As Peter Wright confirmed in his book Spycatcher, [Prime Minister] Wilson was the victim of a protracted, illegal campaign of destabilisation by a rogue element in the security services. Prompted by CIA fears that Wilson was a Soviet agent – put in place after the KGB had, the spooks believed, poisoned Hugh Gaitskell, the previous Labour leader – these MI5 men burgled the homes of the prime minister’s aides, bugged their phones and spread black, anti-Wilson propaganda throughout the media. They tried to pin all kinds of nonsense on him: that his devoted political secretary, Marcia Williams, posed a threat to national security; that he was a closet IRA sympathiser.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Think it fanciful? The BBC didn’t…it made a film about it...’The Plot Against Harold Wilson’…
When the story broke that Donald Trump repeated a Fox News report hat he had been possibly spied upon by GCHQ on behalf of the CIA [Obama] the BBC treated it all as a joke, a non-story, one that didn’t need any investigation…they didn’t care whether it was true or not, they were going to use it as an example of Trump’s madness, his paranoia or indeed an example of his machiavellian use of ‘fake news’ to manipulate the news narrative and attack his enemies.
On Friday we had an ex-director of GCHQ [08:26] on to defend GCHQ…guess what?, he defended GCHQ and thought Trump was bonkers..and spreading fake news [almost as if he was reading from an agreed BBC script]…the BBC had no other commentator or analyst on to provide balance and impartial, reasoned commentary. Saturday we had a professor on [08:50], a supposed expert on such matters, he too poured scorn onto Trump and told us that the Trust implicit in our relationship with the US meant we couldn’t possibly spy on the US…but of course we wouldn’t be spying on the US just on Trump….just as the CIA operates in the UK spying on Muslims.
The BBC made no attempt to find a counter voice…no one to point out that the US had spied on allies for decades…including the German Chancellors, their Prime Ministers…Merkel included., who had their phones tapped….and that German Intelligence had co-operated in many ways with such operations.
Barack Obama ‘approved tapping Angela Merkel’s phone 3 years ago’
President Barack Obama was told about monitoring of German Chancellor in 2010 and allowed it to continue, says German newspaper
How can the BBC fail to make that very, very apt point instead of laughing it all off? Did Barack Obama also ‘approve’ tapping Trump’s phone?
The BBC failed to point out the rather obvious fact that the US intelligence services were investigating Trump and his associates for any links to Russia…which, it might be added, they haven’t found.
The BBC happily reported as completely credible the dodgy dossier made up by an ex-MI5 agent that Trump had hired prostitutes to urinate on the bed that Obama had slept in in a Russian hotel..and yet make no effort to actually do any real journalism to investigate the claims about GCHQ co-operating with the US intelligence services to track Trump in order to undermine his election campaign.
Regardless of the truth of the story the BBC failed to do its job…it wasn’t in the slightest concerned about establishing the truth but instead eagerly sought to mock and demonise Trump….as you can see from the Wilson story, CIA and British Intelligence can and do co-operate in carrying out political assassinations….Trump must have been a prime target to prevent him getting the Presidency…who can doubt that? How can the BBC fail to make the obvious comaprison with what happened to Wilson….or is that just BBC fake news?
Saturday we also had PJ O’Rourke on the Today show….solely to deliver an anti-Trump screed with no voice to defend Trump at all. Usual BBC impartiality.
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/843135375585419264
Alan,
I am not sure that Peter Wright was a reliable source !
You could make my point there….is Wright a reliable source? And yet the BBC took it all very, very seriously unlike the way they have treated Trump.
If not, he is likely a shoo in as a BIJ/ Newsnight stringer.
Obummers finally been caught.
Not that it will make any difference to the BBC who spent weeks mocking Trump’s claims.
http://worldpoliticus.com/2017/03/18/new-evidence-trumps-wiretaps-claim/
Rebel,
The link you’ve posted in your comment made my anti-virus software light up like a Christmas tree with the warning:
“Content on this website has been reported as unsafe ad.w-ads.xyz Hosted by: worldpoliticus.com”
It won’t let me proceed beyond that point.
Now I don’t normally subscribe to conspiracy theories but anyone else had this problem?
Ta.
Not me, I’m using AVG and it’s up to date.
And this coming after the release of the diaries of Soviet nomenclatura Anatoly Chernyaev?
Wilson WAS in the pockets of the Soviets and so were many in the Labour party at that time, like Tony Benn.
Since Gaitskill the Labour party has done nothing but damage to this country by allying itself with the interests of countries hostile to Britain. Ask a Labour supporter to name something positive their party has done for the country and you can bet the only thing they can name will be the NHS which was a cross party policy they stole from the Nazis !
Labour has done nothing good for this country, nothing at all you can prove it simply by asking them.
Where is the evidence that Wilson was a Soviet agent? Please supply something concrete. Why do you think the British government was so keen to suppress the book Spycatcher?
Not because of Wilson’s alleged behaviour that is for sure.
The jury should stay out on the current behaviour of our services regarding President Trump.
Dave S,
Quite agree.
You’d make a terrible Police officer Dave S !
All investigations begin by looking for the evidence, not by demanding evidence from the accuser at the outset!
“I’ve been raped”, “Well can you prove it?”
“My sisters been murdered” “Well do you have enough evidence to bring a case to court immediately? Otherwise there’s nothing we can do!”
It’s up to the detectives to build that case after prima facie evidence is presented to them suggesting the likelihood of a crime having been committed.
Worse than that, in a shadowy world of Soviet cold war espionage, you expect a member of the public to even be able to produce ‘something concrete’ shows you don’t understand the way things work.
The fact that Wilsons deputy was having meetings with the Soviets should ring alarm bells?? It would have hardly been possible for Wilson to jump on a plane to Moscow once a month to report and get instruction would it?
All you will get is pointers and allusions, the concrete evidence you demand will probably never be found – unless the current Russian government wants it to be found
Read the Spectator article and see if you think there is evidence which points to various Labour people being far too close to the Soviet government for comfort.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2009/11/reaching-through-the-iron-curtain/#
Interesting Mail article from 2009 showing it was not just politicians who were on the payrole.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225637/How-Kremlin-hijacked-Labour-Diary-Kremlin-insider-reveals-hold-Soviets-Labour-politicians.html
Thanks for the lecture. As I said all you have is hearsay. Comparisons with a rape or a murder case are absurd.
I’d start with the sale of British jet engine technology to Russia in the 1940s and work up from there – 55 engines in 1947. Wilson was President of the Board of Trade.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1948/nov/22/jet-engines-foreign-sales
The Russians reverse engineered the engines to create the VK-1, which powered the MIG-15 – which caused UN forces too many casualties in Korea..
Quite right RJ. Also to mention that the UK’s advanced aircraft projects were all cancelled shortly after Wilson’s Labour government got into power in 1964. These were the TSR.2 strike aircraft, the P.1154 (a supersonic version of the VTOL Harrier) and the HS.681 transport aircraft that bears a similar configuration to the current American-designed C-17. Of course it was all down to cost…..
Fred – you omit the economies of which were that 2 types were required to replace the P1154 (the MD F4 Phantom and the Kestrel/Harrier – one supersonic/one with VSTOL). The GD F111 was supposed to replace the TSR2, but was cancelled too (millions spent in cancellation fees – when we could least afford it – with absolutely nothing to show for it) and the Lockheed C130 bought to replace the HS681.
As an aside, and completely unrelated of course, Lockheed were involved in bribery scandals during this timeframe – see, inter alia, F104/Prince Bernhard …….
A consistent feature of American policy from the 50s onwards was to make sure our aircraft industry did not compete with theirs. The TSR2 and Concorde were just two of the victims of this.
The TSR2 threatened sales of the F111 and it’s demise was a condition of US loans and as for Concorde when Boeing found out just how far advanced we were they and the US government fixed that one by denying Concorde overfly rights and killed off potential sales.
The US always acts in the interests of it’s own industry and always will.
Look at railway procurement and the strange fact that at privatisation the freight companies went to the US ( Wisconsin Central and I wonder who put the money up? ) and then ordered a huge fleet of US diesels. Thus killing off our loco building industry.
RJ – to which offer Stalin is supposed to have said:
“Which fool would sell us his secrets?”
or words to that effect…..
Wilson was a very evil man. I shall never forget his support for the Genocide of the Biafrans in Nigeria for which he was never prosecuted. He sold Gowon and his butchers many of the weapons used. He was a disgrace to humanity. It goes without saying that the BBC supported him throughout his period as PM.
“Labour has done nothing good for this country, nothing at all you can prove it simply by asking them.”
Apart from allowing you to sit at home on a comfortable state pension and not having to find a couple of thousand pounds every time you need to see a doctor. Yeah, nothing at all.
Other countries seem to have done rather better without any help from Britain’s Labour party.
Iain,
And have much better health services ! The NHS is a disgrace.
It is.
My impression of Labour’s legacy since WW2 is an attitude of complacency and entitlement which we could not afford.
Labour are very good at spending other peoples money, and err, that’s about it.
Don’t you wish that people would read an entire post before commenting, or at least do a barest minimum of research?
State pension of 1908 was introduced by Herbet Asquith’s Liberal party.
I covered the NHS (which is the only thing the Labourites can claim) in the previous post. It was founded on a cross party basis and agreement that which ever party formed the first government would enact it. They apparently stole the idea for it from the Nazi’s.
You are right Thoughtful. The NHS is a product of 1940s statism and rationing.
Coming out of World War II, the idea that a public service such as medicine should not be a) controlled by the government and b) rationed (ie an equality of misery for all) would have seemed bizarre. Government control and rationing had just won us the war after all.
In 2017 such views might seem quaint, and we don’t have rationing or government control of industry any more… except in the NHS, which has proved to be impossible to replace or reform. It seems it is a feature of British life which will endure until we are all bankrupt.
The odd thing is that very few people have a good word to say about it, yet any attempt to reform it is politically toxic. We seem fated to remain in the era of Mr Attlee and ration books forever when it comes to the National Health Service.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Arf…I was going to point out that they had also given us an education system but then thought I’d best check what the writers of “Yes Prime Minister” thought……
Boohanna,
Great clip !
Maxincony, stalwart defender of the BBC, also appears to be a defender of Labour.
Coincidence or magic? You decide.
I don’t believe the question is one of were Wilson et al Russian spies but rather were the security services working to undermine him?
Space,
The military and security services must have been concerned about Wilson’s policies, but that would not excuse them undermining him, if they did.
His “East of Aden ” policy was madness and opposed by George Brown who lost out. It has subsequently been partially reversed. Boris, gave a , to my mind, surprisingly good speech on this in Bahrain before christmas which is on the UK Gov website.
The jury is out on Wilson, but he was a nasty, devious, slippery piece of work and I would not have trusted him with anything.
“Regardless of the truth of the story the BBC failed to do its job…it wasn’t in the slightest concerned about establishing the truth”
-or-
“Regardless of the truth of the story the BBC wasn’t concerned about establishing the truth”
-or-
“Regardless of the truth, what about the truth”
-or-
“Hello, I call myself Alan…”
*Yawn* you’d have a bit more credibility if you didn’t need to keep creating new accounts to spew your waffle.
Maxiconey
Welcome back ! . Nights again? I know, its a bummer, but its a living.
Found any evidence of Right Wing bias by Al Beeb ? Or do you have a vested interest ?
Or are you just a Troll ?
Assuming this was all true, either the tape recorder clonks were not as loud the reporters made out it to be, or Harold Wilson knew they were recording him. In fact any intelligent man would expect a reporter to be carrying recording equipment on them.
The comments section on Friday’s article was infested with critically-banal comments about how Trump was paranoid and helped by Russia, often very personal attacks on him as well, that received disproportionate amounts of upvotes.
Funnily enough, after I pointed out the fact that the wiretapping would actually SUPPORT Obama’s claims of suspecting Trump of colluding with Russia, and that if they DIDN’T bug him then it was either negligence or they’re now lying about the threat, and posted a link to the article on here so people could redress the balance, the HYS was mysteriously removed from the article.
Just proves the point that the left has no answer when truth or logic is a factor, so they resort to silencing the unbelievers.
The kneejerk virtue signalling of sneering at Trump is what LibMob do to show they belong to the right tribe.
The rarely get around to actually addressing the argument.
If this is all true, then there are lot of forces that have been trying to destroy and save Britain. The Empire was lost, English Culture was weakened and destroyed to Multiculturalism and a concept of British guilt for a mythical evil British empire, despite modernising the world to industrialisation, railway networks, free trade, agricultural productivity, slavery abolishment, saving Europe and the world from Nazism etc. Strange.
Post Snowden, Vault 7 revelations and the undisputed fact that USA tapped Frau Merkel’s phone, how can anybody doubt that the USA is listening in on everyone all the time? It is their job, they are spies so they spy. Get used to it as it has always been that way and always will be.
Having said that, the MSM, not just the BBC just don’t get it. The more they vilify Trump, the more people love him and mistrust them.
Space:
It hasn’t always been the way. There used to be things like warrants for wiretaps.
Nowadays, almost all communication is electronic, and therefore very easy to intercept. The NSA and their useful deniable friends at GCHQ have decided they wish to capture literally all electronic communication in the world. And they can. So they do.
Trump showed his age when he used the word “wiretapped”. There is no place for Watergate era wiretaps any more. The NSA links directly into every telephone exhange, they don’t need to put a bug in the phone. So it was easy for them to deny that the phones in Trump Tower had been “wiretapped”. Likewise, GCHQ, which probably did the dirty work, because it is outside the US chain of command, could say that the claims that Trump Tower was bugged were “ridiculous” and “should be ignored”. They did not deny them.
The fact is we now know that the NSA/GCHQ operation intercepts and stores every phone call, email and web search they can, across the world, as a matter of policy. It is a level of intrusion unknown in human history, and gives the intelligence agencies huge influence over politics and business. Which is, I expect, why they do it.
To take control of Britain “you take over the airports, take over the BBC, and protect Buckingham Palace with the queen”. Well the lefties & Islamists have taken over the BBC. The Islamists and others are buying up chunks of Britain made available through privatisation, including the utilities. Governments have downgraded the military. Worrying times.
‘When the story broke that Donald Trump repeated a Fox News report hat he had been possibly spied upon by GCHQ on behalf of the CIA [Obama] the BBC treated it all as a joke, a non-story, one that didn’t need any investigation…they didn’t care whether it was true or not, they were going to use it as an example of Trump’s madness, his paranoia or indeed an example of his machiavellian use of ‘fake news’ to manipulate the news narrative and attack his enemies’.
This is how the story came over to me. Experts were trotted out to confirm that Smiley’s people would never spy on Trump and consolidate the BBC line that Trump is crazy. That will fit with the agenda of Trump’s US enemies who are building up a case for his removal.
My questioh is this: is the BBC acting by itself or together with Smiley’s people carrying out orders from No 10?
It does seem that President Trump’s removal would be welcomed by the UK/EU Arab establishment
The experts (and, of course, the BBC) were lying. US security services spy on everyone they want to and so do ours. It may suit the BBC and its carefully chosen ‘experts’ to pretend otherwise, but that is simply how the BBC conducts its disinformation programme.
What strikes me as glaringly obvious is that difference between the way the BBC treats Obama’s illegal activities and the way it once treated Nixon.
Any thoughts that I just might be a touch paranoid for thinking that the BBC is spinning this story have been allayed after listening to an hour of the Today programme this morning.
We’re definitely being played.
Fox News Pulls Judge Napolitano Off Air Due To Prior Comments on UK Trump Surveillance…
Murdoch appears to have intervened.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/03/20/fox-news-pulls-judge-napolitano-off-air-due-to-prior-comments-on-uk-trump-surveillance/
One of the comments to this article is revealing and indicates how Obama might have used Smiley’ people in Cheltenham
Link here
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7H9FvCXgAUp3eO.jpg