Category Archives: Police

Alastair Campbell — guilty of breaching the OSA?

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Alastair_Campbell_1I have long sus­pec­ted that Alastair Camp­bell, Labour’s former Dir­ect­or of Com­mu­nic­a­tions, may poten­tially have broken the UK’s Offi­cial Secrets Act.  Now prima facie evid­ence is begin­ning to emerge that he did indeed breach the “clear bright line” against unau­thor­ised dis­clos­ure of intelligence. 

I know that the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police have their hands full invest­ig­at­ing the melt­down that is the News of the World hack­ing scan­dal — and also try­ing to replace all those seni­or officers who had to resign because of it — but they do have a duty to invest­ig­ate crime.  And not just any old crime, in this case, but one that has poten­tially threatened the very basis of our nation­al security.

Why do I say this? 

Sun_45_minutes_from_doomYou’ll no doubt have some vague recol­lec­tion that, in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment pro­duced a couple of reports “mak­ing a case for war”.  The first, the Septem­ber Dossier (2002), is the one most remembered, as this did indeed sex up the case for war, as well as include fake intel­li­gence about Sad­dam Hus­sein try­ing to acquire urani­um from Niger.  Most mem­or­ably it led to the “Brits 45 minutes from Doom” front-page head­line in Rupert Mur­doch’s The Sun news­pa­per, no less, on the eve of the cru­cial war vote in Parliament.

There was also the notori­ous leaked Down­ing Street Memo, where the then-head of MI6, Sir Richard Dear­love ©, was minuted as say­ing that the intel­li­gence and facts were being fit­ted around the [pre­de­ter­mined war] policy.

How­ever, for the pur­poses of a pos­sible Regina v. Camp­bell day in court, it is the second report that requires our attention.

It was pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2003, just before “shock and awe” was launched to lib­er­ate the grate­ful Iraqi people.   This report became known as the “Dodgy Dossier”, as it was largely lif­ted from a 12 year old PhD thes­is that the spin doc­tors had found on the inter­net.  How­ever, it also included nug­gets of brand-new and unas­sessed intel­li­gence from MI6.  Indeed, even the tooth­less Intel­li­gence and Secur­ity Com­mit­tee in Par­lia­ment stated in para­graph 82 of its 2002–2003 Annu­al Report ( Down­load ISC_2003) that:

“We believe that mater­i­al pro­duced by the [intel­li­gence] Agen­cies can be used in pub­lic­a­tions and attrib­uted appro­pri­ately, but it is imper­at­ive that the Agen­cies are con­sul­ted before any of their mater­i­al is pub­lished. This pro­cess was not fol­lowed when a second doc­u­ment was pro­duced in Feb­ru­ary 2003. Although the doc­u­ment did con­tain some intel­li­gence-derived mater­i­al it was not clearly attrib­uted or high­lighted amongst the oth­er mater­i­al, nor was it checked with the Agency provid­ing the intel­li­gence or cleared by the JIC pri­or to pub­lic­a­tion. We have been assured that sys­tems have now been put in place to ensure that this can­not hap­pen again, in that the JIC Chair­man endorses any mater­i­al on behalf of the intel­li­gence com­munity pri­or to pub­lic­a­tion.”

ISC_Iraq_reportAt the time it was repor­ted that Blair and Camp­bell had spon­tan­eously dis­trib­uted this report to journ­al­ists trav­el­ling with them on a tour of the Far East.   The ISC con­firmed that the intel­li­gence had been passed to journ­al­ists without the per­mis­sion of MI6 in its Septem­ber 2003 spe­cial report — “Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion: Intel­li­gence and Assess­ments” (see pars 131 to 134):

“The doc­u­ment was ori­gin­ally giv­en to a num­ber of journ­al­ists over the week­end of
1 and 2 Feb­ru­ary and then placed in the Lib­rary of the House on 3 Feb­ru­ary. The Prime
Min­is­ter described the doc­u­ment as follows:

“We issued fur­ther intel­li­gence over the week­end about the infra­struc­ture of
con­ceal­ment. It is obvi­ously dif­fi­cult when we pub­lish intel­li­gence reports, but I hope
that people have some sense of the integ­rity of our secur­ity ser­vices. They are not
pub­lish­ing this, or giv­ing us this inform­a­tion, and mak­ing it up. It is the intel­li­gence
that they are receiv­ing, and we are passing on to people. In the dossier that we
pub­lished last year, and again in the mater­i­al that we put out over the week­end, it is
very clear that a vast amount of con­ceal­ment and decep­tion is going on.”

“Con­clu­sions:

“The Com­mit­tee took evid­ence on this mat­ter from the Chief of the SIS on both
12 Feb­ru­ary and 17 July and sep­ar­ately from Alastair Camp­bell on 17 July. Both agreed
that mak­ing the doc­u­ment pub­lic without con­sult­ing the SIS or the JIC Chair­man was
a “cock-up”. Alastair Camp­bell con­firmed that, once he became aware that the
proven­ance of the doc­u­ment was being ques­tioned because of the inclu­sion of
Dr Al-Marashi’s work without attri­bu­tion, he tele­phoned both the Chief of the SIS and
the JIC Chair­man to apologise.

“We con­clude that the Prime Min­is­ter was cor­rect to describe the doc­u­ment as
con­tain­ing “fur­ther intel­li­gence… about the infra­struc­ture of con­ceal­ment.… It is the
intel­li­gence that they [the Agen­cies] are receiv­ing, and we are passing on to people.”

“How­ever, as we pre­vi­ously con­cluded, it was a mis­take not to con­sult the
Agen­cies before their mater­i­al was put in the pub­lic domain. In evid­ence to us the
Prime Min­is­ter agreed. We have repor­ted the assur­ance that we have been giv­en
that in future the JIC Chair­man will check all intel­li­gence-derived mater­i­al on
behalf of the intel­li­gence com­munity pri­or to publication.”

Iraq_supergunCru­cially, Blair and Camp­bell had jumped the (old Iraqi super-) gun by issu­ing this inform­a­tion, but Camp­bell seems to have got away with it by describ­ing such a breach of the OSA as a “cock-up”.  Or per­haps just anoth­er pre­cip­it­ous “rush of blood to the head” on his part, as recently described in the long-sup­pressed testi­mony of SIS2 revealed around the Chil­cot Enquiry and repor­ted in The Guard­i­an:

“Papers released by the Chil­cot inquiry into the war show that an MI6 officer, iden­ti­fied only as SIS2, had reg­u­lar con­tacts with Camp­bell: “We found Alastair Camp­bell, I think, an enthu­si­ast­ic indi­vidu­al, but also some­what of an unguided mis­sile.” He added: “We also, I think, suffered from his propensity to have rushes of blood to the head and pass vari­ous stor­ies and inform­a­tion to journ­al­ists without appro­pri­ate pri­or con­sulta­tion” (my emphasis).

So why do I sug­gest that Camp­bell could be liable for pro­sec­u­tion?  It appears that he was a “noti­fied per­son” for the pur­poses of Sec­tion 1(1) of the OSA.  While not employed by the intel­li­gence agen­cies, noti­fied per­sons have reg­u­lar access to intel­li­gence mater­i­al and are sub­jec­ted to the highest clear­ance — developed vet­ting — in the same way as the full-time spooks.  As such, they are also bound by the law against dis­clos­ure of such mater­i­al without the pri­or writ­ten per­mis­sion of the head of the agency whose intel­li­gence they want to dis­sem­in­ate.  There is no room for manœuvre, no dam­age assess­ment, and no pub­lic interest defence.  The law is clear. 

And a report in today’s Tele­graph about Andy Coulson and the phone-hack­ing scan­dal seems to show clearly that Camp­bell was just such a noti­fied person:

“Unlike Alastair Camp­bell and oth­er pre­vi­ous hold­ers of the Down­ing Street com­mu­nic­a­tions dir­ect­or role, Mr Coulson was not cleared to see secret intel­li­gence reports and so was spared the most detailed scru­tiny of his back­ground and per­son­al life.….

“The only people who will be sub­ject to developed vet­ting are those who are work­ing in secur­ity mat­ters reg­u­larly and would need to have that sort of information.

“The only spe­cial advisers that would have developed vet­ting would be in the For­eign Office, Min­istry of Defence and maybe the Home Office. Andy Coulson’s role was dif­fer­ent to Alastair Camp­bell’s and Jonath­an Powell.

“Alastair Camp­bell could instruct civil ser­vants. This is why [Coulson] was­n’t neces­sar­ily cleared. Giv­en [the nature of] Andy Coulson’s role as more stra­tegic he would­n’t have neces­sar­ily have been sub­ject to developed vetting.”

So it would appear that Alastair Camp­bell is bang to rights for a breach of the Offi­cial Secrets Act under Sec­tion 1(1).  He released new, unas­sessed and uncleared MI6 intel­li­gence with­in the dodgy dossier.  This is not just some tech­nic­al  infrac­tion of the law — although even if it were, he would still have a case to answer.

EMBNo, this report led inex­or­ably to our coun­try going to war against Iraq, shoulder to shoulder with the US, and the res­ult­ing deaths, maim­ings, pois­on­ings and dis­place­ment of mil­lions of inno­cent Iraqi people.  It has also dir­ectly increased the ter­ror­ist threat to the UK, as Tony Blair was offi­cially warned pre-Iraq war by the then-head of MI5, Eliza Man­ning­ham-Buller.  With the dodgy dossier, Camp­bell has dir­ectly harmed count­less lives and our nation­al security.

Of course, many of us might fan­tas­ise about war­mon­gers get­ting their just deserts in The Hag­ue.  But per­haps the OSA could prove to be Al Camp­bell’s Al Capone-style tax eva­sion moment.

Now, what about The Right Hon­our­able Tony Blair?

How the Light Gets In festival — my talk

Posted on by Annie Machon
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My recent talk at the excel­lent How the Light Gets In philo­sophy fest­iv­al at Hay-on-Wye.  With cred­it and thanks to IAI TV and the staff of the Insti­tute of Art and Ideas, the organ­isers the event.

 

Fair trials in the UK courts? Anyone?

Posted on by Annie Machon
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This art­icle in today’s Guard­i­an about the ongo­ing reper­cus­sions of the Mark Kennedy under­cov­er cop scan­dal earli­er this year piqued my interest.

Mark_KennedyIt appears that the Crown Pro­sec­u­tion Ser­vice (CPS) has sup­pressed key evid­ence about the all-too-appar­ent inno­cence of envir­on­ment­al pro­test­ers in the run-up to their tri­als.  In this case Mark Kennedy aka Stone, the police­man who for years infilt­rated protest groups across Europe, had cov­ertly recor­ded con­ver­sa­tions dur­ing the plan­ning ses­sions to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

Kennedy offered to give evid­ence to prove that the unit he worked for at the time, the private and unac­count­able ACPO-run Nation­al Pub­lic Order Invest­ig­a­tions Unit (NPOIU), had witheld this key evid­ence.  It now appears that the police are claim­ing that they passed all the inform­a­tion on to the CPS, which then seems to have neg­lected  to hand it over to the pro­test­ers’ defence lawyers.

Keir_StarmerWhich makes it even more fas­cin­at­ing that in April this year the Dir­ect­or of Pub­lic Pro­sec­u­tions, fam­ous civil liber­ties QC Keir Starm­er no less, took the unpre­ced­en­ted step of encour­aging those same pro­test­ers to appeal against their con­vic­tions because of poten­tial “police” cover-ups.

It’s just amaz­ing, isn’t it, that when vital inform­a­tion can be kept safely under wraps these doughty crime-fight­ing agen­cies present a united front to the world?  But once someone shines a light into the slith­ery dark corners, they all scramble to avoid blame and leak against each other?

And yet this case is just the tip of a titan­ic leg­al ice­berg, where for years the police and the CPS have been in cahoots to cov­er up many cases of, at best, mis­com­mu­nic­a­tion, and at worst out­right lies about incom­pet­ence and poten­tially crim­in­al activity.

Ian_TomlinsonA couple of months ago George Mon­bi­ot provided an excel­lent sum­mary of recent “mis­state­ments” (a won­der­fully euphemist­ic neo­lo­gism) by the police over the last few years, includ­ing such blatant cases as the death of Ian Tom­lin­son dur­ing the Lon­don G20 protests two years ago, the ongo­ing News of the World phone hack­ing case, and the counter-ter­ror­ism style exe­cu­tion, sorry, shoot­ing of the entirely inno­cent Jean Charles de Menezes, to name but a few.

Mon­bi­ot also dwelt at length on the appalling case of Michael Doherty, a con­cerned fath­er who dis­covered that his 13 year-old daugh­ter was appar­ently being groomed by a pae­do­phile over the inter­net.  He took his con­cerns to the police, who brushed the issue aside.  When Doherty tried to push for a more informed and pro­act­ive response, he was the one who was snatched from his house in an early morn­ing raid and ended up in court, accused of abus­ive and angry phone calls to the sta­tion in a sworn state­ment by a mem­ber of the rel­ev­ant police force, sorry, ser­vice.

And that would have been that — he would have appar­ently been bang to rights on the word of a police sec­ret­ary — apart from the fact he had recor­ded all his phone calls to the police and kept metic­u­lous notes on the pro­gress of the case.  Only this evid­ence led to his right­ful acquittal.

As Mon­bi­ot rightly con­cludes, “justice is impossible if we can­not trust police forces to tell the truth”.

It appears that the notion of “cit­izen journ­al­ists” is just sooo 2006.  Now we all need to be not only journ­al­ists but also “cit­izen law­yers”, just in case we have to defend ourselves against poten­tial police lies.  Yet these are the very organ­isa­tions that are paid from the pub­lic purse to pro­tect civil soci­ety.  Is it any won­der that so many people have a grow­ing dis­trust of them and con­cerns about an encroach­ing, Stasi-like, police state?

This is all part of engrained, top-down Brit­ish cul­ture of secrecy that allows the amorph­ous “secur­ity ser­vices” to think they can get away with any­thing and everything if they make a force­ful enough pub­lic state­ment: black is white, tor­ture is “enhanced inter­rog­a­tion”, and war is peace (or at least a “peace­keep­ing” mis­sion in Libya.…).  Espe­cially if there is no mean­ing­ful over­sight.  We have entered the Orwellian world of NewSpeak.

But plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.  This all happened in the 1970s and 80s with the Irish com­munity, and also in the 1990s with the ter­rible mis­car­riage of justice around the Israeli embassy bomb­ing in 1994.  If you have the time, please do read the detailed case here: Down­load Israeli_Embassy_Case

We need to remem­ber our history.

The Israeli Embassy Two — a gross miscarriage of justice

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Samar_Alami Jawad_Botmeh Over the last few years there have been a num­ber of egre­gious cases of police and state cov­er-ups in the UK around the deaths and wrong­ful pro­sec­u­tions of inno­cent people.

This brings to my mind the appalling mis­car­riage of justice that occurred in the 1990s when two Palestini­an stu­dents, a young woman called Samar Alami and a young man called Jawad Bot­meh, were both wrong­fully con­victed of con­spir­acy to bomb the Israeli embassy in Lon­don in July 1994. 

In this case a highly soph­ist­ic­ated car bomb as det­on­ated out­side the embassy.  Thank­fully nobody was killed, but a num­ber of people suffered minor injur­ies.   Alami and Bot­meh had con­nec­tions to Palestini­an polit­ic­al sup­port groups based in Lon­don at the time, many of whom were roun­ded up dur­ing the invest­ig­a­tion.  Bot­meh had naively helped out a shad­owy and nev­er-iden­ti­fied fig­ure called Reda Moghr­abi, who asked for assist­ance in buy­ing a second-hand car at auc­tion.  This was the car that was used in the explosion.

Why is this case an example of estab­lish­ment cov­er-up?  Well,  this was one of the cases that former MI5 officer Dav­id Shayler blew the whistle on dur­ing the 1990s.  He revealed the exist­ence of two rel­ev­ant doc­u­ments that should have been dis­closed to the defence but, for some unac­count­able reas­on, were not.

The first, an agent report from a cred­ible and trus­ted source, poin­ted to a non-Palestini­an group plan­ning the attack before it had even occurred.  This report was not acted upon by the MI5 officer respons­ible, who then tried to cov­er up her mis­take.  She was caught out, and there was a much-dis­cussed intern­al inquiry into the mat­ter with­in MI5’s G Branch (inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism) in late 1994.

But there was anoth­er doc­u­ment — one writ­ten by G9/1, the seni­or MI5 officer who over­saw the post-incid­ent invest­ig­a­tion.  His view was that Mossad, the extern­al Israeli intel­li­gence agency, had car­ried out a con­trolled explo­sion out­side its own embassy (the shad­owy and uniden­ti­fied Reda Moghr­abi being the poten­tially cru­cial miss­ing link) in order to acquire the long-deman­ded addi­tion­al secur­ity pro­tec­tion around Israeli interests in the UK, and also to shat­ter the Palestini­an sup­port net­works in Lon­don — a long-term object­ive of Mossad.

The gov­ern­ment at the time tried to dis­miss these dis­clos­ures.  How­ever, the much-missed Private Eye invest­ig­at­ive   journ­al­ist, Paul Foot, and the indefatig­able law­yer, Gareth Peirce, fol­lowed them up and pur­sued them tire­lessly through the media and the courts. 

And guess what?  It turns out that these two key doc­u­ments had indeed not been dis­closed to the leg­al defence team dur­ing the tri­al of Alami and Bot­meh — and not just by the hap­less spooks.  It emerged dur­ing the appeal hear­ing that no few­er than sev­en people from a vari­ety of police and intel­li­gence organ­isa­tions had failed to dis­close the rel­ev­ant doc­u­ment­a­tion to the defence.  This can­not be explained away as an inno­cent over­sight, a cock-up — it bears all the hall­marks of a delib­er­ate, sys­tem­ic estab­lish­ment cover-up.

All this rep­res­en­ted, at the very least, a need for a retri­al but also a pos­sible gross mis­car­riage of justice.  And yet, while acknow­ledging that these doc­u­ments did indeed exist dur­ing the appeal hear­ing and bey­ond, the presid­ing m’luds decided to ignore all case law and European law and let those two inno­cents rot in pris­on.  After all, it would be ter­ribly embar­rass­ing to vin­dic­ate the actions of an intel­li­gence whis­tleblower, would­n’t it?

As a res­ult, the poor pawns in this sick estab­lish­ment game, Jawad Bot­meh and Samar Alami, ended up serving their full sen­tences, des­pite the over­whelm­ing body of evid­ence prov­ing their inno­cence, and were finally released in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

For any­one inter­ested in the detailed hor­ror story behind this flag­rant mis­car­riage of justice, here is the rel­ev­ant chapter from my long-defunct book: Down­load The_Israeli_Embassy_Case

Guardian article: the role of the spies in the UK

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Here’s the text of an art­icle I wrote for The Guard­i­an a while ago, where I sug­gest we need a fresh per­spect­ive and some clear think­ing on the role of the spies in the UK. 

Worth reit­er­at­ing, fol­low­ing the pre-empt­ive arrest of protesters: 

Mark_KennedyThe cas­cade of rev­el­a­tions about secret police­men, start­ing with PC Mark Kennedy/environmental act­iv­ist “Mark Stone”, has high­lighted the iden­tity crisis afflict­ing the Brit­ish secur­ity estab­lish­ment. Private under­cov­er police units are hav­ing their James Bond moment – cider shaken, not stirred – while MI5 has become ever more plod-like, yet without the accom­pa­ny­ing over­sight. How has this happened to our demo­cracy without any pub­lic debate?

From the late 19th cen­tury the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Spe­cial Branch invest­ig­ated ter­ror­ism while MI5, estab­lished in 1909, was a counter-intel­li­gence unit focus­ing on espi­on­age and polit­ic­al “sub­ver­sion”. The switch began in 1992 when Dame Stella Rim­ing­ton, then head of MI5, effected a White­hall coup and stole primacy for invest­ig­at­ing Irish ter­ror­ism from the Met. As a res­ult MI5 magic­ally dis­covered that sub­ver­sion was not such a threat after all – this rev­el­a­tion only three years after the Ber­lin Wall came down – and trans­ferred all its staff over to the new, sexy counter-ter­ror­ism sec­tions. Since then, MI5 has been eagerly build­ing its counter-ter­ror­ism empire, des­pite this being more obvi­ously evid­en­tial police work.

Spe­cial Branch was releg­ated to a sup­port­ing role, dab­bling in organ­ised crime and anim­al rights act­iv­ists, but not ter­ribly excited about either. Its prestige had been ser­i­ously tar­nished. It also had a group of exper­i­enced under­cov­er cops – known then as the Spe­cial Duties Sec­tion – with time on their hands.

Acpo_logoIt should there­fore come as little sur­prise that Acpo, the private lim­ited com­pany com­pris­ing seni­or police officers across the coun­try, came up with the bril­liant idea of using this skill-set against UK “domest­ic extrem­ists”. Acpo set up the Nation­al Pub­lic Order Intel­li­gence Unit (NPOIU). This first focused primar­ily on anim­al rights act­iv­ists, but mis­sion creep rap­idly set in and the unit’s role expan­ded into peace­ful protest groups. When this unac­count­able, Stasi-like unit was revealed it rightly caused an out­cry, espe­cially as the term “domest­ic extrem­ist” is not recog­nised under UK law, and can­not leg­ally be used as jus­ti­fic­a­tion to aggress­ively invade an indi­vidu­al’s pri­vacy because of their legit­im­ate polit­ic­al beliefs and act­iv­ism. So, plod has become increas­ingly spooky. What of the spooks?

As I men­tioned, they have been aggress­ively hoover­ing up the pres­ti­gi­ous counter-ter­ror­ism work. But, des­pite what the Amer­ic­ans have hys­ter­ic­ally asser­ted since 9/11, ter­ror­ism is not some unique form of “evil­tude”. It is a crime – a hideous, shock­ing one, but still a crime that should be invest­ig­ated, with evid­ence gathered, due pro­cess applied and the sus­pects on tri­al in front of a jury.

A mature demo­cracy that respects human rights and the rule of law should not intern sus­pects or render them to secret pris­ons and tor­ture them for years. And yet this is pre­cisely what our spooks are now allegedly doing – par­tic­u­larly when col­lud­ing with their US counterparts.

Also, MI5 and MI6 oper­ate out­side any real­ist­ic demo­crat­ic over­sight and con­trol. The remit of the intel­li­gence and secur­ity com­mit­tee in par­lia­ment only cov­ers the policy, admin­is­tra­tion and fin­ance of the spies. Since the com­mit­tee’s incep­tion in 1994 it has repeatedly failed to mean­ing­fully address more ser­i­ous ques­tions about the spies’ role. The spooks are effect­ively above the law, while at the same time pro­tec­ted by the dra­coni­an Offi­cial Secrets Act. This makes the abuses of the NPOIU seem almost quaint. So what to do? A good first step might be to have an informed dis­cus­sion about the real­ist­ic threats to the UK. The police and spies huddle behind the pro­tect­ive phrase “nation­al secur­ity”. But what does this mean?

Climate_camp_and_policeThe core idea should be safe­guard­ing the nation’s integ­rity. A group of well-mean­ing envir­on­ment­al pro­test­ers should not even be on the radar. And, no mat­ter how awful, the occa­sion­al ter­ror­ist attack is not an exist­en­tial threat to the fab­ric of the nation in the way of, say, the planned Nazi inva­sion in 1940. Nor is it even close to the sus­tained bomb­ing of gov­ern­ment, infra­struc­ture and mil­it­ary tar­gets by the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA in the 70s-90s.

Once we under­stand the real threats, we as a nation can dis­cuss the steps to take to pro­tect ourselves; what meas­ures should be taken and what liber­ties occa­sion­ally and leg­ally com­prom­ised, and what demo­crat­ic account­ab­il­ity exists to ensure that the secur­ity forces do not exceed their remit and work with­in the law.

Can the product of bugs be used as court evidence in the UK?

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Black_sheep?_textAn inter­est­ing story on Chan­nel 4 TV news today: four Lon­don police officers are being pro­sec­uted for beat­ing up Babar Ahmad in 2003 while arrest­ing him on sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism charges.  And it turns out that the key evid­ence for the pro­sec­u­tion comes not from Ahmad’s com­plaint, nor from pho­to­graphs of his injur­ies, but from the product of an eaves­drop­ping device, more com­monly known as a bug, planted in his home by the UK Secur­ity Ser­vice, MI5.

It’s inter­est­ing in itself that MI5 has released this inform­a­tion for court pro­ceed­ings against Met counter-ter­ror­ism officers.  I shall res­ist spec­u­lat­ing now, but shall be watch­ing devel­op­ments with interest.

But the point I want to make quickly today is about the use of inter­cept mater­i­al as leg­al evid­ence in UK courts.  This can poten­tially be cru­cial for law­yers when speak­ing to their cli­ents, journ­al­ists who wish to pro­tect their sources, polticial act­iv­ists, and those who simply wish to pro­tect their inher­ent right to pri­vacy as the encroach­ing elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance state con­tin­ues to swell.

It can also be poten­tially use­ful inform­a­tion for MPs talk­ing to their con­stitu­ents.  Indeed, return­ing to the years-long case of Babar Ahmad, there was a media furore in 2008 when it was revealed that the Met had author­ised the bug­ging of his con­ver­sa­tions with his MP Sad­iq Khan dur­ing pris­on visits. 

And who was the com­mand­ing officer who author­ised this?  Step for­ward former Met Counter Ter­ror­ism supremo, Andy Hay­man, that much esteemed defend­er of Brit­ish civil liber­ties who recently sug­ges­ted “dawn raids” and “snatch squads ” be used against polit­ic­al activists.

Unlike most oth­er west­ern coun­tries, the UK does not allow the use of tele­phone inter­cept as evid­ence in a court of law.  As I’ve writ­ten before, it’s a hangover from the cold war spy­ing game.  MI5 has tra­di­tion­ally seen phone taps as a source of intel­li­gence, not evid­ence, des­pite the fact that much of their work is notion­ally more evid­en­tially based in the 21st cen­tury.  It also still remains a sub­ject of debate and a fiercely fought rear­gard action by the spies them­selves, who claim telecheck is a “sens­it­ive technique”. 

As if we don’t all know that our phones can be bugged.….

How­ever, eaves­drop­ping devices that are planted in your prop­erty — your home, your office, even your car — can indeed pro­duce evid­ence that can be used against you in a court of law.   All this requires a Home Office War­rant (HOW) to make it leg­al, but Home Sec­ret­ar­ies are tra­di­tion­ally reluct­ant to refuse a request in the interests of “nation­al secur­ity”.  Moreover, if the own­er of the prop­erty agrees to a bug, even without a HOW, they can be leg­ally used.  So if you live in ren­ted accom­mod­a­tion, befriend your landlord!

Not a lot of people know all that — but we should. 

How the Light Gets In — speaking in Hay-on-Wye, May 30 2011

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How_the_light_gets_in_Banner I did two ses­sions at Hay-on-Wye philo­sophy and music fest­iv­al — How the Light gets In in May 2011.

The first was a debate called “An Age of Trans­par­ency” with neo-con­ser­vat­ive com­ment­at­or Douglas Mur­ray, and philo­soph­er Nigel Warburton.

The second was my talk about “Spies, Lies, and Life on the Run”.

Here’s a link to a video of my talk.

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So wasn’t the royal wedding lovely?

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Well, yes, for some per­haps, and no doubt for the happy couple.

How­ever, oth­ers spent the glor­i­ous day in a bare, con­crete police cell, pre-empt­ively arres­ted for what they might do and untrace­able to their loved ones and law­yers.  Effect­ively they were “dis­ap­peared”, taken off the streets in case they uttered some­thing that might mar the great day or, heav­en for­bid, caused some embarrassment.

A few days ago I wrote a piece high­light­ing my con­cerns about the threatened secur­ity response to pos­sible pro­test­ers — draw­ing com­par­is­ons with the mind­set, if not the viol­ent tac­tics, of the thugs in Syr­i­a’s secur­ity appar­at­us.  But still, in some deep recess of my mind and against all the accu­mu­lated evid­ence from my last 15 years, I found I still had an emo­tion­al, resid­ual echo of the notion of Brit­ish fair play that, really, we don’t do those kinds of things in the UK.  Well, then I was a child, and spoke as a child.… 

In the run up to the happy nup­tials, the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police stated that it had no spe­cif­ic intel­li­gence of any ter­ror­ist threat from either dis­sid­ent Irish repub­lic­ans, nor from any pos­sible group­ing emer­ging from the Middle East.  Des­pite this, the secur­ity forces had launched a massive intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing oper­a­tion to hunt down known “anarch­ists” who might want to voice their protest against the concept of the mon­archy.  Act­iv­ist pages on Face­book were sud­denly deleted with no warn­ing, but the com­pany said it was because of regis­tra­tion issues, and not because of the police.

Yes, there may well have been some who wanted to cause viol­ence — after which they could have been arres­ted legit­im­ately under the terms of the law .  How­ever, what the police did in this case was in an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent league.  Using the meth­od­o­logy if not the bru­tal­ity of the Syr­i­an mukhabar­at, they organ­ised house raids and snatch squads.  They banned cer­tain act­iv­ists from Lon­don, and arres­ted oth­ers both in the days before the wed­ding and on the day itself. 

Those caught in the secur­ity sweep included a Pro­fess­or of Anthro­po­logy, Chris Knight, and his friends who were plan­ning a bit of mildly amus­ing street theatre involving a fake guil­lot­ine and a Prince Andrew dummy (is that tautologous?).

Oth­ers swept up by the secur­ity forces included a bunch of envir­on­ment­al­ist squat­ters who were busily tend­ing their mar­ket garden, accord­ing to rightly con­cerned MP John McDon­nell, and some ran­dom “zom­bies” who wanted to go to an altern­at­ive “not the roy­al wed­ding” garden party.  Hardly the stuff of revolu­tion­ary nightmares.

Hug_the_Police2And then there’s the case of Charlie Veitch, now denounced across the UK media as the known anarch­ist. Yes, Charlie is anti-roy­al­ist and wanted to voice his views, but he runs an inter­na­tion­ally-known act­iv­ist organ­isa­tion called the Love Police, for chris­sakes.  The peace­ful inten­tions of the organ­isa­tion might pos­sibly be giv­en away by the name.…

So what happened? On Thursday even­ing two police officers, tooled up with proto-Borg tech, muscled their way into the Cam­bridge home he shares with his girl­friend, Silkie Carlo, declar­ing that they were there to arrest him and search the place. They had the pres­ence of mind to film the whole pro­cess and ask some per­tin­ent questions.

Charlie’s alleged pre-crime?  That he had pos­ted a fright­en­ingly pres­ci­ent video on You­tube say­ing that he thought he was being spied on, but still cri­tiquing the roy­al wed­ding and sug­gest­ing that fel­low act­iv­ists get togeth­er in Soho Square, Lon­don (quite a dis­tance away from the fest­iv­it­ies) on the day.  OK, so he had a bit of a rant — but that’s what people do on You­tube.  Agree with him or strongly dis­agree, it’s called his free­dom of expres­sion — a much-vaunted, tra­di­tion­al Brit­ish liberty. 

But in the eyes of the police, appar­ently he was “con­spir­ing to cause a pos­sible breach of the peace”, and needed to be locked up.   It’s like we’ve time-trav­elled back to pre-revolu­tion­ary 18th cen­tury France, where the king could issue a lettre de cachet to send people to the Bastille.

So at the very time that Prince Wil­li­am and his blush­ing bride were cre­ated Duke and Duch­ess of Cam­bridge, a Brit­ish cit­izen was raided, locked up and hid­den away in a police cell in that very city for exer­cising free speech. 

On Thursday night he was hauled off to the Cam­bridge nick, which then refused to con­firm to his under­stand­ably upset girl­friend where he was being held, before being transfered to the Met Police on Fri­day morn­ing and held incom­mu­nic­ado for the rest of the day.  Fam­ily and law­yers then appar­ently spent fruit­less hours ringing around all the Lon­don police sta­tions try­ing to track him down.  So Charlie had effect­ively been “dis­ap­peared”, like a dis­sid­ent in a total­it­ari­an régime.

So let’s get this straight — we’re talk­ing about the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police spy­ing on known act­iv­ists (as we all now know they do, after the under­cov­er cop scan­dal earli­er this year) to pre­vent them from express­ing their legit­im­ate polit­ic­al views about the wed­ding of Kate and Wills.  The secur­ity forces had already stated that there was no spe­cif­ic ter­ror­ist threat, so this was all about pre­vent­ing an embar­rass­ing incid­ent on the big day.  And I’m sorry, but I don’t think that Pre­ven­tion of Embar­rass­ment is covered by the leg­al code.

Plus, these arrests were pre-empt­ive to stop a pos­sible crime which might be com­mit­ted — and let’s face it, only breach of the peace at that.  Not a biggy.

So we are basic­ally look­ing at the police spy­ing on and then pre-empt­ively arrest­ing cam­paign­ers for being poten­tial dis­sid­ents, for ThoughtCrime.  How much more Orwellian can it get?

I men­tioned the tac­tics of the Syr­i­an secur­ity forces and their bru­tal crack-down.  I’ve also pre­vi­ously writ­ten about how the slide towards fas­cism began in Ger­many in the 1930s with the bru­tal­isa­tion of intern­al oppos­i­tion­ists and dissidents . 

So let’s really stop and think about this — do we really want to let these early indic­a­tions slide by, uncon­tested? After all, we have the Olympics and the Dia­mond Jubilee next year, and no doubt the same, or exten­ded, powers will come into force.  How far will we let it go before we wake up to the threat?

As I’ve writ­ten before, with thanks to Pas­tor Mar­tin Niemoeller:

First they came for the Irish in the 1980s,

But I was not Irish so I did not speak up.

Then they came for the Muslims after 9/11,

But I was not a Muslim, so I did not speak up.

Then they came for the “domest­ic extremists”,

But I was not an act­iv­ist, so I did not speak up.

Then they came for me;

and there was nobody left to speak up for me.

 

RTTV interview on the royal wedding and arrest of UK activists

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My inter­view on 29 April 2011 for RTTV about the pre-empt­ive arrests of UK polit­ic­al act­iv­ists in the run-up to the roy­al wedding. 

Thoughtcrime appears to have arrived in the UK — and I acci­dent­ally became a roy­al wed­ding com­ment­at­or (sort of). 

Well, nev­er say nev­er in life.…

 

A tale of two countries — pre-emptive policing in Britain and Syria

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What a dif­fer­ence a mere month makes in the UK media.  At the end of March The Inde­pend­ent news­pa­per pro­duced this art­icle in the wake of the huge TUC anti-cuts protest in Lon­don, where the Brit­ish Home Sec­ret­ary was cas­tig­ated for con­sid­er­ing great­er police powers to pre­vent such “trouble” again, with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the forth­com­ing roy­al wedding.

At the time former assist­ant com­mis­sion­er at Scot­land Yard, Andy Hay­man, who had served as the head of the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Counter-Ter­ror­ism squad and was, umm,  reportedly a much-esteemed officer before his early resig­na­tion, adop­ted a mus­cu­lar tone by call­ing for “snatch squads” and “dawn raids” to be car­ried out by police against sus­pec­ted trouble­makers.  How ter­ribly un-British.

Per­haps I’m start­ing at shad­ows, but with the above in mind two inter­est­ing aricles appeared in that very same news­pa­per today.

The first art­icle that caught my eye con­firmed there was indeed just such a secur­ity crack­down against sus­pec­ted dis­sid­ents in the UK on the eve of the roy­al wed­ding.  Lynne Owens, the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police assist­ant com­mis­sion­er in charge of the roy­al poli­cing oper­a­tion, is quoted as saying:

““We have to be abso­lutely clear. If any­one comes to Lon­don intend­ing to com­mit crim­in­al acts, we will act quickly, robustly and decis­ively.” She said the Met was work­ing with forces across the coun­try and would use “spot­ters” to identi­fy those caus­ing trouble.”

The art­icle goes on to say:

“As police teams step up their pro­cess of “pre-event invest­ig­a­tion” and “intel­li­gence gath­er­ing”, reports have come in from pro­test­ers that plain-clothed police are turn­ing up at their homes to warn them against attend­ing Fri­day’s event.” 

Military&pageantryIt seems that the poor old Met is hav­ing con­nip­tions about poten­tially embar­rass­ing pro­test­ers sul­ly­ing the pageantry of the roy­al wed­ding and is put­ting our money where its mouth is.  Last week The Tele­graph also repor­ted that counter-intel­li­gence oper­a­tions were being con­duc­ted against “anarch­ists” to pre­vent trouble on 29th April.

Inter­est­ing use of lan­guage, but I sup­pose that one news­pa­per­’s “pro­test­er” will always be another­’s “anarch­ist”.…

So what of the second art­icle that con­cerned me?  This described the bru­tal secur­ity crack­down in Syr­ia, where the secret police were pre-empt­ively hunt­ing down and arrest­ing sus­pec­ted dissidents:

“Syr­i­a’s feared secret police raided hun­dreds of homes yes­ter­day as author­it­ies stepped up attempts to crush the pro-reform movement.….”

UK For­eign Sec­ret­ary, Wil­li­am Hag­ue is quoted as say­ing that:

“Syr­ia is now at a fork in the road… it can choose ever-more viol­ent repres­sion which can only ever bring short-term secur­ity for the author­it­ies there.”

How much more need I say?  Put­ting aside the fact that Hag­ue seems to have acquired his very own fork(ed tongue), the only dis­cern­able dif­fer­ence at this stage is in the sheer scale of the bru­tal­ity and repres­sion, not the mind-set or intent.

It’s a slip­pery slope.….

Just how many unaccountable spy organisations are out there in the UK?

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Black_sheep?Unsuc­cess­fully res­ist­ing the tempta­tion to say that the obvi­ous ones (MI5, MI6 and GCHQ) are still pretty unac­count­able, I was intrigued by a few recent art­icles in The Guard­i­an. 

George Mon­bi­ot, someone I have enorm­ous respect for but don’t always see eye-to-swiv­el­ling-eye with, wrote an excel­lent piece about the after­shocks of the Mark Kennedy/undercover cop scan­dal earli­er this year. 

Mon­bi­ot calls for the abol­i­tion of that demo­crat­ic­ally unac­count­able seni­or plod organ­isa­tion and PLC, the Asso­ci­ation of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).  This was the organ­isa­tion under whose aegis the under­cov­er cops spied on hap­less envir­on­ment protest­ors — the very people who are now being encour­aged to appeal against their con­vic­tions by Dir­ect­or of Pub­lic Pro­sec­u­tions, no less.

Mon­bi­ot quotes a couple of acronyms cov­er­ing this shady world of police spy­ing: NPOIU and NECTU.   But in anoth­er Guard­i­an art­icle today — about the police tak­ing pre-empt­ive steps against so-called anarch­ists in the run-up to the roy­al wed­ding — I saw this:

“The Met is also get­ting intel­li­gence from the Fix­ated Threat Assess­ment Centre, a police unit set up in 2006 togeth­er with men­tal health agen­cies to identi­fy indi­vidu­als who are obsessed with mem­bers of the roy­al fam­ily, politi­cians or celebrities.”

Que?  When was this unit set up, and who runs it?  What about data pro­tec­tion and pri­vacy of med­ic­al records?  Or are these notions already just quaint ana­chron­isms, and a de facto Big Broth­er data­base is already in place?

Per­haps it is time for ACPO to make a clean breast of all the little group­ings it has set up over the last decade.….

My article about the role of the spies, The Guardian, 24 January 2011

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Annie_1_Heleen_Banner Here’s a link to my art­icle in The Guard­i­an today, explor­ing the con­fused roles of mod­ern Brit­ish spies, and look­ing at some ways to sort out the mess.  Both the police and the spooks seem to be hav­ing a bit of an iden­tity crisis at the moment…

 

Are envir­on­ment­al act­iv­ists really a spy­ing priority?

Rev­el­a­tions about police­men spy­ing on envir­on­ment­al act­iv­ists sug­gest we need a sense of per­spect­ive on threats to the nation.

The cas­cade of rev­el­a­tions about secret police­men, start­ing with PC Mark Kennedy/environmental act­iv­ist “Mark Stone”, has high­lighted the iden­tity crisis afflict­ing the Brit­ish secur­ity estab­lish­ment. Private under­cov­er police units are hav­ing their James Bond moment – cider shaken, not stirred – while MI5 has become ever more plod-like, yet without the accom­pa­ny­ing over­sight. How has this happened to our demo­cracy without any pub­lic debate?

From the late 19th cen­tury the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police Spe­cial Branch invest­ig­ated ter­ror­ism while MI5, estab­lished in 1909, was a counter-intel­li­gence unit focus­ing on espi­on­age and polit­ic­al “sub­ver­sion”. The switch began in 1992 when Dame Stella Rim­ing­ton, then head of MI5, effected a White­hall coup and stole primacy for invest­ig­at­ing Irish ter­ror­ism from the Met. As a res­ult MI5 magic­ally dis­covered that sub­ver­sion was not such a threat after all – this rev­el­a­tion only three years after the Ber­lin Wall came down – and trans­ferred all its staff over to the new, sexy counter-ter­ror­ism sec­tions. Since then, MI5 has been eagerly build­ing its counter-ter­ror­ism empire, des­pite this being more obvi­ously evid­en­tial police work.

Spe­cial Branch was releg­ated to a sup­port­ing role, dab­bling in organ­ised crime and anim­al rights act­iv­ists, but not ter­ribly excited about either. Its prestige had been ser­i­ously tar­nished. It also had a group of exper­i­enced under­cov­er cops – known then as the Spe­cial Duties Sec­tion – with time on their hands.

It should there­fore come as little sur­prise that Acpo, the private lim­ited com­pany com­pris­ing seni­or police officers across the coun­try, came up with the bril­liant idea of using this skill-set against UK “domest­ic extrem­ists”. Acpo set up the Nation­al Pub­lic Order Intel­li­gence Unit (NPOIU). This first focused primar­ily on anim­al rights act­iv­ists, but mis­sion creep rap­idly set in and the unit’s role expan­ded into peace­ful protest groups. When this unac­count­able, Stasi-like unit was revealed it rightly caused an out­cry, espe­cially as the term “domest­ic extrem­ist” is not recog­nised under UK law, and can­not leg­ally be used as jus­ti­fic­a­tion to aggress­ively invade an indi­vidu­al’s pri­vacy because of their legit­im­ate polit­ic­al beliefs and act­iv­ism. So, plod has become increas­ingly spooky. What of the spooks?

As I men­tioned, they have been aggress­ively hoover­ing up the pres­ti­gi­ous counter-ter­ror­ism work. But, des­pite what the Amer­ic­ans have hys­ter­ic­ally asser­ted since 9/11, ter­ror­ism is not some unique form of “evil­tude”. It is a crime – a hideous, shock­ing one, but still a crime that should be invest­ig­ated, with evid­ence gathered, due pro­cess applied and the sus­pects on tri­al in front of a jury.

A mature demo­cracy that respects human rights and the rule of law should not intern sus­pects or render them to secret pris­ons and tor­ture them for years. And yet this is pre­cisely what our spooks are now allegedly doing – par­tic­u­larly when col­lud­ing with their US counterparts.

Also, MI5 and MI6 oper­ate out­side any real­ist­ic demo­crat­ic over­sight and con­trol. The remit of the intel­li­gence and secur­ity com­mit­tee in par­lia­ment only cov­ers the policy, admin­is­tra­tion and fin­ance of the spies. Since the com­mit­tee’s incep­tion in 1994 it has repeatedly failed to mean­ing­fully address more ser­i­ous ques­tions about the spies’ role. The spooks are effect­ively above the law, while at the same time pro­tec­ted by the dra­coni­an Offi­cial Secrets Act. This makes the abuses of the NPOIU seem almost quaint. So what to do? A good first step might be to have an informed dis­cus­sion about the real­ist­ic threats to the UK. The police and spies huddle behind the pro­tect­ive phrase “nation­al secur­ity”. But what does this mean?

The core idea should be safe­guard­ing the nation’s integ­rity. A group of well-mean­ing envir­on­ment­al pro­test­ers should not even be on the radar. And, no mat­ter how awful, the occa­sion­al ter­ror­ist attack is not an exist­en­tial threat to the fab­ric of the nation in the way of, say, the planned Nazi inva­sion in 1940. Nor is it even close to the sus­tained bomb­ing of gov­ern­ment, infra­struc­ture and mil­it­ary tar­gets by the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA in the 70s-90s.

Once we under­stand the real threats, we as a nation can dis­cuss the steps to take to pro­tect ourselves; what meas­ures should be taken and what liber­ties occa­sion­ally and leg­ally com­prom­ised, and what demo­crat­ic account­ab­il­ity exists to ensure that the secur­ity forces do not exceed their remit and work with­in the law.

Security forces endanger agent lives, not whistleblowers…

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Our esteemed gov­ern­ments, intel­li­gence agen­cies and police forces always attack whis­tleblowers and organ­isa­tions such as Wikileaks on the grounds that unau­thor­ised dis­clos­ure of clas­si­fied inform­a­tion puts the lives of agents and inform­ants at risk.

Bob_QuickAgent iden­tit­ies, along with ongo­ing oper­a­tions (as Former Assist­ant Com­mis­sion­er of Spe­cial Oper­a­tions at the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police, Bob Quick, found to his cost two years ago) and sens­it­ive invest­ig­at­ory tech­niques, are indeed in need of pro­tec­tion.  Much else is not — par­tic­u­larly inform­a­tion about lies, cov­er-ups, incom­pet­ence and crime.

Indeed, once you delve behind the scream­ing head­lines that whis­tleblower dis­clos­ures have risked agent lives, you often find that this is abso­lutely not the case — in fact their motiv­a­tion is usu­ally to pre­vent fur­ther need­less tor­ture, death and war crimes.  So the US Defence Sec­ret­ary, Robert Gates, was forced to admit that Wikileaks had indeed not endangered lives with the pub­lic­a­tion of the Afghan War Logs last year, and Dav­id Shayler­’s tri­al judge, in his form­al rul­ing, stated that “no lives had been put at risk” by his whistleblowing.

Instead, there is a grow­ing body of evid­ence to sug­gest that the secur­ity forces are the very organ­isa­tions not tak­ing the pro­tec­tion and after­care of their agents seriously.

Mark Kennedy, the under­cov­er police officer who spied on UK envir­on­ment­al protest groups, has gone on the record to say that the super­vi­sion, care and psy­cho­lo­gic­al sup­port provided to him was woe­fully lack­ing.   Kev­in Fulton, a serving sol­dier who infilt­rated the IRA on behalf of the notori­ous Forces Research Unit, has sim­il­arly been hung out to dry and is now attempt­ing to sue the Brit­ish Gov­ern­ment to provide the prom­ised, adequate aftercare.

Mar­tin McGart­land, who worked as a source in North­ern Ire­land at the height of “The Troubles” and is cred­ited with sav­ing 50 lives, has also borne the brunt of this lais­sez faire atti­tude since he stopped work­ing for intel­li­gence.  He has the scars to prove it too, hav­ing sur­vived assas­sin­a­tion attempts, and once blindly leap­ing out of a third floor win­dow in an frantic attempt to escape tor­ture at the hands of the IRA.  As he says:

“Who would put their lives on the line nowadays when they can read what hap­pens to those who did?”, McGart­land says. “I can’t go home and the IRA are sup­posed to be a former ter­ror­ist group. Nobody is hunt­ing down my attack­ers and nobody in author­ity seems to care. That has a dir­ect impact on recruit­ing agents.…”

Denis_DonaldsonThe most egre­gious case is of Denis Don­ald­son, Sinn Féin’s Head of Admin­is­tra­tion at Stor­mont in North­ern Ire­land who was outed as a MI5 and police spy by Gerry Adams in 2006.  He was bru­tally murdered a few months later, allegedly by the Real IRA, hav­ing received little pro­tec­tion or sup­port from his erstwhile spook handlers.

So who is really more likely expose cur­rent agents to the risk of psy­cho­lo­gic­al dam­age, tor­ture and death, or to deter future agents from volun­teer­ing to work with the secur­ity forces?  Prin­cipled whis­tleblowers who expose crime and incom­pet­ence with due care for pro­tect­ing real secrets, or the spooks who take a cava­lier approach to the pas­tor­al care of their agents, and then hang them out to dry once their use­ful­ness is at an end?