[A-List] Israeli "intelligence"

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Arno Tausch writes:

Dear Ian-

I find your comments, frankly, out of touch with reality. The article is
interesting and makes a lot of sense. Rule number one (I tell you this
as a
former diplomat) - keep your eyes open on all sides, and disregard no
information whatsoever, out of ideological reasons!

=====

Actually these were my comments but with the listserver apparently
processing all mails without registering the original sender some
clarity has been lost.

My comments re Ian Bruce's article are based on a continuing
surveillance of his very interesting and peculiar output in the
provincial newspaper, The Herald, published in Glasgow, Scotland. For
such a provincial newspaper journalist, he appears to be well-connected,
if not so well-informed. Or should that be disinformed? My scepticism
regarding his output is based on a succession of gung-ho articles he has
published which, to be frank, are downright racist in their depiction of
those whom our leaders are bombing with impunity. I can forward these
articles to the list, and will be forwarding his articles in future
anyway, for the purposes of further scrutiny. They reveal as much of
what the establishment would like us to believe as they do of whatever
is really happening on the ground.

I don't disregard information for ideological reasons -- I am acutely
aware of the strong possibility for disinformation being disseminated
for ideological reasons. Bruce is only one in an endless stream of
British journalists whose connections to the UK intelligence services
are legion. Below is a post I forwarded to PEN-L in response to some
queries regarding the Guardian newspaper, whose image as a liberal/left
standard-bearer is belied by its historical and current role in the
evolution of the British state.

Posted to PEN-L on 3 October:

Jim D. reasonably asks:

Michael, shouldn't it be basic that we should distrust all of the
bourgeois 
media -- not just the GUARDIAN -- because they have clear bourgeois
biases, 
including favoring the national security state, etc.? Even though the
New 
York TIMES doesn't seem to be connected with the CIA, I am very careful 
with what I believe in their stories.

=====

Yes, absolutely right. The UK press generally serves a much more unified
"market" which can be segmented according to politics and again
according to presumed degree of affluence/education, giving highbrow
rightwing crap, middlebrow rightwing crap, lowbrow, etc. The Guardian
has traditionally occupied the "left", and has been put to use in
various ways over the last 30 years, not least in helping to hobble
Wilson/Callaghan/Foot Labour, supporting the breakaway Gaitskellite
successor SDP, and ushering in the New Labour ascendancy. An analogous
job to the dishing Labour from the left tactic is being accomplished now
by the Daily Telegraph, which is more likely to complain of the
Conservative Party selling out, and thus support every idiot punk
Thatcherite who declares loyalty to the cause. A while back I
deliberately inserted the mischievous little paragraph from Private Eye
noting Telegraph editor Charles Moore's sighted exit from MI5 HQ. Given
Britain's smaller size and historically more unified news media space,
it's a very cosy club indeed. This means all newspapers are ripe for
manipulation, overt and covert. It also means that information, however
partial or distorted, can inadvertently leak out from time to time,
especially when different branches of the secret state are conducting
their own turf wars, as with the long tussle between MI5 and MI6, and
even between different "wings" of MI5 itself.

I suppose picking on the Guardian goes back to a point raised by Michael
P. back in March/April or thereabouts, when he queried why it was that a
significant proportion of forwarded news articles are from the Guardian.
This got us into the merits of that specific paper, and on to Mark
Jones' point about the historic relationship between the Guardian and
the intelligence services, followed by Michael Pugliese's interventions,
followed by my own research into the British state following the IMF UK
1976 episode, etc. There are people here who are on record as praising
the reliability of the Guardian, and it maybe needs to be reiterated
just how questionable that particular source really is, for all its
housing of worthy social democrats over the years(e.g. Roy Hattersley),
and even the odd radical (Paul Foot, Mark Steel - now at the
Independent, Gary Younge, Seumas Milne). There are still plenty of Polly
Toynbees, Jonathan Freedlands, Martin Kettles, Peter Prestons, Matthew
Engels to keep the liberal intelligentsia happy. (But far better is the
Tory Geoffrey Wheatcroft.) The image of the Guardian as hammer of the
right is helped by its recent history of bringing down various
Conservative Party Ministers, including Neil Hamilton and Jonathan
Aitken. But the related point made by Mark Jones regarding the
realignment of the permanent government towards New Labour and away from
the increasingly unstable and unpredictable Conservatives, riven with
factions and infighting thanks to the punk Thatcherites, adds a
different gloss to the apparently laudable conduct of the Guardian as a
haven of campaigning journalism. The Guardian also got in on the "stop
Portillo" campaign, playing a bit part to the major roles taken by both
Telegraph titles, whose own contributions were so clearly orchestrated
to produce a wholly predictable outcome (Thatcher denying all support
for Portillo just prior to the crucial MPs' vote) show that security
service mischief-making is far from over in the British news media.

You continue:

BTW, traditionally the CIA was the "liberal" spy agency in the US
(compared 
to the FBI). Its agents were sophisticated Ivy League types who
hobnobbed 
with (and corrupted) liberals, social democrats, and laborites. The CIA 
traditionally embraced a more long-term and "enlightened" perspective
than 
the FBI. Is the MI5 the same way? If so, one can learn something from
them 
(and their allies in the media) while being extremely careful not to 
believe everything they say.

=====

There is no doubt that MI5 has housed some seriously reactionary types
over the years, too extreme even for many colleagues. MI6 has its own
horrible history, laid out in detail by Stephen Dorril in his recent
book, but, yes, if one can make comparisons then MI6 would be analogous
to your characterisation of the CIA. Particularly in Northern Ireland,
MI6 comes out rather well compared to the ruthlessness which
characterised MI5 operations there, and which contributed to many
civilian deaths and subverted whatever minimal norms of bourgeois
liberal democracy remained. As Peter Taylor revealed in his "Brits"
series and book, it was via MI6 that Mrs Thatcher broke her vow and
"talked to terrorists". Meanwhile army types were horrified at what MI5
were getting up to. Some of this is revealed in both the David Leigh and
Dorril/Ramsay books on the Wilson plots. There is also a much longer,
detailed study by Paul Foot, "Who Framed Colin Wallace?", Wallace being
an army information officer who was being fed all sorts of smears
regarding Wilson, but whose uncovering of an establishment paedophile
ring led to him being framed for manslaughter and jailed.

It gets more complicated when someone like Foot, for example, who has no
truck with the British state, can be relied upon to indulge his
sectarian tastes by rubbishing e.g. Arthur Scargill, whose limitations
are apparent to many on the left but whose pariah status on the right
means that leftists' disaffections can be exploited, as with the attempt
by Robert Maxwell and Roger Cook in 1990 to frame Scargill and Peter
Heathfield for the misuse of NUM funds and the pocketing of large sums
of Soviet miners' money sent to help striking British miners.

Thus, to answer your question, I think it's a mixture of instinct,
historical knowledge, cross-checking and inspired guesswork. An
important question to answer is, "whose purposes are served by this
reporting?" The advantage of a forum like this is that the latter
particularly can be tested and others who are informed on related and
similar matters can add to the common understanding. Marx's notion of
determinations is useful here, given all the subtexts encountered in
some of the topics we have focused on in recent times, whether on the
IMF in Britain, the marginalisation of punk Thatcherism, the ascendancy
of New Labour, etc. Not to mention the rather more global role performed
by the Financial Times in its campaign against James Wolfensohn.

In closing, you ask:

BTW2, what is PRIVATE EYE's connection with the intelligence goons?

=====

That's an intriguing one. I tried to cover that in my review of David
Leigh's book, noting the relationship of certain individual staff
members to the state (Auberon Waugh, Patrick Marnham, e.g.) and their
toleration by editor Richard Ingrams whose own sympathy towards
Thatcherism and loathing of Harold Wilson significantly skewed the
content of the magazine, and led to the departure of people like Paul
Foot and the noticeable reduction of commitment by other founders like
Willie Rushton and John Wells, who were unhappy with the rather
one-sided nature of the satire being employed. In certain respects the
latterday Ingrams Eye looked like a comic book version of the Spectator.
Under Ian Hislop's editorship, it's become a more equal opportunities
satirist again, and Rushton and Wells returned, as did Paul Foot, to be
joined by Francis Wheen, while old hacks like Peter Mackay, Nigel
Dempster and Patrick Marnham were booted out. Meanwhile former owner
Peter Cook encouraged Hislop to develop the investigative reporting side
of the magazine. I think there is a generally healthy distrust of state
and corporate power displayed in most of the magazine's contents. That
attitude can, of course, be exploited by some in the intelligence
services to score tactical points. To be independent of the goons does
not immunise one from their manipulations. But I would reckon that the
Eye's head and heart are generally in the right place, as concern state
and corporate power at least. On the basis of current evidence, anyway.

Michael K.

=====

This does not explain the role of a provincial newspaper like the
Herald. Until recently the Glasgow Herald, the paper serves a readership
concentrated mostly in the west of Scotland, for obvious reasons.
Intelligence angst about Scottish separatism, close links with
Ireland/Northern Ireland, and now a large Pakistani emigre population
would provide sufficient rationale for spooks to get busy. And busy they
are. What I cannot understand is the point of Bruce's very provocative
disquisitions on the "character" of the Afghan people -- just who is
supposed to be impressed by that? Certainly not the large Pakistani
community, which, incidentally, in my experience, was never enthusiastic
about the "Islamic" ideas of General Zia (the US stooge who came to
power via a bloody coup in 1977, paving the way for Brzezinski-inspired
destabilisation of the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul). Of course
"provincial" newspapers, like foreign ones, however obscure, can be used
in a technique known as "surfacing", where information comes to light in
a faraway place and can then be relayed back to the intended audience
under cover of simply reporting what others have been saying. Hence the
career of Colin Wallace, British Army Information Officer serving in
Northern Ireland in the early 1970s who was being fed lots of whacked
out smears concerning Harold Wilson by the goons of MI5.

Another feature of recent times has been the laments regarding the lack
of "expertise" on Afghanistan and the Middle East generally. The CIA and
allied agencies have been caught short because they have not engaged in
the same levels of infiltration, subversion, etc., that they did under
the Cold War. Better to sub-contract these activities to darker-skinned
types who can live the alcohol-free, celibate and rough lifestyle
necessary. The KGB had the good taste to lay on all kinds of tasty
entrapments for our agents, after all. No such pickings in Kandahar.
Thus which sub-contractor has been using this arrangement for its own
benefit? Probably all of them, but certainly Israeli intelligence which,
as the closest ally to the US, is in the best position to influence and
manipulate according to its prerogatives. One need only see the
energetic performances of Ehud Barak in the world media in recent
months, talking about "terrorism" in such terms as to mirror the
monochrome treatments routinely served up by Mossad et al.

So, I am certainly open to considering evidence that backs up the tale
being peddled by Mr Bruce. But I have to see it first. Meanwhile I've
got plenty that suggests Mr Bruce is simply the current incarnation of
Chapman Pincher, long a reliable establishment urinal (to use E.P.
Thompson's wonderfully accurate description) whereby fragments of fact
are deposited along with judicious helpings of disinformation, mischief
and smear. Our job here is to evaluate what gets passed off as reportage
and distil the urine accordingly.

Michael Keaney