British officials have privately regarded Israel as a nuclear-armed power for at least 40 years, while telling the public they cannot make an assessment.Israel has never formally declared it has a nuclear weapons programme, a position UK ministers do not publicly contradict. But behind the scenes in Whitehall, staff in the Foreign Office and Min...
Category: Counterproliferation
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Daniel Ellsberg Week Honors Pentagon Whistleblower
I first spent time with Dan Ellsberg at a writer’s retreat in 2016. I was writing The Ghost about counterintelligence chief James Angleton. I asked Ellsberg about him and quickly learned everything I heard about Ellsberg was true. He is a profound student of U.S. policy and U.S. empire. He combines an encyclopedic yet personal...
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CIA and Mossad Differ Over Iranian Threat
The episode sheds fresh light on the close but contradictory ties between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies, one of the most complicated relationships in the shadowy world of international espionage. On one hand, Mossad and CIA officers share intelligence and even coordinate some field operations, reflecting Israel’s status as a close and trusted U.S. ally....
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How MI6 Cultivated British Media on Iraq’s Non-Existent WMD
From Declassified U.K. In an article for the New Statesman published four years after the invasion, Rose wrote in detail about how he (and other newspaper journalists) had long been cultivated by MI6. In an article which pays revisiting, he wrote:“To my everlasting regret, I strongly supported the Iraq invasion, in person and in print....
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Talking Nukes: CIA Chief Meets With Russian Counterpart in Turkey
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency was in Turkey Monday to warn his Russian counterpart against using nuclear weapons, the White House said, part of an expanding effort to engage with the Russians over the conflict in Ukraine. Source: CIA Chief Meets With Russian Counterpart in Turkey – WSJ