May 7, 2024 • 48 mins
Also known as the Security Service, MI5 is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, dealing with threats inside the kingdom. However, recent revelations have shown that, in some cases, the organization may have helped to aid and abet some crimes in the course of (theoretically) preventing others. Tune in to learn more about the morally grey world of covert operations and MI5.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, we return to you, mere humble Farmers
with another classic episode. This one is a doozy. We're
entering the world of tradecraft, morally gray political thrillers situations.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
M I five.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
The question are they a criminal organization? I'm shrinking, y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I have been knee deep in this Apple TV series
called Slow Horses with Gary Oldman and some other fantastic
cast members, and it is about m I five and
it really speaks to this exact thing, like some of
the political maneuvers that these folks in charge of five
perpetrate in this series, which I believe is based on
(00:46):
a book series that was written by somebody with inside information.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
About the inner workings of five.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Absolutely staggering, reckless, psychotic, megalomaniacal behavior, no no account for
human life outside of just one's own political motivations and
or covering one's own RS as they say.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
For Crown and country guys. Uh what am I five?
This is the one that's similar to the NSA, right,
not the FBI, but like National Security Agency in the Uecurity.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Services I believe is what they're called over there.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yes, okay, but like Internal hundred resent Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, yeah, not to be confused with six, which is
a different thing. M I five investigates national security internally
though I counterinsurgency.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, like CIA would be our equivalent to I six
takes field trips. Got it well with that?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
With that, folks, and I love the shout out to
slow horses there too.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
With that, we are going to dive in.
Speaker 6 (01:52):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Mine
name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
We were joined with our super producer Paul Michigan control
dec At most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. No,
we several of us have been to the UK, right, correct?
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Right? Have we all been?
Speaker 7 (02:36):
I have when I was very very little, but I
don't really recall it intimillion.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Okay and Paul thumbs up, thumbs down.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Have you been to London? He is not. Okay, Paul.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
We will go on an adventure soon, assuming we can
get into the country.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
After today's episode, which is kind of a.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Question that we have to confront often.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Had a I think we'll be fine as what we
will find out a little bit later. Yes, about the
differences in MS.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Hopefully, yes, hopefully we will be fine.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know, if the Epstein episode didn't didn't finish us,
hopefully this one will be fine. So we have a
lot of listeners in the United Kingdom. A lot of
your fellow listeners as you are checking out the show
today are located often in the Anglo sphere where people
speak English, right, but there are listeners around the world.
(03:28):
We just got an email from a guy in Uganda actually,
which is very interesting. He was left our risk was
not a fan of the above majestic interview. By the way,
you can check out our Facebook page. Here's where it
gets crazy to see our response to this sort of stuff.
But this this is a episode that will center on
(03:51):
the United Kingdom. If you are thinking to yourself, Matt
nol Ben Michigan control, why should I care about this?
Why does it Matt to me? I don't want to
go to foggy London town. This is irrelevant.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well, let's just say before you get into your point,
remember all the connections we've made between intelligence agencies across
the world, especially those that speak English.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Right, right, So this matters to you.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
If you can understand the language in which we are
conducting this podcast, then this matters very much more so
than you might assume. Like most countries, the United Kingdom
has its own variety of intelligence services, and most people
outside of the UK, we're familiar with their intelligence operations
through one very important portrayal in fiction, James Bond. Yes, right, yes,
(04:45):
perfect Agent double seven himself. I mean, I can't even
I should have looked this up before we hopped in
the booth here, but I don't even remember how many
James Bond films exist.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
I'm gonna have a shot in the dark and say twelve.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
That sounds like the title for James Bond film Shot
in the Dark. But that's not right.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
It's more than fifteen.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Paul says, thirty five, Paul says nineteen, Paul says twenty five.
He's a twenty five.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
That's amazing, and it also shows like, of course, we
would be most familiar with intelligence agencies through this James
Bond thing. There's also an interesting study you can find
if you just google it about James Bond's drinking habit.
Somebody went through all the books and they counted every
(05:34):
time he had a drink, and we're like, well, this
guy is clearly wasted the entire time, and he probably
has a serotic liver.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
Have you ever had a vesper martini? That's James Bond's
martini of choice.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, there's a there's there are a couple of great
vesper places here in town now.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Really really good.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
It's like got a lemon twist and it uses lil
a instead of remooth, I believe, which is like a
kind of dry white wine, A pair of teeth kind
of thing, very citrusy.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Very refreshed.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I have no idea most of the words that you
just said, A pair of teeth.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
It's good, it's good.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We we also have a huge advocate for vespers in
the form of our pal Josh Clark.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
He's a he's a vesper guy.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Now nice.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I don't know why I said it, like that changes
his that shakes his moral character to the core.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I see a lot of people riding around on the vespers.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Uh in.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
That's cute man, all right, big oof, but uh today
we are taking a look behind the curtain past the
the sexy James Bond portrayals. Right, today, we're looking at
the real life inspiration for countless spy thrillers. Aiming to
answer a disturbing question. Let's just get it.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Out of the way now.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Is m I five a criminal organization?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
That's that's heavy.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
It's a good way to frame this discussion. Get some clicks, right, Yeah,
it's a big question. Sure, we're going to drill down
into it. As they say in corporate speak.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Let's start drilling.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Let's get granular. So what is m I five?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Well, am I is the most important thing you need
to know here, and that's military intelligence.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I thought it was Mission impossible.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I wish that it was.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I thought it was martian intuition.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
In this case, it is military intelligence. Specifically, that number
afterwards is the section number, so Section five. And it's
founded in nineteen o nine, and it wasn't called this
at all times. It started out as just something that
was called the Secret Service Bureau.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Because what better way to keep a secret than have
the word secret in the title.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
That's right, I mean, in that Secret Service in nineteen
oh nine. You can see it harken back then to
the United States in our own secret service, and it
we we'll find is that they do very different things.
And that's why you kind of have sections for all
these different secret services that you have. In this case,
five is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee or JIIC,
(08:08):
and this service itself is bound by this thing that
was created in nineteen eighty nine called the Security Service
Act of nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Yes, yes, yeah, that's name right.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
What we mean when we say bound is that the
Security Service Act, essentially, i should say, ostensibly, lays the
groundwork for what MI five is supposed to do, how
it does it, what it can do basically right right,
right right, and what does it do. The service is
supposed to, well, it's directed to, we should say, protect
(08:45):
British parliamentary democracy and Britain's economic interest and a counter
terrorism and espionage within the UK so counterintelligence.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
M I five was founded by Captain Vernon Kel. It's
a very distinguished sounding name. The organization played a central
role in the capture of most of Imperial Germany's intelligence
agents in the UK at the beginning of World War One.
It's a big deal. M I five is not the
same thing. It's important to note as am I six,
(09:16):
M I five is the British security Service. Well, I
six is the British foreign intelligence Service. So Ben, how
how should we think about this?
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I think of it as been similar in a way
for our American listeners to the relationship between the FBI
and the CIA just always kind of flummes me a
little bit. If I'm being honest, I think it always
flumkes the FBI and CIA themselves because they certainly overstep
into one another's encroach. Yeah, well, and often, I mean
when the CIA is dealing drugs and the FBI has
(09:46):
to deal with it, things get messy. Uh oh whatever,
It's true.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Ultimately, it's dealing with inward facing and outward facing counterintelligence
and intelligence.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Right, perfect, Yeah, that's the perfect way to say it. Essentially,
I six is tasked to send British spies abroad, and
m I five is there to catch spies from other countries.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So there you go.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
That makes sense, right, and.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
There are multiple military intelligence services. I really like the
hit on this, Noel, because we a lot of people
have kind of this Heinz fifty seven problem when we
talk about I five and m I six. You know,
were you ever a kid looking at heines fifty seven
and wondering where the hell or the other fifty six.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I want to try some of those, at least ketchups.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
It doesn't have to do with how many spices are
in it or something. I don't know.
Speaker 7 (10:34):
I assumed it was like Baskin Robbins or they've got
the flavors and they always exceeded that flavor.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Yeah, we should.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
We should probably ask Lauren Vogel Bomb or Annie Reese.
There's a plug for savor. It's a boot size showing lifestyle.
But yeah, So it turns.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Out it was an historical advertising slogan about the fifty
seven different varieties of sickulls.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Oh pickles?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Okay, how do you have fifty seven different I guess
you can pickle anything, right.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
So, in the case of these multiple military intelligence services
in the UK, we find that they go all the
way up to m I nineteen and many have come
and gone since the creation of the first military intelligence
service m I one, which was created sometime during World
War One, and they mainly focused on cryptography, code breaking,
(11:27):
counterintelligence stuff, you know what I mean. So they were
figuring out what Imperial Germany was up to and as
we mentioned, they were quite successful with some of this stuff,
and over time various sections folded or they merged, or
they changed their area of focus. In these sections I
one through nineteen ran all sorts of different I don't
(11:50):
want to say hustles, but different processes. Their activities included
stuff like specialized geographical analysis. You know, we have a
desk that just looks at Russia, for instance, when that
just looks at South America. And then they would have
things like map making, aerial photography.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
They would also have.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Things that we would normally find objectionable in Western governments today,
such as three different active propaganda and censorship bureaus. Yeah,
and they were blatant about it. That's what it's said
on their label.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
But you know, a lot of that stuff spawned out
of World War Two, when the propaganda had to be
strong on all fronts, right, And including with that was
I nineteen that you already mentioned, and that was the
bureau specifically, or the I guess section specifically designed to
interrogate prisoners of war during World War Two, which is
(12:41):
kind of scary. It's like the Black Site section.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And it's also it's interesting because the organization feels a
little bit different in comparison to intelligence agencies in the US,
Like the CIA handles a ton of this stuff with
its own different subsection, you know what I mean. So
what does m I five do. We've we've looked at
(13:07):
just the broad I don't know the broad strokes of this,
but when we ask what it actually does on the ground,
we run this is one of those million dollars or
million pound questions. Officially, I five does what it says
on the website, right.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, it catches spies, that's what it does. It intercepts communications,
it finds people, it conducts classified counterintelligence. I mean, come on,
that's m I five for you. And what it does
is it keeps the bear from the.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Door whatever scary animal.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, the coyotes can't get in because of US.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah yeah, that's I like that Cold War reference, right,
because the UK had to reorganize a lot of their
stuff in and evolve their sophistication when the KGB came
out guns blazing in the Cold War.
Speaker 7 (13:59):
Oh yeah, interesting though, because to this day many of
these operations and my five operations remain classified.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah it's kind of a big deal. Yeah yeah, yeah, yes,
I mean a lot.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
It seems like in our country some of that stuff
kind of eventually over time, when it ceases to be
important for security, we get to get a little glimpse
into some of the past covert operations, right, a little, yeah,
some of them.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're absolutely correct. One thing that's
one thing that's tough for the British public is that
without information about a lot of these operations, many of
which were fairly recent in the nineteen eighties and stuff.
Without that information, it's tough to gauge how successful or
(14:42):
unsuccessful this organization is. Because if they're doing everything right,
you never hear about them, you know, you only hear
about them when something goes pair shaped, which I believe
is British slang.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Or something goes really right and another person leaks information.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Right, And that's how we do know some intelligence failures.
For instance, in nineteen eighty three, one of MI five's officers,
a guy named Michael Bettany, was caught trying to sell
information to the KGB. He got caught, he got convicted
of vespionage. The big question is what did he did
He successfully sell some stuff beforehand?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, did he get away with it? Before he got
caught and was he the only guy selling information? I
certainly doubt it.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And you know, with these organizations, you have to continually
justify the reason that you're getting so much money from
the public, I guess tax dollars and all of that
with any intelligence community or organization. And as a Cold
War came to an end, they switched gears again because
there were terrorist threats coming from Northern Ireland states such
(15:49):
as Libya where Colonel Gaddafi was operating, and that was
a threat, at least at the time it perceived threat.
These were some of the major threats at least according
to the MI five for a little while there. And
then you know, like we said, the Cold War is
coming to an end. Now we're in the nineties, and
there were some major reforms put into place, and the
service actually around this time gained its first female director general.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, Dame Stella Remington, who held the position from nineteen
ninety two to nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 7 (16:20):
And then the rise of Islamis terrorism at the end
of the nineties, culminating in the nine to eleven attacks
in two thousand and one, led to massive changes in the.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Way MI five operated.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, absolutely, and look, folks, it's no secret. The counter
intelligence is a murky murky business. Operations often edge into
moorally and legally gray areas. Over the course of its existence,
like many other intelligence agencies, five has conducted numerous secret operations,
often without any public oversight, and often even without governmental oversight.
(16:56):
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And many people would say that is the way it
should be.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Sure, Sure, sometimes even people who don't work for five,
mostly people who work for m I five probably say that. Yeah,
but yeah, I see the point about compartmentalized information, right,
There's a need to have that sort of operational security.
But critics don't buy this. Critics allege that I five
is much more than a counter intelligence agency. In fact,
(17:25):
they argue, while I five functions as a spy service,
it also effectively functions as a criminal empire. WHOA yeah,
like hydro level, What the hell are we talking about?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
(17:49):
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
While the MI five might not be a criminal organization
at least to its parent government, yield just call it
what do we call it? The Parliamentary United Kingdom In
their government and you know, perhaps the Queen and all
of her subjects. But it certainly functions as a criminal
(18:11):
organization at least at times, you know. And we're not again,
we're not just throwing throwing ninja stars. Is that okay
to say, we're not just throwing ninja stars at Britain.
We've seen this occur, as we said earlier, with many
other intelligence services within many other countries. But it does
(18:32):
function as a criminal organization sometimes.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
And we know this.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
This isn't a theory. No, this isn't some to foil
Internet bloggery. Here it turns out that in twenty eighteen,
declassified documents showed that the government of the United Kingdom
allows MI five's agents and informants to carry out crime
within the UK without consequence. They've been allowed to do
(18:59):
this for at least thirty years. WHOA, Seriously, it's a
it's a license to kill, it's a license to torture, pillage.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Did you just say a license to kill? Yes?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Oh wait, yeah I did.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
I mean, come on, man, that's great.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I can't believe I did think of that.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, I mean that.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
But really the bit we did was awesome.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
But the fact that they can just go murder people
is not cool.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
And and as it turns out, which was a bummer
to me or to my kid's self, they don't actually
have a license they can flash before they kill someone,
letting them know that it's legit.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
It's more of an expression.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Maybe we should just manufacture our own, not to use,
but just to have just.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
On a T shirt.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Maybe we like, how would you.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Feel if you stole someone's wallet and you were going
through the wallet and you found like three different fake
forms of identification right all the same face, three different names,
three different profiles, and then you saw like this mysterious
license to kill. What would you do with that wallet?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I would put it right back down, wipe first. I'd
wipe my prints from it. There you go, say it
right back down on the ground.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Clever, clever?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
All right, well, I know what you guys are getting
for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
You'd also have to check local security cameras and any
CCTV that's around. Make sure to destroy those tapes, all right.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
And you probably want to drop your phone too, because
that GPS record would be there. Oh god, you know what,
we might be taking this thought experiment a little too far.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Right, Now, if you do have a license to kill,
and you can tell us about it without killing us,
we would love to hear your experiences. We will do
our best to keep you anonymous, just putting it out there.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Well, I guess you're right, Noel, it's as we'll see.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
They kind of did have not a badge they could
wave around, but they did have documented proof that the
government at all levels that were aware of it, approved
of this. It was called a secret and concealed policy.
This would allow the security service to authorize participation in murder, torture,
sexual assault, or other grave criminality if.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Just a few folks believed it was.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
In the service of the greater good in the public interest.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
That is so creepy and disgusting, and I wonder how
many other intelligence organizations have an active policy like that,
a secret and concealed policy. Okay, so this was basically
a criminal authorization, just literally that you can do crime
and it's okay.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
But it's like a further greater good clause, right right,
that's the implication here.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, but yes, but this is something that has been
around for thirty years and it was only first acknowledged
in British court when an alliance of human rights groups
argued that it was unlawful to have this kind of policy,
like maybe not, let's not do this.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
And it was completely secret like they were practicing omerta
until twenty twelve. Prime Minister David Cameron wrote to Sir
Mark Waller, the Intelligence Service Commissioner at the time, asking
him to keep the policy under review, which we've got
a quote. It's very British in the way it's written,
(22:31):
but we'll give it a shot.
Speaker 7 (22:32):
I'm gonna do a British accent, let's say, in the
discharge of their function to protect national security. The Security
Service has long standing policy for their agent handlers to
agree to agents participating in crime in circumstances where it
is considered such involvement is necessary and proportionate in providing
or maintaining access to intelligence that will allow the disruption
(22:53):
of more serious crimes or threats to national security.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Oh wow, that was great.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
That it sounds nice.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
But it sounds like he's describing marzipan.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It sounds like he's reading like a Winnie the Pooh
story or something.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You know, it's totally it's a clause for undercover agents, right,
that's all that's what that is.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Well, no, but I meant is but yeah, it's saying like,
if you have an informant who is operating maybe in
something like gun running or human trafficking circle, yeah, and
you need to keep them embedded.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
Question in the States, Yeah, you see it in movies.
I just want to see what you guys think about this.
Whenever an undercover agent is offered drugs, they they go
to whatever lengths they can to not actually do the drugs.
If they're like, you know, you know, like prove you're
not a cop, do the drugs.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Or whatever, it's like oops, oops, I drop the drugs.
Speaker 7 (23:44):
You know, isn't that a thing? No, I'm wondering, like,
do you think we have a It does seem like
it's not. It's frowned upon for undercover cops to like
get deep and start like doing drugs. It sounds like
there's a border, there's a there's a boundary that we
would prefer not to cross.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
They probably want to avoid it, but it comes into
that idea the greater good right accomplishing the sting or
the operation. So I am sure there are people who have,
maybe in the DEA or something, been forced to do
cocaine or something like that. But I don't know if
there's a strict, a strict bright line policy wise, I.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Don't think there can be. Yeah, I think because all
of it's circumstantial, right, especially when you're dealing with this,
if this is full on national security for the past
thirty years, I can't even imagine some of the terrible
things that some of these agents have had to do,
like you're saying, in the human trafficking fields and drug
fields and murder, like in murder in order to then
(24:46):
get a bigger fish essentially down the line.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And you also have to wonder, Okay, let's put ourselves
in that hypothetical position. Let's say Paul Mission Control DECA
is a big time like Narco's level Columbia drug cartel leader, right,
I can see it, and we're we're up and comers,
we're gonna be lieutenants. And he's like this, do this
cocaine in front of me? It's cocaine, and we would
(25:13):
we would look very suspicious if we just fumbled, just
dropped it. Because I don't know. I don't know a
ton about about that drug, but I do know about
the general trends of addiction and people who are into
that kind of stuff don't just drop it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah. In that case, I think the fumble move would
be to accidentally drop it on one of the guys
that you know is not an undercover agent, so that it's, oh, well,
we didn't waste it. It just is all over that guy.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Now, I don't know, man, I think you have to
do it if you're at that point.
Speaker 7 (25:44):
It's like that you can't be like that scene in
that Woody Allen movie where he sneezes the cocaine off
the dish or whatever, and it's just basically like a
party foul. It's more like a you're gonna get shot
in the face foul.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah. But then if you're talking about the bigger operations,
where you're at out in the field doing things other
than drugs, the actual criminal acts, that's where it gets
a little I don't know, it gets murky.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
For me, right right right, Like if you are embedded
as an enforcer and you're sent to beat the crap
out of someone, you know what I mean. And I'm
sure there have been in the past undercover agents who
have to performatively beat the snot out of one another
just to make sure they look like they're legit. So yes,
the informant stuff, that's part of it, and that doesn't
(26:31):
seem that far out. But when Cameron is writing this
letter to Sir Mark Waller, he essentially says, look, we're
not going to ask you to tell us whether like,
we don't want you to feel as if you have
to report it to anybody. If you get what I'm
saying anyone, and you don't have to worry about whether
(26:54):
or not it's legal at all.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
That's just crazy, man.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
Is that one of those things where it sort of
exists in like an extra legal area.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yes, right, Yeah, And most people in the government had
no idea what was happening, you know what I mean.
I think most people in Parliament at that time would
have said, you know, we should we should not give
people these licensees for wanton destruction.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Cameron, to be.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Fair, he am were gonna try to be fair here
said he considered making the letter public in the interest
of transparency, but decided against it because he thought it
might be damaging to the national interest also known as
his political career. Wow, that's what I think. I think
he was sane, damaging to the national interest, But he
(27:43):
meant damaging to his political career.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Yeah, kind of a typo.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Maybe A Well, I can see that. I can see that, Ben,
I mean I can see where you become prime minister,
you get with of something like this, and as a citizen,
it gives you pause just knowing that it's happening right,
no matter where what your beliefs are in while you're
holding that office. And it does seem like he kind
of rode the fence there a little bit of should
(28:07):
I shouldn't I tell anybody about this? This is really
effed up? But in the in the in the uh,
let's keep national security in public interest in order, and
let's just balance it out and say, let's just keep
it quiet. Like, wasn't it the whole idea that he
basically just he said he told this guy not to
comment on the legality. That was the whole idea.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
So it's the policy is under review. Doing air quotes here,
I hope you could hear them. The policies under review. However,
what that essentially means is provide cover for us and
don't like, Okay, look, sometimes you gotta you gotta break
a few innocent eggs if you really want to cook
a terrorism Omelet you.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Know what I mean? Geez.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So that's yeah, that's exactly what happens. Said, don't comment
on the legality, don't refer it to any prosecuting body,
don't refer it to law enforcement. Let's keep this between us.
Let's let's have a greater good. So the argument was
essentially that for most of history, most of modern British history,
they have been following one of two paths as just
(29:16):
a nation. There was the rule of law and then
there were criminal acts. Right, But they called this strategy
the third direction, right right? Do you guys remember Glee?
Do you remember their band?
Speaker 7 (29:32):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (29:33):
One direction was a real band?
Speaker 4 (29:37):
What am I thinking of? Well, there was that U
plus me equals us thing?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
New direction, a new direction, new direction.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
It's a pun new direction. I see a very body.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Like Boy's Soul from Always Sunday in Philadelphia. But they
called this thing, seriously, the third direction. Nobody acknowledged it
until this year in a British court when that Alliance
of Human Rights group said Matt mentioned earlier, Privacy International.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Who are the other ones?
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, those guys over at PI. Then we've got reprieve
the Committee on the Administration of Justice and the Pat
Finnickan Center.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
According to the legal team representing this alliance, the third
direction policy is likely to have enabled the Security Service
to conceal wide ranging illegal activity, and they brought this
case before an investigatory powers tribunal. The trial included as
a bonus the publication of a heavily redacted document, a
(30:44):
guideline essentially for how to break the law and get
away with it.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
This is how you do it.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
And like a lot of government documents, you can find
copies of this published in a couple of different places
in British media, but tons like the entire paragraphs are
blacked out. They're not gonna admit this stuff, right because
it's still the great boogeyman of national security exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And you know, the timing of the letter was also
really strange here because just two weeks after this highly
redacted document gets released, it's made public. Mister Cameron, our buddy,
admitted that there was this thing called state collusion in
the nineteen eighty nine murder of Belfast solicitor Patrick Finnickin
and state state collusion what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That means essentially the Cameron is arguing some faction of
the intelligence apparatus or the state apparatus.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Of the United Kingdom.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
May have aided aided in this guy's death, or may
have at the very least been criminally negligent and protecting him. Right,
it's the most fair way to say it. They get
into some very very very dirty things when they were
attempting to retain Northern Ireland, you know. Oh yeah, and
(32:08):
we'll tell you more about the trial after a word
from our sponsor. So, according to Sir James ed QC,
that stands for Queen's Counsel, those are the guys who
have the wigs. The name for those wigs is Peruke, So.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Peruk assault, What was the what was the one you did?
Off air?
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Peruca's on fire Peruke.
Speaker 7 (32:36):
To learn more about the history of the Peruke, you
can check out me and Ben's other podcast, Ridiculous History,
where we do an episode about what the heck's up
with those crazy British lawyer wigs, which is yeah, which
is one of our first episodes.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Be kind or be brutal, it's up to you. We
just want you to know. That's a great word. Internet's
going to do it then, and that's going to do.
Then that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
So this guy, Sir James Edy, QC, is representing the
intelligence agencies, the Home Office in the Foreign Office, and
he told this Investigatory Powers Tribunal that details of MI
five's conduct had to be kept secret even in the
modern day and could not be aired in open court.
He argued that the claim should be restricted to investigating
(33:21):
over a sensible time period, at most six years.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Wow, six years to keep all your secrets?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So what did the Alliance of Human rights organizations say
to that?
Speaker 7 (33:34):
So in their argument, the claimants cite Finnican's murder as
an illustration of the considerable public importance of the issues raised.
It also refers to allegations that Freddie Scapatici great name,
Yeah it's pretty good, was a former senior member of
the IRA and a security Service agent working under the
(33:56):
code name Oh my god, I love this Steak Knife
s T A k E. That's a good DJ name
right there, Steak Knife.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Huh oh wow, that's great.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, that's so Skeptichi aka steak Knife was we have
to say, allegedly still but was involved in kidnap, torture,
and murder. A while working as an agent employed by
m I five. So the roundabout way, then the government
of the United Kingdom was paying this guy to kidnap,
(34:35):
torture and murder people.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
For the greater good, for the greater good. Right.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
M I five has refused to answer the claimant's questions
about the scope of this third direction policy, including whether
it could in principle authorize murder, torture, in humane and
degrading treatment, sexual assault, kidnapping, or false imprisonment. The security
services lawyers all so said to answer such questions would
(35:02):
reveal the facts of conduct that they wish to keep secret.
So it's kind of like a trust us we're doing
the right thing. We can't tell you what we're doing.
We can't tell you why. Other than that, not a
very convincing argument.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
No, not at all. And we also have other examples
of some strange things that ended up coming to light,
or at least things that maybe never wanted to see
the light of day. There were some papers released by
the Irish state that showed that there was this loyalist
paramilitary group, or at least members of one of these groups,
specifically the Ultier Volunteer Force. They're a paramilitary group out
(35:40):
of Northern Ireland. They claimed that am I five asked
them to assassinate the then Prime Minister of Ireland, Charles
Hahi in nineteen eighty five. And we went to this
BBC source to learn a little bit more about this.
But it's very I don't know, it's very strange because
(36:02):
it was it was a letter, just kind of your
standard letter sent to somebody, like a correspondence, and it
just happened to include a couple documents and a couple
literally guys who just said, hey, by the way, m
I five asked us to kill you one time.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
We didn't do it, yeah, but but you know, you
should know it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
It was sent two years after the alleged I guess
assassination or the hit was put on him, I guess.
It contained a long long list of collusion allegations against
the British Intelligence Service so or various services that the
British intelligence has this guy. It was addressed to mister Hahien.
It read in nineteen eighty five, we were approached by
(36:47):
an MI five officer. He asked us to execute you.
And it said that these this paramilitary group had been
supplied with quote details that would have compromised this guy's
personal security, including aerial photographs of his family home, his cars,
and his private yacht.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
So for an imperfect comparison, it's similar to say, the
CIA taking over Newfoundland and the people of Newfoundland wanting
to make a United Canada, and so the CIA contacts
someone in Canada and says, kill whomever is in charge
(37:27):
of this unity group in Newfoundland, or kill the prime
minister of Canada so we can keep our part.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, And I guess they didn't imagine that the people
who were not necessarily the friends of the British Intelligence Service,
they wouldn't just say, oh, yeah, okay, show up boss.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Well maybe they just said, you know, killing prime ministers
step too far.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I guess that's what I'm saying. Yeah, like they didn't
expect that to occur. That seems very strange to me.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
In twenty ten, Benyam Mohammed al Habashi went to court
to hold five accountable for collusion in his torture at
the hands of Uncle Sam. And then there's the example
of Shakira Mir who said I five watched him being
tortured in two thousand and one.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
That was really brutal too. Yeah, the guy he was
in Guantanamo Bay, right, and he said like several times
British officers would be in the room while he's being beaten,
just brutally beaten, his head slammed against the wall. Yeah,
pretty pretty crazy stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
It's truly disturbing because now with all this new information,
this admission on the part of the British government that
these sorts of things occur, many of those previous allegations
of criminal activity on the part of mi I five
that were once dismissed as out and out conspiracy theories
seem increasingly maybe not plausible, well maybe not probable, but
(38:56):
certainly less impossible. They've been implicated in the murder of
anti nuclear activists Tilda Murle. They've been accused of creating
a far right neo Nazi group, Combat eighteen. Their profile
peaked in February fifteenth, nineteen ninety five, when they orchestrated
a riot in Dublin that led to a cancellation of
a football match between England and Ireland. One theory suggests
(39:19):
that British intelligence wanted to create a magnet for the
most extreme parts of these political parties. One member who
is convicted of murder. In nineteen ninety eight, a guy
named Charlie Sargent has been accused of being an MI
five informant with some pretty solid evidence. And then we
did the death of Commander Buster Crab in a previous episode.
Speaker 7 (39:40):
Yeah, just a.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Crab where he never surfaced, and it seems that maybe
someone on the inside was responsible.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Weren't there frogmen involved in that story? Yes? Yeah, what
about crab men?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
They never made it to Crab mainly because the difficulty
of making forward backward motion.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
That's hard. Yeah, scuttling, scuttling.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
So you mentioned Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi earlier as well, right.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Oh, yeah, And in ninety six, there was a bomb
that was placed under a car that was I guess
thought to be the vehicle that Gaddafi was going to
be traveling in in his motorcade, but well he wasn't
in that vehicle. The car did explode, the bomb did explode,
and several bodyguards were killed. There was an ensuing gun
battle that killed several people, and there were even there
(40:28):
would be assassins, you know, the people that planted the
bomb and everything. They had links to al Qaeda, and
it's thought that maybe maybe I five had a little
bit of a hand in.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
This, right.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
The head of the Libyan desk for mi I five
at the time was a guy named David Shaler, and
in nineteen ninety seven he left the service leaked this
information at these accusations, these allegations to the press. He
was forced to flee to France, and in nineteen ninety
eight he claimed that the plot to kill Gadaffi had
been funded by.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
M I six. Wow, cooperation with m I five.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
There's you know, taking out a head, a leader like
that of a country is no small deal.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Well, and there's compelling it's not compelling evidence, there's proof
that ultimately the French government was behind the assassination of
Goadaffi to preserve financial hegemony because they wanted you know,
Godaffy did many, many terrible things, but the thing France
was most frightened of him doing was to create a
(41:30):
continental African currency, a denollur. Yeah, so mess with the money, right,
that's what happens.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Money in the oil.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The new series starting Matt Frederick.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Here's always money in the banana stand.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
So what does this all mean?
Speaker 1 (41:47):
This is this is pretty strange because it's rare for
this kind of information to come out in such a
blatant way. Yeah, break the law for the greater good,
most intelligence agencies, I would say, pra just that right.
The problem is the goalpost of that defines greater good
is always moving.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
Who's good, right, greater for whom?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Exactly exactly, And at this point many of us listening
to the show today will have a hard time being surprised.
Some of us might even support this policy, you know
what I mean. There are people who say that torture
is a terrible thing, but ultimately it saves lives. We
have an episode on why that is not true as well.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, but but there are points to be made that
if you it's not an easy task to stop the
you know that, in your worldview, the worst people in
the world from doing the worst things. That's not an
easy task to prevent that from happening, and you do
have to perhaps do some bad things. It's just I
(42:48):
think in this case, it's that gray area of how
bad is too bad for the a thing for the
good guys to do to prevent the bad guys.
Speaker 7 (42:55):
Well, it's that idea that to like counter to the
bad guys, you got to stoop to their level. We
got to play by their rules otherwise you're gonna get
stepped all over right in theory?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a good point. Did they
tell you guys rewatched True Detective recently?
Speaker 4 (43:11):
Season two? Season one?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Thank god?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (43:14):
I have a friend that really says, revisit season two,
give another chance.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
I yeah, I've heard that.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
I've heard that before, but I didn't take a break
beause season one was just so great. There's a quote
that's not a spoiler, but this, this conversation reminds me
of it. The two main characters, Marty and Rust, are
having a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil,
and at some point in the conversation, Marty says Marty
(43:40):
asked if they're good people, and Rust says, no, we're bad,
but they need bad men like us to keep the
others from the door.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Yeah, and that made that a bear from the beginning
of the show. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Or Jack Nicholson, right, not not as a not as
a character, just him.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
He's keep don't know, he's a creepy looking guy. I
don't know. I wouldn't want him to knock him.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, I don't know him well enough to remark on
his door policy.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
I guess, I guess the big question is do we
have to have the bad guys inside the door keeping
the other bad guys from the door. Why can't we
just build a giant wall and.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Topical topical question? So I take that.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Totally, getting them totally.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well. It's a good question though, because should m I
five allow its agents and informants to break the law?
Does it really does it really become a necessary evil
on the way to achieving a greater good?
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And if so, for who what laws they break? How
do we measure the success or the efficiency of something
like this if it's conducted entirely in secret? What sort
of oversight should the public and or government agencies have
on this process? Because right now the answer is not.
But yeah, they have a letter from twenty twelve that's like,
(45:04):
don't send this to anybody. David Cameron sent a no
snitching letter.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, that's exactly what happened, and that's where we are today,
no snitching, boys.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
And girls, Snitches end up in stitches. Yeah, Well, tell
us what you think.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and let us know.
Are these things necessary evils, is allowing the collapse of
the rule of law in one scenario really necessary to
allow the enforcement of rule of law in another situation? Right,
That's ultimately the question really is.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
And by the way, I was just going to bring
this up before we ended at the Tenderfoot holiday party
thing that we were at the three of US. I
ran into a gentleman. Paul Dicken was there too, but
I ran into a gentleman who truly truly believes and
had a long discussion on me about it that the
British government still controls the United States.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
I overheard that, and I didn't want to jump in.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
He truly believed it. Oh, I should talk to him,
I know, well, I kind of. I didn't want to
go any deeper than we already had in the conversation
because it's one of those that doesn't really go anywhere.
After you hit a certain wall. It's like, yeah, well,
you can't prove anything, but that's an interesting idea.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Did you tell me did an episode on it?
Speaker 2 (46:19):
I did?
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Did you tell him that he can contact us via
a telephone call? We're just a phone call away.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
I did, I said, call one eight three three std
WYTK brought the STD back for this one because it's
not about awful things like the last one.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Oh and I also also want to just in the
interest of full transparency, I'm not at death's door, but
I am in. I am darn sure on like the
sub basement of sickness right now. So that's why my
voice sounds.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
A little bad.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
If you heard any any mucusy noises, sorry, folks, that
was me.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
Should be hailing hardy later. Are you down with the sickness? Ben? Oh?
Oh ah, I'm always I'm always up to something.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
It's just extra deep. I like it.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
It's nice and gravelly. Thanks guys, Paul, Will Shirley snip
out all the snot sounds, thanks Paul.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
So yeah, let us let us know what you think
and check in with your fellow and listeners. We'd like
to take this debate to the internet, and we mentioned
it earlier in the show, but you can find us
at our Facebook site.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Here's where it gets crazy if you love all that.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist, we return to you, mere humble Farmers
with another classic episode. This one is a doozy. We're
entering the world of tradecraft, morally gray political thrillers situations.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
M I five.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
The question are they a criminal organization? I'm shrinking, y'all.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I have been knee deep in this Apple TV series
called Slow Horses with Gary Oldman and some other fantastic
cast members, and it is about m I five and
it really speaks to this exact thing, like some of
the political maneuvers that these folks in charge of five
perpetrate in this series, which I believe is based on
(00:46):
a book series that was written by somebody with inside information.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
About the inner workings of five.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Absolutely staggering, reckless, psychotic, megalomaniacal behavior, no no account for
human life outside of just one's own political motivations and
or covering one's own RS as they say.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
For Crown and country guys. Uh what am I five?
This is the one that's similar to the NSA, right,
not the FBI, but like National Security Agency in the Uecurity.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Services I believe is what they're called over there.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yes, okay, but like Internal hundred resent Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, yeah, not to be confused with six, which is
a different thing. M I five investigates national security internally
though I counterinsurgency.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, like CIA would be our equivalent to I six
takes field trips. Got it well with that?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
With that, folks, and I love the shout out to
slow horses there too.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
With that, we are going to dive in.
Speaker 6 (01:52):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Mine
name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
We were joined with our super producer Paul Michigan control
dec At most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. No,
we several of us have been to the UK, right, correct?
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Right? Have we all been?
Speaker 7 (02:36):
I have when I was very very little, but I
don't really recall it intimillion.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Okay and Paul thumbs up, thumbs down.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Have you been to London? He is not. Okay, Paul.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
We will go on an adventure soon, assuming we can
get into the country.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
After today's episode, which is kind of a.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Question that we have to confront often.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Had a I think we'll be fine as what we
will find out a little bit later. Yes, about the
differences in MS.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Hopefully, yes, hopefully we will be fine.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know, if the Epstein episode didn't didn't finish us,
hopefully this one will be fine. So we have a
lot of listeners in the United Kingdom. A lot of
your fellow listeners as you are checking out the show
today are located often in the Anglo sphere where people
speak English, right, but there are listeners around the world.
(03:28):
We just got an email from a guy in Uganda actually,
which is very interesting. He was left our risk was
not a fan of the above majestic interview. By the way,
you can check out our Facebook page. Here's where it
gets crazy to see our response to this sort of stuff.
But this this is a episode that will center on
(03:51):
the United Kingdom. If you are thinking to yourself, Matt
nol Ben Michigan control, why should I care about this?
Why does it Matt to me? I don't want to
go to foggy London town. This is irrelevant.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well, let's just say before you get into your point,
remember all the connections we've made between intelligence agencies across
the world, especially those that speak English.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Right, right, So this matters to you.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
If you can understand the language in which we are
conducting this podcast, then this matters very much more so
than you might assume. Like most countries, the United Kingdom
has its own variety of intelligence services, and most people
outside of the UK, we're familiar with their intelligence operations
through one very important portrayal in fiction, James Bond. Yes, right, yes,
(04:45):
perfect Agent double seven himself. I mean, I can't even
I should have looked this up before we hopped in
the booth here, but I don't even remember how many
James Bond films exist.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
I'm gonna have a shot in the dark and say twelve.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
That sounds like the title for James Bond film Shot
in the Dark. But that's not right.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
It's more than fifteen.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Paul says, thirty five, Paul says nineteen, Paul says twenty five.
He's a twenty five.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
That's amazing, and it also shows like, of course, we
would be most familiar with intelligence agencies through this James
Bond thing. There's also an interesting study you can find
if you just google it about James Bond's drinking habit.
Somebody went through all the books and they counted every
(05:34):
time he had a drink, and we're like, well, this
guy is clearly wasted the entire time, and he probably
has a serotic liver.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
Have you ever had a vesper martini? That's James Bond's
martini of choice.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, there's a there's there are a couple of great
vesper places here in town now.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Really really good.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
It's like got a lemon twist and it uses lil
a instead of remooth, I believe, which is like a
kind of dry white wine, A pair of teeth kind
of thing, very citrusy.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Very refreshed.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I have no idea most of the words that you
just said, A pair of teeth.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
It's good, it's good.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We we also have a huge advocate for vespers in
the form of our pal Josh Clark.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
He's a he's a vesper guy.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Now nice.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I don't know why I said it, like that changes
his that shakes his moral character to the core.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I see a lot of people riding around on the vespers.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Uh in.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
That's cute man, all right, big oof, but uh today
we are taking a look behind the curtain past the
the sexy James Bond portrayals. Right, today, we're looking at
the real life inspiration for countless spy thrillers. Aiming to
answer a disturbing question. Let's just get it.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Out of the way now.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Is m I five a criminal organization?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
That's that's heavy.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
It's a good way to frame this discussion. Get some clicks, right, Yeah,
it's a big question. Sure, we're going to drill down
into it. As they say in corporate speak.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Let's start drilling.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Let's get granular. So what is m I five?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Well, am I is the most important thing you need
to know here, and that's military intelligence.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I thought it was Mission impossible.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I wish that it was.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I thought it was martian intuition.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
In this case, it is military intelligence. Specifically, that number
afterwards is the section number, so Section five. And it's
founded in nineteen o nine, and it wasn't called this
at all times. It started out as just something that
was called the Secret Service Bureau.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Because what better way to keep a secret than have
the word secret in the title.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
That's right, I mean, in that Secret Service in nineteen
oh nine. You can see it harken back then to
the United States in our own secret service, and it
we we'll find is that they do very different things.
And that's why you kind of have sections for all
these different secret services that you have. In this case,
five is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee or JIIC,
(08:08):
and this service itself is bound by this thing that
was created in nineteen eighty nine called the Security Service
Act of nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Yes, yes, yeah, that's name right.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
What we mean when we say bound is that the
Security Service Act, essentially, i should say, ostensibly, lays the
groundwork for what MI five is supposed to do, how
it does it, what it can do basically right right,
right right, and what does it do. The service is
supposed to, well, it's directed to, we should say, protect
(08:45):
British parliamentary democracy and Britain's economic interest and a counter
terrorism and espionage within the UK so counterintelligence.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
M I five was founded by Captain Vernon Kel. It's
a very distinguished sounding name. The organization played a central
role in the capture of most of Imperial Germany's intelligence
agents in the UK at the beginning of World War One.
It's a big deal. M I five is not the
same thing. It's important to note as am I six,
(09:16):
M I five is the British security Service. Well, I
six is the British foreign intelligence Service. So Ben, how
how should we think about this?
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I think of it as been similar in a way
for our American listeners to the relationship between the FBI
and the CIA just always kind of flummes me a
little bit. If I'm being honest, I think it always
flumkes the FBI and CIA themselves because they certainly overstep
into one another's encroach. Yeah, well, and often, I mean
when the CIA is dealing drugs and the FBI has
(09:46):
to deal with it, things get messy. Uh oh whatever,
It's true.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Ultimately, it's dealing with inward facing and outward facing counterintelligence
and intelligence.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Right, perfect, Yeah, that's the perfect way to say it. Essentially,
I six is tasked to send British spies abroad, and
m I five is there to catch spies from other countries.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So there you go.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
That makes sense, right, and.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
There are multiple military intelligence services. I really like the
hit on this, Noel, because we a lot of people
have kind of this Heinz fifty seven problem when we
talk about I five and m I six. You know,
were you ever a kid looking at heines fifty seven
and wondering where the hell or the other fifty six.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I want to try some of those, at least ketchups.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
It doesn't have to do with how many spices are
in it or something. I don't know.
Speaker 7 (10:34):
I assumed it was like Baskin Robbins or they've got
the flavors and they always exceeded that flavor.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Yeah, we should.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
We should probably ask Lauren Vogel Bomb or Annie Reese.
There's a plug for savor. It's a boot size showing lifestyle.
But yeah, So it turns.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Out it was an historical advertising slogan about the fifty
seven different varieties of sickulls.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Oh pickles?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Okay, how do you have fifty seven different I guess
you can pickle anything, right.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
So, in the case of these multiple military intelligence services
in the UK, we find that they go all the
way up to m I nineteen and many have come
and gone since the creation of the first military intelligence
service m I one, which was created sometime during World
War One, and they mainly focused on cryptography, code breaking,
(11:27):
counterintelligence stuff, you know what I mean. So they were
figuring out what Imperial Germany was up to and as
we mentioned, they were quite successful with some of this stuff,
and over time various sections folded or they merged, or
they changed their area of focus. In these sections I
one through nineteen ran all sorts of different I don't
(11:50):
want to say hustles, but different processes. Their activities included
stuff like specialized geographical analysis. You know, we have a
desk that just looks at Russia, for instance, when that
just looks at South America. And then they would have
things like map making, aerial photography.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
They would also have.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Things that we would normally find objectionable in Western governments today,
such as three different active propaganda and censorship bureaus. Yeah,
and they were blatant about it. That's what it's said
on their label.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
But you know, a lot of that stuff spawned out
of World War Two, when the propaganda had to be
strong on all fronts, right, And including with that was
I nineteen that you already mentioned, and that was the
bureau specifically, or the I guess section specifically designed to
interrogate prisoners of war during World War Two, which is
(12:41):
kind of scary. It's like the Black Site section.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And it's also it's interesting because the organization feels a
little bit different in comparison to intelligence agencies in the US,
Like the CIA handles a ton of this stuff with
its own different subsection, you know what I mean. So
what does m I five do. We've we've looked at
(13:07):
just the broad I don't know the broad strokes of this,
but when we ask what it actually does on the ground,
we run this is one of those million dollars or
million pound questions. Officially, I five does what it says
on the website, right.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, it catches spies, that's what it does. It intercepts communications,
it finds people, it conducts classified counterintelligence. I mean, come on,
that's m I five for you. And what it does
is it keeps the bear from the.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Door whatever scary animal.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, the coyotes can't get in because of US.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah yeah, that's I like that Cold War reference, right,
because the UK had to reorganize a lot of their
stuff in and evolve their sophistication when the KGB came
out guns blazing in the Cold War.
Speaker 7 (13:59):
Oh yeah, interesting though, because to this day many of
these operations and my five operations remain classified.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah it's kind of a big deal. Yeah yeah, yeah, yes,
I mean a lot.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
It seems like in our country some of that stuff
kind of eventually over time, when it ceases to be
important for security, we get to get a little glimpse
into some of the past covert operations, right, a little, yeah,
some of them.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're absolutely correct. One thing that's
one thing that's tough for the British public is that
without information about a lot of these operations, many of
which were fairly recent in the nineteen eighties and stuff.
Without that information, it's tough to gauge how successful or
(14:42):
unsuccessful this organization is. Because if they're doing everything right,
you never hear about them, you know, you only hear
about them when something goes pair shaped, which I believe
is British slang.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Or something goes really right and another person leaks information.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Right, And that's how we do know some intelligence failures.
For instance, in nineteen eighty three, one of MI five's officers,
a guy named Michael Bettany, was caught trying to sell
information to the KGB. He got caught, he got convicted
of vespionage. The big question is what did he did
He successfully sell some stuff beforehand?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, did he get away with it? Before he got
caught and was he the only guy selling information? I
certainly doubt it.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And you know, with these organizations, you have to continually
justify the reason that you're getting so much money from
the public, I guess tax dollars and all of that
with any intelligence community or organization. And as a Cold
War came to an end, they switched gears again because
there were terrorist threats coming from Northern Ireland states such
(15:49):
as Libya where Colonel Gaddafi was operating, and that was
a threat, at least at the time it perceived threat.
These were some of the major threats at least according
to the MI five for a little while there. And
then you know, like we said, the Cold War is
coming to an end. Now we're in the nineties, and
there were some major reforms put into place, and the
service actually around this time gained its first female director general.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, Dame Stella Remington, who held the position from nineteen
ninety two to nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 7 (16:20):
And then the rise of Islamis terrorism at the end
of the nineties, culminating in the nine to eleven attacks
in two thousand and one, led to massive changes in the.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Way MI five operated.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, absolutely, and look, folks, it's no secret. The counter
intelligence is a murky murky business. Operations often edge into
moorally and legally gray areas. Over the course of its existence,
like many other intelligence agencies, five has conducted numerous secret operations,
often without any public oversight, and often even without governmental oversight.
(16:56):
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And many people would say that is the way it
should be.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Sure, Sure, sometimes even people who don't work for five,
mostly people who work for m I five probably say that. Yeah,
but yeah, I see the point about compartmentalized information, right,
There's a need to have that sort of operational security.
But critics don't buy this. Critics allege that I five
is much more than a counter intelligence agency. In fact,
(17:25):
they argue, while I five functions as a spy service,
it also effectively functions as a criminal empire. WHOA yeah,
like hydro level, What the hell are we talking about?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
(17:49):
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
While the MI five might not be a criminal organization
at least to its parent government, yield just call it
what do we call it? The Parliamentary United Kingdom In
their government and you know, perhaps the Queen and all
of her subjects. But it certainly functions as a criminal
(18:11):
organization at least at times, you know. And we're not again,
we're not just throwing throwing ninja stars. Is that okay
to say, we're not just throwing ninja stars at Britain.
We've seen this occur, as we said earlier, with many
other intelligence services within many other countries. But it does
(18:32):
function as a criminal organization sometimes.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
And we know this.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
This isn't a theory. No, this isn't some to foil
Internet bloggery. Here it turns out that in twenty eighteen,
declassified documents showed that the government of the United Kingdom
allows MI five's agents and informants to carry out crime
within the UK without consequence. They've been allowed to do
(18:59):
this for at least thirty years. WHOA, Seriously, it's a
it's a license to kill, it's a license to torture, pillage.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Did you just say a license to kill? Yes?
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Oh wait, yeah I did.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
I mean, come on, man, that's great.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I can't believe I did think of that.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, I mean that.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
But really the bit we did was awesome.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
But the fact that they can just go murder people
is not cool.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
And and as it turns out, which was a bummer
to me or to my kid's self, they don't actually
have a license they can flash before they kill someone,
letting them know that it's legit.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
It's more of an expression.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Maybe we should just manufacture our own, not to use,
but just to have just.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
On a T shirt.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Maybe we like, how would you.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Feel if you stole someone's wallet and you were going
through the wallet and you found like three different fake
forms of identification right all the same face, three different names,
three different profiles, and then you saw like this mysterious
license to kill. What would you do with that wallet?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I would put it right back down, wipe first. I'd
wipe my prints from it. There you go, say it
right back down on the ground.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Clever, clever?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
All right, well, I know what you guys are getting
for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
You'd also have to check local security cameras and any
CCTV that's around. Make sure to destroy those tapes, all right.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
And you probably want to drop your phone too, because
that GPS record would be there. Oh god, you know what,
we might be taking this thought experiment a little too far.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Right, Now, if you do have a license to kill,
and you can tell us about it without killing us,
we would love to hear your experiences. We will do
our best to keep you anonymous, just putting it out there.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Well, I guess you're right, Noel, it's as we'll see.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
They kind of did have not a badge they could
wave around, but they did have documented proof that the
government at all levels that were aware of it, approved
of this. It was called a secret and concealed policy.
This would allow the security service to authorize participation in murder, torture,
sexual assault, or other grave criminality if.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Just a few folks believed it was.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
In the service of the greater good in the public interest.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
That is so creepy and disgusting, and I wonder how
many other intelligence organizations have an active policy like that,
a secret and concealed policy. Okay, so this was basically
a criminal authorization, just literally that you can do crime
and it's okay.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
But it's like a further greater good clause, right right,
that's the implication here.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, but yes, but this is something that has been
around for thirty years and it was only first acknowledged
in British court when an alliance of human rights groups
argued that it was unlawful to have this kind of policy,
like maybe not, let's not do this.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
And it was completely secret like they were practicing omerta
until twenty twelve. Prime Minister David Cameron wrote to Sir
Mark Waller, the Intelligence Service Commissioner at the time, asking
him to keep the policy under review, which we've got
a quote. It's very British in the way it's written,
(22:31):
but we'll give it a shot.
Speaker 7 (22:32):
I'm gonna do a British accent, let's say, in the
discharge of their function to protect national security. The Security
Service has long standing policy for their agent handlers to
agree to agents participating in crime in circumstances where it
is considered such involvement is necessary and proportionate in providing
or maintaining access to intelligence that will allow the disruption
(22:53):
of more serious crimes or threats to national security.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Oh wow, that was great.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
That it sounds nice.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
But it sounds like he's describing marzipan.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It sounds like he's reading like a Winnie the Pooh
story or something.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You know, it's totally it's a clause for undercover agents, right,
that's all that's what that is.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Well, no, but I meant is but yeah, it's saying like,
if you have an informant who is operating maybe in
something like gun running or human trafficking circle, yeah, and
you need to keep them embedded.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
Question in the States, Yeah, you see it in movies.
I just want to see what you guys think about this.
Whenever an undercover agent is offered drugs, they they go
to whatever lengths they can to not actually do the drugs.
If they're like, you know, you know, like prove you're
not a cop, do the drugs.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Or whatever, it's like oops, oops, I drop the drugs.
Speaker 7 (23:44):
You know, isn't that a thing? No, I'm wondering, like,
do you think we have a It does seem like
it's not. It's frowned upon for undercover cops to like
get deep and start like doing drugs. It sounds like
there's a border, there's a there's a boundary that we
would prefer not to cross.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
They probably want to avoid it, but it comes into
that idea the greater good right accomplishing the sting or
the operation. So I am sure there are people who have,
maybe in the DEA or something, been forced to do
cocaine or something like that. But I don't know if
there's a strict, a strict bright line policy wise, I.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Don't think there can be. Yeah, I think because all
of it's circumstantial, right, especially when you're dealing with this,
if this is full on national security for the past
thirty years, I can't even imagine some of the terrible
things that some of these agents have had to do,
like you're saying, in the human trafficking fields and drug
fields and murder, like in murder in order to then
(24:46):
get a bigger fish essentially down the line.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And you also have to wonder, Okay, let's put ourselves
in that hypothetical position. Let's say Paul Mission Control DECA
is a big time like Narco's level Columbia drug cartel leader, right,
I can see it, and we're we're up and comers,
we're gonna be lieutenants. And he's like this, do this
cocaine in front of me? It's cocaine, and we would
(25:13):
we would look very suspicious if we just fumbled, just
dropped it. Because I don't know. I don't know a
ton about about that drug, but I do know about
the general trends of addiction and people who are into
that kind of stuff don't just drop it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah. In that case, I think the fumble move would
be to accidentally drop it on one of the guys
that you know is not an undercover agent, so that it's, oh, well,
we didn't waste it. It just is all over that guy.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Now, I don't know, man, I think you have to
do it if you're at that point.
Speaker 7 (25:44):
It's like that you can't be like that scene in
that Woody Allen movie where he sneezes the cocaine off
the dish or whatever, and it's just basically like a
party foul. It's more like a you're gonna get shot
in the face foul.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah. But then if you're talking about the bigger operations,
where you're at out in the field doing things other
than drugs, the actual criminal acts, that's where it gets
a little I don't know, it gets murky.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
For me, right right right, Like if you are embedded
as an enforcer and you're sent to beat the crap
out of someone, you know what I mean. And I'm
sure there have been in the past undercover agents who
have to performatively beat the snot out of one another
just to make sure they look like they're legit. So yes,
the informant stuff, that's part of it, and that doesn't
(26:31):
seem that far out. But when Cameron is writing this
letter to Sir Mark Waller, he essentially says, look, we're
not going to ask you to tell us whether like,
we don't want you to feel as if you have
to report it to anybody. If you get what I'm
saying anyone, and you don't have to worry about whether
(26:54):
or not it's legal at all.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
That's just crazy, man.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
Is that one of those things where it sort of
exists in like an extra legal area.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yes, right, Yeah, And most people in the government had
no idea what was happening, you know what I mean.
I think most people in Parliament at that time would
have said, you know, we should we should not give
people these licensees for wanton destruction.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Cameron, to be.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Fair, he am were gonna try to be fair here
said he considered making the letter public in the interest
of transparency, but decided against it because he thought it
might be damaging to the national interest also known as
his political career. Wow, that's what I think. I think
he was sane, damaging to the national interest, But he
(27:43):
meant damaging to his political career.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Yeah, kind of a typo.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Maybe A Well, I can see that. I can see that, Ben,
I mean I can see where you become prime minister,
you get with of something like this, and as a citizen,
it gives you pause just knowing that it's happening right,
no matter where what your beliefs are in while you're
holding that office. And it does seem like he kind
of rode the fence there a little bit of should
(28:07):
I shouldn't I tell anybody about this? This is really
effed up? But in the in the in the uh,
let's keep national security in public interest in order, and
let's just balance it out and say, let's just keep
it quiet. Like, wasn't it the whole idea that he
basically just he said he told this guy not to
comment on the legality. That was the whole idea.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
So it's the policy is under review. Doing air quotes here,
I hope you could hear them. The policies under review. However,
what that essentially means is provide cover for us and
don't like, Okay, look, sometimes you gotta you gotta break
a few innocent eggs if you really want to cook
a terrorism Omelet you.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Know what I mean? Geez.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So that's yeah, that's exactly what happens. Said, don't comment
on the legality, don't refer it to any prosecuting body,
don't refer it to law enforcement. Let's keep this between us.
Let's let's have a greater good. So the argument was
essentially that for most of history, most of modern British history,
they have been following one of two paths as just
(29:16):
a nation. There was the rule of law and then
there were criminal acts. Right, But they called this strategy
the third direction, right right? Do you guys remember Glee?
Do you remember their band?
Speaker 7 (29:32):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (29:33):
One direction was a real band?
Speaker 4 (29:37):
What am I thinking of? Well, there was that U
plus me equals us thing?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
New direction, a new direction, new direction.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
It's a pun new direction. I see a very body.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Like Boy's Soul from Always Sunday in Philadelphia. But they
called this thing, seriously, the third direction. Nobody acknowledged it
until this year in a British court when that Alliance
of Human Rights group said Matt mentioned earlier, Privacy International.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Who are the other ones?
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, those guys over at PI. Then we've got reprieve
the Committee on the Administration of Justice and the Pat
Finnickan Center.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
According to the legal team representing this alliance, the third
direction policy is likely to have enabled the Security Service
to conceal wide ranging illegal activity, and they brought this
case before an investigatory powers tribunal. The trial included as
a bonus the publication of a heavily redacted document, a
(30:44):
guideline essentially for how to break the law and get
away with it.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
This is how you do it.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
And like a lot of government documents, you can find
copies of this published in a couple of different places
in British media, but tons like the entire paragraphs are
blacked out. They're not gonna admit this stuff, right because
it's still the great boogeyman of national security exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And you know, the timing of the letter was also
really strange here because just two weeks after this highly
redacted document gets released, it's made public. Mister Cameron, our buddy,
admitted that there was this thing called state collusion in
the nineteen eighty nine murder of Belfast solicitor Patrick Finnickin
and state state collusion what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That means essentially the Cameron is arguing some faction of
the intelligence apparatus or the state apparatus.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Of the United Kingdom.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
May have aided aided in this guy's death, or may
have at the very least been criminally negligent and protecting him. Right,
it's the most fair way to say it. They get
into some very very very dirty things when they were
attempting to retain Northern Ireland, you know. Oh yeah, and
(32:08):
we'll tell you more about the trial after a word
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Speaker 4 (32:29):
Peruk assault, What was the what was the one you did?
Off air?
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Peruca's on fire Peruke.
Speaker 7 (32:36):
To learn more about the history of the Peruke, you
can check out me and Ben's other podcast, Ridiculous History,
where we do an episode about what the heck's up
with those crazy British lawyer wigs, which is yeah, which
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Speaker 4 (32:48):
Be kind or be brutal, it's up to you. We
just want you to know. That's a great word. Internet's
going to do it then, and that's going to do.
Then that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
So this guy, Sir James Edy, QC, is representing the
intelligence agencies, the Home Office in the Foreign Office, and
he told this Investigatory Powers Tribunal that details of MI
five's conduct had to be kept secret even in the
modern day and could not be aired in open court.
He argued that the claim should be restricted to investigating
(33:21):
over a sensible time period, at most six years.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Wow, six years to keep all your secrets?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So what did the Alliance of Human rights organizations say
to that?
Speaker 7 (33:34):
So in their argument, the claimants cite Finnican's murder as
an illustration of the considerable public importance of the issues raised.
It also refers to allegations that Freddie Scapatici great name,
Yeah it's pretty good, was a former senior member of
the IRA and a security Service agent working under the
(33:56):
code name Oh my god, I love this Steak Knife
s T A k E. That's a good DJ name
right there, Steak Knife.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Huh oh wow, that's great.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, that's so Skeptichi aka steak Knife was we have
to say, allegedly still but was involved in kidnap, torture,
and murder. A while working as an agent employed by
m I five. So the roundabout way, then the government
of the United Kingdom was paying this guy to kidnap,
(34:35):
torture and murder people.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
For the greater good, for the greater good. Right.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
M I five has refused to answer the claimant's questions
about the scope of this third direction policy, including whether
it could in principle authorize murder, torture, in humane and
degrading treatment, sexual assault, kidnapping, or false imprisonment. The security
services lawyers all so said to answer such questions would
(35:02):
reveal the facts of conduct that they wish to keep secret.
So it's kind of like a trust us we're doing
the right thing. We can't tell you what we're doing.
We can't tell you why. Other than that, not a
very convincing argument.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
No, not at all. And we also have other examples
of some strange things that ended up coming to light,
or at least things that maybe never wanted to see
the light of day. There were some papers released by
the Irish state that showed that there was this loyalist
paramilitary group, or at least members of one of these groups,
specifically the Ultier Volunteer Force. They're a paramilitary group out
(35:40):
of Northern Ireland. They claimed that am I five asked
them to assassinate the then Prime Minister of Ireland, Charles
Hahi in nineteen eighty five. And we went to this
BBC source to learn a little bit more about this.
But it's very I don't know, it's very strange because
(36:02):
it was it was a letter, just kind of your
standard letter sent to somebody, like a correspondence, and it
just happened to include a couple documents and a couple
literally guys who just said, hey, by the way, m
I five asked us to kill you one time.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
We didn't do it, yeah, but but you know, you
should know it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
It was sent two years after the alleged I guess
assassination or the hit was put on him, I guess.
It contained a long long list of collusion allegations against
the British Intelligence Service so or various services that the
British intelligence has this guy. It was addressed to mister Hahien.
It read in nineteen eighty five, we were approached by
(36:47):
an MI five officer. He asked us to execute you.
And it said that these this paramilitary group had been
supplied with quote details that would have compromised this guy's
personal security, including aerial photographs of his family home, his cars,
and his private yacht.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
So for an imperfect comparison, it's similar to say, the
CIA taking over Newfoundland and the people of Newfoundland wanting
to make a United Canada, and so the CIA contacts
someone in Canada and says, kill whomever is in charge
(37:27):
of this unity group in Newfoundland, or kill the prime
minister of Canada so we can keep our part.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, And I guess they didn't imagine that the people
who were not necessarily the friends of the British Intelligence Service,
they wouldn't just say, oh, yeah, okay, show up boss.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Well maybe they just said, you know, killing prime ministers
step too far.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I guess that's what I'm saying. Yeah, like they didn't
expect that to occur. That seems very strange to me.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
In twenty ten, Benyam Mohammed al Habashi went to court
to hold five accountable for collusion in his torture at
the hands of Uncle Sam. And then there's the example
of Shakira Mir who said I five watched him being
tortured in two thousand and one.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
That was really brutal too. Yeah, the guy he was
in Guantanamo Bay, right, and he said like several times
British officers would be in the room while he's being beaten,
just brutally beaten, his head slammed against the wall. Yeah,
pretty pretty crazy stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
It's truly disturbing because now with all this new information,
this admission on the part of the British government that
these sorts of things occur, many of those previous allegations
of criminal activity on the part of mi I five
that were once dismissed as out and out conspiracy theories
seem increasingly maybe not plausible, well maybe not probable, but
(38:56):
certainly less impossible. They've been implicated in the murder of
anti nuclear activists Tilda Murle. They've been accused of creating
a far right neo Nazi group, Combat eighteen. Their profile
peaked in February fifteenth, nineteen ninety five, when they orchestrated
a riot in Dublin that led to a cancellation of
a football match between England and Ireland. One theory suggests
(39:19):
that British intelligence wanted to create a magnet for the
most extreme parts of these political parties. One member who
is convicted of murder. In nineteen ninety eight, a guy
named Charlie Sargent has been accused of being an MI
five informant with some pretty solid evidence. And then we
did the death of Commander Buster Crab in a previous episode.
Speaker 7 (39:40):
Yeah, just a.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Crab where he never surfaced, and it seems that maybe
someone on the inside was responsible.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Weren't there frogmen involved in that story? Yes? Yeah, what
about crab men?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
They never made it to Crab mainly because the difficulty
of making forward backward motion.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
That's hard. Yeah, scuttling, scuttling.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
So you mentioned Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi earlier as well, right.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Oh, yeah, And in ninety six, there was a bomb
that was placed under a car that was I guess
thought to be the vehicle that Gaddafi was going to
be traveling in in his motorcade, but well he wasn't
in that vehicle. The car did explode, the bomb did explode,
and several bodyguards were killed. There was an ensuing gun
battle that killed several people, and there were even there
(40:28):
would be assassins, you know, the people that planted the
bomb and everything. They had links to al Qaeda, and
it's thought that maybe maybe I five had a little
bit of a hand in.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
This, right.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
The head of the Libyan desk for mi I five
at the time was a guy named David Shaler, and
in nineteen ninety seven he left the service leaked this
information at these accusations, these allegations to the press. He
was forced to flee to France, and in nineteen ninety
eight he claimed that the plot to kill Gadaffi had
been funded by.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
M I six. Wow, cooperation with m I five.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
There's you know, taking out a head, a leader like
that of a country is no small deal.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Well, and there's compelling it's not compelling evidence, there's proof
that ultimately the French government was behind the assassination of
Goadaffi to preserve financial hegemony because they wanted you know,
Godaffy did many, many terrible things, but the thing France
was most frightened of him doing was to create a
(41:30):
continental African currency, a denollur. Yeah, so mess with the money, right,
that's what happens.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Money in the oil.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The new series starting Matt Frederick.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Here's always money in the banana stand.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
So what does this all mean?
Speaker 1 (41:47):
This is this is pretty strange because it's rare for
this kind of information to come out in such a
blatant way. Yeah, break the law for the greater good,
most intelligence agencies, I would say, pra just that right.
The problem is the goalpost of that defines greater good
is always moving.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
Who's good, right, greater for whom?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Exactly exactly, And at this point many of us listening
to the show today will have a hard time being surprised.
Some of us might even support this policy, you know
what I mean. There are people who say that torture
is a terrible thing, but ultimately it saves lives. We
have an episode on why that is not true as well.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, but but there are points to be made that
if you it's not an easy task to stop the
you know that, in your worldview, the worst people in
the world from doing the worst things. That's not an
easy task to prevent that from happening, and you do
have to perhaps do some bad things. It's just I
(42:48):
think in this case, it's that gray area of how
bad is too bad for the a thing for the
good guys to do to prevent the bad guys.
Speaker 7 (42:55):
Well, it's that idea that to like counter to the
bad guys, you got to stoop to their level. We
got to play by their rules otherwise you're gonna get
stepped all over right in theory?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a good point. Did they
tell you guys rewatched True Detective recently?
Speaker 4 (43:11):
Season two? Season one?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Thank god?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (43:14):
I have a friend that really says, revisit season two,
give another chance.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
I yeah, I've heard that.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
I've heard that before, but I didn't take a break
beause season one was just so great. There's a quote
that's not a spoiler, but this, this conversation reminds me
of it. The two main characters, Marty and Rust, are
having a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil,
and at some point in the conversation, Marty says Marty
(43:40):
asked if they're good people, and Rust says, no, we're bad,
but they need bad men like us to keep the
others from the door.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Yeah, and that made that a bear from the beginning
of the show. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Or Jack Nicholson, right, not not as a not as
a character, just him.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
He's keep don't know, he's a creepy looking guy. I
don't know. I wouldn't want him to knock him.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, I don't know him well enough to remark on
his door policy.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
I guess, I guess the big question is do we
have to have the bad guys inside the door keeping
the other bad guys from the door. Why can't we
just build a giant wall and.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Topical topical question? So I take that.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Totally, getting them totally.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well. It's a good question though, because should m I
five allow its agents and informants to break the law?
Does it really does it really become a necessary evil
on the way to achieving a greater good?
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And if so, for who what laws they break? How
do we measure the success or the efficiency of something
like this if it's conducted entirely in secret? What sort
of oversight should the public and or government agencies have
on this process? Because right now the answer is not.
But yeah, they have a letter from twenty twelve that's like,
(45:04):
don't send this to anybody. David Cameron sent a no
snitching letter.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, that's exactly what happened, and that's where we are today,
no snitching, boys.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
And girls, Snitches end up in stitches. Yeah, Well, tell
us what you think.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and let us know.
Are these things necessary evils, is allowing the collapse of
the rule of law in one scenario really necessary to
allow the enforcement of rule of law in another situation? Right,
That's ultimately the question really is.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
And by the way, I was just going to bring
this up before we ended at the Tenderfoot holiday party
thing that we were at the three of US. I
ran into a gentleman. Paul Dicken was there too, but
I ran into a gentleman who truly truly believes and
had a long discussion on me about it that the
British government still controls the United States.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
I overheard that, and I didn't want to jump in.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
He truly believed it. Oh, I should talk to him,
I know, well, I kind of. I didn't want to
go any deeper than we already had in the conversation
because it's one of those that doesn't really go anywhere.
After you hit a certain wall. It's like, yeah, well,
you can't prove anything, but that's an interesting idea.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Did you tell me did an episode on it?
Speaker 2 (46:19):
I did?
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Did you tell him that he can contact us via
a telephone call? We're just a phone call away.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
I did, I said, call one eight three three std
WYTK brought the STD back for this one because it's
not about awful things like the last one.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Oh and I also also want to just in the
interest of full transparency, I'm not at death's door, but
I am in. I am darn sure on like the
sub basement of sickness right now. So that's why my
voice sounds.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
A little bad.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
If you heard any any mucusy noises, sorry, folks, that
was me.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
Should be hailing hardy later. Are you down with the sickness? Ben? Oh?
Oh ah, I'm always I'm always up to something.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
It's just extra deep. I like it.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
It's nice and gravelly. Thanks guys, Paul, Will Shirley snip
out all the snot sounds, thanks Paul.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
So yeah, let us let us know what you think
and check in with your fellow and listeners. We'd like
to take this debate to the internet, and we mentioned
it earlier in the show, but you can find us
at our Facebook site.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Here's where it gets crazy if you love all that.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ben Bowlin
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