News you may have missed #590

Manningham-Buller

►►Saudi ex-spy chief on US war on terrorism. The longtime head of Saudi Arabia’s foreign intelligence service, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who resigned shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings, says that the US should be using Osama bin Laden’s demise as a pretext for declaring victory in the war in Afghanistan and withdrawing US troops. Not by the end of 2014, which is the current timetable, but immediately.
►►Ex-MI5 chief says ‘9/11 made us stronger’. Britain’s foremost domestic intelligence agency, MI5, felt almost swamped after 9/11, inundated with leads to plots and fragmentary intelligence, according to Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of Britain’s Security Service. But in the decade since the attacks, its budget doubled and its headcount has almost tripled, while intelligence operations have increased fivefold, she said.
►►Captured Libyan spy chief defiant. Defiant and angry, captured Libyan spy chief Bouzaid Dorda, who directed the country’s External Security Organization (ESO), denied any wrongdoing when he was presented to reporters on Sunday by former insurgents who tracked him down in the capital Tripoli. He is believed to have taken on his job in 2009 when his predecessor Moussa Koussa, who defected earlier this year, became foreign minister.