Posted on 11/26/2007 8:17:41 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
LONDON: They are not quite the prototype of Ian Fleming's Martini-drinking, Aston Martin-tooling, macho English playboy secret agent James Bond, but Britain's desperately-seeking, mainly-white foreign and domestic intelligence services have launched an unusual publicity drive to recruit Muslim and Hindu agents by allowing a few of the existing handful to speak out about their lives.
In a rare bid to open up its work to the world's curious gaze, MI5 allowed one agent calling herself 'Jayshree' and another with the assumed name 'Shahzad' to talk about their work.
The recorded interviews, conducted at MI5's headquarters in the British capital, are the first in the organisation's nearly-100-year history. In the process, 'Jayshree' and 'Shahzad' are seen to have become walking "sandwich boards" for the British secret services as they try and interest younger members of the two-million strong Asian community in a life a la 007.
The interviews wax eloquent about second-generation immigrants' burning desire to give back to the host country by going underground and ferreting out potentially-explosive information on sleeper terrorist cells and other threats.
Just hours after the interviews were broadcast on the BBC's Asia Network radio station, whose heavy diet of Bollywood songs and sub-continental news is targeted at Asians, sections of the community admitted it was an eye-catching initiative by the security services.
MI5's current haul of black and ethnic minority staff stands at 6.5 per cent and the new publicity drive is seen as more than just another shard of political correctness. The intelligence services have long admitted their need for agents who belong to immigrant communities in order to identify potential threats to the UK.
But MI5's decision to showcase at least one agent bearing a Hindu moniker is seen to be part of its attempt to reassure British Muslims they are not the only targets of the enhanced drive to infiltrate immigrant communities. Both 'Jayshree' and 'Shahzad' affirmed that their MI5 work was not about targeting specific religious or racial communities but about tracking individuals who might mean harm to their host country.
Agent 'Jayshree', who analyses intelligence from domestic and overseas sources, described her double life as an exercise in discretion. She said, "When out with friends or relations I tend to be quite vague about my work - I don't want the unnecessary attention". But as a good Asian girl, she admitted her parents were in on the secret but had never been "as excited or interested" as she thought they would be.
MI5, whose chief Jonathan Evans recently declared that at least 2,000 potential terrorists were on the run in the UK, plans to increase its 3,000-strong workforce to 4,000 by 2011. It wants a significant proportion of them to be Hindu, Muslim and Sikh, thus raising the possibility of Agents Amar, Akbar and Anmol Singh increasingly becoming a reality.
For those not aware, 'Jayshrie/ Jayshree' is a Hindu feminine name, while 'Shahzad' is a male Islamic one.
The Brits (and we aswell) sure as heck need more penetration into the Middle Eastern and Asian cultures for information gathering. But beware of doublecrossers.
They already have lots of them.
beware of doublecrossersYup. I'm sure the same kind of people willing to strap on a bomb are willing to be double agents.
Beware of double agents. The FBI and CIA just had a turncoat exposed.
What desire would that be? Most simply resent Britain, live there because it has more "things".
but about tracking individuals who might mean harm to their host country
A conceit of the managerial class that pervades both Britain and America. They think they can manage the mass invasion and takeover of Western, Christian (well, they were) nations by imposing a secret police state, and ferreting out a few 'malcontents'. The obvious reality - that virtually all the foreigners harbor resentment and will never be part of 'the nation' - is lost on them.
But it's a conceit, like I said.
They'll get a few. And those few might help identify another few bad guys. But the 'bad guys' number in the millions, folks. Maybe they don't all throw bombs, but....they pretty much all agree with the underlying sentiment of the bomb throwers....which is, the people on the receiving end 'deserve it'.
No 'nation' survives inundation, no matter how much happy talk and police power is used to try and save it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/28/iraq/main626508.shtml
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.