INT-Media

Journalism: theory, practice and criticism. Online First

Wilson's fears were publicised in July 1977 in an article in The Observer, in which he was quoted as claiming that a faction in the Service was mounting a "whispering campaign" against him and that he had been bugged. The allegations sparked an immediate political controversy to which the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, responded by instigating an internal inquiry. He issued a statement on 23 August 1977 which read:

"The Prime Minister has conducted detailed inquiries into the recent allegations about the Security Service and is satisfied that they do not constitute grounds for lack of confidence in the competence and impartiality of the Security Service, or for instigating a special inquiry.

There are subsequent allegations that Windsor was an MI5 'mole' within the NUM, which are denied by both Windsor and MI5.

Roger Windsor has since won libel damages in relation to this allegation.

Ms Massiter reveals the National Council for Civil Liberties and CND are classified as 'subversive'.

She claims MI5's definition of subversion was being distorted and widened, saying: "We were violating our own rules. It seemed to be getting out of control."

On 19 July 1985, Gordievsky went for his usual jog, but he instead managed to evade his KGB tails and boarded a train to the Finnish border, where he was met by British embassy cars and smuggled across the border into Finland, then flown to England via Norway.

18 December 1989 - The new Security Service Tribunal is established to review warrants and investigate complaints from the public. It is chaired by Lord Justice Sir Murray Stuart-Smith. Between 1989 and 1997 275 complaints are made but none are upheld

In 1996, legislation formalised the extension of the Security Service's statutory remit to include supporting the law enforcement agencies in their work against serious crime.

In 1997, a former MI6 agent, Richard Norwood, was jailed for a year for passing secrets over to Russia.

October 1997. Arrested and imprisoned in UK. I had to pay for my own defence. I decided I could not afford a long trial, so pleaded guilty. Imprisoned for 12 months (released on parole after six months).

An MI6 officer, in one of the first British interrogations in Afghanistan after 9/11, tells London the suspect had been mistreated by Americans before questioning began. This is reported by the Intelligence and Security committee (ISC), the MPs and peers supposed to oversee MI5 and MI6.

29 August 2002

MI6 receives the 45-minute intelligence report - Lord Butler says it came "third hand" through a main well-established source via a second link in the reporting chain and originally an Iraqi military source - the middle link had since proved unreliable.

24 September 2003

The dossier is published with a foreword from Tony Blair, which says: "The document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them."

Colin Powell addressed a plenary session of the United Nations Security Council, stating categorically that Saddam Hussein was working to obtain key components to produce nuclear weapons.

In apparent response to Abu Ghraib pictures, Tony Blair writes to the ISC to tell it of changes to the UK interrogation policy passed to MI5 officers and MI6 officers in January 2002.

Lord Butler's inquiry concludes that the 45 minute claim should not have been included in the dossier without explanations of what it referred to.

The report also reveals MI6 now says the intelligence report on the claim "has come into question", with doubts cast about one of the links in the reporting chain.

MI5 holds secret files on 272,000 individuals—equivalent to one in 160 adults

Eliza Manningham-Buller resigns.

Jonathan Evans, defends MI5's co-operation with agencies known to torture: "In my view we would have been derelict in our duty if we had not worked, circumspectly, with overseas liaisons."

Gareth Williams' decomposing naked body is discovered padlocked inside a holdall in a bath in his top-floor flat in Pimlico, half a mile from MI6's headquarters in the capital.

On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El País), France (Le Monde), Germany (Der Spiegel), the United Kingdom (The Guardian), and the United States (The New York Times) started simultaneously to publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential – but not top-secret (dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010).[

May 1, 2011: bin Laden is killed in a U.S. raid on his compound in Pakistan.

In July, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to the publications The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The documents detail individual incidents including "friendly fire" and civilian casualties.

Channel Four

The so-called ‘Waldegrave initiative’ of 1992 (which resulted the following year in official proposals for more ‘Open Government’) challenged the traditional British presupposition that all official matters were secret until government specifically decided otherwise.

Part of a run of stories on S African intelligence agency Boss.

Part of a long series of articles

Part of a series of articles

Part of a long series of articles

Death of the Rock story

21 Jan 1996 Tx: Producer/originator of BBC TV Timewatch programme "RUSSIA'S SECRET WAR" on Stalin's role in the Korean War.

8 Oct 1996 Tx: Producer/originator of BBC TV Timewatch programme "BAITING THE BEAR" - how the real life Dr Strangelove generals brought us close to Armageddon.

MI6 AGENTS UNMASKED ON THE NET

BYLINE: By Paul Lashmar

SECTION: TITLE PAGE; Page 1

LENGTH: 284 words

A SECRET-SERVICE unit in the Foreign Office tried to recruit Tony Benn, the left-wing MP, and offered him a generous salary to write anti-Communist articles for the media. He turned it down on his father's advice.

The Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), a covert unit set up after the war to fight Soviet influence, sought out the young Anthony Wedgwood Benn in the 1950s, describing him as "a really brilliant young man". IRD documents recently released by the Foreign Office show Mr Benn was approached in 1950 by Colonel Leslie Sheridan, a former Daily Mirror journalist and wartime Special Operations Executive officer. Mr Benn had just been elected MP for Bristol East when Sheridan offered him the job.

How we destroyed Sukarno; Foreign Office 'dirty tricks' helped overthrow Indonesia's President Sukarno in 1966. Over the next 30 years, half a million people died.

BYLINE: By Paul Lashmar and James Oliver

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/mi6-officers-worked-in-iraq-as-un-inspectors-1076106.html

MI6 OFFICERS on undercover missions abroad are posing as journalists, an Independent investigation reveals, and they are using false National Union of Journalist (NUJ) cards in the former Yugoslavia.

Sources close to the intelligence services say MI6 officers have long posed as reporters, a disguise more popular than that of businessmen or academics. "Around 40 per cent of MI6 officers sent abroad on missions use journalistic credentials," said one former British intelligence officer. MI6 has a special unit that produces forged documents.

THE MINISTRY of Defence "Electronic Test Facility", a rather mysterious 150-ft high tower stands isolated in a British Nuclear Fuels Limited site at Capenhurst, Cheshire.

Locals knew that the tower housed a dark secret but did not know what it was. That secret is now out.

The tower was craftily erected between two BT microwave radio towers carrying telephone traffic. The ETF was the ideal place to discreetly intercept international telephone calls of the Irish government, businessmen and those of suspected of involvement with IRA terrorism.

Channel 4 filmed extensive BT equipment inside the building, including optical fibre cables linking the tower to the MoD's communication system.

The hi-tech white ETF tower included eight floors of advanced electronic equipment and three floors of aerial galleries.

These were used to extract and sort the thousands of communications passing through every hour. Fax messages, e-mails, telexes and data communications were automatically sorted by computers scanning their contents for key words and subjects of interest. Telephone calls could be targeted according to the numbers dialled or by identifying the voice of the speaker.

At the time the tower first came into operation the IRA campaigns were raging.

Relations between the British and Irish government's were not always smooth, with the British suspecting their Irish counterparts of being sympathetic to the IRA.

BRITAIN'S intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, are to be challenged in the courts by a group of MPs and campaigning organisations seeking to overturn the blanket secrecy surrounding personal files.

MINISTERS ARE to be chall- enged over a serious security breach after an internal MI6 document implicating Britain in a 1996 attempt to kill Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was posted on the internet.

REVEALED: HEALEY ADMITS ROLE IN BRITISH DIRTY TRICKS CAMPAIGN TO OVERTHROW INDONESIA'S PRESIDENT SUKARNO

A CONVICTED British drug smuggler who escaped from Ford Open Prison 10 years ago is living openly on Spain's "Costa del Crime". But the Government is refusing to comment on why it is not seeking the extradition or deportation of Joe Wilkins, a well known London gangland figure of the 1960s.

Members of the top-level European inquiry into Britain's electronic spying activities will soon have to investigate themselves. The Independent on Sunday has uncovered evidence showing the world is covered with illegal listening stations, many of them maintained by Britain's European trade partners.

Members of the top-level European inquiry into Britain's electronic spying activities will soon have to investigate themselves. The Independent on Sunday has uncovered evidence showing the world is covered with illegal listening stations, many of them maintained by Britain's European trade partners.

The United States and Britain have been roundly attacked for their joint global spy system Echelon which, intelligence experts say, has been used to intercept satellite phone calls and e-mails to obtain commercial as well as military secrets. Last week the European Parliament voted to appoint a 36-man commission to investigate Echelon.

MI5 FILES: REVEALED: THE MAN WHO STARTED WORLD WAR TWO;
WARTIME REPORTS DESCRIBE HOW POLAND WAS DRAGGED INTO CONFLICT AND HOW A BRITISH HERO BECAME A JAPANESE SPY

LENGTH: 456 words

OFFICIAL SECRETS Act charges against the former bomb disposal officer Lt-Col Nigel Wylde were dropped yesterday. The case was due to be heard at the Old Bailey in three weeks' time and prosecution lawyers had applied only last week for it to be heard in secret.

Lt-Col Wylde was charged earlier this year with handing over secrets to a journalist about classified surveillance computers used by the British military in Northern Ireland.

BRITISH FIRM DENIES LINKS TO TERRORIST;
LINCOLNSHIRE INVESTMENT GROUP ADMITS TO ARMS DEALER CONNECTION BUT DENIES ANY CONTACT WITH OSAMA BIN LADEN

OPERATION BIG Breach, a dastardly plot to discredit MI6 by revealing its innermost secrets, appeared to be on hold yesterday. The John le Carre- style denouement of this dark plan was to have been a press conference in Moscow to launch the book by the renegade MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Securit

January 1, 2001, Monday

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE FILES: TERRORISM - UK ANTI-TERRORIST STAND BUCKLED DURING HIJACKINGS:

THE RENEGADE MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, has confirmed that British intelligence officers working undercover abroad often pose as journalists, using forged National Union of Journalists (NUJ) press passes. That may be one of the less-newsworthy aspects of his book, to judge from the way it has gone unreported, but for journalists it is hugely serious.

Eighteen months ago The Independent revealed that MI6 officers had used "deep cover" as reporters to work in Yugoslavia during the Bosnian War. While long suspected, MI6's practice of using journalistic cover sends shivers down the spine of foreign correspondents, who will now find it even harder to persuade gun-toting militia everywhere that they are not, in fact, spies.

SPY PLANE: HOSTILITY OVER SPY FLIGHTS IS NOTHING NEW - BUT IT'S NORMALLY KEPT SECRET

SEPTEMBER 11: AL-QA'IDA PLANNED TO HIT NUCLEAR PLANTS';
ANNIVERSARY ATTACKS: FOILED PLOT AGAINST US ARMY BASE RAISES NEW ALARM OVER AL-QA'IDA THREAT

Consultant and interviewee for German TV documentary on spyflights: Playing with Fire – The Hot Sky in the Cold War Broadcast date: Summer of 2006, ARTE 52-minute version; Spring of 2007, MDR 45-minute version.

Augmented podcast. Lashmar, Paul (series editor and contributor). Analysis of the critical issues facing journalism today: augmented podcasts series for Henry Stewart Talks. Contributed 50 minute analysis of the media and the war on terror. Other contributors to the series include Professor Chris Frost (Liverpool John Moores University), Prof Dr Damian Tambini (Polis at LSE), Alex Thomson (C4 News), Professor Richard Keeble (Lincoln), Dr Paul Bradshaw (City University), Dr Marianne Franklin (Goldsmiths College), Charlie Beckett (Polis at LSE), Professor Ivor Gaber (City and Bedfordshire Universities), Granville Williams (CPBF) and Dr Kari Anden-Papadopoulos (Stockholm University).

Lashmar, Paul. 2011. “Blonde on Blonde: Wikileaks versus the Official Sources” in Investigative Journalism: Dead or Alive. Editors: Mair, J., Keeble, R.L. 1st: 107-121. Suffolk: Abramis.

Lashmar, P. The ‘Five Eyes’ are watching you: A new paradigm in the relationship between journalists and sources in age of meta-data. MeCCSA Annual Conference 2014, Bournemouth University 8th - 10th January 2014

Lashmar P (2015) “Spies at The Observer”, British Journalism Review, Vol. 26, No 3 September 2015, pp 60-65

Lashmar, P (2016) Undigested Snowden. Open Democracy. 31 May.

Lashmar, P (2016) Guardian interview finally brings an MI5 boss in from the cold – but why? The Conversation, 3 Nov

Lashmar, P (2018) Nest of Spies, British Journalism Review, Vol. 29, No 1 March, pp 53-59.

EUP Hardback and paperback

= De Burgh, H and Lashmar, P (April 2021)(eds) Investigative Journalism. London: Routledge (3rd ed)

Lashmar, P (2021) Official Secrets Act: UK government has a long history of suppressing journalism to hide its misdeeds. The Conversation. 27 July 2021
https://theconversation.com/official-secrets-act-uk-government-has-a-long-history-of-suppressing-journalism-to-hide-its-misdeeds-164893

Lashmar, P, Gilby N, and Oliver, J (2021) Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists. The Observer. 17 October 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/17/revealed-how-uk-spies-incited-mass-of-indonesias-communists

Lashmar, P, Gilby N, and Oliver, J (2021) Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain’s secret propaganda war. The Observer. 17 October 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/17/slaughter-in-indonesia-britains-secret-propaganda-war

Lashmar, P and Gilby N (2021) Survivors of 1965 Indonesia massacres urge UK to apologise. The Observer. 24 October 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/24/survivors-of-1965-indonesia-massacres-urge-uk-to-apologise?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1635067265

Lashmar, P, Gilby N, and Oliver, J (2022) The Observer 23 January 2022