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Former agent: I was abandoned by MI5 after breakdown

By Nick Hopkins and Jake Morris
BBC Newsnight  

A former MI5 spy has broken cover to give the BBC an unprecedented account of his life in service - and describe his anger at the way he was treated.

 

The agent, codenamed Robert Acott, said he spied for 18 years, mostly following Islamic and Irish terrorist suspects.

He told Newsnight MI5 had pushed him out after he suffered symptoms of stress, later diagnosed as PTSD.

MI5 would not comment on the claims - but security sources said they felt his was only one side of the story.

In an interview with Newsnight, Acott says:

• MI5 was completely unprepared for the Islamist terror threat and was so short-staffed during one major plot that it had to rely on British Transport Police to follow terrorist suspects
• The agency had so few non-white officers that one team leader considered "blacking-up" agents - this was tried on a training exercise
• The agency had to undertake some surveillance operations because of suspicions of corruption and leaks within the police
• He challenged senior managers when his team was tasked with looking at a suspected paedophile. Acott considered this beyond the agency's remit. The operation lasted several weeks, but he says he saw no evidence of child abuse

Acott, 46, was dismissed five years ago for misconduct after leaving an unmarked MI5 training manual in his garden shed. It was found by a member of the public and handed to police.

"MI5 was my life. I would have done... anything for them"

At the time he was sacked, Acott was suffering from panic attacks - and he has since been diagnosed as suffering from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brought on by the pressure of his career in the service.

Acott claims MI5 took an opportunity to get rid of him. "MI5 was my life," he says. "I would have done - within reason - anything for them."

Though former director-generals of MI5 such as Dame Stella Rimington and Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller have written about their time in the secret service, Acott's is the first account of life as a 'foot-soldier' in the dangerous and secretive world of counter-espionage.

Acott told Newsnight he was immensely proud to have been an MI5 surveillance officer - he was recruited from the Royal Navy by a senior officer.

He says he put himself in numerous dangerous situations because he believed in the work he was doing.

But he admitted the pressure began to get to him after 9/11 when MI5 found itself completely unprepared for the Islamic terrorist threat. There was only one Muslim surveillance officer he was aware of in the whole of the surveillance unit.

"(MI5) was totally understaffed. We weren't used to dealing with the way they acted. The good thing about following Irish targets is the Active Service Units would generally meet in pubs you could go into.

"The Islamists would meet round each other's houses or in mosques which you can't get away with going into. Also, they were living in mostly ethnic areas and often you would find the only white people on the street were surveillance officers."

MI5 was blindsided by the July 7 attacks in 2005 and was stretched to breaking point when it helped foil the plot to detonate explosives on transatlantic airliners a year later.

"It was horrendous. We had around eight targets mostly based in Walthamstow, a couple in High Wycombe. It was 24 hours a day. It went on for quite some time," says Acott.

"With all of Special Branch, with all of MI5, there was just not enough people. CID became involved, British Transport police became involved. That's how desperate we'd become.

"If that airline job had gone as planned it would have eclipsed 9/11. It would have been horrendous."

Acott was in a team following the ringleader of the group, whose codename was Lion Roar. "He was the leader, he was the boss. He was in two minds about whether to martyr his wife and child as well as himself. Just before he was arrested, he took his wife and child with him to Mothercare. It seemed unbelievable to me that he could do that at the same time as he was thinking of killing so many people."

"They were making martyrdom videos. We had cameras hidden in the flat so we could see them videoing themselves."

Acott said following new suspects on the London underground became particularly stressful.
"The jobs I was really unhappy with was what they would call 'the first look up'. If they were a terrorist you had no idea at what stage they were at. I became particularly nervous of travelling on tubes with them."

"On one occasion this chap had shaved his head, which is a ritual they go through. He was on the tube and was stood by the doors in the middle. I was at the end of the tube keeping an eye on him. I had been separated from my team.

"My body comms didn't work very well underground. I was on my own. I looked around. People were on phones, doing crosswords, a woman with a toddler trying to keep it under control. I started having a panic attack."

Acott says he travelled all over the world for MI5, following suspects out of the UK to Europe and the Middle East on a passport with a false identity.
He also went to Ireland to provide covert help to MI5 handlers who had meetings with IRA double agents.

Acott said the trips were undeclared to the Irish government and the surveillance teams would have been stranded had they been caught by republicans - or the Garda.

The surveillance on the suspected paedophile - codenamed Operation Saturday - caused him concern, he says, because he couldn't understand why MI5 was doing it.

"It involved extremely powerful, wealthy people. It was a very need to know job... We were given the scantest of briefings on it. All of a sudden the job stopped. I did actually question why were we doing paedophiles - it wasn't in our remit.

"The trouble with the police is they move from job to job. Special Branch only do it for three or four years. Then they go onto CID or some other job. There was a strong suspicion of corruption within the police, whereas MI5 was more highly trusted."

The operation ended after a few weeks - Acott says the target was using drugs and prostitutes, but he saw no signs of child abuse.

Acott says his health began to deteriorate in 2006. He began to have nightmares and panic attacks and he was drinking to help cope with the pressure.

"I know I was in a mess at the time. But the service didn't want to deal with that. Once they realised I had health problems, I think they just wanted rid of me.

"They went through the motions. I was definitely being bullied by my team leader and my junior team leader... They sent me to see a doctor. However the doctor wasn't there to help me as far as I could see. He was there to diagnose me as an alcoholic."

Acott was dismissed for gross misconduct over the file he had left in his garden shed. He told an MI5 tribunal the document was so dull he didn't believe it had any security status, but he was sacked.
The dismissal, he says, accelerated his health problems - he tried to commit suicide on at least three occasions. His parents, who have also spoken to the BBC, said they were convinced their son was suffering from PTSD, but a psychologist used by the service disagreed.

In a letter to his parents, MI5 said: "It is important to reiterate that this Department is not responsible for his health problems, nor do his problems stem from his time working here."

However, four doctors have now diagnosed him as suffering from PTSD - including clinicians from the military veterans' charity, Combat Stress.

Acott recently attended one of the charity's residential courses.

He told Newsnight he wants MI5 to admit it made a mistake when he was sacked. He also believes he is entitled to a medical pension.

Security sources insisted that MI5 has professional teams that support the physical and mental wellbeing of staff because of "the very particular nature of the work".

Sources said staff do come forward and that support teams are proactive "during difficult periods such as at a time of particular operational intensity or following the death of a colleague".

For more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33543352

Iran nuclear talks: 'Historic' agreement struck

World powers have reached a deal with Iran on limiting Iranian nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions.

US President Barack Obama said that with the deal, "every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off" for Iran.

And President Hassan Rouhani said the "historic" deal opened a "new chapter" in Iran's relations with the world.

Negotiations between Iran and six world powers - the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany - began in 2006.

The so-called P5+1 want Iran to scale back its sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.

Iran, which wants crippling international sanctions lifted, has always insisted that its nuclear work is peaceful.

There has been stiff resistance to a deal from conservatives both in Iran and the US. The US Congress has 60 days in which to consider the deal, though Mr Obama said he would veto any attempt to block it.

The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner, said the deal would only only "embolden" Tehran.

"Instead of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, this deal is likely to fuel a nuclear arms race around the world," he added. Israel's government has also warned against an agreement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a "stunning historic mistake" that would provide Iran with "hundreds of billions of dollars with which it can fuel its terror machine and its expansion and aggression throughout the Middle East and across the globe".

He said he did not regard Israel as being bound by this agreement. "We will always defend ourselves," he added.

In a televised address, Mr Obama insisted the deal would make the world "safer and more secure", and provided for a rigorous verification regime. "This deal is not built on trust - it is built on verification," he said.

Immediately afterwards, Mr Rouhani gave his own televised address, in which he said the prayers of Iranians had "come true".

He said the deal would lead to the removal of all sanctions, adding: "The sanctions regime was never successful, but at the same time it affected people's lives.''
After 12 years, world powers had finally "recognised the nuclear activities of Iran", he said.

Analysis: Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor

The agreement will change the Middle East, perhaps a lot, but at the moment no-one knows exactly how. The biggest question is whether it will reduce or increase the turmoil in the Middle East.

Iran and the world's big powers, most significantly the US, now have a habit of working together - but don't assume that will help automatically to resolve the crises and wars that Iran, the US and their allies are involved with in the region.

There is a danger that mutual suspicion will heat up the Middle East's fault lines, especially the cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia - and with it sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

But the agreement in Vienna removes Iran's nuclear programme from the danger list. Two years ago, as Israel threatened to bomb Iran, it looked likely to lead to a major Middle East war. That in itself is a major diplomatic achievement.

Both Mr Rouhani and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif referred to the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme as an "unnecessary crisis".

Mr Zarif said the deal was "not perfect for anybody'', but that it was the "best achievement possible that could be reached".

Mr Obama, who is trying to persuade a sceptical US Congress of the benefits, said it would oblige Iran to:

• remove two-thirds of installed centrifuges and store them under international supervision
• get rid of 98% of its enriched uranium
• accept that sanctions would be rapidly restored if the deal was violated
• permanently give the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access "where necessary when necessary"

Sanctions relief would be gradual, Mr Obama said, with an arms embargo remaining in place for five years and an embargo on missiles for eight years.

Separately, the IAEA and Iran said they had signed a roadmap to resolve outstanding issues.
IAEA head Yukiya Amano told reporters in Vienna, Austria, that his organisation had signed a roadmap "for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran's nuclear programme".

He called the agreement a "significant step forward", saying it would allow the agency to "make an assessment of issues relating to possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme by the end of 2015".

By the BBC
For more - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33518524

British man who took sick selfie at scene of tourists' slaughter was LABOUR candidate!

• Labour parliamentary candidate Amran Hussain, 29, posed for a selfie where gunman slaughtered 38 tourists
• Army reservist and former NHS England officer defended his actions saying selfies are not 'banned'
• Dozens of people gathered at Marhaba beach in Tunisia to lay tributes 48 hours after crazed gunman opened fire 
• British death toll is expected to rise to 30 and 12 Brits have been identified so far after terror attack on Friday

by Jenny Awford

Labour parliamentary candidate Amran Hussain, 29, (centre) has sparked outrage by posing for a selfie at the exact spot where a crazed gunman massacred 38 holidaymakers

Mr Hussain told MailOnline: 'Selfies are not banned. I don’t see anything wrong with it. We were not capturing a happy moment, we were very distressed after what happened and we went down to the beach for 30 minutes to show solidarity.

‘We laid flowers and wrote a tribute and prayed to those who lost 

their lives in the horrific massacre.

‘We would have asked someone else to take a picture of us, but we were in the moment and we wanted to take a picture with the tribute and flowers we had put down.

'It has been taken completely out of context. It was all very upsetting and we just wanted to have a reminder of what happened. I just happened to be using a selfie stick as that is what I always use.' 

Hundreds have taken to Twitter to condemn the 'disgusting' picture, saying it sums up the 'selfie or selfish generation'. 

Alice Simmonds said: 'Absolutely shameless for a Labour candidate. He should know better.' 

Michael Wilton tweeted: 'This is a disgrace. The families haven't event started grieving.' 

Mr Hussain was on a week-long holiday with four friends, who are also pictured in the selfie, and they were all staying at the nearby Hotel Palmarina.

He said he did not witness the tragedy, but one of his friends heard shots from their hotel balcony.

The politician has now arrived back in the UK and wrote on Facebook, saying: 'We left Tunisia with a very heavy heart, but we will not allow terror to dictate our lives. Tunisia is a beautiful place with kind and peaceful people.

‘We went out onto our hotel beach today and paid our respects to those who lost their lives.

‘My thoughts shall remain for years with all those lives that were lost there, and also for the millions of struggling Tunisian families whose household income would be affected due to the negative effect on their tourism industry.

‘This is what the terrorists wanted and we must not give in I shall of course return back to Tunisia.’

The Labour candidate, who was brought up in the East-End of London in council housing, was defeated in the May election by a staggering majority and received just 5,290 votes compared to victorious Conservative candidate Ranil Jayawardena's 35,573 votes.

Mr Hussain is also a serving soldier in the British Army Reserves and sits on an independent monitoring board member for prisons and a school governor.

His actions on the memorial site have been slammed by hundreds on social media. 

Jerome Taylor ‏tweeted: 'This sums up the selfie generation. Tourist takes a pic next to site of the massacre in Sousse, Tunisia.' 

Davide Manfrin said: 'Selfie of the massacre on the beach in Tunisia. Idiots, don't they understand our fate is hanging by a thread.'

Rabeb Othmani tweeted: 'There is a fine line between freedom of expression & hurting others feelings: Stop posting the beach selfies #Tunisia'

Mark Olrog ‏said: 'A bad 21st century trait. People turning up and taking selfies of #Tunisia terror beach, apparently.'

Dozens of people gathered at the beach 48 hours after ISIS militant Seifeddine Rezgui opened fire on helpless tourists.

Defiant, the group carried flags across the sand that was splattered with blood on Friday before placing flowers and tribute letters near the sunbeds where the attack happened. 

Others bowed their heads in silence as they placed books and signs at the scene, including a poignant one that simply read: 'Why they die?'

Is this right what he did? 

For more on the article follow this link http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3142087/Thousands-defiant-Tunisians-light-candles-march-streets-protest-massacre-brought-blood-beaches-leaving-39-dead.html

How legal tide turned on same-sex marriage in the US

Same sex marriage is now legal in the entire US after a Supreme Court ruling striking down state marriage bans.

The ruling means all US states must grant marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples and recognise marriages that have taken place in other states.So how did we get to this point?

In 1996, the US Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

In 2003, Massachusetts judges ruled the state constitution allowed gay marriage, and marriage licences followed shortly after that. In the following years, a handful of states passed gay marriage bans while others began working towards allowing same-sex unions - either by court order or legislation.

One high-profile ban occurred by referendum in California in 2008 after courts had previously allowed same-sex marriage.

This continued across the US until the Supreme Court heard a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.

What did justices have to decide in this case?

The justices, who had previously have stopped short of resolving the question of same-sex marriage nationally, had to consider whether or not states are constitutionally required to issue marriage licences and if states are required to recognise same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

How many states previously allowed same-sex unions?

Before the ruling, thirty-six states were issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples, as well as Washington DC, which sets its own marriage laws but is not legally a state.

A critical turning point came in October 2014, when the Supreme Court chose not to hear appeals against lower court rulings that had overturned same-sex marriage bans - expanding the legality of gay unions to many more states.

In other states, same-sex marriage has been approved either through legislation or voter referenda.

Michigan couples were briefly able to marry before a court stayed a ruling overturning its ban.

What have been the key Supreme Court rulings?

On 6 October 2014, the court turned away appeals from five states with gay marriage bans on the books that had challenged appeals court rulings overturning those bans.

In challenging the gay marriage bans, proponents relied on a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in the case of United States v Windsor.

In that case, the court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (Doma), which barred the federal government from recognising same sex marriages.

Under Doma, for example, individuals in same-sex marriages were ineligible for benefits from federal programmes such as the Social Security pension system and some tax allowances if their partners died.

Another key case, Hollingsworth v Perry of 2013, was filed by two lawyers, Theodore Olson and David Boies, working together on behalf of their California clients, Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier and another couple, Jeffrey Zarrillo and Paul Katami.

They argued that the Supreme Court should strike down a state law, called Proposition 8, which stated that marriage is between a man and a woman. The law, approved by California voters in 2008, overrode a state Supreme Court decision that allowed for same-sex marriage.ext?

Marriages will continue as previous in the 36 states. The remaining states will have to issue licenses, although it is unclear how long they have to comply with the court's ruling, but there were reports of court clerk offering licences only an hour after the Supreme Court decision

Tory Government's £12bn Welfare Cuts Agreed

By Sophy Ridge, Political Correspondent

Welfare cuts worth £12bn a year will be announced in next month's Budget, after the Government agreed "significant" spending reductions in the last few days.

On a weekend during which tens of thousands of protesters marched against austerity, Chancellor George Osborne and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith signalled they would press ahead with cuts.

The welfare changes will include capping benefits at £23,000 a year for each family. Cuts to housing benefit and tax credits are also expected, defying speculation the promised cuts to the welfare budget would be watered down.

In an article in the Sunday Times, the joint letter from Mr Osborne and Mr Duncan Smith wrote: "This government was elected with a mandate to implement further savings from the £220bn welfare budget.

"For a start, we will reduce the benefit cap, and have made clear that we believe we need to make significant savings from other working-age

Political Message Behind March
"We will set out in detail all the steps we will take to bring about savings totalling £12bn a year in next month's Budget and at the spending review in the autumn.

"It took many years for welfare spending to spiral so far out of control, and it's a project of a decade or more to return the system to sanity.

"Reforming the damaging culture of welfare dependency and ensuring that work pays has been central to our mission to make Britain fit for the future."

The planned cuts emerged as anti-austerity protesters demanded an end to government cuts.

Organisers estimated that 250,000 people took part in the demonstrations in London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Bristol, including celebrities Russell Brand and Charlotte Church.

The decision to write the article on the same weekend as the protests will be seen as deliberately provocative.

The two ministers wrote: "All our reforms will have these central aims: to ensure the welfare system promotes work and personal responsibility, while putting expenditure on a sustainable footing.

"Welfare reform is fundamentally about opportunity and changing lives, supporting families to move from dependence to independence - a vital point, because without social mobility there can be no social justice."

Andy Burnham, Labour leadership candidate and shadow health secretary, said: "I think this is pretty disgraceful, what is going on today.

"Here we have a chancellor that is frightening people basically ... just waving around this idea of huge cuts drastic cuts, without spelling out where they are going to come from.

"He did not spell it out before the election, and he is still not spelling it out now. This is just not acceptable.

"He is trying to play politics by challenging us, but actually in doing that he is frightening vulnerable people. And that is wrong."

For more about the story: http://news.sky.com/story/1505715/tory-governments-12bn-welfare-cuts-agreed

British spies 'moved after Snowden files read'

UK intelligence agents have been moved because Russia and China have access to classified information which reveals how they operate, a senior government source has told the BBC.

According to the Sunday Times, Moscow and Beijing have deciphered documents stolen by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The government source told the BBC the countries "have information" that led to agents being moved but added there was "no evidence" any had been harmed.
Mr Snowden leaked data two years ago.
The former CIA contractor, now living in Russia, left the US in 2013 after leaking details of extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence to the media.

His information made international headlines in June 2013 when the Guardian newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans.
Mr Snowden is believed to have downloaded 1.7 million secret documents before he left the US.

'Hostile countries'

The government source said the information obtained by Russia and China meant that "knowledge of how we operate" had stopped the UK getting "vital information".

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason said the problem for UK authorities was not only the direct consequence that agents had been moved, but also the opportunity cost of those agents no longer being in locations where they were doing useful work. Grey line

Analysis: By Gordon Corera - BBC security correspondent
The phrases "neither confirm nor deny" and "no comment on intelligence matters" is being used by government to respond to Sunday Times' story.

But my understanding from conversations over an extended period is that since he fled two years ago, British intelligence have worked on the assumption that Russian and Chinese spies might have access to his full cache of secrets.

Snowden has always maintained that there is no way that other states could do this but the spies are likely to have thought it too risky to take the chance. In turn, this may have led to undercover agents being moved as a precaution.
Snowden himself would not have had access though to any kind of database of MI6 agents but the fear might have been that by piecing together any secrets on how such agents communicate that were in the files, the Russians and Chinese might have been able to identify them.

However, no one in government today is confirming that they are sure that the Russians and Chinese have got full access - that remains in the realm of "no comment". Grey line

Intelligence officials have long warned of what they see as the dangers of the information leaked by Mr Snowden and its potential impact on keeping people in the UK safe - a concern Prime Minister David Cameron has said he shares.
According to the Sunday Times, Western intelligence agencies have been forced to pull agents out of "hostile countries" after "Moscow gained access to more than one million classified files" held by Mr Snowden.

"Senior government sources confirmed that China had also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified," the newspaper added.

Security expert Professor Anthony Glees said Mr Snowden's actions had been "very very damaging"

Tim Shipman, who co-wrote the Sunday Times story, told the BBC: "Snowden said 'nobody bad has got hold of my information'.

"Well, we are told authoritatively by people in Downing Street, in the Home Office, in the intelligence services that the Russians and the Chinese have all this information and as a result of that our spies are having to pull people out of the field because their lives are in danger.

"People in government are deeply frustrated that this guy has been able to put all this information out there."
The newspaper quoted Sir David Omand, former director of UK intelligence agency GCHQ, saying the fact Russia and China had the information was a "huge strategic setback" that was "harming" to Britain, the US and their Nato allies.

Mass surveillance

The former head of the Navy and current Labour peer Admiral Lord West called Mr Snowden a "traitor", saying it was now much harder to monitor terrorists and criminals.

Professor Anthony Glees, of the University of Buckingham's Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said the leaking of the documents had been "very, very damaging".

Protesters supporting Snowden hold a photo of him during a demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong
He told the BBC: "From the documents that Snowden has, it will be possible to identify those very brave people in countries where if you spy for Britain you get killed.

"There may even be names inadvertently included... Edward Snowden is not only a villain, he's a villain of the first order."
But, the director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said that if Mr Snowden had been pardoned in the US "for doing what many in the United States (consider) to be a public service in revealing the sheer extent of mass surveillance, he wouldn't have needed to go to Russia".

'Pinch of salt'

It comes two days after the UK's terrorism watchdog David Anderson QC published a review into terrorism legislation, which was set up amid public concerns about surveillance sparked by Mr Snowden's revelations.

He said the country needed clear new laws about the powers of security services to monitor online activity and concluded that the current situation was "undemocratic, unnecessary and - in the long run - intolerable".

Former Conservative cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics that the timing of the story was "no accident".

"This debate in Britain between individual liberty and collective security comes into very sharp focus as a result of the Anderson report, and that is why [The Sunday Times' Tim Shipman] has got his very good exclusive today."
Asked if it was part of a propaganda drive by the government, he replied: "Well, there is a big debate going on, you know," adding: "Anderson is going to be a very important part of that".

Andrew Mitchell

Mr Mitchell suggested the timing of the story was linked to the Anderson report
Like it or not, he said, Snowden had directly engendered "a massive change of view about the debate" in the US.
Meanwhile, civil liberties campaigner David Davis - also a Conservative MP - told the Guardian the story should be treated with "a pinch of salt".

"You can see they have been made nervous by Anderson. We have not been given any facts, just assertions," he said of the government.

The government is preparing new legislation to give police and agencies more tools to monitor online communications data, saying this is necessary to fight terrorism.

Previous attempts were blocked by the Lib Dems in coalition, and critics say the plans amount to a "snoopers' charter".

By the BBC

For more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33125068