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| A confused light shed on the
murky world of spies |
Former MI5 officer Annie Machon attempts
to make a case for a rethink of the intelligence services writes
Geoffrey Goodman
Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair
by Annie Machon,
The Book Guild, £17.95
THIS is an extraordinary book in every sense of that much abused
cliché. It is the story of the former MI5 intelligence officer
David Shayler who turned against his employers and made sensational
allegations about the way the intelligence and security services
operate – after which he fled the country.
For long periods he was exiled in Paris but returned to Britain
in August 2000 to face a trial in the Old Bailey, part of which
was in camera.
A two-year court case ended with Shayler spending two terms in jail,
with his appeal refused.
The Shayler story, still an open sore in Whitehall, is told in this
book by his partner, Annie Machon who also defected from the intelligence
services at about the same time.
She now seeks to unravel an astonishing web of intrigue and counter-intrigue
albeit in a style which makes it unusually difficult for any neutral
observer to reach a fair and balanced conclusion.
Indeed large tracts of this book are written in a kind of coded
language which probably requires a trained MI5 officer to interpret
it. This may account for the fact that the book has not, so far,
been seriously reviewed by any national newspaper or journal despite
the fact that it was first published last May.
The authorship itself is an intriguing aspect. Annie Machon, (pictured
with David Shayler) who became Shayler’s lover when they worked
together in MI5, were recruited into the intelligence service in
the early 1990s.
Machon had graduated from Cambridge in 1989 with a degree in Classics
and a knowledge of Russian, French and German.
Her first job was with a small publishing house but her ambition
was to work in the Foreign Service. She sat the Foreign Office examination
and this led to her appointment with MI5.
Shayler’s background and entry into the intelligence service
was different. He also graduated from university in 1989 but opted
for journalism and won a student award before joining the Sunday
Times through its graduate training scheme.
After a few months he left the paper to start a small publishing
business in Scotland before answering a ‘mystery’ advertisement
which turned out to be an MI5 recruiting scheme.
What is far from clear from this book is how committed they were
at the outset given that we must assume that two intelligent graduates
would be, by definition, fully aware of the implications in joining
Britain’s security services. Whether they were unusually naive
or, perhaps, MI5 recruitment interviewers lacked perception, is
not clear from Machon’s account.
The story is told by Machon in the style of a very long and intimate
interview with Shayler, who is fully quoted while remaining in the
background. It all amounts to a description of the inefficiencies
of both MI5 and MI6; their operational failures such as an inability
to gain advance knowledge prior to IRA bomb attacks, notably the
Canary Wharf explosion in February 1996; and the general muddle
and ineptitude of work inside the intelligence services.
The most serious allegation from Shayler against the intelligence
services, especially MI6, is his claim that this arm of Britain’s
security service, which operates abroad, had financed and planned
a Libyan- based, Al Qaeda supporting Islamic terrorist group’s
attempt to assassinate Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.
In 1997 the Mail on Sunday broke these Shayler disclosures and a
whole range of other criticisms about the way both security services
were run such as the “profligate waste of tens of millions”
of taxpayers money, the lack of Parliamentary oversight, and the
existence of “an endemic drinking culture” among intelligence
staff.
The paper was then stopped by a government injunction preventing
any media from revealing further information about Shayler’s
time in MI5.
Annie Machon’s book repeats the charges made in the original
Mail on Sunday story – while also quoting the repudiation given
at the time of the disclosures by Labour’s Foreign Secretary,
the late Robin Cook and his predecessor in John Major’s government,
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, denials dismissed by Machon.
She also claims that her decision to quit MI5 was similar to Shayler’s
– mainly because of the alleged attempt to assassination Colonel
Gaddafi, as well as “the general ineptitude and bungling I
had witnessed” .
In her conclusions Machon calls for the abolition of the entire
existing “intelligence infrastructure” to be replaced
by what she describes as “a dedicated Counter-Terrorist Agency”
that would work at home and abroad alongside “a small discrete
agency charged with gathering and assessing political, economic
and counter-espionage intelligence” and answerable to the Foreign
Office. Precisely how any of this would seriously differ from the
existing system is left unexplained.
Frankly, this book might have been of considerable interest had
it been better written, with greater discipline in the editing and
demonstrated a more convincing understanding of the role, and the
problems, of the security services. Instead Machon offers an often
crude, unfocused and confusingly scattergun picture which does no
credit to the author’s arguably legitimate case for a more
modern and efficient intelligence and security service.
Nor does it do Shayler any favours. Perhaps that explains why it
has received so little attention – except from government lawyers.
• Geoffrey Goodman is a former Assistant Editor of the Daily
Mirror and founding Editor of the British Journalism Review. |
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