BETRAYED: How British Intelligence Has Been Neutered by Politicians in Its Quest to Infiltrate the Enemy Within

By Tom Bower

Daily Mail, 15 July 2005

… Under Britain’s constitution, it is the Prime Minister’s sole right to identify targets for the intelligence services to monitor, and he also has the power to decide the limitations on their operations. But, as part of the New Labour ruling elite’s obsession with multi-culturalism and fear of upsetting Muslim sensibilities, the orders to Britain’s intelligence chiefs were deliberately kept within narrow parameters, with very little room for proper investigation.

The result is that Mr Blair’s desire not to annoy the Muslim community, upon whom Labour depends for a hardcore of votes, severely circumscribed the formal identification of those extremist Muslims in our midst who have become this country’s ‘enemy’.

Meanwhile, instead of arresting all those preachers inciting hatred and murder in makeshift mosques around Britain and preventing London Mayor Ken Livingstone from embracing Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the vicious Islamic preacher, the Government ordered intelligence services and the police to tread softly.

Ignoring criticism by the French, American, Dutch and many other governments about the consequences of such misconceived tolerance, Blair ordered Britain’s intelligence chiefs to avoid risking the aggravation which might have been triggered by the sensible use of deep penetration techniques such as bugging devices and ‘sleepers’.

The public voice of this disastrous policy is Sir Ian Blair. Just 24 hours after last week’s outrages, he insisted that the bombs were not planted by suicide bombers. Meanwhile, Brian Paddick, a deputy assistant commissioner and the Met spokesman, denied there was any link between Islam and terrorism. Such self-delusion merely reflected their politically correct masters’ prejudices….

This week’s headlines, about the hunt for the the ‘Fifth Man’ suspected of organising London’s suicide bombers, are a chilling echo of the headlines towards the end of the last century to the ‘Third’, ‘Fourth’ and ‘Fifth’ men suspected of being in cahoots with Burgess and Maclean.

The prospect of another similar manhunt for Britain’s ‘enemy within’ with such compromised intelligence services is appalling.

Yet the irony is that such a hunt is always easier than trying to penetrate the enemy’s strongholds abroad. Finding them should not be overly difficult if only the intelligence services could be allowed to investigate Britain’s extremist Muslim community.

Their failure so far to undertake such operations is down to the current generation of politicians whose priority of securing Britain’s safety has been fatally blinkered by a politically correct fear of upsetting special interest groups.

Until this dangerous liberal culture is changed, more innocent lives will be at risk.