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Can we clear something up at the outset? The Russian government is not coming over all outraged because it knows it is being falsely accused of complicity in the attempted murder in Salisbury of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. It has more knowledge of the nature of its own involvement than anyone.

No, its theatrical expressions of outrage stem from quite other feelings. The feeling that it should be allowed to get away with poisoning “traitors” in the UK, as it did with Alexander Litvinenko. The feeling that London, having been more greedy than any other financial centre for Russian mafia money, is not showing appropriate respect to the capo di tutti capi himself — Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Russian embassy in Ottawa. Canada joined Britain and other allies in expelling Russian diplomats in response to the Salisbury attack. Photo: Getty Images.

Soon after the Salisbury nerve gas attack on Sergei and Yuliya Skripal, James Nixey and I set out principles that should govern the UK’s response, and assessed potential actions against them. We argued that Britain should:

  • impose measures that are not merely symbolic, but impose costs to deter future unacceptable actions;
  • target key Russian interests, not the wider population; and
  • accept that an effective response will impose costs on some UK interests.

The UK response set out by Theresa May on 14 March comprises three sets of measures:

  1. Diplomatic sanctions: high-level bilateral contacts have been frozen, and no ministers or members of the royal family will attend the World Cup.
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Un domingo tranquilo en Madrid me sorprendió el artículo en ABC «Negación, distracción y confusión» del señor Simon Manley, embajador del Reino Unido en España. Simon es un colega a quien aprecio por su alta profesionalidad y a quien tengo una simpatía personal. Como veo, los representantes del Reino Unido han recibido las instrucciones desde Londres para promover insistentemente la postura británica sobre el llamado «caso de los Skripal» a través de la prensa. Nosotros, los diplomáticos, estamos convencidos de que «los canales diplomáticos» son los más adecuados para resolver problemas. Pero si la parte británica se siente incapaz de convencernos a través del diálogo profesional y escoge la prensa como el canal de comunicación, no me queda otra opción sino responder por la misma vía.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un domingo tranquilo en Salisbury, una ciudad con una de las catedrales más bonitas del Reino Unido, un padre y su hija fueron víctimas del primer ataque con agente nervioso cometido en Europa desde el fin de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Serguéi y Yulia Skripal todavía están en el hospital y un agente de policía que acudió en su ayuda también se encuentra en estado crítico. Sin olvidar a las otras 35 personas que tuvieron que recibir tratamiento médico por encontrarse en aquel momento cerca del lugar del ataque.

El ataque en Salisbury el pasado 4 de marzo fue un descarado intento de asesinato de civiles en suelo británico que puso en peligro a cualquier persona, de cualquier nacionalidad, que por azar se encontrase allí.…  Seguir leyendo »

A police officer stands near the scene of the attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Photo: Getty Images.

There can be little doubt that the Russian government is behind the attempted assassination of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. While there were the typical official denials, the Russian state has ways of communicating its innocence to foreign governments. In this case, it has not done so.

The use of a nerve agent fits a pattern established by the murder of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium in 2006. This was not a McMafia-style operation commissioned by ‘rogue elements’. If they were to blame, Moscow would be even more alarmed than London. Since the chaos of the 1990s, Putin has restored the state’s traditional prerogatives in foreign covert operations, as well as the president’s prerogatives within it.…  Seguir leyendo »

Sberbank offices in London. Photo: Getty Images.

If confirmed, the attack on double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter would be the second known Russian state-sponsored murder in the UK, following the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. Other suspicious cases are now being reopened.

What principles should guide an effective response?
  1. Effective measures are more than symbolic. They impose costs that punish unacceptable actions and deter future ones. The UK’s response to Litvinenko’s death – expelling four diplomats, imposing visa restrictions for officials, and suspending security service liaison – was clearly not sufficient enough to deter the latest attack. Symbols matter, but only if they credibly convey intentions about the consequences of further action.
…  Seguir leyendo »
Pedestrians walk past a spray painted job advert for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) on the pavement. Photo by LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Until 1994, GCHQ, the British signals intelligence agency, didn't officially exist. Now, it has emerged out of the shadows to take a very public role at the heart of British cybersecurity.

Public accountability for intelligence services is crucial to any democracy but, as the recent WannaCry ransomware attack showed, there are inevitable conflicts of interest between the role of intelligence services and network safety.

The past seven years have seen a dramatic change in profile for GCHQ. While the number of police officers has been cut by 14 per cent since 2010, GCHQ's staff numbers - according to the Home Office - have grown by more than ten per cent in the same period.…  Seguir leyendo »

Alexander Litvinenko. Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Nearly eight years ago, the news shocked the world that Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian FSB officer who defected to Britain in 2000, died after having been poisoned while having tea with three other retired Russian intelligence agents in a luxury London hotel. The FSB, or Federal Security Service, is the successor to the communist era’s KGB.

Litvinenko’s wife, Marina, spent several years petitioning British authorities for a formal investigation, but top-level officials who were trying to repair their strained relationship with Moscow continuously impeded her efforts. Now, however, upset at the high-handed ways of Russian President Vladimir Putin, British authorities are signaling that there will finally be a “public inquiry” into the matter.…  Seguir leyendo »

Think of it as the ‘‘Skyfall’’ session. In a committee room of the House of Commons, the heads of the British secret services appeared on Thursday before a panel of M.P.’s in what might have been a re-enactment of that scene from the latest Bond movie — minus the shootout.

Even without gunfire, it was not short of drama. The mere sight of the heads of Britain’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, along with the director of its listening post, G.C.H.Q., was spectacle enough. This was their first joint appearance in public, addressing a parliamentary intelligence and security committee whose hearings had, until now, always been held behind closed doors.…  Seguir leyendo »

On Monday the Modern Spies programme substantiated an extraordinary allegation that suggested how far the war on terror has descended into legal abyss. The claim was that MI6 rolled the pitch for Tony Blair's bizarre 2004 hug-in with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi by apparently arranging for the CIA to kidnap Gaddafi's opponent in exile, Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He was seized in Bangkok, where he and his wife were en route to Britain. It's been suggested they were "rendered" via the British colony of Diego Garcia to Tajoura jail in Tripoli. Belhaj spent six years, and his wife four and a half months, at the tender mercies of Gaddafi's security boss, Moussa Koussa.…  Seguir leyendo »

The revelations from Libya show just how far we are from touching the bottom of British complicity in rendition and torture. For anyone who had hoped that, 10 years on from the catastrophic attacks on the United States which kicked off the "war on terror" we might be starting to come to terms with the abuses carried out in our name and put them behind us, the depressing news is that we seem to be further than ever from doing so.

With the caveat that these documents have yet to be fully verified, it would appear that we have been given yet another insight into our own security services getting mixed up in some of the truly appalling abuses carried out by an odious regime.…  Seguir leyendo »

It is highly unusual to expel a single foreign national for espionage activities. These incidents tend to involve the expulsion of a number of suspected agents all at the same time. The classic example is Operation Foot in 1971, when 105 Soviet diplomats were sent packing, or the departure of most of the KGB's London station in 1985 following the defection of the station chief, Oleg Gordievsky.

The reason for this approach is that if a security service is lucky enough to spot a suspected foreign agent (it doesn't happen very often), expelling that operative simply allows the enemy to send someone else instead and the hunt starts all over again.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pongamos nombre y avergoncemos a esos peligrosos, endebles, complacientes e hipócritas liberales que ponen en peligro la seguridad nacional del Reino Unido, sus intereses vitales y la seguridad personal de sus ciudadanos. ¿Quiénes son? Lord Igor Judge, juez-presidente del Tribunal de Apelaciones de Inglaterra y Gales; Lord Neuberger, Master of the Rolls, que preside la Sala Civil; Sir Anthony May, presidente de Queen's Bench, la Sala Penal; y los magistrados Lord Thomas y Lloyd Jones.

¿No se dan cuenta de que estamos en guerra? ¿No comprenden que sus sentencias simplistas obstaculizan los esfuerzos de los servicios de seguridad para salvar al Reino Unido de una amenaza constante, ponen en peligro su importantísimo intercambio de informaciones con Estados Unidos y reconfortan a sus enemigos?…  Seguir leyendo »

Why do you want to join the Secret Service?” demands John Cleese, the British spymaster interviewing a new recruit in the old Monty Python sketch.

“Can you keep a secret?” “Yes.” “Good, well you're in then.”

Some British spies have proved notoriously bad at keeping secrets, but for most of the last century the British intelligence agencies insisted on complete secrecy as the central defining tenet of their work. MI5, the Security Service, and MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, worked in deep shadow, anonymous, deniable and invisible.

As the historian Sir Michael Howard remarked in 1991: “So far as official government policy is concerned, the British security and intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, do not exist, enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought in by the storks.”…  Seguir leyendo »

Bellas mujeres, lugares exóticos, y fantásticos artilugios. Todos son atributos de una película de James Bond. Y el nuevo filme, Quantum of Solace, seguramente exhibirá una dosis saludable de cada uno de ellos. La película, que se encuentra actualmente en fase de producción, es el último episodio en la espectacularmente exitosa saga de James Bond, que comenzó en 1953, cuando Ian Fleming publicó la novela Casino Royale.

Aunque Fleming falleció en 1964, Bond, el osado espía que creó, sigue viviendo. La última novela de la serie, Devil May Care, escrita por el novelista británico Sebastian Faulks, se publicará el 28 de mayo, cuando se cumplan los 100 años del nacimiento del escritor.…  Seguir leyendo »

I have asked my lawyers to petition HM Coroner to hold a full inquest into the murder of my husband, Alexander Litvinenko. Only a review of the evidence in an open, independent court in Britain will get to the truth about who poisoned his tea with radioactive polonium-210 on November 1, 2006, as well as how and why.

I do this against the wishes of the Scotland Yard and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who both told me that making the evidence public would prejudice a criminal trial of the chief suspect, Andrei Lugovoy, whom the UK is trying to extradite from Russia.…  Seguir leyendo »

The recommendation that a Russian national should be extradited to stand trial for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko has led to fevered speculation about the state of UK-Russia relations. Few commentators, it seems, can resist the temptation to view the issue in cold war terms. Depending on who you choose to believe, there is either an icy chill or a deep freeze in relations.For most Russians, not least those who have grown up enjoying the freedoms and opportunities of the post-communist years, these perceptions seem utterly at odds with the reality of modern Russia's experiences and ambitions. Russia is a member of the G8 group of leading democracies, and a partner in addressing international issues as diverse as nuclear proliferation and climate change, and I certainly find it difficult to reconcile the media rhetoric with reality.…  Seguir leyendo »

The attacks on London of July 7 2005 triggered a searching debate about the ability of the police and MI5 to cope with the threat of terrorism. Some people said that we needed further curbs on civil liberties; some pointed the finger at British Muslims and demanded more cooperation from them. But it is the competence of the security services that is now in question after revelations from the trial that ended yesterday at the Old Bailey with five men found guilty of plotting to cause mass murder in Britain using fertiliser-based explosives. Some of those convicted yesterday were seen by MI5 meeting two of the July 7 bombers.…  Seguir leyendo »

After health officials tested Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium for radiation, who will be the first to “reveal” that suspected polonium poisoning could be to blame for the mystery health and form problems apparently afflicting Thierry Henry?After all, just about everything else in London has been “linked” to Alexander Litvinenko’s death.

As health officials tested aircraft, sushi bars and stadiums for traces of dodgy material, others have been busy radiating dubious speculation and conspiracy theories. Litvinenko’s is the only death by polonium poisoning ever recorded. Yet this unique incident has been turned into a metaphor for whatever people are afraid of, or want to raise the alarm about, letting paranoid fantasies run riot in the absence of facts.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Kevin Toolis, a terrorism expert working on a film for Channel 4 on female and Western suicide bombers (THE TIMES, 02/06/06):

Could the man we all believe to have launched a thousand car bombs and to have twice ordered the assassination of the British Cabinet at Brighton in 1984 and in the 1991 mortar attack on Downing Street really have been working for the British Secret Service all along? Our very own Derry version of 007?

A few months ago such a thesis would and could be dismissed as even too fantastical for the plot of a James Bond movie.…  Seguir leyendo »