The Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowden’s revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie.
1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by officers. Their informants are agents. In real life, James Bond would not be a secret agent. He would be an MI6 officer. Those whose knowledge comes from fiction frequently confuse the two. Nobody really working with the intelligence services would do so, as the Sunday Times source does. The story is a lie.
2) The argument that MI6 officers are at danger of being killed by the Russians or Chinese is a nonsense. No MI6 officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese for 50 years. The worst that could happen is they would be sent home. Agents’ – generally local people, as opposed to MI6 officers – identities would not be revealed in the Snowden documents. Rule No.1 in both the CIA and MI6 is that agents’ identities are never, ever written down, neither their names nor a description that would allow them to be identified. I once got very, very severely carpeted for adding an agents’ name to my copy of an intelligence report in handwriting, suggesting he was a useless gossip and MI6 should not be wasting their money on bribing him. And that was in post communist Poland, not a high risk situation.
3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services – I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from the Russian Embassy in London. The Russians retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats from Moscow, all of whom were not spies! As a third of our “diplomats” in Russia are spies, this was not coincidence. This was deliberate to send the message that they knew precisely who the spies were, and they did not fear them.
4) This anti Snowden non-story – even the Sunday Times admits there is no evidence anybody has been harmed – is timed precisely to coincide with the government’s new Snooper’s Charter act, enabling the security services to access all our internet activity. Remember that GCHQ already has an archive of 800,000 perfectly innocent British people engaged in sex chats online.
5) The paper publishing the story is owned by Rupert Murdoch. It is sourced to the people who brought you the dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, every single “fact” in which proved to be a fabrication. Why would you believe the liars now?
There you have five reasons the story is a lie.
JSD
“How is the information recovered?”
With Madame Blavatsky’s help of course.
“Does more than one officer know the identity of every agent?”
Impressive flash of enlightenment; worth at least an empty brown envelope or two.
“Thats why they are cracking codes and copying lists of 4 million US public employees, they are soooo incompetent, hahahaha”
You seem to relish it, Neverhadamind. This isn’t some dick-waving contest. The Russians and Chinese are able to do lots of things but they aren’t anywhere near the capabilities of Western intelligence agencies. That is a point of fact. Clearly the idea of Chinese hacking some fairly mundane records is sending you into fit of full orgasm.
Our agent in Moscow has a tattoo like Popeye on his forearm but in the shape of a British Bulldog. He works in the photocopying department of a print shop where he takes full advantage of couriers making secret copies of government papers who pretend to be undercover Vietnamese geology students.
He’s a bit of a midget at only 4ft 4in tall with blond hair but does have a chiselled jaw like Arnold Slackbladder. He’s known to like wearing Goodyear welted, Crockett & Jones, hand-made shoes from Nottingham. He enjoys Fleetwood Mac on his customized, tartan covered i-phone. His Russian is quite good but still speaks with a plummy, Home Counties accent.
His name? Emm, sorry, that’s a secret.
Craig, there are some very waffly posts by your moderators about Phil being banned yesterday. The earlier allusion that a couple of Phil’s comments had somehow been coincidentally caught in the spam filter ring disingenuous, under the circumstances. All this needs to be clarified.
GCHQ mantra.
If youcan make it by computer, you can break it by computer.
Decades old, but I suspect still valid. So not even in an encrypted file. In those days the massive computer had (a lot)less computing power than a smartphone.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-thought-to-be-behind-new-malware-found-by-kaspersky-a-1037960.html
What Anon really wanted to say is that Israel is playing cyber games with countries, sets them up against each other on specific issues of concern and that Russia and China have nothing to offer against this menace.
Are we watching a multi polar game played with geopolitics and with narrow goals designed to amplify the fears and agenda of an Apartheid state?
Are written letters the future?
Oh god it’s now “primitive orientals”. The little disgruntled lost deposit from Norfolk is following Craig’s lead in the “if you can’t beat it, racialise it” game.
Thanks Craig, yes I was witness to the deletions, which was entirely sensible and the abuse unwarranted and over the top.
Your present remark makes things clear as to how he was unwittingly banned.
Thank you again, and good luck with the book!
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-thought-to-be-behind-new-malware-found-by-kaspersky-a-1037960.html
What Anon really wanted to say is that Israel is playing cyber games with countries, sets them up against each other on specific issues of concern and that Russia and China have nothing to offer against this menace.
Anons reply…
‘You seem to relish it, Neverhadamind. This isn’t some dick-waving contest.’
Nothing to do with dicks, you petulant anemone. My use of the term ‘primitive orientals’ was merely parodying your initial attempt at calling ‘Asians’ technologically behind and inferior to what the west does. You are nothing but a twisting scrota, a wrinkly ex pat in the pay of your master.
Are we watching a multi polar game? with more than just a few players of geopolitics and with the narrow goals/directions designed to amplify the fears and agenda of an Apartheid state? would not surprise me one iota.
G H Graham
A Nat with a sense of humour who takes lovely photos – talk about shattering preconceptions!
The whole childish story assumes that the Chinese and the Russians aren’t already completely aware of anything Snowden might reveal. The whole point, the very reason the NSA/GCHQ et al skullduggery is so poisonous is that it is a secret kept from the very people against who it is directed ie the public of the so called 5 eyes. Such programs might stay hidden for a short while from active opposing intelligence agencies but their utility because of that would be short lived, not so when directed at an innocent public who without a snowden have no hope of ever knowing. I see so much embedded, arrogant cultural bigotry in the comments here, Russian and Chinese SIGINT capabilities will be every bit as sophisticated as America’s are just not as breathtaking in their scope..because $$. A wise man would do well to remember that the Iranian Vaja had little difficulty bridging the “impenetrable” air gap to very control centre of the US drone program and that Hezbol were happily sucking down the targeting feed from the IAF and playing a loaded game of Whack A Mole with Israeli airstrikes only to then land accurate ballistic munition on the IAF’s own FAC centres. Just dumb Arab luck I guess! In the stuff of fiction western intelligence agencies may have the sole lock on god like information powers in the real world the truth is a mite more complex. The Sunday Times article is in short transparent bullshit.
You claim that Russians have not killed an officer. Perhaps.
In Estonia case in 2014 a officer was kidnapped by Russian special forces in Estonian territory, close to border.
It was claimed he was working to find smugglers. Eston Kohver was not in military but security police. Claimed and believable was that he was trying to run an agent in Russia to stop Russian secret service backed smuggling operations. So Russian secret service run into Estonia and kidnapped him.
Now he is in prison.
Some don’t play by any rules.
There seems to be a remarkable coincidence also that there is a new round of anti-Snowden stories at a time when OPM has lost personnel files on millions of US Federal employees (including security clearance files).
@Craig
“Nobody has invented psychic powers.”
Craig the Russians and the Americans and to some extent the British intelligent services
experimented with psychics in through the 1960`s and 1970`s with mixed results.
Suhayl Saadi
14 Jun, 2015 – 11:10 am
“And sure enough (with regards to matters pertaining to a certain large building situated in the Vauxhall area of London), in a wonderfully miraculous and utterly unprecedented synchronicity worthy of the Madame Blavatsky herself, here three days ago was the eminent and aptly-named sage, Con Coughlin, on the matter.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/concoughlin/
……………………………………………………………………………..
Interesting Suhayl.
The strapline to the article you link to is:
“Anderson Report: the civil rights lobby need to understand that we are a nation at war.”
And a day later Richard (Dick) Littlejohn in the Daily Mail says:
“Murdered? No, Menezes was a casualty of war.”
(Quoted from paper edition).
Web edition:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3120885/Jean-Charles-Menezes-casualty-war-against-western-civilisation-Islamic-fanatics-writes-RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN.html
Phil, if that’s your central point, your forecast of Craig turning into a warmonger, I’ll leave it at that and wait and see. However, unless you do not believe in level playing fields, I think it to be entirely unfair for you to be taunting and sniping at Craig without lending credibility to your own identity, background and circumstances for context. So please stick with criticising his beliefs, as he can yours, without calling a spade a bloody shovel.
Finally, I was witness to the dialogue, and deletions; I do not recall Craig accusing you of lying.
Let’s actually now make this end of story. Hopefully future comments can be a little more affable, without loss of intellectual arguments.
Est
I stated they have not killed an MI6 officer. I am aware of the Kohver case. He is in one very limited sense fortunate. The Russian secret services have killed a very great many people. But there is no danger they will kill MI6 officers.
Incidentally just spotted another completely wrong use of terminology in the article. Instead of withdrawn or in extremis extracted, it talks of MI6 officers or agents being “lifted”. Again totally wrong terminology. Lifting in this context means in effect kidnapping – taking a target asset against their will. You would never talk of “lifting” your own people.
This source has bugger all real connection to intelligence.
@bjsalba
GCHQ mantra.
“If youcan make it by computer, you can break it by computer. “
The problem with that GCHQ mantra is that it is static and gathers dust.
You don`t need a computer to break the code just use “Smash and Grab”
Anon1
14 Jun, 2015 – 11:11 am
“What do you think the Russians will do with the 1 million cracked files now they are safely in Putin’s hands?”
………………………………………………….
As far as I am aware Anon1, Snowden did not take the encrypted data with him to Russia.
I stand to be corrected.
My day is complete. I have just come home and switched the BBC News channel on. There was Esler on Dateline with Aaronovitch (who advocated BLiar’s war which has led to the massive destabilization of the region) now calling for ‘boots on the ground’ to eradicate ISIS.
More war Mr Aaronovitch, Murdoch’s mouthpiece?
Dear @thesundaytimes: You have an obvious, key lie in your story (among many) – will you retract it?
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/610067798715404288
” it was a big mistake going and dumping everything on Vlad’s doorstep.”
Snowden dumped the files on your doorstep, Anon 1-Putin’s access to them was purely coincidental- and you decided that not only did you prefer not to know but that you preferred that the rest of us ought not to know either.
Why? Because you prefer to live in a condition in which you are spoonfed silly fantasies by the state and its propaganda agencies: terrible tales of foreign perfidy, in which you are constantly at risk of attack by ‘bad guys’, Russians, muslims, levellers and jacobins.
Happily however, the state protects you- because it loves you, because you are good, on the whole, (the state like Father Christmas knows all), and adore your rulers- thwarting plots against you, informing you, thanks to that clever and honest chap Mr Murdoch, of what you can do to help your saviours (Keep Calm and Do as You are Told) and voting for politicians who protect you from the Nanny State in which schools, libraries and hospitals, rather than spies and assassins and tax breaks for thieves, are given the highest priority.
And you have the temerity to call Assange ‘oily’!
Craig
Then you need to delete the following:
Villager 12:31pm
Villager 12:47pm
Villager 1:34pm
Mary 1:57pm
And me.
J
Mic Edwards “There seems to be a remarkable coincidence also that there is a new round of anti-Snowden stories at a time when OPM has lost personnel files on millions of US Federal employees (including security clearance files).”
Is it possible it took two whole years of Chinese super computer crunching to carry out a “brute force” de-encryption of some of the Snowden material?!
It appears the 3,000 strong super secret Pentagon (false flags?)Division in the North Wing where Rumsy was ensconced on 911 has switched on a CIA asset at the Times, as “this source has bugger all real connection to (British)intelligence.”?!
Suhayl Saadi
14 Jun, 2015 – 12:06 pm
“Does MI6 organise assassinations? Is their stated policy that they do not, just another lie? And what about MI5? Do they organise assassinations in Britain (including using various paramilitary organistaions in Northern Ireland)?”
…………………………………………………..
Are you for real Suhayl Saadi?
I’m having my doubts.
The oligarch owned media are preparing the way for the new raft of anti whistle blower, public oversight and scrutiny. The path chosen is “our boys” this time it is our “our spooks”, and the moronic hamburger munchers, will be buying into the narrative. Who needs liberties, in fact if you don’t break the law why should you be afraid? (the mentality of the sheep like standard issue citizen conditioned to the pen rules)
Whilst the same bunch of reactionary tossers, busy propagating the same message as the oligarch owned media, in the way of covering up any cracks in case of any alternative narrative from taking a hold!
Just reading the reactionary tossers brain farts borderline infantile reasoning and debunking is a further proof of this point.
A 6th reason. In matters of security, the Government never comments on operational matters. Moving spies/agents/offerers would be an operational matter. QED.
Michael Scally
14 Jun, 2015 – 2:00 pm
“Dear @thesundaytimes: You have an obvious, key lie in your story (among many) – will you retract it?”
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/610067798715404288
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Thanks for that Michael.
An endorsement that 77th Brigade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom)) has noticed this blog and felt the need to contribute to comments section?