When a terrorist group is active in the UK — as Islamist extremists and dissident republicans are at the moment — there is no more essential figure in the prevention of carnage than an agent working for the security services. Reliable intelligence is what defuses bombs, intercepts arms caches, and apprehends suspects. Its acquisition can involve unimaginable personal risks, in circumstances of nerve-shredding tension. We should all be grateful, but most of us never get to know what to say thank you for, or to whom. An agent’s success manifests itself in nothing happening. Its continued value depends on secrecy.
Is MI5 grateful on our behalf? Well, it seems that gratitude for intelligence sources may come with an expiry date. Earlier this month, for example, the BBC interviewed a former MI5 surveillance officer, codenamed Robert Acott, who claimed to have spied for 18 years, mostly on Irish and Islamist targets.
After 9/11, he said, MI5 found itself worryingly short of Muslim agents, and officers such as Acott struggled to compensate.
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