Alastair Crooke

Photo of Alastair Crooke by Osama Al Eryani (www.shababyemeni.com/en/index.php?option=com.)

Reportedly, Alastair Crooke has worked for MI6.

Reportedly he was sacked from MI6 for not being a Zionist.

According to the Financial Times , 2 january 2009, (FT.com / Weekend /Middleman in the Middle East):

"In August 2002, perhaps because Crooke was seen as too sympathetic to Palestinian groups, the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv outed him as an MI6 agent, poking fun at how slight this real-life James Bond was compared with his fictional counterpart.

"In 2003, after another ceasefire collapsed, Crooke was recalled to London. In a typically English fudge, he was given a CMG in the 2004 New Year’s Honours List for services to “the advancement of the Middle East peace process” – and sacked from MI6."



Crooke talks about Hamas, Moslems and Palestine.


Crooke has been asked about al Qaeda, but seemingly he is not prepared to spill the beans about any connection it may have to MI6.

"Could he imagine negotiating with al-Qaeda, I wondered? 'Never say never,' he replied, though he couldn’t really see the point. Groups such as al-Qaeda only get a hearing, he said, because of the failure of more mainstream political Islamism to speak to the Muslim world." (Middleman in the Middle East)

Crooke worked with bin Laden's men in Afghanistan.

Crooke gives us some clues about whether or not MI6 helped put the Ayatollahs into power in Iran.

"He views the 1979 Iranian revolution as progressive and enthusiastically explained obscure theological differences between its main Islamic protagonists.

"In the past two years he has visited Iran regularly – at one point he said 'our view', before correcting himself: 'the Iranian view, I mean'." (Middleman in the Middle East)

What is Alastair Crooke doing now?

"Crooke went freelance, drawing on his intelligence and political contacts to set up Conflicts Forum, a think-tank whose aim is to help western governments understand Islamist groups and their military resistance to Israel.

"In 2005 he moved to Beirut, where he lives with his partner, Aisling Byrne, an Englishwoman who previously worked with Palestinian refugees."

Has he really left MI6?

Alastair Crooke has written (2004 Guardian) :

"The overwhelming bulk of Islamists and Muslims support elections, good governance and freedom (more so than in some European states, the polls show)...

"Muslim values do not pose a threat to the strategic values of western society. Muslims do not hate our values. They hate our policies. We need dialogue at all levels."


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