Some more spying tales.

Britain’s first national security strategy document has largely been forgotten in Whitehall. Officials are carrying on in much the same way as they did before Britain’s security priorities were set out on paper. One explanation is given in an endnote to the document:

“The wider scope of issues to be addressed within this strategy is not to be taken as affecting the legally understood meaning of national security.”

This disclaimer was requested by the Secret Intelligence Service and Security Service, I’m told. Britain’s spies refused to have the legal basis by which they operate watered down by adding threats like flooding to the “legal definition” of national security.

Cynics among you may wonder why the government spent months on a national security strategy that was never permitted to officially redefine national security. But very little surprises when it comes to the NSS, which has always had the smack of a Whitehall farce. We are looking forward to the second instalment, which is supposed to be published in nine months time.

Global Dashboard have spotted an incredible interview in the LA Times with “Curveball”, one of the most important “disinformation” agents in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

Rather depressingly, it shows that a good deal of Colin Powell’s UN presentation on WMD was based on the word of a jobbing burger flipper who failed to even win the trust of his colleagues at Burger King.

This passage is unforgettable:

In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and would report any fellow Iraqi worker who criticized Hussein’s regime.

They couldn’t decide if he was dangerous or crazy.

“During breaks, he told stories about what a big man he was in Baghdad,” said Hamza Hamad Rashid, who remembered an odd scene with the pudgy Alwan in his too-tight Burger King uniform praising Hussein in the home of der Whopper. “But he always lied. We never believed anything he said.”

Another Iraqi friend, Ghazwan Adnan, remembers laughing when he applied for a job at a local Princess Garden Chinese Restaurant and discovered Alwan washing dishes in the back while claiming to be “a big deal” in Iraq. “How could America believe such a person?”