
Prime Minister Brown
The UK has launched an extraordinarily dark and menacing repositioning of Russia, which it claims is now the third largest threat to Britain's security. In particular, Russian spies form this menace to the national security in the UK, London asserts. The worst threat? Taleban terrorists. Number two, Iranian terror and maybe a nuclear threat from Iran - if it learns how to make bombs in the future. Third biggest threat, Russian spying on Britain. Say again?
Last Tuesday, as Russian president Dimitry Medvedev and British prime minister Gordon Brown met during a break in the G8 talks in Japan, BBC Newsnight went on the air, opening with a scoop that one of Newsnight's reporters was handed by British intelligence. The Russian State, according to the scoop, was involved in the murder of dissident Alexander Litvinenko two years ago. As the story unfolded, it turned out the State meant Russian intelligence. By then, of course, whatever goodwill Medvedev had hoped to encourge at his first ever meeting with Gordon Brown, was dead.
The idea of Britain seeking the humiliation of another country's new head of state is, according to diplomats, a nearly unheard of "no-no." Yet that is exactly what British intelligence accomplished. Of course, any real journalist at Newsnight might have smelled something rotten when the scoop was handed to its reporter on the very day of the Medvedev-Brown meeting. Why didn't the BBC Newsnight editors notice they were being played?