UK authorities decided not to prosecute in this country.  Even if they had, Gary would probably have been sentenced to community service.  However, if he is extradited, he will get up to 70 years in a maximum security prison in the US.

So a year after Gary's bedroom hack, and after the CPS had decided there was no case to answer, the US authorities demanded Gary's extradition retroactively.   The UK government, rather than protecting a British citizen, basically said "Yes, have him!".  Gary has been fighting the case ever since.

He has not been alone.  Many people from across the political spectrum see this unilateral law as invidious.  And the government reckoned without his mum.  Janis Sharp has fought valiantly and indefatigably to protect her son from this unjust extradition. She has lobbied MPs, talked to newspapers, gained the support of many public and celebrity figures.  She even recently met the PM's wife, Sarah Brown, who was reportedly in tears for Gary.  Yet still the majority of the parliamentary half-wits refuse to do anything. 

In fact, it gets worse.  Over the last few years many MPs have signed Early Day Motions supporting Gary's fight against extradition.  But in a recent debate in the House of Commons about the need to revise the provisions of the Extradition Act, 74 of these MPs betrayed him and voted for the government to keep the Act in place.  Only 10 Labour MPs stuck to their guns and defied the party Whip.  One Labour MP, Andrew MacKinley, will stand down at the next election in protest at this hypocrisy.

This week is crunch time: on Friday a final judicial ruling will be made about the case.  It was the last throw of the legal dice for Gary.  If this fails, he will have to rely on political intervention, which is possible, to prevent his harmful, unjust and unnecessary extradition to the USA.  Please visit the Free Gary website and do all you can in support.

Deja Vu

I had a strong sense of deja vu today, when I read about the woes of Mrs Green, the barrister wife of Tory MP Damien Green who was arrested last November for allegedly encouraging government information leaks. 

Mr Green was arrested under an obscure and antique piece of legislation for "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office".  This, despite the fact that civil service mandarins had persuaded the Metropolitan Police Special Branch (MPSB) to investigate him because he posed a "serious threat to national security".  The case has now been dropped and reports have now shown that these civil servants significantly overstated the case to spur the police into action. 

In such a case the obvious step would have been for the Met to have invoked the draconian 1989 Official Secrets Act.  Certainly their heavy-handed response seemed to indicate that this was how they were viewing the gravity of the case, even if they were desperately trying to avoid the attendant scandal such a step would have provoked.    Special Branch officers in the Counter-Terrorism squad are not normally sent to rip apart people's houses for minor offences.

Which takes me back to the interview with the outraged Mrs Green.  A barrister specialising in highly confidential child abuse cases, she innocently let the secret police enter her home, only to watch in disbelief as they ripped it apart in what sounds to me like a counter-terrorism style search.  They, of course, found nothing relevant to their investigation, but scoured the computers, removed the bedsheets, took away love letters between the Greens, and even rifled through the children's books. 

I suppose I was more fortunate than the hapless Mrs Green.  When the secret police ripped apart my home in the same way back in 1997, I was in Europe with my ex-partner and colleague, MI5 whistleblower David Shayler.  After we had exposed the fact that MI5 was shamelessly breaking the law, the MPSB had obtained a warrant that allowed them to search our home for material relating to our employment in MI5.  As I was away, they jackhammered the front door in, and then spent two days ripping through the flat in Pimlico.  It had been my home for 4 years. 

Naturally, the police found nothing relevant.  That did not deter them from searching the place for two days, and taking away bags of possessions, including some of my underwear, the bedsheets, photographs, and our love letters.  They also smashed up chairs and lamps, ripped the bath apart, pulled up the carpets, and scattered my remaining underwear across the bedroom floor. It looked like they had been playing with it.

I saw all this when I returned home a month later, and I felt violated.  I know this is a common reaction when one's home is burgled; but in this case my home had been despoiled by the police, not by criminals.  No doubt, some would say that we, and the Greens, deserved this treatment.  After all, we had the temerity to expose malpractice, lies, and crime within government circles.  We, of course, would argue that we had acted for the public good. 

Whatever.  I still think that a counter-terrorism style search of a whistleblower's house is over the top and deliberately intimidatory.

The police may have ransacked my home, but I was never charged with any offence.  Nor did I ever did get my underwear or love letters back..... 

The Real Reason for the Police State?

I haven't written here for a while, despite the embarras de richesses that has been presented to us in the news recently: Dame Stella saying that the UK is becoming a police state;  drones will patrol the streets of Britain, watching our every move; databases are being built, containing all our electronic communications; ditto all our travel movements. What can a lone blogger usefully add to this?  Only so much hot air - the facts speak for themselves.

Plus, I've been a bit caught up over the last couple of months with Operation Escape Pod. Not all of us are sitting around waiting for the prison gates to clang shut on the UK. I'm outta here!

But I can't resist an interesting article in The Spectator magazine this week. And that's a sentence I never thought I would write in my life.

Tim Shipman, quoting a plethora of anonymous intelligence sources and former spooks, asserts that Britain's foreign policy is being skewed by the need to placate our intelligence allies, and that the CIA is roaming free in the wilds of Yorkshire.

His sources tell him that the UK is a “swamp” of Islamic extremism, and that the domestic spies are terrified that there will be a new terrorist atrocity, probably against US interests but it could be anywhere, carried out by our very own home-grown terrorists. According to Shipman, this terrible prospect had all the spooks busily downing trebles in the bars around Vauxhall Cross in the wake of the Mumbai bombings.

Apart from the suggestion that the spies' drinking culture appears to be as robust as ever, I find this interesting because well-sourced spook spin is more likely to appear in the august pages of The Speccie than in, say, Red Pepper. But if this is an accurate reflection of the thinking of our politicians and intelligence community, then this is an extremely worrying development. It goes a long way to explaining why the UK has become the most policed state in the Western world.

Yes, in the 1990s the UK practised a strategy of appeasement towards Islamic extremists. MI5's view was always that it was better to give radicals a safe haven in the UK, which they would then be loathe to attack directly, and where a close eye could be kept on them.

This, of course, was derailed by Blair's Messianic mission in the Middle East. By unilaterally supporting Bush's adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the teeth of stark warnings about the attendant risks from the head of MI5, Britain has become “the enemy” in the eyes of radical Islam. The gloves are off, and we are all at greater risk because of our former PM's hubris.

But now we apparently have free-range CIA officers infiltrating the Muslim communities of the UK.  No doubt Mossad is also again secretly  tolerated, despite the fact that they had been banned for years from operating in the UK because they were too unpredictable (a civil service euphemism for violent).

And I am willing to bet that this international perception that UK spooks will be caught off-guard by an apparently British-originated terrorist attack is the reason for the slew of new totalitarian laws that are making us all suspects. The drones, the datamining and the draconian stop-and-search laws are designed to reassure our invaluable allies in the CIA, Mossad, ISI and the FSB.  They will not be put in place to “protect” us.

MPs object to police state

An interesting political row has erupted this week in the UK about the arrest of the opposition Tory MP, Damien Green, who is also the Shadow Minister for Immigration.  He was arrested on Thursday for alleged breaches of an obscure common law  "aiding and abetting misconduct in public office".

Reports indicate that the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, or as the newspapers would have it the "anti-terrorism branch" was called in to investigate leaks from the Home Office about immigration policy, that Green was using these leaks to score points off the government, and the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in particular.

Naturally, MPs from both sides of the House have been frothing at the mouth:  how dare Plod embarrass an MP by arresting him without warning and by conducting co-ordinated searches of his homes and offices in both Kent and London?  Newspapers, particularly on the right of the political spectrum, have been full of headlines saying that this is proof that we are living in a police state.

While I have some sympathy for the beleaguered Mr Green, having also been hauled off by the Met Special Branch and quizzed for hours for discussing sensitive information that was very much in the public interest, as well as seeing my home ripped apart in a co-ordinated counter-terrorism style raid and seen friends arrested in co-ordinated dawn raids, I am still aghast at the hypocrisy of both the politicians' and media's reaction.

Many of us are already all to painfully aware that we live in a de facto police state.  Under the notorious Section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, we can all be stopped and searched for no reason - and can even be arrested purely so that a bobby on the beat can ascertain our identity.  Notices to this effect are now helpfully pinned up outside most tube stations in London.  Thousands of people are subject to this across the UK every year on the streets of Britain.

But other points rather leap to my attention from the coverage of this case.  If MPs don't like the heavy-handed use and abuse of police powers, why did they pass these laws in the first place?  Did they not think through the implications?  Or do they think that, as MPs, they are somehow above the laws of this land?

Plus, senior MPs are arguing that the use of leaks from disgruntled civil servants is a time-honoured way for HM Opposition in Parliament to hold the government to account.  Well, that might be good for the MPs' parliamentary careers, but what of the hapless and frequently brave souls within the Civil Service who face 2 years in prison for such leaks if they are convicted of a breach of the 1989 Official Secrets Act?  And, of course, there is no legal defense under the OSA of having acted "in the public interest" - the very argument that MPs are using to justify Green's exposure of Home Office cover-ups and incompetence. 

As far as I can see, there have been no comments from either journalists or MPs about the fate of the source.    The most I could find was the following in the Daily Telegraph:

"An alleged "whistleblower", thought to be a male Home Office official was arrested 10 days ago."

Either that means that journalists and MPs couldn't give a toss about the fate of this person - after all, an MP's career is far more important - or that any reporting of the arrest of the whistleblower has been injuncted in the media to the nth degree.  This would be even more troubling, as someone can just be "disappeared" into a Kafka-esque legal nightmare. 

Save Our Free Speech

The Guardian today reported that the United Nations Committee on Human Rights had issued a damning indictment of the British government's use of legislation to suppress a right that is fundamental to all functioning democracies: freedom of expression.

This is not news to me. But it's interesting that freedom of expression is now being curtailed in so many varied, interesting and imaginative ways: libel laws, terrorism laws and official secrecy. That's quite an arsenal.

Britain is now infamous for being the “libel capital” of the world. Wealthy individuals can use our courts to suppress publication of critical books and articles anywhere in the world, if they can prove that the book has been sold in the UK – even if it's just one, second-hand copy on Amazon. The magazine, Private Eye, has been commenting on this extensively over the last year.

Then, under the slew of new counter-terrorism legislation that the Labour government has introduced since 2001, it is now an offense to say anything that might “encourage” terrorism. That definition is so broad that, say, you or I made an innocent comment about the Palestinian or Iraqi situation, and this could be misconstrued by another person as encouraging them to violence, this could be assessed subjectively as a criminal offense by the prosecuting authorities. This is third party thought-crime.

These sort of laws have a negative impact on free speech, as publishers, editors and journalists begin to self-censor rather than run informed risks for the public good.

But it's the third area of law that resonates most with me, for obvious reasons: the 1989 Official Secrets Act, which criminalises any unauthorised disclosure by serving or former intelligence officers, notified persons, and other crown servants and officials. These people are the most likely to witness high crimes and misdemeanors on the part of government, police and the intelligence services, and yet they are the most criminalised in this country for speaking out. Whistleblowers in other areas of work are specifically protected by the law under the Public Interest Disclosure Act (1998).

How did this happen? Ever since the 1911 Official Secrets Act came into force, there has been legislation to protect this nation's genuine secrets against the actions of traitors. Under this law, crown servants face 14 years in prison if they betray information to hostile powers. Of course we need to protect genuine secrets, and this is certainly safeguard enough.

The change in this law was specifically designed to gag genuine whistleblowers in sensitive areas, not protect national security. This came about in the 1980s after the notorious failed prosecution of Ministry of Defense civil servant, Clive Ponting. In 1984 he blew the whistle on the fact the British government knew that the Argentinian warship, the General Belgrano, was sailing away from the exclusion zone during the Falklands War in 1982. Despite this, the order was still given to attack it, and many were killed. Ponting was rightly outraged by this, and went public. His actions were manifestly in the public interest, and this was precisely the successful defense he ran in court. Furious, the Conservative government of the time re-wrote the secrecy laws, removing the public interest defense to deter such principled whistleblowers in the future. And this is the current Official Secrets Act criticised so strongly by the UN.

Interestingly, at the time the Labour party strongly opposed this change, rightly thinking that this would curtail crucial information reaching the public domain. At this point, of course, many of them correctly suspected that they were on the receiving end of illegal investigations by MI5.

The roll call of Labour MPs who voted against the proposed Act as it passed through Parliament in 1988 includes such luminaries as Tony Blair, Jack Straw and the former Attorney General John Morris. All these people went on to use the 1989 OSA to threaten and prosecute the intelligence whistleblowers of the last decade.

The blanket ban on freedom of expression for intelligence personnel appears to be illegal under the terms of the European Convention of Human Rights. Sure, Article 10(2) does give nations the limited right to curtail freedom of expression in a proportionate way to protect national security. However, the term “national security” has never been defined for legal purposes in this country and is used as a catch-all phrase to prevent disclosure of anything embarrassing to the government and the intelligence agencies. Plus, during these cases, lawyers and judges have consistently confused the notion of the national interest with national security – two very different beasts. And freedom of expression cannot be legally curtailed under the Convention merely for reasons of “the national interest”.

So I was heartened to read the UN's verdict on this legal mess: “Powers under the Official Secrets Act have been "exercised to frustrate former employees of the crown from bringing into the public domain issues of genuine public interest, and can be exercised to prevent the media from publishing such matters"."

Let's hope this leads to the reinstatement of the public interest defense at the very least. During this time of the unending “war on terror”, governments lying to take us into illegal wars, and the use of torture and internment, whistleblowers play an important role in upholding and defending our democratic values. We need to protect them, not prosecute them.

Boiling a Frog

Last Sunday George Bush graciously flew into the UK for a final official visit before he steps down as president in January next year. PM Gordon Brown looked distinctly uncomfortable at their joint press conference, particularly when he had to announce that the UK would continue to support US military adventurism in the Middle East by sending yet more troops out there.

Of course, over the years many millions of us opposed these illegal wars, but to no avail. This was the last opportunity for peace protesters in the UK to vent their feelings towards Bush. The police responded in an increasingly heavy-handed way, penning the peaceniks up, beating innocent people around the head for no reason, and calling in the armoured riot police.

One friend of mine said that they were standing there playing protest songs when suddenly a wall of Robocop lookalikes appeared and began to advance on them. My friend, a seasoned activist, had never seen anything quite like it; even he was unnerved. Another decided to make a stand. Well, to be exact, he lay down at their feet, protected only by Solomon his trusty Peace Dog.

Despite all this, the police persisted in blaming the protesters. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison announced that the Met would hold an enquiry and said: "We are seriously disappointed by the irresponsible and criminal action of those who have challenged police….”

Allison then went on to make a statement that chilled my heart: he said that the protest could have been used as a “cover” for terrorists targeting George Bush.

So this is what it has come to. Many intelligent commentators over recent years have said that politicians and police use the threat of terrorism to gain more and more draconian powers. Time and again we have seen innocent people stopped for no good reason under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. Infamously, this Act was also used to throw 87 year old Walter Wolfgang out of a Labour Party conference for heckling Jack Straw. Police can even arrest you now purely to ascertain your identity.

But for a senior policeman to claim that violence is acceptable against peace campaigners as they might be harbouring terrorists is one step beyond. The tactics the US army has used so disastrously on the streets of Baghdad have now been imported to the streets of Westminster.

I have been saying for a long time that the laws are already in place for the UK to be defined as effectively a police state. The only reason that this is not yet obvious to all is because these laws are not applied more widely. But perhaps we are seeing the first signs of this now.

Where will this end? The German people did not just wake up one day in 1939 and find that they lived under a fascist regime. The process was slow, and the erosion of democracy incremental. The vast majority was not even aware of what was happening to their country until it was too late.

They say that if you put a frog in cold water, and then gradually heat up the pot, the frog cannot detect the change in temperature fast enough and will sit there boiling to death. This, I fear, is what is happening to our democracy.

The Media and the Spies

The UK mainstream media has made much this week of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s assertion that MI5 had not requested the government’s proposed extension of the imprisonment without charge of terrorist suspects from 28 to 42 days.

This statement has caused a furore in the UK, and there is a chance that the PM may lose the key vote in Parliament on this amendment tomorrow.

In fact, such has been the uproar that the Director General of MI5, Jonathan Evans, is reported by Reuters to have made a rare public statement:

"Since the security service is neither a prosecuting authority nor responsible for criminal investigations, we are not, and never have been, the appropriate body to advise the government on pre-charge detention time limits," he said in a statement on the MI5 website.

"We have not, therefore, sought to comment publicly or privately on the current proposals, except to say that we recognise the challenge posed for the police service by the increasingly complex and international character of some recent terrorist cases."

What particularly strikes me about this is an apparently insignificant phrase, “raised publicly or privately”.

In contrast to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who admitted to “unintentionally misleading” the parliamentary Joint Committee charged with assessing the need to increase the detention limit, Evans had refused to give evidence about the 42 day issue. So he has certainly not raised this in a publicly accountable way.

It’s the word “private” that intrigues me. It reeks of sotto voce discussions between old school chums at the grander gentlemen’s clubs in London: of unattributable briefings between anonymous MI5 officers and chosen journalists; and of cosy lunches with Fleet Street editors in the DG’s dining room at Thames House, MI5’s London HQ.

While Evans denies using this methodology around the 42 day issue, his statement confirms that such private discussions do indeed play a part in influencing policy decisions and media perception.

I saw this approach first-hand in the 1990s during the whistleblowing years. In fact, it was then that MI5 stepped up its charm offensive with politicians and journalists. It was during one of the first of these cosy media lunches in Thames House, hosted by the then DG Stephen Lander, that the respected BBC Diplomatic Editor Mark Urban asked a fateful question about the Gaddafi Plot and was reportedly told by Lander that “he was not here to answer half-baked questions from smart-arse journalists”. So there were certain shortfalls in the charm, even if the lack of accountability held up well.

But there are other, more sinister ways for the spies to manipulate public opinion. MI6 has a sensitive section called Information Operations (I/Ops), which exists purely to set the news agenda for the spies. I/Ops manages this either by massaging the facts, spinning the tone of the story or, more worryingly, planting false stories in a quiescent press.

In the 1990s there was a famous case. Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al Islam, applied for a visa to come to Britain. I/Ops planted a completely false story in The Sunday Telegraph that he was involved in money laundering with Iran and, lo and behold, MI5 had the perfect excuse to deny him a visa. Al Islam subsequently sued the newspaper which, faced with Shayler's evidence, settled out of court.

A few months ago the ex-head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, gave a talk at the LSE about the intelligence agencies and the media. I went along to have a laugh, and was graciously allowed to ask a question. Naturally I raised the issue of I/Ops, its relationship with the media, and whether such a role was acceptable in a modern democracy.

In the context of the talk, what could have been more pertinent? However, Dearlove declined to answer. In fact, he went so far as to say that such a matter was “within the ring of secrecy”. At which point a journalist from a prestigious national newspaper who was sitting next to me, turned and said gleefully that this at last proved that I/Ops existed. Gratifying as this was, I shall reiterate my question: is the role of I/Ops acceptable in a modern democracy, where we are supposed to enjoy freedom of information, transparency and accountability from the powers-that-be?

Spooks leave UK vulnerable to Russian mafia

According to the Daily Mail this week, Russian security expert, Andrei Soldatov, reckons the UK is wide open to the threat of the Russian mafia. He primarily blames the froideur that has blighted Anglo-Russian relations since the Litvinenko affair. However, he also states that MI5 no longer has a role to play in investigating organised crime, and that has contributed to our vulnerability.

Naturally resisting the temptation to say that MI5’s involvement would not necessarily have afforded us any meaningful protection, I would say that this is down to a fundamental problem in how we organise our response to threats to the national security of this country.

The security infrastructure in the UK has evolved over the last century into a terribly British muddle. For historic reasons, we have a plethora of intelligence agencies, all competing for funding, power and prestige: MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the Metropolitan Police Special Branch (MPSB), special branches in every other police force, military intelligence, and HM Revenue and Customs et al. Each is supposed to work with the other, but in reality they guard their territory and intelligence jealously. After all, knowledge is power.

MI5 and MPSB have always been the lead intelligence organisations operating within the UK. As such, their covert rivalry has been protracted and bitter, but to the outside world they appeared to rub along while MI5 was primarily focusing on espionage and political subversion and the Met concentrated on the IRA. However, after the end of the Cold War, MI5 had to find new targets or lose staff, status and resources.

In 1992 the then Home Secretary, Ken Clarke, announced that MI5 was taking over the lead responsibility for investigating IRA activity on the UK mainland - work that had been done by MPSB for over 100 years. Victory was largely credited to clever Whitehall manoeuvering on the part of the head of MI5, Stella Rimington. The Met were furious, and the transfer of records was fractious, to say the least.

Also, there was a year’s delay in the handover of responsibility. So MI5 artificially maintained the perceived threat levels posed by political subversion in order to retain its staff until the transition was complete. This meant that there was no real case for the aggressive investigation of subversive groups in the UK – which made all such operations illegal. Staff in this section, including me, vociferously argued against this continued surveillance, rightly stating that such investigations were thereby flagrantly illegal, but the senior management ignored us in the interests of preserving their empires.

However, in the mid-1990s, when peace appeared to be breaking out in Northern Ireland and beyond, MI5 had to scout around for more work to justify its existence. Hence, in 1996, the Home Secretary agreed that they should play a role in tackling organised crime – but only in a supporting role to MPSB. This was never a particularly palatable answer for the spooks, so it is no surprise that they have subsequently dropped this area of work now that the threat from “Al Qaeda” has grown. Terrorism has always been perceived as higher status work. And of course this new threat has led to a slew of increased resources, powers and staff for MI5, not to mention the opening of eight regional headquarters outside London.

But should we really be approaching a subject as serious as the protection of our national security in such a haphazard way, based solely on the fact that we have these agencies in existence, so let’s give them some work?

If we are really faced with such a serious terrorist threat, would it not be smarter for our politicians to ask the basic questions: what is the realistic threat to our national security and the economic wellbeing of the state, and how can we best protect ourselves from these threats? If the most effective answer proves to be a new, dedicated counter-terrorism organisation, so be it. We Brits love a sense of history, but a new broom will often sweep clean.

Iran Threat - First the Spooks, now the Politicians

As I posted on on 7 May, Israeli intelligence is claiming it has new intelligence that proves the recent US National Intelligence Estimate wrong in its assessment of the nuclear threat posed by Iran.

Mossad claims to have solid intelligence that proves Iran is still trying to develop a nuclear military capability. There have been recent high-level talks about this between the intelligence agencies of the US, UK and Israel.

A report in The Guardian today now indicates that the politicians are following suit. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is set to meet President Bush today to discuss the threat from Iran. It would not surprise me if the US soon announces that it has proof of Iran's nuclear intent, and tries to push for another a "pre-emptive", and highly illegal, attack.

Cockle Rustlers under Surveillance

Four times in the past three years, powers designed to catch terrorists have been deployed against potential cockle rustlers on the sands outside Poole Harbour in Dorset. I kid you not. The Independent newspaper yesterday reported that Poole Borough Council had used the sweeping surveillance of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), otherwise known as RIPA, to police the cockle fishermen of Dorset.

RIPA was intended (the government told us in 2000) merely to update for the internet age the old Interception of Communications Act (1985) that for the first time had regulated the intrusive surveillance carried out by spooks and police. In fact, the Grim RIPA massively expanded state intrusion into our personal lives, so that nine government organizations, including the security services and police, and 792 public authorities (of which 474 are local councils) now have the powers to snoop on our private communications, and then some.

In fact, documents disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act suggest that Poole Borough Council may have the dubious distinction of being the nosiest in the UK, using RIPA not only to police its waters, but also to check on the residential status of locals, damage caused to traffic barriers or other minor infractions. Hardly the stuff of James Bond.

Inadvertently, Poole Council has provided a classic case of reductio ad absurdum, but this can be useful in highlighting more serious flaws.

In the last decade we have seen a slew of laws passed by our elected representatives in parliament that are potentially dangerous to our democracy and way of life. All these laws have been whipped through parliament, and the media has tended not to give them much consideration.

One such law that springs to mind is the Civil Contingencies Act (2004). This was passed with barely a murmur and, in the wake of the foot and mouth crisis, was deemed to be A Good Thing. However, the devil is always in the detail. This law allows any senior government minister, at the stroke of a pen, to declare a 30 day state of emergency. Under these terms, the authorities can prevent our free association at political meetings or demonstrations, they can quarantine us, or prevent us moving freely around our country. They can even seize our homes, demolish them, and not have to pay a penny in compensation, as this will have been done to protect “national security”.

But the real stinker was the draft of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act (2006). If Blair had succeeded in passing this law, it would have spelled the end of 700 years of parliamentary democracy in Britain. Had the original draft been approved, any senior government minister could have abolished any law previously passed by our Houses of Parliament.

Not for nothing was this nicknamed the “Abolition of Parliament Bill” (well, that and the fact that its formal title is a tongue-twister – try saying it out loud!). Following a citizens' campaign, the Bill was watered down as it passed through the Houses of Parliament. However, even though limited safeguards have been introduced, ministers are still in a position to tinker with any British laws except the Human Rights Act. So, the tendency for authoritarian government may have been reined in this time, but we need to remain vigilant.

Many people are aware and are also apprehensive of how these laws could be misused against the citizens of the UK if a more ruthless and draconian government were in power. Many commentators say we are sleep-walking towards a police state. The tragedy is that we are pretty much there – most of the necessary laws are in place. It is time for us all to re-engage in the democratic process and halt this rush towards a completely unaccountable government.

Straw Man

The government is pushing through yet another piece of legislation designed to provide “public service honesty, integrity and independence” to the British people. As part of this strategy, the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill even contains a section to provide protection for government whistleblowers. Needless to say, spies are automatically excluded (see section 25 (2) of the draft Bill).

The draft Bill states that any whistleblowers from within the ranks of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ will be dealt with internally. This has always been the case for MI5 and 6 (despite the government’s breathtaking lies during the Shayler case that he could have gone to any crown servant with his concerns). However, in the case of GCHQ, this Bill will take away employees’ rights to go to an independent Commissioner, to bring it into draconian line with its sister agencies.

So, to put this bluntly, those in our intelligence agencies who experience ethical qualms about their work or, even worse, witness crimes, will have to take their concerns to the head of the very agency committing these crimes. Let’s guess how far these complaints will go.

Now, some might say that it’s naïve to think that the intelligence agencies don’t commit illegal or unethical acts. All I can say to that is - grow up. James Bond is a myth. Even the bad old days of the Cold War when, as former MI5 officer Peter Wright put it, MI5 could “bug and burgle its way around London” with impunity are long gone. The 1985 Interception of Communications Act (and subsequent legislation), the 1989 Security Service Act, and the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, have put paid to that. In line with basic human rights, the spies now have to apply for ministerial permission based on, ahem, a solid intelligence case, to aggressively investigate a target.

During the 10 month period of my recruitment to MI5 in 1990, I was repeatedly told that the organisation had to obey the law; that it was evolving into a modern counter-terrorism agency. If that is indeed the case, then why is MI5 still to this day not accountable in the same way as the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, which does the same work?

And who is the brave politician ensuring that our intelligence community can remain shrouded in secrecy and protected from criticism by the full force of the law? Stand up Justice Minister Jack Straw.

It just remains for me to say that Straw has a certain history in this area. In 1997, when Shayler blew the whistle, Straw was the Home Secretary, the government minister charged with overseeing MI5. One of Shayler’s early disclosures was that MI5 held files on a number of politicians, including Straw himself. Did Straw demand to see his file in angry disbelief? No, he meekly did the spies’ bidding and issued a blanket injunction against Shayler and the UK’s national media.

But think about it - this is a classic Catch 22 situation. Either MI5 was right to open a file on Straw because he was a political subversive and a danger to national security – in which case, should he not have immediately resigned as Home Secretary? Or MI5 got it wrong about Straw. In which case he should have been investigating this mistake and demanding to know how many other innocent UK citizens had files wrongly and illegally opened on them.

But Straw did neither. Perhaps he was worried about what the spies could reveal about him? It’s interesting that he is yet again rushing to protect their interests….

Iran threat ramped up

The Sunday Times reported last weekend that Sir John Scarlett, the current head of MI6, is to fly to Israel at the end of the month to meet his counter-part, Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad. Whitehall has tried to downplay the meeting as “routine”. However, the focus of the meeting appears to be to discuss Israel’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear capability.

In recent years the neo-cons in power in the US have made no secret of their desire to “finish the job” in the Middle East and attack Iran. For the last two years there has been much sabre-rattling on both sides. The polemics from the US usually coincided with Iran’s plans to trade increasing amounts of its oil in euros. The south west region of Iran has vast oil reserves, and if Iran switched trading currencies, this would have an extremely detrimental effect on the power of the petrodollar, and the American economy as a whole.

Lest we forget, Saddam Hussein had also begun to trade in euros what little oil he could prior to the Iraq war in 2003. Scarlett, a career MI6 officer, played a leading role in making the case for that war. At the time he was Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and came to public attention when he signed off the notorious September Dossier. It has since become apparent that Iraq did not have WMD, nor was it trying to acquire uranium from Niger, as MI6 had stated in the dossier. This claim was based on forged documents.

So the timing of the new Israeli intelligence is interesting, to say the least. Last week, Iran announced that it was going to trade ALL its oil in euros and the yen, and Israel appears to be furiously lobbying the US and UK about Iran’s increasing nuclear threat. Israeli intelligence sources are claiming that they have information “on a par with” that which led to the bombing of the Syrian nuclear power station.

Based on this, they are asking the US government to reassess the level of threat posed by Iran. In December 2007 the combined thinking of the whole of America’s intelligence infrastructure was published in the US National Intelligence Estimate. It clearly stated that Iran had stopped developing its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 because of international pressure.

But the apparent triumph of international diplomacy does not suit the agenda of the hawks in the US administration. What could be better than to have the spy agencies of its closest allies conveniently reveal new intelligence saying that Iran now poses an increasing nuclear threat?

The (Il)legal Road to War

Yet another article has appeared about the mess that is the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Max Hastings, writing in the Daily Mail yesterday, described how our soldiers in Afghanistan feel that the continued conflict is pointless if there is no clear political strategy to resolve the situation.

The British army is overstretched, apparently at the behest of the USA. According to the article, our military badly needs to redeploy both normal troops and the SAS from Iraq to Afghanistan, but the US is unwilling to allow this to happen for political reasons. The Americans also appear to be making shameless use of the SAS.

So, let’s remind ourselves of how we got into this mess. At an informal meeting with Bush in 2002, Blair unilaterally committed this country to support the American invasion of Iraq. Without the support of Blair, Bush could not have pretended that he had a meaningful international coalition to invade Iraq.

Having made this promise, Blair needed to deliver. Intelligence material, rather than being used to inform policy making, was manipulated to fit around pre-determined decisions. This was summarised clearly by the then head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, in the notorious leaked "Downing Street Memo", in which he is quoted as saying that the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Following on from this came the September Dossier, which not only placed undue emphasis on the claim that WMD could be launched against British interests in 45 minutes, but also the fake intelligence that Saddam was trying to procure uranium from Niger. And finally, we had the Dodgy Dossier of February 2003, based largely on a 12 year old PhD thesis culled from the internet, but which also contained nuggets of raw intelligence from MI6. Interestingly, it has been established by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in parliament that Blair did not have prior written permission from MI6 to publish this intelligence, which leaves him wide open to prosecution under Section 1(1) of the 1989 Official Secrets Act.

These are the false assertions that inexorably took this country to war. But even if these claims had been true, aggressive war is illegal under both international and British law. A raft of legislation prohibits our country engaging in any military action except in self-defence:

The General Treaty for the Renunciation of War (Kellogg-Briand Pact)
The United Nations Charter
The Nuremburg Judgment
The Nuremburg Principles
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
The UK’s International Criminal Court Act 2001

The Iraq and Afghan wars are unwinnable and illegal. It is time for the people of the UK to inform themselves of the laws of war and demand that they be upheld. We are all equal under the law – even the former Prime Minister. Every day we delay results in the deaths of more of our servicemen and of yet more innocent people in the Middle East.

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Spies and the Law

For context, here's a little bit of background information about the UK's spy agencies, and the legal constraints within which they are supposed to operate.

There are three primary agencies: MI5 (the UK Security Service), MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service - SIS) and GCHQ (the Government Communications HQ). Beyond this inner circle, there is the Metropolitan Police Special Branch (MPSB), the special branches of every other police force in the UK, military intelligence, and Customs, amongst others.

MI5 and MI6 were set up in 1909 during the build up to the First World War, when their remit was to uncover German spies. For the next 80 years they didn’t officially exist and operated outside the law.

In 1989 MI5 was put on a legal footing for the first time when parliament passed the Security Service Act. This stated that it had to work within legal parameters, and if it wanted to do something that would otherwise be illegal, such as breaking into and bugging someone’s house, it had to get the written permission of its political master, the Home Secretary. Without that, MI5 would be breaking the law just as you or I would be.

MI6 and GCHQ were not put on a legal footing until the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, and are answerable to the Foreign Secretary. The same Act also set up the Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament as a sop to democratic oversight. The ISC is responsible for overseeing the policy, finance and administration of the three agencies. It has absolutely no remit to look at their operational running, nor can it investigate alleged crimes committed by them. Even if it could, the ISC has no power to call for witnesses or demand documents from the spooks. Moreover, the committee is appointed by the Prime Minister, answerable only to him, and he can vet its findings. Much of the ISC's annual reports are blanked out.

When I was recruited by MI5 in the early 1990s, the organisation was at great pains to explain that it worked within the law, was accountable, and its work was mainly investigating terrorism. Once I began working there, this quickly proved to be untrue. MI5 is incompetent, it breaks the law, connives at the imprisonment of innocent people, illegally bugs people, lies to government (on whom it holds personal files) and turns a blind eye to false flag terrorism. This is why I resigned and helped to blow the whistle.

With all this hysteria about the threat from Al Qaeda, and the avalanche of new powers and resources being thrown at the spooks, as well the erosion of our liberties, we need to keep a cool head. Why don’t our politicians take a step back and ask what precisely are the scale and nature of the threats facing this country, and how can we best police them? As Sir Ian Blair recently showed, we cannot take the security forces' words about this at face value.

There’s a lot of historic baggage attached to MI5 and 6, particularly after their dirty tricks against the left in the 1980s. As they are now primarily doing a policing job against terrorism, why not just clear the decks and start again? Set up a dedicated counter-terrorism agency, which is properly accountable to parliament, as the police already are and the spies are not.

As it stands the UK has the most secretive intelligence agencies in the western world. They are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and protected by the draconian Official Secrets Act. The 1989 OSA makes it a criminal offence for anyone to blow the whistle on crimes committed by the spies, and it is no longer possible for a whistleblower to argue that they acted in the public interest.

No other western democracy has spies who are quite so unaccountable, nor so protected from scrutiny by the law. The closest analogies are probably the intelligence agencies of countries such as Libya or Iran. Particularly as we now know that MI5 and MI6 officers are conniving in extraordinary rendition and the use of torture.

Are they legal? Yes, now, in theory. Do they abide by the law? Only when it suits them. Are they ethical? Absolutely not.