Are the security services stupid, or devious, or both?

The SIS building at Vauxhall Cross, London, seen from Vauxhall Bridge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI6

Are the security services stupid or devious or both?

Is there a cabal within the security services which pulls the strings?

Nigel Inkster was deputy director of Britain's MI6 at the time that Saddam was toppled.

On 3 May 2009, The Telegraph (a UK newspaper allegedly used to spread MI6 disinformation) told us that Inkster, in a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research, has claimed (Former MI6 chief says Britain was 'dragged' into Iraq war - Telegraph):

Britain was "dragged into a war in Iraq which was always against out better judgment."

MI6 was blamed for producing a dossier which claimed that Iraq was ready to use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.

The dossier was said to have been "sexed up" by the cabal surroundingTony Blair.

Inkster 'was passed over as the head of MI6 in favour of Sir John Scarlett', who took responsibility for the dodgy dossier.

So, is there a group within MI6 and within the government which can pull the strings and take us into war?

On 9 November 2003, Richard Norton-Taylor, the Guardian's security affairs editor, wrote:

"What has already emerged ... is the existence of a dark, almost Jacobean, cabal at the core of the Blair administration.

"It is a group of powerful, unelected people few would have heard of were it not for the evidence given to Hutton: Sir David Manning, the prime minister's foreign policy adviser; Sir David Omand, his security coordinator; and John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee..." (There is a dark cabal around Blair) (aangirfan: A secret cabal within the security services?)

Stephen Dorril's book 'MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations' reveals that MI6 has gone in for:

Attempted assassinations (Egypt, Libya), coup d'états (Albania, Iran, Oman), forging Swiss bank account documents (East Germany) and psychological warfare (planting of false information, secret funding of propaganda and smearing opponents). (Guardian Unlimited Archive Search)

Is MI6 stupid?

MI6 appears to have got it wrong over the Suez invasion. The USA ordered the UK to get out of Suez because the USA was backing Nasser, who was then their asset.

MI6 appears to have failed to see that Argentina was going to invade the Falklands. The USA seemed to like the Argentine generals and may not have bothered to warn the UK of what was happening.

Angleton

Is MI6 run by a secret CIA cabal?

In 1965 the CIA's James Angleton, and President Johnson, decided to commission a report on Britain's secret services.

This report recommended sending more spies to Britain. It seemed that the CIA was going to treat Britain like Indonesia or Pakistan.

In order to ensure that there was an elite which would support US interests, the CIA would try to gain control of MI5 and MI6, use dirty tricks to get rid of anti-American politicians, and place pro-American puppets into positions of power.

In 1996, in the Guardian, Martin Kettle suggested that New Labour was all about Britain being in with the Americans.

MI6 gradually seems to have become dependent on the CIA, which has far more money and people.

MI6 and the CIA jointly toppled Mossadeq in Iran in 1953. And reportedly they both worked to topple the Shah. The Ayatollahs and the militant Moslems were seen as being the best people to use to weaken Russia and other powers.

MI6, in 1965, worked with the CIA to topple Indonesia's president Sukarno.

MI6, in the 1980's, working with the CIA, used militant Moslems in Afghanistan to weaken Russia.

Is MI6 devious?

In the book 'The Fifth Man', (by Roland Perry, Pan Books London 1994) Roland Perry puts the case that Ted Rothschild was a major spy for Israel.

Rothschild was a key figure within the British security services.

According to ex-KGB Colonel 'F' and KGB officer Yuri Modin, Rothschild was the key to most of the Cambridge ring's penetration of British Intelligence.

According to Perry, "Burgess, at MI6 (and still on a retainer from Rothschild) recommended Philby for a job in Section D of MI6. Rothschild, who had helped nudge Burgess into his position before the war, had been in turn recommended to MI5 by Burgess."

'Rothschild had the contacts,' Modin noted. 'He was able to introduce Burgess, Blunt and others to important figures in Intelligence such as Stewart Menzies, Dick White and Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-secretary of State in the Foreign Office, who controlled MI6.'

In 1957, French engineers began building a nuclear reactor at Dimona on the edge of the Negev Desert.

Perry believes that while "MI5 inventions and technical advances went on, Rothschild kept in contact with the key figures and digested the reports.

"This, coupled with his close contact with Dick White, other intelligence chiefs, Wright and the heads of the key research facilities in everything from weapons to radar, meant that Rothschild understood better than anyone in MI6 or MI5 every aspect of British Intelligence, from technical developments to their application in the field......"

aangirfan: MI5 and MI6

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