Parliament is spooked by the spooks

A parliament that cannot defend civil liberties and human rights against the secret state is not fit for purpose and ought to be sent packing. That’s one conclusion you could draw from the pathetic performance of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) yesterday.

Another is that members of the ISC have effectively been so integrated into the three-ringed spying circus of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ that their designated role to check on the work of the agencies is just for show, part of a great game played at our expense.

Each and every member of the ISC is a trusted member of the Commons or Lords, cleared in advance by the same security services they are supposed to be checking up on! No danger of them ever rocking the boat and so it turned out when the chiefs of the three agencies appeared in public together for the first time.

If anyone was waiting for the ISC to grill the three over the extent of mass surveillance revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, they would have been sorely disappointed. "They faced a grilling that wouldn't have scared a puppy," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty. "It was tame, predictable, and limp," said Privacy International about the 90-minute session.

They were not asked about issues do with mass surveillance and privacy. No one even mentioned Tempora, the  programme that allows GCHQ to access mountains of date from transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic.

Naturally, no one asked why international encryption standards had been compromised by the joint work of the National Security Agency in the US and GCHQ. Or the compromising of corporations like Google and the eavesdropping on the phones of leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Above all, no one on the ISC asked why these programmes had been kept secret from the public and possibly the government. It’s not hard to fathom why the spy chiefs got an easy ride. Hazel Blears, former New Labour counter-terrorism minister, admitted on BBC2’s Newsnight that she had been on “several visits” to GCHQ and was aware of the agency’s “broad capabilities”.

Presumably she was advised that to reveal this would constitute some kind of crime. Blears didn’t take much convincing. “We've had very, very confidential briefings about what the capabilities were and obviously we were satisfied that they were operating within our legal framework.” So that’s alright then.

As the gentle questioning proceeded, the spy chiefs took advantage to assert that articles based on the Snowden material published by the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post had played into the hands of Al-Qaida. Why, the terrorists were even talking about what the leaks meant for their own security, said GCHQ head Sir Iain Lobban.

The head of MI6, Sir John Sawers added: "Our adversaries are rubbing their hands with glee. Al-Qaida is lapping this up." He went so far as to claim that the leaks could help dangerous criminals and even paedophiles evade the law.

Yes, the whole state is facing collapse as a result of articles showing how the US and Britain have access to just about every communication they want to intercept, with or without legal authority. This is a standard scare tactic  – blame the messenger and accuse them of playing into the hands of the country’s enemies when in fact the real threat comes from the secret spy agencies themselves who are beyond oversight.

The secret state within the state considers itself above parliament, above political control and above the rule of law. They don’t give a jot about the warning from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist who created the world wide web, that weakening encryption had put at risk transactions made by ordinary people.

As for the ISC, if this is the best parliament can come up with, it shows how unrepresentative and undemocratic this present body is. One is reminded of the words used by Cromwell. When faced with a “Rump” parliament that was doing absolutely nothing useful, he told the sitting: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Something rotten in the state of Britain

A plot by the state against a weak government of the day, unable to govern on its own, amidst a grave economic crisis. Sounds familiar? Well, this is not actually about “plebgate” and the Tories – though it could just as well be - but Harold Wilson and Labour.

Wilson was prime minister from 1964-70 and again from 1974 to his sudden and dramatic resignation in 1976. Later he would claim that the spy agency MI5 had wanted him out. And that army officers had been plotting a takeover.

Wilson was right on both counts.

In 1968, a period of mass upheavals in Britain and worldwide, senior army officers, together with press baron Lord Cecil King, Lord Mountbatten and intelligence agency figures, discussed staging a coup in to overthrow a Labour government thought to be in the pockets of the trade unions.

A global economic crisis followed America’s decision in 1971 to end the system of fixed currencies established at Bretton Woods after the Second World War. Inflation spiralled out of control. Oil prices tripled and miners took industrial action. Much of Britain was on a three-day week in 1973-4 as power supplies dwindled.

The plans for a coup were dusted down when Labour was returned to office in 1974 after miners’ industrial action had brought down the Tory government of Edward Heath. Heath asked voters to say “who rules Britain?”. A minority Labour government took office.

Out of the blue, a series of joint police/army exercises were held at Heathrow Airport. The first of these was held in January 1974, while Heath was still in power but the remaining three were held in June, July and September. They were labelled “anti-terror” operations.

The troops at Heathrow in 1974 were part of a dry run for a coup. Six years later, Field Marshall Lord Carver, during a Cambridge Union debate, admitted that “not very senior, but fairly senior, officers were ill advised enough to make suggestions that perhaps if things got terribly bad, the Army would have to do something about it."

The army and MI5 had already shown their contempt for Wilson’s government. MI5 had vetoed the appointment of a number of his colleagues to the cabinet on the grounds of "security", while in Northern Ireland the spy agencies and the army had seized control of events.

In May 1974, right-wing Protestant forces organised a strike to break the power-sharing agreement politicians had agreed. The army pointedly refused to carry out instructions from Wilson’s government to intervene to maintain electricity generation.

Former MI5 officer, Peter Wright, whose book Spycatcher was banned by the Thatcher government, wrote extensively about MI5’s plot to force Wilson out on the fantastic grounds that the prime minister was a Soviet agent!  

Weeks after Wilson’s shock departure, journalists Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour, interviewed him. "Wilson spoke darkly of two military coups which he said had been planned to overthrow his government in the late 1960s and in the mid 1970s," Penrose wrote in 2006.

"Both were said to involve high-ranking elements in the British army, eager to see the back of Labour governments.” Penrose concludes his Radio Times article:

"You may ask, at the end of the programme, how much of it can be believed. My view now, as it was then, is that Wilson was right in his fears.... in answer to the question 'how close did we come to a military government' I can only say - closer than we'd ever be content to think."

Fast forward to 2012 and we are bang in the middle of a plot by sections of the police to destabilise the Tory government, no doubt spurred on by cut-backs that have weakened pension and other conditions. The economy is on a knife-edge and the Coalition divided and weak.

There is something deeply rotten at the heart of the British state, as the plots against Wilson and fake “evidence” produced against former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell demonstrate. There can be no real democracy until we revolutionise the state from top to bottom. Until then, we can answer the question “Who rules Britain?” by saying for certain that it is not the people.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Finucane's murder reveals the state within the state

A state within a state signifies the fact that sections of the armed forces, police or intelligence services are running their own agenda, often with deadly consequences.

They take it upon themselves to defeat perceived enemies of the state.

Britain is home to such a state, as is clear from the de Silva report into the murder of the lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989. Although the report is only a review of documents and not the public inquiry the family wanted, it is devastating enough.

The report uses the term “collusion” to describe the role of the RUC Special Branch, the British army’s agent-running section (FRU) and the intelligence service MI5. But it amounts to a state conspiracy to kill Finucane, who acted for Republicans in Northern Ireland. The report shows that:

• the three agencies running agents “operated under their own separate regimes”.
• there was a “wilful and abject failure” by successive governments to provide a legal framework necessary for agent-handling operations.  
• Army agent Brian Nelson played some part in at least four murders and ten attempted murders.
• Nelson extensively updated and disseminated targeting material to other loyalist paramilitaries which they subsequently used in their efforts to carry out terrorist attacks.
• Nelson’s FRU handlers provided him with information that was subsequently used for targeting purposes.  
• the Army and the RUC SB had prior notice of a series of planned UDA assassinations, yet nothing was done by the RUC to seek to prevent these attacks.
• there were extensive leaks of security force information to the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groups.
• two agents who were at the time in the pay of agencies of the state were involved in Finucane’s murder.
•  no political clearance was sought or obtained for the MI5’s involvement in black propaganda, including against Finucane which helped set him for attack.
• MI5 knew in December 1988 of UDA plans to kill three solicitors. They chose not to raise it with the RUC SB.
• an RUC officer or officers did propose Finucane (along with at least one other man) as a UDA target when speaking to a loyalist paramilitary
• Kenneth Barrett became a paid agent of the state after indicating to the RUC SB that he had played a part in killing Finucane.
• senior army officers deliberately lied to criminal investigators by informing them that they did not run agents in Northern Ireland.

The report concludes: “The real importance, in my view, is that a series of positive actions by employees of the state actively furthered and facilitated his [Finucane’s] murder and that, in the aftermath of the murder, there was a relentless attempt to defeat the ends of justice.”

So is all this in the past? Is the state now more transparent in the way it conducts its operations? Are the politicians in the know? Is the state within a state a thing no more? To think that would be a grave mistake.

Only yesterday, the actions of the secret state led to a £2 million pay out to a man who was subject to rendition – aka kidnapping – and despatched to Libya, where he was tortured and jailed. British agents have been directly involved in torturing terror suspects and helping the US in rendition operations.

Agents provocateurs have more recently infiltrated environmental activists, encouraging them to break the law, and disrupting their campaigns. They infiltrate political movements and encourage internal dissension. If a demonstration gets out of hand, you can be sure that Special Branch had a hand in winding up the action.

The state within a state is there to defend and serve the interests of the status quo of capitalism, whether or not the political will exists. Their loyalty is to the state itself, not to governments. Without a democratic transformation, the state will remain a clear and present danger to the rest of us as well as a barrier to a future without capitalism.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Spooks muscle in

The result of the toner cartridge bomb plot, as with all such individual acts of terrorism, will be to further strengthen, rather than weaken, the anti-democratic arm of the state to use against its own citizens.

Whatever the true nature of the plot, said to originate from an Al Qaeda cell in Yemen, its exposure will be useful for MI5 chief, Jonathan Evans. Evans wants anti-terror legislation introduced by New Labour – 28-day detention without charge and “control orders” in particular - to remain on the statute books.

Before last May’s election, both Conservatives and LibDems attacked New Labour for this open breach of civil liberties. Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg was particularly outspoken, condemning the “control order regime” and calling for its abolition. Now that Cameron is in office, the spooks have told him they need these laws and apparently he says that if Clegg objects, the coalition is “heading for a fucking car crash".

Cameron yesterday chaired an emergency meeting of COBRA, the committee that takes over in the face of major terrorist or health threats. In parliament he spoke of the need to “cut out the terrorist cancer that lurks in the Arabian Peninsula”.

Evans, along with his fellow spooks in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism based in the Home Office, are lobbying the government hard to keep the laws on the books so that they can do what they want with terror suspects.

The intelligence agencies are already virtually the only area of government spending not facing cuts – in fact MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have been awarded an extra £65m on top of their existing £2.4 billion budget to run their 5,700-or so agents, much to the chagrin of Defence chiefs. Counter-terrorism and spying on the population is a greater priority than the armed services, apparently.

The reality is that however much they spend, countries across Europe, and the US, are still vulnerable to terror attacks. The toner cartridge bomb exercise demonstrates that it is relatively simple to construct such devices. As long as there are individuals prepared to risk their lives – and terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda to fund and organise global networks – this cat and mouse war will continue.

Hyping their ability to prevent further attacks through big-power co-operation and more cash for spooks, is just whistling in the dark. Innocent civilians in cities like New York, London, Madrid, Mumbai and Nairobi will be the ones to suffer. And the threat is not only in the west – yesterday 52 worshippers lost their lives in yet another Baghdad bombing.

Governments who continue to fight disastrous and hopeless wars like that in Afghanistan, supposedly to root out terrorism, will never succeed in protecting their citizens from terrorist attacks. Quite the opposite.

But will they listen to the advice of former Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev who said last week that victory in Afghanistan was impossible and that the same militants terrorising Afghanistan and Pakistan today were trained by the US? Of course not.

Fighting the so called “war on terror” and protecting populations from terror attacks – real or imaginary, actual or contrived - is one of few important roles that today’s political leaders can lay claim to – as they set about deconstructing the welfare state.

And the spooks lobby will continue to enjoy government support as long as that is the case, not only for the so-called “war on terror” but also to rapidly resurrect the role they played so enthusiastically in the 1980s, of targeting trade unionists and others fighting the actions of the government. For example trade unionists like the firefighters. many of whose personal details including home addresses, were this week mysteriously leaked to the Sunday Mail.


Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

An open and shut case

Of course MI5 doesn’t collude in torture, as wrongly suggested in the case of Binyam Mohamed. Nor do they suppress documents. And how do we know all this to be true? Because the head of the Security Service, Jonathan Hunt, and two cabinet ministers – foreign secretary David Miliband and Home Secretary Alan Johnson – say so.

And just to confirm all is in order, the chair of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee Kim Howells and senior Tory member Michael Mates said that the “director-general [Hunt] has confirmed to us … that no document concerning Binyam Mohamed and his treatment by the US authorities has been withheld from us."

And, as we know, the state never lies (as the Iraq inquiry clearly demonstrates). So we can all rest secure in our homes in the knowledge that we are in honest hands who will never transgress the law – at least not knowingly. If this sounds a little cynical you could be right. After a lifetime of being lied to and deceived by the authorities, I could be forgiven.

There is an air of desperation about the statements and letters from Hunt, Miliband and Johnson that appear like a rash all over the media and the web this morning in the wake of the Appeal Court ruling against the government in the case of Mohamed. It’s hard to lend them any creditability whatsoever.

What springs to mind is the quip made immortal by call-girl Mandy Rice Davies, whose involvement with Christine Keeler in the Profumo affair of the early 1960s helped wreck the Tory government of the time. During a trial, when the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or having even met her, she replied, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?".

The documents made pubic by the court, against the wishes of the government, confirm that Mohamed was tortured by Pakistani intelligence under US supervision and that MI5 agents knew this to be the case. Despite this, MI5 took part in further interrogations of Mohamed, who was then shipped to Guantanamo detention camp in an example of “extraordinary rendition” which New Labour has, of course, washed its hands of, despite allowing flights to refuel in Britain.

Miliband has gone to extraordinary lengths to try and block any criticism of MI5, even being accused of “knobbling” the Appeal Court. A lawyer for the Foreign Office persuaded the judges to tone down their criticism in a draft judgement. The judges apparently believed Mohamed’s lawyers concurred. Only later did it transpire that they had not seen the Foreign Office submission until it was too late to intervene. Another case of trampling over the rule of law while proclaiming the “independence of the judiciary”. The judges are so embarrassed that they may reopen the case.

Last night, Channel 4 News revealed that in the original version Lord Neuberger, one of the most senior judges in the country, did say that MI5 had been involved in the suppression of information – and that also on this issue it had done this on a previous occasion. He had also stated that MI5's human rights record was dubious. The judgement also went onto say MI5 was “less than frank” over its record on inhumane treatment and that MI5, Britain's domestic security service, had a “worrying disregard” for the truth.

So who would you rather believe? New Labour and MI5 – who are hanging on to each other for dear life – or the Appeal Court? It’s an open and shut case. The whole affair adds weight to our draft Manifesto proposals for dissolving the secret state and creating a real political democracy.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

What the 'defence of the realm' really means

Last night’s screening by ITV of Inside MI5: The Real Spooks, could easily be dismissed on the grounds that: “Well, the secret intelligence agencies are hardly likely to tell the truth about themselves.” But in taking this approach you could throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Ever since “5”, as insiders call it, decided to allow historian Christopher Andrew to view its archives and to publish his book The Defence of the Realm: the authorised history of MI5, a few chinks of light have appeared which give glimpses – as in a mirror darkly - of how those paid to spy on us go about their tasks.

Sir Stephen Lander, MI5 director between 1996 and 2002, admitted that the security service has grown considerably since its formation, employing 3,800 people. Of course, MI5 is only one part of the spider-like network of secret agencies which cost the taxpayer around £1.6 billion per year. Lander was quick to dismiss the wildly successful TV series Spooks for portraying MI5 as six people and a chief.

There was a convenient focus on the distant past. But evidently the agencies are still haunted by the Cambridge group of spies which ran rings around British intelligence during World War II and the Cold War. Probably the worst fallout from this episode was that Blunt, Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Cairncross served their Soviet masters from conviction and not for personal gain.

Lander claimed that he wanted to correct “a lot of unjust criticism” that MI5 had suffered. He and Andrew were insistent that accusations it had plotted against former Prime Minister Harold Wilson were untrue and painted Wilson as obsessively paranoid. Clearly the agency was shaken by the large body of evidence which has demonstrated that the Wilson Labour government was seriously destabilised by the intelligence agencies. Former MI5 officer, Peter Wright, whose book Spycatcher was banned by the Thatcher government, also came in for a lot of flack for writing about the plot against Wilson.

But when it came to MI5’s role in the execution of Provisional IRA members Danny McCann, Sean Savage and Mairéad Farrell in 1988 it was crystal clear that three unarmed people had been shot in cold blood with no warning. This shocking incident came to light through Death on the Rock, despite the Thatcher governments furious attempts to prevent it from being broadcast.

MI5 involvement in the following, more recent events, didn’t rate a mention:

• surveillance of National Union of Mineworkers’ leader Arthur Scargill during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike (though the smearing of union leader Jack Jones as a Soviet agent featured prominently)

• the 1984 case of MI5 officer Michael Bettany, who was convicted of acting as an agent for the Soviet Union. Bettany was sentenced to 23 years in jail of which he served 15

• the 1996 case of MI5 officer David Shayler, who accused MI6 of being involved in an assassination plot against Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi and spent time in prison after being charged under the Official Secrets Act

• the operation of agents inside legal left-wing political organisations, the anti-war movement and ecological campaigns.

These issues remain too close and too sensitive for comfort. But far from ignoring the strange spectacle of these agencies becoming “transparent” we should keep on peering inside the weird world that they inhabit. Because as surely as night follows day, the “defence of the realm” amounts to the protection of the capitalist political and economic system by whatever means deemed necessary. As the economic, financial and ecological crises come together in a way that threatens the stability of capitalism, you can be sure that MI5 agents are hard at work on “solutions” that don’t have our wellbeing top of the agenda.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

We are all 'terrorists' now

As politicians of all shades flail about in the wake of the financial and economic crisis, the growth of the neo-fascist British National Party and Parliament’s loss of authority, secret units of police are carrying out their time-honoured function – to spy on anyone who does not fit into (their idea of) the status quo.

An investigation by a team of Guardian journalists reveals that no fewer than three secret units run by the totally unaccountable Association of Police Officers (Acpo) are being funded to the tune of £9m by the Home Office. Their function is to gather intelligence, operate a chain of databases, and warn those who might be “on the receiving end” of protests. (The £9m is, of course, in addition to the hundreds of millions spent on the operations of the state intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6.)

Following the climate camp protests around the Drax power station in Yorkshire in 2006, police and government officials invented a new term – “domestic terrorism”. This categorisation was first used when New Labour and the police characterised animal rights campaigners as “terrorists” between 2001-2004. But now the term, which is not legally defined, is used as a blanket justification for gathering and holding details and photographs of individual protesters and activists on massive police databases. According to the investigation:

• The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) collects and processes information collected by police forces around England and Wales. It is fed intelligence by surveillance units such as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers.
• The nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), which can place a marker against a car, is used by “interceptor teams” to monitor attendance at protests and stop individuals.
• “Spotter cards” are used by the CO11 Public Order Intelligence Unit. Comedian and campaigner Mark Thomas discovered his face on one accidentally dropped at a recent Docklands arms fair.
• The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (Nectu) is used to keep files on groups and share information with big business. Initially set up in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire to curb animal rights’ activists, it works with police forces and companies
• The National Domestic Terrorism Team, set up in 2005, liaises between detectives and police forces.


As Thomas points out, “the very phrase ‘domestic extremist’ defines protesters in the eyes of the police as the problem, the enemy.” And, that “any targeting and treatment of demonstrators (at the G20 for example) that creates a ‘chilling effect’ – deterring those who may wish to exercise their right to protest – is profoundly undemocratic.”

The first comprehensive history of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, just published, The Defence of the Realm, documents how the secret forces of the state have always made those fighting for basic rights a target for surveillance, and often arrest and detention. Those who lead such movements, including political organisations and active trade unionists, are always the first in line.

A quarter of a century ago, Prime Minister Thatcher denounced the National Union of Mineworkers and its leaders as “the enemy within”. The Tory government of the day unleashed all its power to destroy a single trade union. There is no doubt that the ruling classes are still haunted by that era.

Only today, it is not a Tory government but New Labour which is funding secret activities by the police. Not that whatever government comes to power next spring is likely to disband any of these new police units – on the contrary. This state is tooling up for a period of massive social unrest.

Mark Thomas concludes: “This is exactly the time to worry.” Too right. But not only to worry, we would add, but to work for the deconstruction of the existing state and its intelligence agencies.

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary

The state's dirty work

Important truths about the British state are reaching the light of day, thanks to campaigners and ordinary citizens. The Metropolitan Police and the secret forces of security agencies MI5 and MI6 are being more and more exposed, not only as guilty of brutality, but of cynical lying to cover-up disguise their activities.

When last week’s anti-G20 demonstrations saw a middle-aged man die, the police claimed this was due to Ian Tomlinson suffering a heart attack from natural causes. But they are now are under fire following revelations that  47-year-old newspaper seller Tomlinson did not “die of natural causes”. Eyewitnesses, including an experienced freelance photographer, say they saw Tomlinson suffer grievous blows to the head from a police baton which caused him to fall and hit the pavement hard. 

The same Metropolitan Police will be investigating evidence that security and intelligence agencies M15 and M16 colluded with the CIA in the inhuman treatment and secret rendition of British citizens who were kidnapped, tortured and sent to the Guantanamo Bay camp. 

A 55-page dossier released by Cageprisoners called “Fabricating Terrorism II: British Complicity in Renditions and Torture” is now in the hands of the Met. It concludes that there were “systematic violations of international law perpetrated by the British authorities in relation to a) illegal rendition or torture flights which have been, and are using British airspace and airport facilities and b) the role of the intelligence services in gaining information knowingly obtained from torture, and from passing on intelligence of a dubious nature to other countries' intelligence services which forms a basis for the detention, abuse and torture of detainees.” 

The Cageprisoners’ report shows how Farid Hilali, a Moroccan man who had been living in Britain and was initially detained in 1998-1999 in the United Arab Emirates, was tortured. This was two years before the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, which were given as the reason for the US-UK “war on terror”. Hilali claims the British gave "direct orders" to torture him, and that a British official was present when he was mistreated. 

Naturally, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) claims that it takes allegations of mistreatment or torture "seriously", saying in a statement: "The UK's position on torture is clear. We abhor torture. We don't participate, solicit, encourage or condone it. We unreservedly condemn extraordinary rendition for torture."   

The FCO’s claim is ludicrous given the fact that not only Binyam Mohammed’s own testimony, Cageprisoners’ reports, and European Union and other investigations have shown categorically that the UK intelligence agencies were involved in what Asim Qureshi, who drew up the report, describes as “a subterranean system of kidnappings”, where prisoners are “ghosted to ‘black sites’, suffering abuse and torture”. 

Human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, in a foreword to the Cageprisoners’ report, has denounced the official secrecy, saying: “There will be and is already a continuous assertion by the Government that any issue that relates to the Intelligence Services . . . should not see the light of day in normal courts, but should be confined to special courts and/or the evidence should be heard in secret.” Peirce concludes that “the reality of guarantees of human rights does not come from the top down, but has to be fought for, generation by generation”, and that the secret state should be held properly and publicly to account. 

Too right, Gareth. Speed the day. But it certainly won’t happen by the existing state investigating itself. Achieving a new democratic state in place of the authoritarian, undemocratic state we live under now, has to be our aim.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary