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, according to Whitehall sources.
Several potential terrorists were identified with links to a wider European plot, but it is still not known whether the British authorities have uncovered the full extent of the threat.
All of this was fed to a credulous reporter by a very serious looking man who had his fingers and toes crossed.
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. The Government was subsequently forced to pay millions in compensation to him and other detainees.
Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, yesterday warned that unless judges were allowed to hear evidence from MI5 and MI6 officers behind closed doors, lives would be put at risk.
He said: “The Americans have got nervous that we are going to start revealing some of their information, and they have started cutting back on what they disclose.
“I’d love open justice but let’s have some common sense here. Open justice cannot be at the expense of lives being lost.”
And you\’ve just proven that you\’re unfit to be Justice Minister Kenny Boy.
Yes, open justice is more important than lives being lost. You know, that water the tree of liberty with blood shit? Or perhaps you\’d prefer that standard o0f the English idea, better than 100 guilty go free than that one innocent be jailed?
Or perhaps we should just point to the really basic idea here. Justice, this open courts stuff, knowing and being able to challenge the evidence against you, representation in court, presumption of innocence, all this malarkey. Why is it there? No, BZZZZZT!, it\’s not to protect the guilty from their righteous and just punishment. It\’s to protect us, the citizenry, from the whispers of the secret police into the ears of the justice system. From the crushing of liberty by State power.
And if some die as a result of that maintenance of liberty then so be it: for certainly some will die as we rise up to massacre those who would steal our liberty from us.
Ooerr missus. Careful with the menacing language. They’ll have you hauled up on an EAW for an s127 Communications Act 2003 offence before you can say “Espere um minuto”.
Oh, and this:
Doesn’t mean that the detailed information, or even the general information they felt able to release, was in the slightest bit reliable, or even indicative. Given past performance, it is quite likely it was a steaming pile of poo, carefully assembled to extract maximum $ from credulous Yanks.
Muzzies under the beds! Muzzies under the beds!
When was it we abolished the Star Chamber? It was sometime under Cromwell’s rule, anyway. Now we’re going to bring it back?
If the CIA won’t share their top-secret information with us, can’t we just go to the original source and pay an intern at the Home Office to watch CNN?
Seriously, every time the it has come to the publics’s attention that the British authorities have acted on American “intelligence”, it was a screw-up. I particularly liked the liquid bombers (who didn’t have passports, which Special Branch knew) who were arrested (exposing an active investigation into more dangerous terrorists, as well as screwing up our airports) after the CIA told us that their mate had (under torture in a Pakistani jail) said that they were ready to go in days.
” Or perhaps you’d prefer that standard o0f the English idea, better than 100 guilty go free than that one innocent be jailed?”
This is Kenneth Clarke, after all – ensuring those 100 guilty go free seems to be his idea of his job description!
Are there closed courts in the USA hearing similar evidence? If not, Clarke should be dragged out and shot.
We’re tougher in English law; Blackstone’s formula is that we only let 10 guilty men go to save 1 innocent.
100 is I think the more generous Yankee equivalent.
Peter Risdon, Yes. the military courts in Guantanamo, which is where the 9/11 peeps are to be tried. Obama tried to put them through the normal justice system but failed.
Ah, but if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. It’s only those with a guilty conscience they’re after; and how do they know who has a guilty conscience? Because those people protest loudly against the secret courts that are there purely to protect you from those with guilty consciences.
Surreptitious Evil wrote: “Doesn’t mean that the detailed information, or even the general information they felt able to release, was in the slightest bit reliable, or even indicative. ”
I agree. In the kerfuffle over the diplomatic and Iraq war leaks from Wikileaks it was lost in the media frothing that the info could be wrong or partial. Secret gossip is still only gossip. Intelligence isn’t always correct.
Ken Clarke better stop this nonsense, else I’ll blow his office sky high!
( http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Paul_Chambers )
Eugene Volokh wrote a good piece called n Guilty Men – worth a read.
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AIUI, there is something quite ridiculous about the fuss over the Binyam Mohamed case – or, more specifically, the procedure used known as Norwich Pharmacal – where an English court ordered the UK goverment to disclose sensitive information… that had already been disclosed by the US media some months before, and would be disclosed by a formerly classified US judgement (not sure of the timing of the latter).
There seems to be some degree of consensus about ‘problems’ related to Norwich Pharmacal, but the CIA objecting to information being disclosed in English courts that has already been disclosed by the US media?
Incidentally, the US government apparently has a different perception of events. Our JHCR suggests it is a misperception that must urgently be addressed.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201012/jtselect/jtrights/286/28608.htm
sequence of events: US judgement was before UK case
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-ruling-evidence
Well said, Tim.
Beneath a Steel Sky – OUT NOW
‘…for certainly some will die as we rise up to massacre those who would steal our liberty from us.’
Um, yes, but please not until May 2016 , I have a book to sell.