January 20, 2006
As the United States slips ever closer to becoming a national security state -- one in which the security apparatus becomes a state within a state -- it becomes useful to consider what such a state might be like.
The United Kingdom provides a scary example. To this very day, MI5 and the Special Branch police units appear to have the power on occasion to ignore and frustrate the plans of the duly elected government. In the 1970s, it was alleged the security forces used blackmail to force the resignation of left-wing Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson on the grounds that he was an agent of the Soviet Union. It seems more likely, however, that Wilson was forced out by his Labor Party colleagues who were worried about what seems to have been a rapidly increasing Alzheimer's condition.
It was also alleged that in Northern Ireland the security forces were behind a strike of utility workers against Wilson's attempt at power sharing between Protestants and Catholics in that remnant of English imperialism. Since the securitat in Ireland has traditionally conspired against Catholic rights, such a claim is on a priori grounds not improbable. Furthermore, in two much more recent incidents, MI6 and the Special Branch seem to have been instrumental, first, in destroying the power sharing assembly established by the Good Friday agreement and secondly in sinking a more recent attempt to revive it.
A couple of years ago, the Police Service of Northern Ireland showed up at Stormont Castle, the locale of the assembly, and confiscated large quantities of documents from the offices of the Sinn Fein party. The police hinted broadly that three Sinn Fein men they had arrested were guilty of running an IRA intelligence operation within the castle.
Almost as if awaiting a signal, the Loyalist members walked out of the Assembly -- though they continue to collect their salaries (six figures in Euros). The three men were charged but not brought to trial. It appeared as time passed that the documents relevant to the alleged IRA plot were a relatively small bundle which were kept not at the PSNI offices but in an agent's house.
A few weeks ago, the charges against the three were dropped. The reason, it turned out almost immediately, was that Sein Fein had discovered that the alleged leader of the IRA plot in Stormont was an agent of the security services. An office of the English government had conspired against that government to destroy a compromise solution to the Northern Ireland battles on which the government and its ministers had worked for years. The Police Service and its chief, Sir Hugh Orde, were revealed to be either liars or unwitting tools of dark and sinister forces deep within the English bureaucracy.
Other attempts to restore the Good Friday agreement floundered when a large and well-organized gang raided a bank in Northern Ireland and removed (allegedly) $100 million in cash. Immediately the Police Service announced that the thieves were members of the IRA. As days and weeks passed, some of the money was recovered, but no one was arrested -- though homes of Republican suspects were searched.
The full story on this theft is not yet known, though Sinn Fein leaders deny the IRA was involved (which does not necessarily mean that some rogue members did not cook up the scheme). However, the robbery was counterproductive to the Republican moves toward restoring the agreement and the assembly -- and delayed again serious negotiations.
Both events fed the paranoia of the Protestant working class in Northern Ireland -- the same people who smashed Wilson's plans almost 30 years ago. They also deepened the motives for stonewalling that Northern Protestant leaders such as Ian Paisley and David Trimble have practiced for the better part of seven years.
One has to ask whether Prime Minister Tony Blair is capable of controlling his spooks. It would appear he is not. Both he and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern have insisted that time is running out. Unless a solution is reached in the next couple of months -- before Blair leaves office -- there may not be a chance for peace in Northern Ireland for another generation.
The CIA and the FBI are currently in eclipse in this country. Indeed, control is increasingly concentrated in the Defense Department. Yet, as security agencies gain more and more secret power, the risks that they will become the real government are certain to increase.
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