War on Terrorism (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Let's go for broke and assume that Stephen Ward, or at any rate his osteopathic practice that Hatty has so kindly pointed out was being practised in unfeasibly expensive post codes, was the cover for back-back-channel diplomacy. That's not a pun either, that's the stuff that's really deep-state. The stuff that doesn't even get on the unofficial record. Just, you know, people shooting the breeze to see which way the wind blows. Now at least we can explain these otherwise inexplicable pair of quotes

[Mick Harper]

I sent Hatty off to get some dirt on Sir Norman Brook and she came back with some dirt on his big mate, Sir Roger Makins. You can't get the staff. Anyway, it's Maclean of Burgess & Maclean and the net is closing. The Foreign Office has decided on his arrest and interrogation first thing Monday morning.

[Mick Harper]

[Hatty]

'The Cliveden Set' was coined in 1937 by Claud Cockburn, the founder of "an extreme Left-leaning" paper, The Week.. Cockburn was an influential journalist and continually denounced the Astors and their circle (which included Churchill and Chaplin) as pro-German and imperialists up to the beginning of the war.

Cockburn was a member of the Communist party but was free to attend meetings in Britain and abroad. He had been friends with Roger Hollis at university, and later in Shanghai, though Hollis never mentioned this to MI5, and it seems plausible that Cliveden being the venue for Profumo's and Keeler's meeting was Cockburn's idea. Everything about the event had had to be planned so presumably the location itself wasn't random?

[Mick Harper]

Cockburn, it is known now, was a KGB agent. He had the brilliant 'cover' of appearing to be a Communist! But you have to remember it wasn't always easy being a Communist. So far as his KGB instructions were concerned, Churchill was the enemy during the 'Popular Front' period of Russian foreign policy in the mid-thirties, then a friend during the 'anti-Appeasers' period, then an enemy after the Ribbentrop Pact, then a friend after the start of Barbarossa, then an enemy during the Second Front Now campaign, then a friend after the visit to Moscow and the agreement over the Balkans, then a friend/enemy after the Katyn discovery, when holding the Poles firmly in line was British policy while no less firmly holding to the Curzon Line, imposed by Churchill & Co in 1921 in favour of Poland, abolished by the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 and which the British but not the Americans were once again hankering after in 1945. Put that in your paper, Claud.

Even in Churchill's second period in office -- which is the one we are concerned with here -- Cockburn had to tread carefully because the British were pro-Soviet and anti-US/France over Indo-China and recognition of Red China. It was only after Churchill left office, and after Suez and the Nassau Agreement, that Britain finally threw in the towel and agreed to become the fifty-first state of America. And why the Profumo Affair stubbornly refuses to give up its secrets.

He says darkly.

[Mick Harper]

Though on Profumo specifics, Cockburn could have had no input into choosing Cliveden in 1961 but, as contributor to and occasional editor of Private Eye, he certainly had an input into the initial outing of Profumo.in 1963.

[Mick Harper]

Breach on Netflix, the story of the capture of Robert Hanssen, "America's worst spy", illustrated one of the ongoing features of the Profumo Affair and why sleeping dogs are still lying. Although the FBI are portrayed in the film as dazzlingly efficient in fingering Hanssen, it is only at the cost of reminding the viewer that the FBI must have been staggeringly incompetent to let him get away with it for so long. He shovelled so much material to the Russians that, as one character put it, "None of us needed to have come to the office for the last twenty years."

Whichever side Hollis was on, there's a lot to be said for his policy of never catching anyone, and when some other agency caught someone on MI5's behalf, letting them go with a very stern warning not to do it again. After all, it's the illusion of security we're mainly paying for. One can't help thinking that the only really decisive bit of spying in the twentieth century -- the atomic secrets handed over to the Russians -- served the world rather well.

[Wile E. Coyote]

With the UK having helpfully seized an Iranian tanker in support of EU sanctions, no doubt the EU is going to throw its full diplomatic weight in getting the two tankers the UK has had seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards back.

"Je suis au regret de vous informer".......

[Hatty]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Just to combine the tankers and British incompetence, it will be greatly disheartening to find out that we just sleepwalked into the whole thing. And just to combine Iranians and terrorism (which this thread is supposed to be about, I feel guilty about my own hijacking of it), you can't. They just don't go in for it. The Revolutionary Guards would regard it as entirely unworthy of them. Asymmetric warfare is their bag. The Iranians finance terrorism, but every government does that.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I have had a gentle saunter through Profumo.

My question would be was Hollis using, or even did he promote, Profumo's dalliance with Keeler to gather intelligence/ spy on the government of the day, ie to manipulate Profumo with a view to promote the interest of the underperforming security services.

Just asking?

[Mick Harper]

I can't see Hollis wanting to promote the interests of MI5 since he was working for the opposition. He didn't need to big MI5 up for his own advancement since he was already at the top. Profumo was clearly a security risk independent of Hollis by virtue of his womanising and general loucheness. The theory is that Hollis steered him in the direction of Ward's stable of women. It didn't matter which one Profumo dallied with (personally I'd have preferred it to have been Mandy R & D) because whichever one it was, Ivanov would have been ordered to sally and dally with also, thereby creating the 'security risk'.

I have finally got my greasy maulers (it's Tesco Big Sticky Bun Tear'n'Share day) on The Denning Report. With the no less enthralling 1990 preface from the Good Lord saying, looking back thirty years, he got it completely right! I will share morsels with you when I've stopped laughing and feeling less full.

[Mick Harper]

Lord Denning is not a judge in the "Oh, really?" tradition, more in the "Thank you, officer, and so I can make sure my note is accurate, the defendant said, in the back of the police car, "Course I dun it, copper, you lads were just too quick for me." Denning's main brief was to reassure the British (and American) public that there were no adverse security implications in the Profumo Affair. In order to do this he had to believe that Ivanov, in the period between arriving in London in March 1960 and attending the Cliveden swimming pool party in July 1961, did the following

1. Made such a spectacle of himself, drinking and womanising, as to trigger an MI5 honey trap
2. Allowed himself to be unwittingly honey-trapped by the Editor of the Daily Telegraph introducing him to Ward.
3. Becoming great friends with Stephen Ward
4. Making many visits to the Cliveden cottage and the mews flat awash with Ward's women
5. Getting drunk with Christine Keeler at the mews flat on the evening of the swimming pool party, resulting possibly in some kind of sexual activity but probably not and only that one time.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Stena Impero is a Swedish-owned tanker, and those on board are Indian, Russian, Latvian and Filipino. Still the Iranians have our flag (eagle).

It's a symbolic humiliation.