Should MI6 have come in from the cold?
Newspaper revelations about the secret service’s dealings with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s spy masters would have horrified the spooks of George Smiley’s day.
By Con Coughlin
8:37PM BST 05 Sep 2011
Source - Telegraph, UK
Spy masters: Sir Mark Allen, left, former head of MI6's counter-intelligence branch; right, Gary Oldman as George Smiley
In the spying game, there is no greater indignity an intelligence service can suffer than to see its secrets splashed all over the front of the morning’s newspapers. So it is not difficult to imagine the extreme discomfiture senior officers at Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (or MI6, as it is more familiarly known) are today experiencing over embarrassing revelations relating to its past involvement with Colonel Gaddafi.
That MI6 had dealings with the Gaddafi regime was not, in itself, much of a secret. Indeed, Tony Blair’s government was more than happy to trumpet the lead role the service had played in persuading Gaddafi to give up his nuclear and chemical weapons arsenals in late 2003.
Despite the Gaddafi clan’s repeated denials to the contrary, by early 2002 MI6 had uncovered compelling evidence that the regime had a well-advanced nuclear weapons programme, as well as a stockpile of hundreds of chemical warheads that could be detonated from the air.
By any standard, getting Gaddafi to renounce this deadly arsenal was an intelligence coup of the first order. It was on a par with getting the Soviet Union to remove its nuclear missiles from Cuba at the height of the Cold War in 1963 (missiles whose very existence were similarly denied by Moscow), which was achieved as a result of crucial intelligence provided by MI6’s Russian agent Oleg Penkovsky.
David Cameron would certainly not have enjoyed taking on the Gaddafi regime this year had it been armed with chemical and nuclear weapons. In fact, Mr Cameron would not have gone to war with Gaddafi and the Libyan dictator would still be brutalising his countrymen.
What was less well known about Britain’s intelligence links with Libya was the intimacy of the cooperation that then followed between MI6 and Libya’s external security office, the regime’s main intelligence-gathering body headed by Gaddafi’s former henchman Moussa Koussa.
The Blair government had made vague references to there being a closer intelligence-sharing arrangement between the two countries as a result of the WMD deal, not least because Gaddafi was very worried that Islamist militants with links to al-Qaeda were seeking to overthrow his regime. But very few people outside Whitehall’s clandestine intelligence community had any idea of just how close that relationship had become, with Mark Allen, the former head of MI6’s counter-intelligence branch, signing personal letters to Koussa “Your Friend, Mark” after he had received a gift of “delicious” dates and oranges from the Libyan strongman.
Until, that is, a group of enterprising human rights activists blew the whistle on this unlikely alliance after stumbling across a pile of incriminating documents that, quite fortuitously, had been abandoned in Koussa’s decidedly ramshackle office in a Tripoli suburb.
According to Human Rights Watch, the group which now has possession of the documents, they reveal that MI6, together with the CIA, enjoyed such a close working relationship with their Libyan opposite numbers that they arranged for Libyan dissidents to be shipped back to Libya for interrogation, and helped the Libyans to spy on dissident groups in Britain and elsewhere. MI6, in particular, became so chummy with Koussa that it is now claimed he was even provided with details of Britain’s annual intelligence budget.
While these revelations have made for some sensational headlines this week, with Mr Cameron yesterday calling for them to be examined by an independent inquiry, it is important not to lose sight of one of the first principles of the shadowy world of espionage: things are never as clear-cut as they seem.
It is, after all, perfectly feasible that these documents were deliberately abandoned by Gaddafi’s former henchmen as an act of sabotage to discredit the reputation of the West’s leading intelligence agencies, and embroil them in yet another round of costly litigation. Yesterday, Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of Britain’s most radical Islamist groups, lost no time in condemning the Government’s “collusion with Gaddafi’s torturers”.
Then there is the more complex issue of the role Islamist groups are playing in post-Gaddafi Libya. Abdulhakim Belhadj, who now commands the main anti-Gaddafi militia in Tripoli and claims he was unlawfully repatriated to Libya by MI6, was, until just a few years ago, a prime target of MI6 and the CIA.
Belhadj came to their attention following reports that he had fought with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and was a founder member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
Although Belhadj says he never attended al-Qaeda training camps, MI6 and the CIA claim that the LIFG was an ally of al-Qaeda whose main aim was to overthrow Gaddafi and establish an Islamist state in north Africa.
Even though the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group renounced violence in late 2009, the fact that Belhadj holds a senior position within the opposition movement has fuelled fears that the rebels have a secret plan to set up an Islamist government in Tripoli.
But for the moment it is Belhadj and his accomplices who are being portrayed as the innocent victims, and MI6 that stands accused of being complicit in acts of illegal rendition and torture, a state of affairs that many former proponents of the world’s second oldest profession will regard with incredulity.
It was not that long ago, after all, that only a handful of people even knew that Britain’s spies were located in an ugly, grey tower-block, Century House (it has now been converted into luxury flats) south of Waterloo Station. It was here that the previous generation of spies immortalised in John le Carré’s book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the film version of which is currently attracting rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival, did battle with the KGB.
It could be argued that MI6 played a crucial role in winning the Cold War through its recruitment of highly valued Soviet agents, from Penkovsky through to Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB’s station chief in London who eventually defected in 1985. For the most part, this important work was done entirely in secret. The only time the spooks broke through to the public consciousness was when one of their number, such as Kim Philby, the service’s former station chief in Washington, defected to Moscow.
But MI6’s happy life in the shadows came to an abrupt end in 1994 when Douglas Hurd, the then Foreign Secretary, decided to make the Service more accountable by placing it on a statutory footing. At a stroke Britain’s spies no longer enjoyed the cloak of anonymity and were publicly accountable not only to their political masters, but also to the wider public.
Many former senior MI6 officers blame that seismic change for some of the difficulties the Service has suffered in subsequent years, from its involvement in the “dodgy dossier” on Iraq to its current embarrassment over Libya.
“Ever since MI6 became public property, there has been a tendency for senior officers to try to cosy up to the government of the day, with disastrous consequences,” a former senior officer told me. “Rather than just concentrating on what MI6 does best, which is intelligence gathering, it has got itself involved in politics, where its track record is clearly not very impressive.”
The nadir of MI6’s fortunes arguably came during the build-up to the Iraq war when John Scarlett, an MI6 officer with a distinguished record as a former Moscow station chief, became a close confidant of Tony Blair – so much so that Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s press secretary, took to calling him a “mate”.
Not surprisingly, there are many officers in today’s Service who would argue that, to safeguard our national security, it is essential that they put more distance between the very different worlds of politics and intelligence-gathering.
Equally, John Scarlett, who became head of MI6, was fond of telling colleagues: “There’s not much point in having a secret intelligence service, unless you keep the intelligence secret.” That is how it was in the era of George Smiley, and there are many in the Service who wish the same held true today.
Newspaper revelations about the secret service’s dealings with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s spy masters would have horrified the spooks of George Smiley’s day.
By Con Coughlin
8:37PM BST 05 Sep 2011
Source - Telegraph, UK
Spy masters: Sir Mark Allen, left, former head of MI6's counter-intelligence branch; right, Gary Oldman as George SmileyIn the spying game, there is no greater indignity an intelligence service can suffer than to see its secrets splashed all over the front of the morning’s newspapers. So it is not difficult to imagine the extreme discomfiture senior officers at Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (or MI6, as it is more familiarly known) are today experiencing over embarrassing revelations relating to its past involvement with Colonel Gaddafi.
That MI6 had dealings with the Gaddafi regime was not, in itself, much of a secret. Indeed, Tony Blair’s government was more than happy to trumpet the lead role the service had played in persuading Gaddafi to give up his nuclear and chemical weapons arsenals in late 2003.
Despite the Gaddafi clan’s repeated denials to the contrary, by early 2002 MI6 had uncovered compelling evidence that the regime had a well-advanced nuclear weapons programme, as well as a stockpile of hundreds of chemical warheads that could be detonated from the air.
By any standard, getting Gaddafi to renounce this deadly arsenal was an intelligence coup of the first order. It was on a par with getting the Soviet Union to remove its nuclear missiles from Cuba at the height of the Cold War in 1963 (missiles whose very existence were similarly denied by Moscow), which was achieved as a result of crucial intelligence provided by MI6’s Russian agent Oleg Penkovsky.
David Cameron would certainly not have enjoyed taking on the Gaddafi regime this year had it been armed with chemical and nuclear weapons. In fact, Mr Cameron would not have gone to war with Gaddafi and the Libyan dictator would still be brutalising his countrymen.
What was less well known about Britain’s intelligence links with Libya was the intimacy of the cooperation that then followed between MI6 and Libya’s external security office, the regime’s main intelligence-gathering body headed by Gaddafi’s former henchman Moussa Koussa.
The Blair government had made vague references to there being a closer intelligence-sharing arrangement between the two countries as a result of the WMD deal, not least because Gaddafi was very worried that Islamist militants with links to al-Qaeda were seeking to overthrow his regime. But very few people outside Whitehall’s clandestine intelligence community had any idea of just how close that relationship had become, with Mark Allen, the former head of MI6’s counter-intelligence branch, signing personal letters to Koussa “Your Friend, Mark” after he had received a gift of “delicious” dates and oranges from the Libyan strongman.
Until, that is, a group of enterprising human rights activists blew the whistle on this unlikely alliance after stumbling across a pile of incriminating documents that, quite fortuitously, had been abandoned in Koussa’s decidedly ramshackle office in a Tripoli suburb.
According to Human Rights Watch, the group which now has possession of the documents, they reveal that MI6, together with the CIA, enjoyed such a close working relationship with their Libyan opposite numbers that they arranged for Libyan dissidents to be shipped back to Libya for interrogation, and helped the Libyans to spy on dissident groups in Britain and elsewhere. MI6, in particular, became so chummy with Koussa that it is now claimed he was even provided with details of Britain’s annual intelligence budget.
While these revelations have made for some sensational headlines this week, with Mr Cameron yesterday calling for them to be examined by an independent inquiry, it is important not to lose sight of one of the first principles of the shadowy world of espionage: things are never as clear-cut as they seem.
It is, after all, perfectly feasible that these documents were deliberately abandoned by Gaddafi’s former henchmen as an act of sabotage to discredit the reputation of the West’s leading intelligence agencies, and embroil them in yet another round of costly litigation. Yesterday, Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of Britain’s most radical Islamist groups, lost no time in condemning the Government’s “collusion with Gaddafi’s torturers”.
Then there is the more complex issue of the role Islamist groups are playing in post-Gaddafi Libya. Abdulhakim Belhadj, who now commands the main anti-Gaddafi militia in Tripoli and claims he was unlawfully repatriated to Libya by MI6, was, until just a few years ago, a prime target of MI6 and the CIA.
Belhadj came to their attention following reports that he had fought with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and was a founder member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
Although Belhadj says he never attended al-Qaeda training camps, MI6 and the CIA claim that the LIFG was an ally of al-Qaeda whose main aim was to overthrow Gaddafi and establish an Islamist state in north Africa.
Even though the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group renounced violence in late 2009, the fact that Belhadj holds a senior position within the opposition movement has fuelled fears that the rebels have a secret plan to set up an Islamist government in Tripoli.
But for the moment it is Belhadj and his accomplices who are being portrayed as the innocent victims, and MI6 that stands accused of being complicit in acts of illegal rendition and torture, a state of affairs that many former proponents of the world’s second oldest profession will regard with incredulity.
It was not that long ago, after all, that only a handful of people even knew that Britain’s spies were located in an ugly, grey tower-block, Century House (it has now been converted into luxury flats) south of Waterloo Station. It was here that the previous generation of spies immortalised in John le Carré’s book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the film version of which is currently attracting rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival, did battle with the KGB.
It could be argued that MI6 played a crucial role in winning the Cold War through its recruitment of highly valued Soviet agents, from Penkovsky through to Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB’s station chief in London who eventually defected in 1985. For the most part, this important work was done entirely in secret. The only time the spooks broke through to the public consciousness was when one of their number, such as Kim Philby, the service’s former station chief in Washington, defected to Moscow.
But MI6’s happy life in the shadows came to an abrupt end in 1994 when Douglas Hurd, the then Foreign Secretary, decided to make the Service more accountable by placing it on a statutory footing. At a stroke Britain’s spies no longer enjoyed the cloak of anonymity and were publicly accountable not only to their political masters, but also to the wider public.
Many former senior MI6 officers blame that seismic change for some of the difficulties the Service has suffered in subsequent years, from its involvement in the “dodgy dossier” on Iraq to its current embarrassment over Libya.
“Ever since MI6 became public property, there has been a tendency for senior officers to try to cosy up to the government of the day, with disastrous consequences,” a former senior officer told me. “Rather than just concentrating on what MI6 does best, which is intelligence gathering, it has got itself involved in politics, where its track record is clearly not very impressive.”
The nadir of MI6’s fortunes arguably came during the build-up to the Iraq war when John Scarlett, an MI6 officer with a distinguished record as a former Moscow station chief, became a close confidant of Tony Blair – so much so that Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s press secretary, took to calling him a “mate”.
Not surprisingly, there are many officers in today’s Service who would argue that, to safeguard our national security, it is essential that they put more distance between the very different worlds of politics and intelligence-gathering.
Equally, John Scarlett, who became head of MI6, was fond of telling colleagues: “There’s not much point in having a secret intelligence service, unless you keep the intelligence secret.” That is how it was in the era of George Smiley, and there are many in the Service who wish the same held true today.