CIA activities in the United Kingdom

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There is a long history of close cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom intelligence services; see Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for World War II and subsequent relationships. There are permanent liaison officers of each country in major intelligence agencies of the other, such as CIA and Secret Intelligence Service ("MI6") (which is the British counterpart of the CIA), FBI and the Security Service (MI5), and National Security Agency (NSA) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Oleg Penkovsky, a Soviet military intelligence colonel, who was a defector in place, was a joint US-UK espionage operation. Much of Penkovsky's product is available online at the CIA FOIA Reading Room under the code name IRONBARK.^[1]

A major source of tension between the two countries was Kim Philby, a senior UK SIS officer who was a Soviet agent. Philby, at one point, was the SIS liaison officer resident in the US. James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence, was surprised by Philby's activity, and, as a consequence, began hunts for moles within CIA.

1984[]

In January 2014, newly released documents revealed that Margaret Thatcher had been warned 30 years earlier that the CIA did not always give sufficient notice in advance when it carried out operations in the UK. In 1984, Paddy Ashdown, who later became leader of the Liberal Democrats, raised fears about clandestine approaches made by CIA agents, but his allegations were dismissed by Thatcher.^[2]

1985[]

A series of CIA memos were released in January 2017. One, dated from 1985, said that the CIA believed that Labour Party was "in the hands of urban leftists given to ideological extremes with only fringe appeal".^[3]

2009[]

In February 2009, journalist Tim Shipman revealed in The Spectator that the CIA was "running its own agent networks on an unprecedented scale in the British Pakistani community." He claimed "somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent of CIA activity designed to prevent a new terrorist spectacular on American soil is now directed at targets in the UK."^[4]

2016–present[]

In January 2022, former CIA agent-turned whistleblower, John Kiriakou revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy—a non-profit corporation created in the 1980s by President Ronald Reagan and funded by the United States Congress—had funnelled millions of dollars into British independent media groups since 2016. These include investigative outlets such as Bellingcat, Finance Uncovered and openDemocracy, as well as media freedom and training organisations like Index on Censorship, Article 19, the Media Legal Defence Initiative, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.^[5]

"In 2011, the US Congress changed the law that forbade the Executive Branch from propagandizing the American people or nationals of the other 'Five Eyes' countries—the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand," he told Declassified UK. "The National Endowment for Democracy, like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, countless Washington-area 'think tanks', and Radio/TV Martí, are the vehicles for that propaganda", referring to the US broadcaster that transmits to Cuba. Kiriakou continued: "And what better way to spread that propaganda than to funnel money to 'friendly' outlets in 'friendly countries'? The CIA's propaganda efforts throughout history have been shameless. But now that they're not legally relegated to just Russia and China, the whole world is a target."^[5]

See also[]

• 1953 Iranian coup d'état
• Inter-Services Intelligence activities in the United Kingdom

References[]