{"id":676,"date":"2007-10-31T16:05:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-31T22:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=676"},"modified":"2007-10-31T16:05:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T22:05:00","slug":"former-spy-chief-kerfuffle-at-the-lse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/10\/former-spy-chief-kerfuffle-at-the-lse\/","title":{"rendered":"Former spy chief kerfuffle at the LSE"},"content":{"rendered":"

S<\/span>pooks and Halloween go together, so the former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service<\/span>\u2019s appearance at the LSE<\/span> seemed timely, to say the least. Still, it was an extraordinary public performance by Sir Richard Dearlove<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The current Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, was speaking on \u201cIntelligence and the Media.\u201d His aim appeared to be threefold:<\/p>\n

\u2022 to reaffirm the importance of informal media contacts, i.e. chummy chats but no press office (no thanks, David Rose<\/a>)
\u2022 to defend the intelligence services, i.e. existing scrutiny is just fine and dandy
\u2022 to emphasize that the Iraq war was not the responsibility of the intelligence services<\/p>\n

In the questions afterwards he threw in the bone that 9\/11 had nothing to do with Iraq.<\/p>\n

There were a lot of lines to read between, but broadly speaking I think we can guess that he believes:<\/p>\n

\u2022 there won\u2019t be a ground invasion of Iran (you don\u2019t say!)
\u2022 if there is any kind of military strike, we\u2019ll get served up with intelligence evidence AFTER the event (no dossiers)
\u2022 there will be a National Security Council with a press spokesman (you will get a kind of press office)<\/p>\n

But why was it an extraordinary public performance? For starters, his nerves when faced with hecklers (Sir Richard – you were in the freemasons\/Bilderberg Group\/Da Vinci Code).<\/p>\n

No wonder he was never put before journalists in public, a press conference would have reduced the poor chap to a quivering jelly. At one point, he even threatened to leave the stage.<\/p>\n

Then, at a drinks reception afterwards in the SCR,a guy with a video camera started shouting at poor Sir Richard, accusing him of having the blood of 600,000 Iraqis on his hands. <\/p>\n

Given his attempts to drop the politicians right in it, you could see how this accusation was a little unfair. The protesters called for Sir Richard to be hanged – yes, they were pro-death penalty peace campaigners.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day part of me felt sorry for him. He had put himself on a public stage without any apparent security. The protesters might have been terrorists. And another part of me felt that it was a kind of olde worlde agit prop. Good old fashioned political theatre, very English and half-arsed.<\/p>\n

Oh well.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spooks and Halloween go together, so the former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service\u2019s appearance at the LSE seemed timely, to say the least. Still, it was an extraordinary public performance by Sir Richard Dearlove. The current Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, was speaking on \u201cIntelligence and the Media.\u201d His aim appeared to be threefold: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}