Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [238]
During the cold war, British intelligence suffered several Soviet espionage penetrations. The most famous was Kim Philby, who, with four other Cambridge University associates, began spying for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Philby became MI6’s CIA liaison, an invaluable position for a Soviet spy. Other Soviet spies included George Blake, an SIS officer, and Geoffrey Prime, a GCHQ employee. Most known British spies were motivated by ideological, not monetary, reasons. Allegations were made that Sir Roger Hollis, a director general of M15, was a spy, but he was cleared after an investigation in 1974.
The British services do not conduct assassinations. However, British special forces units, the Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS), have taken part in antiterrorist activities against the IRA that some people have charged were assassinations. The most famous case occurred in March 1988, when the SAS killed three IRA members in Gibraltar. The British government claimed that the IRA members were on active service, planning a series of bomb attacks. The SAS has conducted special operations for M16.
The British services, like those in the United States (and in Australia), came under scrutiny after the start of the Iraq war in 2003, when the expected WMD were not found. The Butler Report did not find substantial flaws in how the British intelligence on Iraq was produced. However, the report noted that the intelligence sources on Iraq had grown weaker and less reliable over time and that that fact was not properly conveyed. The report also said that no evidence existed that intelligence had been politicized, which was as serious an issue in Britain as it was in the United States. In response to the concerns raised about intelligence sources, MI6 created the position of a senior quality control officer to review collected intelligence for its credibility and veracity. The new officer is known as “R,” for reports officer. (The head of M16 has traditionally been known as “C,” in honor of the first head of MI6, Sir Mansfield Cumming.)
British intelligence performance has been the target of earlier investigations. In the aftermath of the Falklands War (1982), a probe by Lord Oliver Shewell Franks held that the changes in Argentina’s policy regarding the Falkland Islands should have been obvious through diplomatic and open sources. However, no basis existed to conclude that the Argentine invasion could have been prevented, although the Franks report criticized the Margaret Thatcher government for not paying enough attention to the issue prior to the war.
The main concern of the British intelligence apparatus today is terrorism. Given the fact that there have been three attacks or attempted attacks since July 2005, a great deal of effort must be given to discerning the depth of the threat within the indigenous Muslim population. Indeed, one of the main concerns in the aftermath of the July 7, 2005, attack was whether or not there were connections between the four bombers and al Qaeda. There is evidence that some of the bombers traveled to Pakistan but none about the plot being directed by al Qaeda. The review by the Intelligence and Security Committee urged that greater attention be paid to causes of radicalization within the British population and the “homegrown” terrorism threat.
British security services have also been more public in their concerns about foreign espionage against the United Kingdom. Russia and China are of concern. Intelligence relations with Russia center on the 2006 death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (KGB)—Committee of State