Breaking Britain's Spy Silence

LONDON: That repressive muzzle known as the Official Secrets Act hasn't stopped Britons from finding out what allegations are being leveled against their own intelligence services. On Thursday The Guardian broke the injunction on reporting whistleblower David Shayler's claims that MI6 tried to blow up Libya's Colonel Ghaddafi. How? The Guardian simply reprinted Wednesday's New York Times article on the subject. That forced the Foreign Office to actually deny the story for the first time; an official told Reuters it was "inconceivable" that they would grant the authority for assassinations "in normal peacetime circumstances."

Whether Shayler has the skinny or not, the allegations come as a blow to British intelligence's attempt to lose its "license to kill" image. Only last week, MI5 -- the domestic spy service -- issued a booklet pointing out that while it holds 13,000 active files on British residents, it "does not kill people or arrange their assassination." Now it seems MI6, MI5's foreign-espionage counterpart, will be forced to bring out a similar glossy pamphlet denying everything. Mr. Bond will be most displeased.