MI6 flaws exposed by former diplomat (Heap On UK Intell & Hutton inquiry)

[Khephra]

MI6 flaws exposed by former diplomat

David Leigh
Thursday October 2, 2003
The Guardian

A former senior British diplomat today breaks the traditional taboo on discussing MI6 operations to launch a broadside against the intelligence agencies' failures in the wake of the Hutton inquiry.

Writing in the Guardian, Sir Peter Heap, ambassador to Brazil until 1995 and subsequently an adviser to the HSBC investment bank, quotes his own experiences with MI6 which show, he says, why politicians allowed themselves to be misled over Iraq.

"The poor quality of intelligence material ... was far too readily accepted at face value by ministers."

He describes how he once discovered an MI6 officer at one embassy sending back a secret intelligence report which he described as emanating from a "well-placed source". But it was an article lifted from a local newspaper.

more...........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1053863,00.html

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The truth behind the MI6 facade

Governments should realise that intelligence is often simply self-serving gossip - or just plain wrong

Peter Heap
Thursday October 2, 2003
The Guardian

The Hutton inquiry seems likely to conclude that no one in government set out to significantly mislead the public over the threat from Iraq. This should put the focus on the real issue: why the government got it so wrong in stating that Iraq was a threat at all, thereby providing the justification for going to war. That means a debate about the poor quality of intelligence material that was far too readily accepted at face value by ministers.

I doubt very much that the inaccurate data to bolster the case for the war was an aberration. I suggest that the whole system of intelligence-gathering is all too often prone to producing inadequate, unreliable and distorted assessments, often at considerable cost. But only very rarely, as in the Hutton inquiry, is intelligence material subject to the same scrutiny, verification and testing as information governments receive from other sources. Naturally there are, by definition, genuine secrets in obtaining such material, but the whole process is wrapped around in an unnecessary aura of secrecy, mystery and danger that prevents those from outside the security services applying normal and rigorous judgments on what they produce.

It is difficult to see why, for example, Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of MI6, should have given his evidence to the Hutton inquiry by telephone. Everyone knows his name and what he does. Even his head office is probably not far behind the Houses of Parliament in its recognition factor. Yet the manner of his appearance merely enhances his mystique rather than protects national security.

As a diplomat who worked in nine overseas posts over 36 years, I saw quite a lot of MI6 at work. They were represented in almost all of those diplomatic missions. They presented themselves as normal career diplomats, but often, indeed usually, they were a breed apart. And it normally only took the local British community a few weeks to spot them. "That's one of your spies," they would say at an embassy social function. "Spies, what spies?" we would reply. "You've been watching too much television." But they were usually spot on.

more...........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1053977,00.html