The secret reality of spying on allies

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Times
By Michael Evans and Charles Bremner



AN intriguing snippet of Treasury information, clearly not intended for wider circulation, has exposed an apparent covert British intelligence operation in 1993 against the French.

In its reasoning for exempting from publication one passage in documents relating to Black Wednesday, a Treasury official referred to a 1993 report which read: “On Sunday December 22 we heard that the French were intending to announce an increase in their interest rate the following morning.”

There are supposed to be strict rules about spying on your friends. MI6 and GCHQ, the Government communications headquarters, are prohibited from engaging in “active” espionage against the French or other allies but there have been many allegations that these have been bent.

The guidelines for MI5 also say to leave your friends alone, a former intelligence official said. One intelligence expert, studying the Treasury reference concluded that the information was unlikely to have emanated from an “aggressive” agent-running operation. Had the information been gleaned clandestinely by MI6 in Paris from a high-level source inside the French finance ministry, it would have been sent to London in the form of a “CX” report, the normal method for circulating classified material, which would have left no doubt about its sensitivity.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1477686,00.html