The police were searching the home of a Libyan terror suspect, Abu Anas al-Liby, in Manchester when they came across an al-Qaeda handbook. The year was 2000, and the handbook — later dubbed the “Manchester Manual” — laid out the …
Will there be another Stakeknife?
For a spy, a job requiring furtive anonymity, James Bond always did have an unusual side-line in mass homicide. Apart from The Man with the Golden Gun, where Bond dispatches only the eponymous Scaramanga, his body count almost always hits …
The amateur sleuths taking on the CCP
“Stop touching her! Don’t touch her!” The screams rang out across the concourse of London’s St Pancras station. “Please. Do not touch her! Please. You are not the same age. Please do not touch her. Don’t touch her. Please don’t …
The paranoia behind China’s spy war
The revelation that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of being a Chinese spy has sent Westminster “reeling” and left the British political establishment in “shock”. Or that, at least, is the impression offered by London’s news …
How I knew my phone was hacked
Prince Harry isn’t the only one who has been having trouble with his phone. About 40 years ago, I began to hear strange clicking sounds when I picked up the receiver; being of a rational cast of mind, I put …
Stakeknife’s final escape
Freddie Scappaticci died sometime last week, somewhere in his late 70s, somewhere in England. It is a death that defies obituary.
Obituaries give shape to a death and hold it in context, allowing us to extract explanations and lessons. But …
The battle to control America’s mind
“How can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading communications society?” wondered Richard Holbrooke, the dean of the American Diplomatic Corps, in the aftermath of 9/11. What startled Holbrooke, and presumably many of the readers of his Washington …
How to stop China’s spy balloons
Two things are clear about the four aerostats (“balloons”) that have penetrated the skies above US and Canadian territory in recent days. First, that the US authorities knew almost from the start they were Chinese because they intercepted transmissions of …
Is this British company arming China?
By all accounts, the visit by the delegation of leading Chinese businessmen was a resounding success. Hidden away in sleepy Shropshire, Grainger and Worrall is a world-leader in the precision casting business. It prides itself on turning molten metal into …