Category Archives: Art & Culture

Film Review of “Secrecy” on Cinepolitics, January 2009

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Over the last few years I have been a reg­u­lar guest on polit­ic­al dis­cus­sion pro­grammes on the rap­idly grow­ing Press TV.  Occa­sion­ally I am invited onto the film review show, “Cinepol­it­ics”, by the host (and film maker) Rus­sell Michaels. 

The film under review is a doc­u­ment­ary called “Secrecy”, look­ing at the stifling effect cen­sor­ship and the creep­ing concept of nation­al secur­ity have had on demo­cracy in the USA under the former pres­id­en­tial régime.  When this was filmed in Janu­ary, there was hope that the new pres­id­ency might roll this back.  How­ever, “Secrecy” is just as per­tin­ent now that the issue of tor­ture and Guantanamo Bay is being addressed more openly by the media.

The Elephant in the Room

Posted on by Annie Machon
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In Septem­ber an award-win­ning inde­pend­ent doc­u­ment­ary, “The Ele­phant in the Room” was screened at the Por­to­bello Film Fest­iv­al in London.

The film, made by Brit­ish dir­ect­or Dean Puck­ett, had already won “Best Doc­u­ment­ary” at the Lon­don Inde­pend­ent Film Fest­iv­al earli­er this year.  At Por­to­bello, Dean won the “Best Dir­ect­or” award.

The film doc­u­ments Dean’s per­son­al jour­ney and response to the tra­gic events of 9/11.  In Octo­ber 2001 he vis­ited New York with his fath­er, who was run­ning in the mara­thon.  As a bud­ding 19 year old film maker, Dean recor­ded images of the trau­mat­ised city and his per­son­al response to the events, and includes this early foot­age in the film.

He then goes on to meet act­iv­ists in the UK and Europe who ques­tion the offi­cial account, and inter­view 9/11 hero Wil­li­am Rodrig­uez and US Pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate Cyn­thia McKin­ney, amongst oth­ers.  He also deals sens­it­ively with the first respon­ders who are ill and dying because the US gov­ern­ment lied about the safety of the air in NYC after the attacks.  These people are gen­er­ally ignored and giv­en little help or support.

I helped Dean in some sec­tions of the film, and he accom­pan­ied Wil­li­am Rodrig­uez on the European leg of the speak­ing tour I organ­ised for him last year — I’m chuffed to have an “Assist­ant Pro­du­cer” credit!

The film can be down­loaded and watched here.

RSC Play about the Shayler Case

Posted on by Annie Machon
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In Lon­don in 2001 the Roy­al Shakespeare Com­pany per­formed a play called “Epi­taph for the Offi­cial Secrets Act” by Paul Green­grass (who co-wrote the notori­ous book “Spycatch­er”).  The play focused on the polit­ic­al issues around whis­tleblow­ing and the Shayler case.

It was an excel­lent play, with an intel­li­gent ana­lys­is of the cur­rent mess that is secrecy legis­la­tion in the UK, but it was rather strange to see act­ors using words your own words on stage.

The fol­low­ing report appeared in “The Observer”:

Shayler is a model spy for MI5 play

by Vanessa Thorpe, Arts Cor­res­pond­ent, 2001

Henry V, Macbeth and Ham­let, the great
Shakespearean prot­ag­on­ists who strut before audi­ences at
Strat­ford-upon-Avon, are to be joined tomor­row by a new name, the
former MI5 reneg­ade, Dav­id Shayler.

A new play by Paul Green­grass, the screen­writer respons­ible for ITV’s
upcom­ing film about Bloody Sunday and for the award-win­ning television
dram­at­isa­tion of The Murder of Steph­en Lawrence , is to be premiered
tomor­row night by the Roy­al Shakespeare Company.

Epi­taph
for the Offi­cial Secrets Act will also fea­ture Shayler­’s girlfriend,
Annie Machon, and the MI5’s first woman dir­ect­or, Stella Rim­ing­ton. ‘It
is a play about the year that MI5 first decided to recruit a new sort
of agent,’ explained Simon Reade, the RSC’s dram­at­urge, refer­ring to
1991, when the secret ser­vice briefly turned away from their
estab­lished Oxbridge source of gradu­ates and advert­ised for applicants
from the wider population.

‘The play starts with a
read­ing of the advert­ise­ment that news­pa­pers ran at the time,’ said
Reade, who developed the piece with Green­grass for its six-night run.
‘The ad showed an empty chair under the words “Godot isn’t coming”.’
The play then deals with some of the changes that fol­lowed as Rimington
took con­trol of an organ­isa­tion that was fight­ing to redefine itself.

Machon and Shayler, both from the gradu­ate intake that was then new, are iden­ti­fied only by their first names.

News of their the­at­ric­al debut came as a shock to Shayler and Machon,
who are in Lon­don await­ing Shayler­’s tri­al on charges of breach­ing the
Offi­cial Secrets Act. Machon said: ‘It is rather alarm­ing to find that
we are both going to played by actors.’


BBC Radio Bristol Interview

Posted on by Annie Machon
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A recent inter­view on BBC Radio Bris­tol to pub­li­cise the screen­ing of an award-win­ning new doc­u­ment­ary called “The Ele­phant in the Room”, made by tal­en­ted dir­ect­or Dean Puck­ett.

I had the chance to explore the mech­an­isms by which the UK media is con­trolled by the spies and the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the sec­tion in MI6 called I/Ops, which plants false stor­ies in the media to the bene­fit of MI5 and MI6.

Art; Signs of the Times

Posted on by Annie Machon
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’Signs of the Times, A coded his­tory of alpha­bets and com­mu­nic­a­tion’ is a series of works by artist Paul Flack who col­lab­or­ated with me on hid­den mes­sages and codes in art:

Inspired by the com­plex evol­u­tion of alpha­bets, words and sym­bols sculptor Paul Flack has been inter­ested in lan­guage and its mean­ing for many years. Cryptic mean­ing suf­fuses his work, which is a blend of words and sym­bols from many dif­fer­ent cul­tures. Hiero­glyphs and runes jostle for space with mod­ern alpha­bets and bin­ary code on painted can­vasses, stone carvings and sculp­tures. The out­come is a flu­id mix­ture of man-made mean­ing and uni­ver­sal, geo­met­ric shapes.

Paul’s col­lab­or­a­tion with Annie Machon — a lead­ing civil liber­ties act­iv­ist and former MI5 intel­li­gence officer — has enabled him to take his under­stand­ing of codes, cen­sor­ship and the secret­ive side of lan­guage to a new level.

“We live in an age of spoon-fed inform­a­tion and extreme cen­sor­ship. I want people to think about the ori­gins of lan­guage and how it binds cul­tures togeth­er, as opposed to sep­ar­at­ing them” — Paul Flack

“It’s a cliché, but you really should­n’t believe everything you read. His­tory is writ­ten by the vic­tori­ous and today’s rul­ing élite is cer­tainly no less ruth­less in its approach to secrecy and cen­sor­ship.” — Annie Machon

“If this sounds a bit con­tro­ver­sial, all the bet­ter. Some altern­at­ive views of recent events are encoded into the work, and if you look hard enough you will find them.

“Of course, what you do with the inform­a­tion is up to you,” — Paul Flack

Coda: Sadly, Paul died unex­pec­tedly in 2008.  His was a rare and beau­ti­ful spir­it, and he is much missed by his many friends.

Spies,Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5 and the David Shayler Affair

Posted on by Annie Machon
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My book about the Shayler affair (includ­ing the MI6 plot to assas­in­ate Col. Gad­dafi) and my exper­i­ences as an Intel­li­gence Officer in MI5.

I was invited on to “The Richard and Judy Show” in 2005 to talk about my book, and it is fea­tured on the show’s web­site.

Wil­li­am Pod­more was kind enough to review my work:

In this remark­able book, Annie Machon makes ser­i­ous alleg­a­tions against the Brit­ish state’s intel­li­gence ser­vices, MI5 and MI6. Ms Machon and her part­ner Dav­id Shayler are former high-rank­ing MI5 officers, both now retired from the ser­vice. The book’s alleg­a­tions derive from their exper­i­ences and deserve at least to be the sub­ject of inquiry.

She asserts that MI5 has illeg­ally invest­ig­ated thou­sands of Brit­ish cit­izens for their polit­ic­al views; that there was col­lu­sion between the Army Forces Research Unit and loy­al­ist ter­ror­ists; that MI5 failed to stop four major ter­ror­ist attacks in Bri­tain, even though it had reli­able evid­ence; and that MI5 and MI6 let a known Liby­an ter­ror­ist into Bri­tain and let him set up a ter­ror­ist net­work here.

She alleges that MI6’s counter-Ira­ni­an sec­tion used the Sunday Tele­graph (and the journ­al­ists Con Cough­lin, John Simpson and Domin­ic Lawson) to try to blame Iran for the 1988 Lock­er­bie bomb­ing, the destruc­tion of flight PA103. MI6 was try­ing to deflect atten­tion from the fact that it was actu­ally a Liby­an retali­ation for the US bomb­ing of Tripoli (backed by Thatch­er) in 1986.

The book’s most sig­ni­fic­ant alleg­a­tion is that MI6 illeg­ally paid tens of thou­sands of pounds to Al-Qa’ida in 1995–96 to assas­sin­ate Col­on­el Gad­dafi and seize power in Libya. In the attemp­ted coup, sev­er­al inno­cent civil­ians and secur­ity police were killed. If this is true, MI6, a Brit­ish state agency, sponsored our ter­ror­ist enemies in a con­spir­acy to murder, which res­ul­ted in the killing of inno­cent civilians.

But Blair refuses to hear any evid­ence against the intel­li­gence ser­vices, and pro­sec­utes and har­asses crit­ics and whis­tleblowers. The Intel­li­gence and Secur­ity Com­mit­tee, set up under the 1994 Intel­li­gence Ser­vices Act to over­see the ser­vices, is no use, because it is appoin­ted by and reports only to the Prime Minister.

The intel­li­gence ser­vices should work under the rule of law and respect demo­crat­ic rights. Ter­ror­ist sus­pects should be arres­ted and brought to tri­al under crim­in­al law, not detained, or executed, without tri­al, as has happened in North­ern Ire­land and elsewhere.

The intel­li­gence ser­vices are sup­posed to pro­tect us, but it would appear that they have instead con­nived in ter­ror­ism, put­ting us at great­er risk of ter­ror­ist attack.

The Cam­paign for Press and Broad­cast­ing Free­dom (CPBF) also high­lighted it.

The book can be ordered through Amazon.