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EGYPT has been training British MI5 and MI6 agents in how to combat Islamic terrorists, underlining Cairo’s growing importance to the war against terror and the Middle East peace process. A senior Middle Eastern military intelligence official revealed last week that British officers had undergone the training as part of a co-operation programme with Egypt that began after the September 11 attacks on America in 2001 and continued until last year. Details have not been revealed, but it is believed to have included instruction in specialised interrogation techniques and in the terminology used by terrorists, which will enable agents to...

DISGUISED in an Arab robe and headdress, the British hostage Ken Bigley escaped from his captors in Iraq by car the day before they beheaded him, it was claimed last night. A Saudi described as a spokesman for the group that kidnapped Bigley said two of his captors had accepted a large sum of money to help him flee after three weeks of captivity. The money was provided by a Syrian and an Iraqi who had penetrated the group on behalf of British intelligence, the spokesman claimed. Bigley was bundled into the car last Wednesday and driven towards the safety...

British spies across the Balkans are being moved after they were publicly identified in a number of media reports planted by disgruntled local intelligence services. The Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, has been forced to withdraw its chief officer in the Serb capital, Belgrade, and another spy in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, is about to leave. A third man, who has also been branded a British spy in the Balkans, this week left the office of the High Representative in Bosnia, Lord Ashdown, to take up a post elsewhere. A further two British intelligence officers working in the...

Agent Behind Fake Uranium Documents Worked for France By Bruce Johnston The Telegraph (UK) September 19, 2004 The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France. The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo". His admission to investigating magistrates in...

Nato has exposed the identities of four MI6 intelligence officers working in the Balkans, sparking intense anger from Britain. The four were named on the alliance's website in a summary of news, translated into English, from the former Yugoslavia. The site identified the men eight weeks ago, on July 9, and their names remained there until yesterday, when The Telegraph alerted Nato to its blunder. Within hours of being told of the error, embarrassed officials removed the web page yesterday afternoon. Their prompt action did not appease senior intelligence officials in London, who last night expressed fury at Nato's mistake...

MI6 involved in Balkan spy plot, says Croatian paper Ian Traynor in Zagreb Friday August 27, 2004 The Guardian British intelligence's extensive operations in the Balkans were thrown into disarray yesterday after a Croatian newspaper revealed the identities of several alleged British spies and claimed that the Croatian government had given MI6 agents carte blanche to wiretap and conduct undercover operations against Croatian citizens. The weekly news magazine, Nacional, published the names of four British diplomats it described as important spies. Nacional's claim followed the recent unmasking by a Belgrade tabloid of the chief MI6 officer in Serbia, Anthony Monckton,...

Tony Blair's war case has suffered a fresh blow after MI6 took the rare step of withdrawing intelligence about Iraq's WMD, the BBC has learned. This week sees the publication of the Butler report into how intelligence on Iraq was handled. That follows the premier's admission that Iraq's WMD may never be found. The Archbishop of Canterbury said Mr Blair, a practising Christian, would have to account for his decision over the Iraq war at "the judgement seat". John Ware, from the BBC's Panorama programme, was told that key intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction used to back...

Britain's Financial Times reported Wednesday that an official British government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq has concluded that Britain's MI-6 was correct to conclude that Saddam Hussein's regime had sought to buy uranium ore from Niger. If so, this gives the lie to the charge that "Bush lied!" when he said in his 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The July 7 FT story by Mark Huband follows his article from the previous week, which revealed that "a key...

Tony Blair's claim that Saddam Hussein posed a 'current and serious' threat to Britain is challenged by dramatic new allegations today that Britain's spy chiefs have retracted the intelligence on which it was based. The supposed proof that the Iraqi dictator was still trying, even in the run-up to war, to produce chemical and biological weapons became crucial to the Prime Minister's case for urgent military action rather than waiting for inspectors to finish their task. Yet, according to a senior intelligence source interviewed by BBC1's Panorama tonight, MI6 has since taken the rare step of withdrawing the intelligence assessment...

According to a major article in weekly Wprost based on a translation of an article by Gordon Thomas which was published in a British newspaper, British Foreign Military Intelligence (MI6) in league with American intelligence (CIA), began a major operation on February 9, 2003 to spy on the then Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Richard Dearlove, the Director General of MI6 appears to have exchanged a number of e-mails with George Tentem, the chief of the CIA, as both the Americans and British wanted to find out if they could be absolutely certain that Miller would be a solid ally...

A FEW days before American and British troops invaded Iraq on March 20 last year, an Arab intermediary made a telephone call to a senior intelligence officer in the headquarters of MI6 at Vauxhall Cross alongside the Thames. The Arabic-speaking MI6 officer with long experience of the Middle East was given the following message: “Saif al- Islam Gaddafi would like to arrange a meeting.” The brief conversation began what was to become one of the most extraordinary diplomatic breakthroughs in recent history — Libya’s agreement to declare and then dismantle the whole of its clandestine weapons of mass destruction programme....

Baghdad leaders reveal that coup plot duped MI6 Julie Flint explains how rumours of Saddam's overthrow caused British intelligence to miss vital information about Iraq's weapons programme British intelligence took its eyes off Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes because it had been duped into believing a military coup would leave Sunni Muslims in power in Iraq. Sources in the country say what they missed was a push to convert chemical and biological organisms into dry agents that could be hidden until pressure on the regime was lifted. 'From the second half of 2000, the focus of the British was not on...

Faulty phone wrecked MI6 bid to kill Chemical Ali By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 08/01/2004) Faulty military satellite links caused the failure of an MI6-led operation to assassinate "Chemical Ali", a senior aide to Saddam Hussein. Secure satellite links to London broke down on the first day of the war in Iraq. The British commander, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, at first thought the Iraqis had mounted a successful "cyber warfare" attack. Military satellite phone links broke down, often for hours at a time, leaving British commanders without any secure line of communication to the Prime Minister, a major problem...

<p>Al Qaeda (search) has turned its terror sights to the sea, targeting luxury cruise liners in a major expansion of its "jihad (search)" against Western interests.</p> <p>And top of the terrornetwork's list of ocean-bound targets is the new $1.3 billion British ship Queen Mary 2 (search).</p>

The truth, at last (Filed: 07/12/2003) "The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," Lt Col Dabbagh tells the Telegraph's intrepid Con Coughlin in today's newspaper. "If the army had used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences." The weapons Col Dabbagh was referring to are Saddam Hussein's stocks of chemical and biological warheads. A senior officer at the heart of Saddam's armed forces, the colonel was the conduit of the now-infamous claim in the intelligence dossier which Tony Blair presented to Parliament and to the country: the claim that Saddam had the capacity...

An American web daily has claimed that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda has formed the "first terrorist naval force" and positioned 15 ships in the Indian ocean or the Pacific. The US State Department has issued a warning about threats to its maritime interests and the Philippines government raised alert levels at all its ports. Quoting intelligence reports, the World Net Daily said Al Qaeda "has purchased at least 15 ships in the last two years creating, perhaps, the first terrorist naval force". It said the Lloyds of London has reportedly helped Britains MI-6 and US CIA to "trace the...

Alastair Campbell said he had been assured by senior MI6 officers that the Government had the full support of the intelligence agencies over its decision to publish the dossier on Iraqi weapons. Giving evidence to the inquiry into the death of Government weapons expert David Kelly, the Downing Street communications chief confirmed that he had offered "presentational" advice on the production of the dossier. But he said that the intelligence material in the dossier had been the work of the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett. And he insisted he had not been involved in any way in...

A new intelligence dossier is being prepared on the progress made in finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it was reported today. The Economist magazine reports that the MI6 document will contain evidence, based on interviews with Iraqi scientists, that Saddam Hussein had produced quantities of biological weapons. The report, which would come out one year after last September's controversial dossier - which the BBC alleged No 10 "sexed up" to support the case for war - is also said to contain hard evidence of cover-up programmes designed to conceal WMDs. A "Whitehall source" told the Economist: "We would hope...

The argument over whether a British intelligence report was accurate or not is quite frankly moot. Whether or not the piece of paper contained accurate or tainted information doesn’t change the fact that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. And the fact that he had an advanced nuclear weapons program, as admitted by the IAEA, stands as proof that it was only a matter of time before the murderous dictator attained the nuclear capability he was striving for. So, the real question isn’t whether one report out of many corroborating Hussein’s actions was false or not, the real question...

The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow MI6 to give the Americans "credible" intelligence showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, US intelligence sources said yesterday. MI6 had more than one "different and credible" piece of intelligence to show that Iraq was attempting to buy the ore, known as yellowcake, British officials insisted. But it was given to them by at least one and possibly two intelligence services and, under the rules governing cooperation, it could not be shared with anyone else without the originator's permission. US intelligence sources believe that the...