Category Archives: MI5

UK officials still blocking Peter Wright’s ‘embarrassing’ Spycatcher files

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A documentary-maker has accused the Cabinet Office of defying the 30-year rule in withholding details of the MI5 exposé

The Cabinet Office has been accused of “delay and deception” over its blocking of the release of files dating back more than three decades that reveal the inside story of the intelligence agent Peter Wright and the Spycatcher affair.

Wright revealed an inside account of how MI5 “bugged and burgled” its way across London in his 1987 autobiography Spycatcher. He died aged 78 in 1995.

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The spies who hated us: reporting on espionage and the secret state

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Our security correspondent speaks to a predecessor about an era of spooks, leaks and open hostility from MI5

It is time for morning coffee and Richard Norton-Taylor and I are discussing secrecy, deception and brown envelopes, which comes naturally to the pair of us, as past and present defence and security correspondents of the Guardian.

Norton-Taylor joined the paper in January 1973 (when, incidentally, this writer was not yet two), starting in Brussels and switching to security a few years later. The first part of his career was dominated by a series of landmark official secrecy battles.

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MI5 involvement in drone project revealed in paperwork slip-up

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Exclusive: Document produced by university cited agency as secret funder of research

For an agency devoted to secrecy and surveillance, it is an embarrassing slip-up. An inadvertent disclosure on a university document has revealed that MI5 is partly behind what was meant to be a covert bug and drone research project.

Ostensibly, Imperial College’s research was to create a quadcopter system for charging remote agricultural sensors – but MI5’s participation has emerged because somebody involved stated it was the secret second funder of the programme.

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MI5 was involved in 1972 conviction of trade unionists, court told

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‘Higher echelons of the state’ allegedly helped get striking workers including Ricky Tomlinson convicted

Three government departments including the Security Service, MI5, collaborated to help convict a group of construction workers who had gone on strike to try to improve their pay and safety measures, the appeal court has heard.

Lawyers for the 14 trade unionists, including the actor Ricky Tomlinson, told the court that the “higher echelons of the state” were responsible for helping to get them unfairly convicted for offences arising out of a strike 47 years ago.

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Government lawyer tells court M15 officers could authorise murder

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Admission came hours before bill allowing continuation of controversial powers passed the Commons

Government lawyers have told a court that MI5 officers could authorise an informer to carry out a murder under controversial powers that ministers want to see continued contained in a bill that passed the Commons hours later.

The admission came in a court of appeal hearing on Wednesday when Sir James Eadie, representing the government, was asked if there was “a power for a Security Service officer to authorise an agent to execute an extremely hostile individual”.

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John le Carré obituary

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Writer whose spy novels chronicle how people’s lives play out in the corrupt setting of the cold war era and beyond

John le Carré, who has died aged 89 of pneumonia, raised the spy novel to a new level of seriousness and respect.

He was in his late 20s when he began to write fiction – in longhand, in small red pocket notebooks, on his daily train journey between his home in Buckinghamshire and his day job with MI5, the counter-intelligence service, in London. After the publication of two neatly crafted novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), which received measured reviews and modest sales, he hit the big time with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).

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MI5 boss says Russian and Chinese threats to UK ‘growing in severity’

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Ken McCallum also pledges to boost diversity in the service as response to Black Lives Matter movement

MI5’s new boss has said the spy threats posed by China and Russia to the UK are “growing in severity and complexity” while the terrorist threat from Isis and the far right “persists at scale”.

Giving his first speech since his domestic spy agency’s director general in April, Ken McCallum focused on risks from hostile states, including undermining “the integrity of UK research” on a coronavirus vaccine.

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UK set to introduce bill allowing MI5 agents to break the law

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Government says bill is not a ‘licence to kill’ but critics call for limits on agents’ activities

A bill allowing confidential informants working for MI5 and the police to break the law will be introduced on Thursday amid a row about whether committing crimes such as murder and torture should be explicitly banned.

The government says that the covert human intelligence sources bill does not amount to a “licence to kill” because it will be compliant with the European convention on human rights, which safeguards the right to life and prohibits torture.

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Timid, incompetent … how our spies missed Russian bid to sway Brexit

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MPs who compiled the Russia report were incredulous at Britain’s reluctance to tackle Kremlin

In September 2015 a tall young man with jet black hair and a pleasant grin made his way to Doncaster. His name was Alexander Udod. With the EU referendum vote on the horizon, Udod was attending Ukip’s annual conference. In theory he was a political observer. Actually Udod was an undercover spy, based at the Russian embassy in London.

Udod chatted with the man who would play a key role in Brexit – the Bristol businessman Arron Banks. The spy invited Banks to meet the Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko. What allegedly followed was a series of friendly encounters between Leave.EU and the Russians in the crucial months before the June 2016 poll: a boozy lunch, pints in a Notting Hill pub, and the offer of a Siberian gold deal. (Banks denies receiving money from Russia and previously stated his only contact with the Russian government in the run-up to the referendum consisted of “one boozy lunch” with the ambassador.)

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British security services to get extra powers in wake of Russia report

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Counter-espionage laws to be strengthened as government accused of failing to respond to security threat

Legislation to clamp down on foreign spying is being considered by Downing Street in the wake of a damning report laying bare the impact of Russian influence in Britain and accusing the government of “badly” underestimating the threat posed by the Kremlin.

Under the new legislation, foreign agents would have to register in the UK in a move modelled on similar requirements in the US and Australia.

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British state ‘covered up plot to assassinate King Edward VIII’

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Historian says papers challenge official version that George McMahon was a fantasist

It has all the hallmarks of a 21st-century political thriller, including a plot to assassinate a controversial monarch, an MI5 double agent, and claims of a high-level cover-up.

In 1936, an MI5 informant called George McMahon tried to assassinate King Edward VIII as he rode his horse near Buckingham Palace. Just as he was taking aim with a revolver, a woman in the crowd grabbed his arm and a policeman punched him, causing the weapon to fly into the road and strike the monarch’s mount.

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MI5 rejects claims that officials withhold intelligence from Priti Patel

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Informed security source says Sunday Times report quoting unnamed officials is untrue

MI5 has rejected claims that its officials are withholding information from Priti Patel because they do not trust her.

An informed security source said the report about Patel’s relationship with the agency in the Sunday Times was “simply untrue” and that she was getting the same information from the agency as any other home secretary.

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Confession of British spy for the Soviets made public for first time

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Double agent Kim Philby’s confession partially released to National Archives

Extracts from Kim Philby’s official confession to the UK’s security services in which he likens joining the Soviet secret police to signing up to the army, have been made public for the first time.

Philby, one of the Soviet Union’s most notorious British cold war spies, fled to Moscow shortly after his 1963 admission of guilt.

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Top lawyer hired to bring IRA double agent to justice

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Appointment of Jonathan Laidlaw QC seen as sign of ‘serious intent’ to put spy known as Stakeknife in dock

One of Britain’s most prominent criminal lawyers has become the legal adviser for detectives investigating an army agent operating in the top ranks of the IRA, the Observer can reveal.

The spy, known as “Stakeknife” and once described as the “jewel in the crown” of British military intelligence, allegedly was implicated in acts of murder and torture while he ran the IRA’s internal security squad during the Troubles.

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Ireland to charge suspect for murder of British spy in IRA

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Prosecutors obtain warrant to arrest man over Denis Donaldson shooting in 2006

Irish authorities are preparing to charge a man for the murder of Denis Donaldson, a British spy within the IRA who was shot dead in 2006.

The news emerged on Wednesday when an Irish police officer told an inquest in Letterkenny, County Donegal, that prosecutors had obtained a warrant to arrest and charge the suspect with murder.

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London Bridge attack: Victims’ families criticise authorities for clearing MI5 and police

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Relatives of eight people killed in terrorist attack said security services had fallen short

The families of the London Bridge victims criticised the authorities on Friday after a coroner cleared MI5 and police of failing to prevent the terror attack despite having the ringleader under investigation.

After more than seven weeks of harrowing evidence, the inquests into the deaths of the eight victims of the June 2017 attack came to an end with the conclusion that they had been unlawfully killed.

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Sajid Javid announces overhaul of espionage and treason laws

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New bill needed to tackle hostile activity by Russia and others, says home secretary

Hostile state actors – spies, assassins or hackers directed by the government of another country – are to be targeted by refreshed espionage and treason laws, the home secretary has announced.

In a speech to security officials in central London, Sajid Javid revealed plans to publish a new espionage bill to tackle increased hostile state activity from countries including but not limited to Russia.

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Far-right terrorism threat is growing, say MI5 and police chiefs

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Andrew Parker and Cressida Dick say numerous plots have been foiled in recent years

Far-right terrorism has been identified as a key threat to the safety and prosperity of the country, according to the director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, and Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police.

Writing in the Times, the pair warned that while Islamist terrorism remains the largest by scale, they are also “concerned about the growing threat from other forms of violent extremism … covering a spectrum of hate-driven ideologies, including the extreme right and left.”

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