Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

EU foreign minister’s husband shunned KGB approaches in 1980s

December 8, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Peter Kellner

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The husband of the recently appointed European Union minister for foreign affairs has acknowledged that the KGB tried to cultivate a relationship with him in the 1980s. Peter Kellner, who now presides over influential British polling company YouGov, is married to Baroness Ashton of Upholland (born Catherine Margaret Ashton), who assumed the prominent EU post on November 19. Intelligence documents show that British domestic intelligence agency MI5 had tagged Kellner and his wife as “communist sympathizers”, because of their anti-apartheid activism and long-term involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, considered a “subversive” movement within the intelligence services. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with 1984 Labour Party National Conference (UK), Alexander Lebedev, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, Blackpool (UK), Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Catherine Margaret Ashton, Cold War, defectors, diplomatic expulsions, domestic intelligence, double agents, EU, history, KGB, Labour Party (UK), MI5, MI6, National Reserve Bank (Russia), News, Oleg Gordievsky, Peter Kellner, political activism, Russia, The New Statesman and Society, UK, USSR, YouGov, Yuri Kudinov

“Unprecedented” history of MI5 published

October 6, 2009 by intelNews 3 Comments

Dr. Andrew

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence organization, made headlines in 2002, when it appointed Cambridge University history Professor Christopher Andrew to produce an authorized account of its long history. The 1,032-page-long book, entitled Defense of the Realm, was published this week by Allen Lane, as announced last March, in time to mark the agency’s centennial. Despite the fact that Defense of the Realm has been officially sanctioned by MI5, (ex-director-general Stephen Lander was sitting next to Dr. Andrew during Monday’s press conference), the book makes some interesting revelations. Among them is that MI5 considered assassinating V.K. Krishna Menon, post-colonial India’s first High Commissioner (an ambassador within the British Commonwealth of Nations) to Britain. Read more of this post