The Mountbatten Diaries have again emerged with a focus on India. They came up during a recent appeal hearing by a tribunal on British author Andrew Lownie’s petition demanding the full release
Misuse of Pegasus Was Enabled by Governments Ignoring Calls to Reform Intelligence Agencies
Since Independence, every Union government brushed aside opportunities to create oversight mechanisms which are common in other parts of the world.
Illustration: The Wire
Rights28/Jul/2021
When India won Independence, it had the choice of two models for its intelligence agencies. One was the United States’s version, which gave intelligence work a legal basis, insisting on accountability and transparency through a system of checks and balances. George Washington, one of the founding fathers of the US, established this principle in his first State of the Union address in January 1790 by requesting the US Congress for funds to finance intelligence operations. The US passed the National Security Act in 1947 and the CIA Act in 1949 to cement these principles.
By David Burke.
George Blake has just died aged 98 at his dacha outside Moscow where Putin’s overseas intelligence service, the SVR, was protecting him from Covid-19. Blake was held in high esteem by the Russians. Putin has said that the “memory of this legendary person will be preserved forever in our hearts”. Putin awarded him a medal in 2007.
Blake was arrested in London in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years imprisonment but escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with the aid of Sean Bourke from Limerick. He then spent two months in London before making his way to East Germany.
The story of his escape and the time he spent in hiding in London is astonishing. Blake may have been helped by Soviet agents inside the British Establishment. The Director-General of MI5, Roger Hollis, 1956-65, was believed by many to be one such agent. He retired the year before Blake made his escape, something which gave him four years to help the KGB prepare a plan to break Blake free.