Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 And the Shayler Affair

By Annie Machon

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 185776952X
• ISBN13: 9781857769524
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Book Guild Ltd
• Length: 387 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.5" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Fine study of how badly MI5 and MI6 protect the British people

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.