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Image of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in death released by U.S. military WASHINGTON – When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, was killed today by 500-pound bombs dropped by two F-16 fighter jets on a house north of Baghdad, it was the result of intelligence information gathered, in part, by an elite task force of international special operations forces formed just a month ago with the express purpose of taking him out. The "A-Team" created for the mission drew on the skills and expertise of U.S. Army Green Berets, "Tier 1" of Britain's Special Air Service and the...

Britain's international intelligence service is advertising for new real life James Bonds.MI6 chiefs are placing ads in The Times newspaper and The Economist magazine this week. The ads feature photos of places in the world where MI6 operate from their London HQ by the Thames to Arabian deserts and central American jungles. One of them reads: "We operate around the world to make this country safer and more prosperous." A Government source said: "We hope people who might have thought MI6 was not for them may consider us as an employer." As well as agents, MI6 is looking for administrators,...

NIGERGATE: BUSH TOLD THE TRUTH ……. BUT DID THE LIBERAL MSM ? Another interesting piece today from the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. Following-up on yesterday’s excellent article Il Foglio takes another look at how lies were, and still are, propagated through the anti-3B liberal media. President George W. Bush was correct in stating during his State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .” The statement was true, indeed to quote the British Government’s Butler Report “It is accepted by all parties...

Investigations of alleged British espionage activities in Russia are continuing. The FSB has been tracking the past movements of the four diplomats it has accused of spying. Visits made last year by one named diplomat to the cities of Kirov and Saratov have sparked an FSB probe of any organisations the individual concerned may have met, as well as anyone connected with the trip. So far, the most exciting 'revelation' seems to have been that some aid money was officially handed over to the local police academy in Kirov. While no new scandals have yet been uncovered, JID's sources in...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A fake stone alleged to have been used by British spies to communicate with Moscow agents was a "wonder" of technology that cost tens of millions of pounds (dollars), Russia's FSB security service said on Thursday. FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko praised the high-tech spy stone, which would look at home in a James Bond film, and listed its extraordinary qualities. The stone was revealed by the FSB on Sunday in a television programme that apparently showed four British spies using it as a dead letter drop. "This is like space technology in its qualities. You could throw...

Tony Blair has laughed off the latest spy row with Russia, telling journalists with a smile: "I think the less said about that, the better." For the Prime Minister the revelations of British diplomats using electronic devices hidden in rocks may seem like another escapade in the spy games played for centuries by Britain and Russia. But in Moscow the affair is more ominous - it marks the latest attempt by the Kremlin to throttle the human rights and pro-democracy groups. Moscow is appalled by the "colour revolutions" that have removed its clients in the former Soviet Union - such...

"..caught red-handed financing a number of nongovernmental organizations.." "..the Russian special services offered us material that we evaluated as unambiguously sensational and exclusive. Do you think that, if the BBC received footage on which it was convincingly proved that four of our agents were working in London, that they wouldn't have aired it? " "The main crime of the British intelligence agents seems to be that their connections to Russian human rights organizations." http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?idr=527&id=643044 http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.html?docId=643044

Russian state television has broadcast video footage of what it claims are British diplomats spying in Moscow. In the programme, people claiming to be Russian agents say British spies retrieved data from a transmitter in a fake rock planted on a Moscow street. The intelligence officers also said a UK diplomat made regular payments to Russian non-governmental organisations. The UK Foreign Office said it was "concerned and surprised" and denied any improper conduct with Russian NGOs. The programme said four officials from the UK embassy and one Russian citizen, allegedly recruited by the British secret service, downloaded classified data from...

LONDON: The French government tried to blame the 1985 sinking of Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior on British spy agency MI6, according to official documents released under freedom of information. The campaign of misinformation and smears - suggesting MI6 bombed the ship in New Zealand and framed French secret agents, or that MI6 knew in advance of the French mission - infuriated Margaret Thatcher's government.

A British overseas-intelligence service has launched a new Web site to enlist recruits--so would-be 007s can now sign up online. The MI6 Web site contains the history of the organization, officially known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), as well as frequently asked questions and information on how to become an officer. "We never talk about the size of the service, because that's giving the opposition some advantage, but we are actively recruiting," an MI6 representative said. In the first hour after its launch on Thursday, the Web site received 1,700 visitors. The site also experienced some slow loading due...

The Guardian - UK 10-2-5 An astonishing claim that M16 recruited Muslim extremists in Britain for terror training abroad has been made by Oldham MP and former cabinet minister Michael Meacher. Mr Meacher also suggest that a British Muslim held under sentenced of death in Pakistan for beheading a US journalist is being kept alive because he was a British double agent. The Oldham West and Royton MP makes these sensational claims in an article for Asian News' sister paper, The Guardian. The former Environment Secretary claims that Britain's 'overseas' security organisation, M16, set about recruiting UK Muslims directing them...

Council seeks intelligence service modeled after British spy agency MI6 09/14/2005 The Asahi Shimbun Japan needs a more effective intelligence agency modeled after Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) that would engage in activities beyond the diplomatic norm, a report by an advisory council said. The report said the entity would be under the control of the foreign minister and would specialize in collecting information on international affairs. The council is an advisory panel to Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura. Currently, the Foreign Ministry's Intelligence and Analysis Service is in charge of collecting and analyzing information on international affairs, as well as...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ The Time in UK MI6 warned US of Al-Qaeda attacks Nicholas Rufford MI6 warned the American intelligence services about a plot to hijack aircraft and crash them into buildings two years before the September 11 attacks

August 10, 2005: Figuring out who the best intelligence service is can be quite difficult. The very nature of intelligence often means that the successes will not be public knowledge for years (for instance, World War II decryption efforts – the key to the United States winning the battle of Midway in 1942 – were not declassified until the 1970s), whereas failures or controversial operations will be taken to the press. It’s a thankless situation. Still, from what little has emerged, one can have an idea of some of the better intelligence services out there, with the understanding that this...

MI6 and the Croatian general       By Nick Thorpe   BBC News, Dubrovnik   European intelligence services have joined forces in the search for Croatian General Ante Gotovina, indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for alleged war crimes against Serbia in 1995. But as Nick Thorpe finds out, tracking him down is proving a difficult task. Croatian General Ante Gotovina was indicted for war crimes in 2001 Franjo Turek suggests we meet in the Dubrovnik cafe in central Zagreb. He is sitting in the corner by the window when I arrive, looking younger, but...

Spent the weekend watching back to back DVDs of John Le Carre's "Tinker,Tailor,Soldier,Spy" & "Smiley's People", both starring the Great Sir Alec Guinness. I had not seen either in quite awhile and thought I would rent both to see again. What a tour de force for Guinness playing British Master Spy George Smiley. This really is what good drama is and I was on the edge of my seat watching both of these as Smiley is tracking his Arch Nemesis Karla of Moscow Center. Reminded me growing up of all the great spy films there was durng the Cold War....

A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation. By Douglas Frantz, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes...

Moviegoers can thank Austin Powers for killing off the martini-quaffing sexoholic, writes Tanya Gold. Last week James Bond was fired. His nuclear pencil gathers dust beneath Whitehall. There is no news of 007 number six and the production of Bond film 21, due this November, has stalled. There is trouble at MI6, minister: the martini-quaffing sexoholic is suffering an existential crisis and it can't be cured by an intelligent Rolex or a gondola that can drive on land. Eon, which produces Bond, and MGM, which finances his capers, are bickering. It is rumoured MGM wants an action-movie franchise - Spiderman...

A RUSSIAN double agent who worked for MI6 for ten years before having to defect for his own safety is at the centre of a new mystery over who betrayed him to the KGB. Oleg Gordievsky, who has lived in Britain since his escape from Moscow in the boot of a car in 1985, is now claimed to have been betrayed by a British journalist working for a magazine in Washington. Mr Gordievsky, in an interview with The Times, discounted the latest theory, although he admitted that he still did not know who tipped off the KGB that he was...

LONDON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- MI6 chief John Scarlett unveiled the biggest shake-up of the British intelligence service in 20 years in the wake of its performance before the Iraq war. The changes are meant to prevent a repeat of the government's withdrawal of the report on Iraq used to justify the 2003 invasion. The Times of London said Sunday the shake-up is a "tacit admission" the intelligence agency's credibility had been damaged. Scarlett plans to reinstate procedures used in the cold war when senior intelligence officers vetted information before it was passed on.