- A second senior MI6 officer is resigning in a shake-up
of the top ranks of Britain's secret intelligence service, the Guardian
has learned.
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- MI6's director of operations, who cannot be named for
reasons of personal security, is to take up a job in the City. He follows
Mark Allen, the director responsible for anti-terrorism, who left in the
summer to join BP.
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- The resignations come as MI6 re-examines how it should
pass on intelligence to ministers following the most traumatic episode
in its recent history.
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- They also follow Tony Blair's controversial decision
to appoint John Scarlett as head of MI6 to succeed Sir Richard Dearlove.
As chairman of Whitehall's joint intelligence committee, Mr Scarlett was
at the centre of the dispute over the government's Iraqi weapons
dossier.
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- Sources close to the intelligence and security services
insist that Mr Allen and his former MI6 colleague decided to resign because
they were close to their retirement age of 55 rather than because they
had fallen out with Mr Scarlett.
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- However, Whitehall officials admit that the dossier
fiasco
has damaged the morale of MI6 officers. They say MI6 was divided over the
quality and accuracy of the original intelligence and how it was
subsequently
"sexed up" in the dossier.
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- Nigel Inkster, the deputy head of MI6, who like Mr Allen
applied for the top job, has decided to stay on and help the agency settle
down. Whitehall's intelligence assessment staff is being beefed up and
MI6 has launched a discreet recruitment campaign, which may include an
official agency website.
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- Five senior officers have recently left the CIA, MI6's
American partner, after George Bush's appointment of a former Republican
congressman, Porter Goss, to head the agency in place of George Tenet who
resigned after the dispute in the US about intelligence failures over
Iraq.
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- http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1367300,00.html
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