In 2012 the Central Intelligence Agency had risked British lives needlessly by offering vague ‘tips’ of Mumbai style attacks, without including necessary information such as sources and methods used to gather the intelligence. This has forced MI5 and MI6 in some cases to have to conduct their own investigations to gather information the US already had, but did not disclose.
The Security Service (MI5) is a British intelligence agency working to protect the UK’s national security against threats such as terrorism and espionage.
MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) supplies the British Government with foreign intelligence. It operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) alongside the Interna lSecurity Service (MI5), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and theDefense Intelligence (DI).
“This is unacceptable given that British lives are at risk”, says Thomas Dunn of Charlotte, a counterterrorism expert, who is critical of the CIA information sharing restraints with our closest allies. “Yes we want to protect sources, but as some point you have to share the information with our allies so they can act on the information concerning the threat posed to their country. To not do so could put lives at risk”, he said.
In one case in particular the CIA warned MI6 that al-Qaeda was planning an attack 18 months ago, but “withheld detailed information” because of concerns it would be released by British courts. British intelligence agencies were subsequently forced to carry out their own investigations, wasting valuable time and resources, according to Whitehall sources.
CRITICAL INFORMATION IS NOT BEING SHARED
“The identity of intelligence sources and other sensitive information is no longer shared by the CIA”, according to one British source speaking on the condition of anonymity… “This puts us in the situation of having to request additional information or launch our own independent investigations trying to figure out information the Americans had but decided not to share for whatever reason, all of which takes time…”, he said.
INCOMPLETE INFORMATION GIVEN
MI6 was said to have been particularly “frustrated” after receiving “only the tip, not the intelligence” about a plot in which armed terrorists dressed as civilians were planning to mount an indiscriminate attack on British soil.
The plot echoed an attack by extremists in Mumbai in 2008, which led to the deaths of 174 people. The CIA is also understood to have retrieved substantial intelligence about potential threats to Britain from documents seized during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Although some information has been passed to British authorities from the intelligence “cache”, it is said to be far from a “full read-out”.
A senior British security source said: “The urgent threat-to-life operational material” is still coming, as it should. “But we see strong signs of a greater reluctance to share some of the other stuff — the building blocks, the bits that let you put the jigsaw together.”
The breakdown in relations came after the release of US intelligence in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who took legal action over his incarceration and brutal torture at the hands of the US military, who later admitted mistakes and released him. Mohamed has said that he was tortured in US custody, and tortured while in nominally Moroccan custody. He was alleged to have played a role in what American counter-terrorism analysts characterized as a “dirty bomb plot” with Jose Padilla, despite the fact that it became clear, almost from the moment that Mohamed was seized, that the plot never existed.
In June 2002, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy to US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, admitted that “there was not an actual plan” to set off a radioactive device in America, that Padilla had not begun trying to acquire materials, and that intelligence officials had stated that his research had not gone beyond surfing the internet. Mohamed was transported to a black site known as “the dark prison“, where captives were permanently chained to the wall, kept in constant darkness, tortured sadistically and constantly bombarded with “The Real Slim Shady ” by Eminem for 20 days(the later enough to drive anyone mad).
The Government was subsequently forced to pay millions of pounds in compensation to Mohamad and other detainees.
According to the Washington Post the court order forcing the British Government to publish secret memos it received from US intelligence officials will jeopardize future US-UK intelligence sharing.See article: Intelligence ties between UK and US in jeopardyhttp://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2010%2F02%2F11%2FAR2010021102939_pf.html&date=2010-02-13 ).
The Washington Post quoted “White House officials” on February 10, 2010, who said the publication: “will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship.”
According to The Guardian an anonymous White House officials had told them: “the court decision would not provoke a broad review of intelligence liaison between Britain and the US because the need for close co-operation was greater now than ever.”
Conservative ministers are proposing establishing a system of “secret justice” to allow sensitive intelligence (including that derived from beating and torturing people) to be heard in British courts behind closed doors, but are facing mounting opposition from the Liberal Democrats.