Revealed: How British Spies Pull the PA’s Strings

JUNE 2, 2023

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° 

Asa Winstanley and Kit Klarenberg

Secret files reveal the names of British agents who influenced the Palestinian Authority.

A cache of leaked documents obtained by The Electronic Intifada reveals the extent of British intelligence penetration of Palestinian Authority forces, including “daily direction” from a UK military officer.

The documents detail how shadowy British contractor Adam Smith International (ASI) has influenced the Palestinian Authority for almost 15 years.

They expose several military intelligence trainers, naming names for the first time.

Two of the British agents, including a likely MI6 officer, worked closely with Israeli spies.

Some ASI personnel who worked with the Palestinian Authority are named in the files as also working with the contractor’s controversial “Free Syrian Police” project.

The program used British government funds to support al-Qaida-linked groups fighting the Syrian government – inadvertently, ASI claims.

ASI training to the Palestinian Authority is done in Ramallah, Jericho and Jordan, under the ultimate command of a US general, and in coordination with Israel.

The Electronic Intifada used the same document cache to reveal in February that the contractor had carried out a secret British government project to spy on Palestinian refugee camps, with the aim of monitoring “criticism of Western and Israeli foreign policy.”

No comment

You can read extracts from the files on this page and some of the full documents at the end of this article. The cache has been publicly available from a file sharing site since October last year. The Electronic Intifada has chosen to publish only files it has reviewed and determined to be in the public interest.

ASI declined to comment, directing us to the Foreign Office for queries “regarding any particular project.” A spokesperson for the UK’s foreign ministry declined to comment.

The Electronic Intifada understands that ASI has been ordering those named in the leaked documents not to speak to this publication.

“It is important that you do not respond to these requests for information, and that you let us know if you are contacted,” ASI director Daniel Pimlott wrote in one internal email seen by The Electronic Intifada

“The Electronic Intifada is not a credible media organization and has a pro-Russian slant,” he claimed.

“Remember the confidentiality clauses you signed up to and your obligations to the UK government,” he added in an implicit warning to anyone who might consider speaking out.

The Palestinian Authority has always been a brutal collaborationist proxy force for Israel’s occupation. Its leader Mahmoud Abbas once described security collaboration with Israel as “sacred.”

In 2021 there were weeks of protests after Abbas’ goons beat to death Nizar Banat, one of his most prominent critics, whose influential Facebook videos often denounced collaboration.

One of the main US goals in the region is to preserve the Palestinian Authority.

To further that goal, they established the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The position was founded in 2005 and the first person to take the role was Keith Dayton, a US army general.

In 2007, Dayton was instrumental in a CIA-backed coup against the elected Palestinian Authority leadership. Hamas’ political wing had won the 2006 legislative elections, much to the anger of Israel and the US.

The coup failed in the Gaza Strip, but was successful in the West Bank, resulting in a bitter and sometimes violent split between Hamas and Abbas’ faction Fatah.

British trainers

The leaked files are ASI bids for British government contracts, mostly in countries other than Palestine.

In the bids ASI often cites its training of Palestinian Authority armed forces as evidence of its suitability for other lucrative contracts, in the process revealing previously unknown names and details.

ASI’s training of the Palestinian Authority falls under the auspices of the “British Support Team,” which is funded by the Ministry of Defence and run by ASI under the auspices of the US Security Coordinator.

One of the leaked documents, part of a 2019 bid on a project in Tunisia, describes ASI’s work as “assisting the UK Government in building the capacity of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces” for “over 10 years.”

An obscure post published on LinkedIn by one of ASI’s military contractors confirms these details.

It was written by Anthony Malkin, a former British army colonel and military intelligence officer.
British military trainer Anthony Malkin.

Claiming Arabic fluency, Malkin describes how, from 2013, he established a Palestinian Authority training academy and designed courses for its officers.

While Malkin’s post does not name ASI – alluding only to “an international development company” – his LinkedIn profile does list the firm as one of his employers.

The LinkedIn post aligns well with the descriptions in the ASI files – although the files do not name Malkin.

But one file dating to 2015 does seem to refer to him, describing “a specialist military technical advisor” who is “a former head of leadership training at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst” and who was then “the only international consultant embedded at this high level within” the Palestinian Authority armed forces.
A photo apparently taken by Anthony Malkin shows PA, US and UK troops on a training exercise. (LinkedIn)

The adviser “developed a nine-month practical leadership curriculum with over 1,700 lesson plans in English and Arabic,” according to the file.

Malkin’s LinkedIn post seems to tally with that, describing how he set up an “officers’ leadership course … for nine months” with a “live-firing four week culminating exercise in Jordan based on Sandhurst.”

What are the priorities of this course?

According to Malkin’s LinkedIn post, he made sure Palestinian Authority forces were trained in conducting “raids into Palestinian refugee camps,” which he claims are “lawless sanctuaries for criminals and armed political activists.”

Palestine is described in another ASI document as one of several “priority countries” for the “Conflict, Security and Stability Fund,” a $1.6-billion-dollar British government pool for global interference projects, which often finances ASI projects.

It has been described by one parliamentary committee as a potential “slush fund” that doesn’t meet the needs of UK national security.

One ASI document written as part of a 2019 bid on a “police reform” contract in Jordan says that almost $7 million in British government funds have been spent on the British Support Team since 2012.
According to the document, the funds came from the Ministry of Defence.

However, according to Malkin’s blog post, the project was – at least initially – also funded by the US military.

Another ASI document from 2019 shows the extent of British government penetration of the Palestinian Authority under the auspices of US imperialism.

It says that the ASI runs Palestinian-Authority-embedded “advisers … reporting frequently” to British government officials, “in the case of the [occupied Palestinian territories], taking daily direction from a serving UK senior officer.”

Although the leaked documents seem to refer to Malkin only obliquely, other British overseers are explicitly named.

A 2016 bid for ASI’s “Free Syrian Police” project names former British army intelligence officer David Robson as a senior director of the UK’s “support to security sector reform in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The document boasts tantalizingly of Robson’s “distinguished military career” during which he “operated at the highest political and strategic levels.”

But Robson is more forthcoming on his LinkedIn page.

There it says he was a colonel of “info superiority” as an intelligence adviser to the head of the British army between 2007 and 2010. He was subsequently the commander of the 1st Signal Brigade, a UK-NATO army unit.
Former British military intelligence officer David Robson trained Palestinian Authority forces and went on to lead a program in Syria that aided al-Qaida.

He went on to become senior British officer for the United States Security Coordinator in Ramallah, working with Palestinian Authority forces between 2012 and 2015.

Robson was later hired by ASI to lead its Syria program, “tracking and managing the risks affecting AJACS” – the so-called “Access to Justice and Community Security” program which directed the Free Syrian Police.

British funding to the project was halted after a 2017 BBC documentary exposed evidence that ASI was aiding al-Qaida.

Despite the scandal, Robson went on to work with Palestinian Authority armed forces again, and even as military expert for UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees in Jerusalem, his LinkedIn page states.

Others are named in the ASI files as also working with Israeli intelligence.
Michael Frayne worked with Israel’s notorious torture agency the Shin Bet.Michael Frayne, a former close protection officer in London’s Metropolitan Police and Northern Ireland’s Royal Ulster Constabulary, is named as a prospective security manager in a 2016 ASI bid on a Foreign Office-funded project in South Sudan.

Listing his experience, the document names him as a collaborator with Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, “against Islamic-based terrorist organizations.”A more senior figure named John Deverell is exposed in an ASI bid on security “reform” in Tunisia.A former British army brigadier, the Arabic-speaking Sandhurst graduate once “reported personally to Foreign Secretary David Miliband,” a Labour Party politician in office between 2007 and 2010.
Former army officer John Deverell allegedly helped Israel improve its checkpoint security. YouTube

Deverell’s ASI resumé states that in 2007 he began overseeing the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, as another United States Security Coordinator adviser.

Deverall had previously worked for US general Dayton as his deputy in Iraq, soon after the illegal US-UK invasion.

The resumé also describes Deverell as having been “deputy commander” of “operational intelligence” in Iraq.

Asked to comment, Deverell told The Electronic Intifada he had never been a military intelligence officer and that “at no stage during my time in the West Bank did I report to, or prepare any reports for, British military intelligence.”

Deverell’s ASI resumé boasts a glowing recommendation from Dayton himself: “the finest senior strategic mind I have ever encountered.”

For two years, the files claim, Deverell “was the first British government servant living and working full time in the Palestinian Territories [sic] since the end of the British Mandate” in 1948.

In office, Deverell’s priority was to support Salam Fayyad, then the unelected, US-imposed “prime minister” of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
According to the ASI files, Deverell worked on “the improvement of border security operations on the crossing points between Israel and Gaza.”

ASI claims Deverell “helped improve life for the Palestinians,” but only “within the strategic objectives of encouraging their moderates [read: Fatah against Hamas] and giving confidence to the Israelis.”

In his response to The Electronic Intifada, Deverell confirmed briefing David Miliband “at times” but denied involvement in the US-backed coup: “I started to work and live in the West Bank in 2007, after Hamas took over in Gaza, not during the lead up to that point.”

He also denied involvement “in any aspect of border security operations between Israel and Gaza, nor did I ever advise on them.” Asked in a followup email to explain the resumé stating otherwise, he wrote: “I stand by what I said. It is not for me to comment on what ASI said about me.”

ASI declined to comment on whether it had misled the government. The Foreign Office also declined to comment.

While Deverell’s resumé gives the impression of being involved in military intelligence, another figure named in ASI’s Tunisia bid looks like an outright MI6 officer – a spy for Britain’s overseas intelligence agency.

The very nature of such a post makes it almost impossible to prove for certain. But if the ASI files are to be believed, David Haines must at minimum be an asset for MI6 within the British diplomatic service.

Haines is described in the Tunisia bid as “a former senior diplomat” who has decades of experience in “counter-terrorism.” Countries including the US and UK have a long history of disguising their spies under diplomatic cover.
British “diplomat” David Haines has a top secret security clearance to the level of an MI6 officer. He worked with the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.

According to the ASI bid, Haines led the British government’s “capacity building program for the Omani intelligence services,” and is a fluent Arabic speaker. On Haines’ LinkedIn page, this is described in slightly more euphemistic terms as “managing elements of the UK’s relations with Oman in the security and international relations spheres.”

It seems highly likely that a diplomat charged with such a sensitive intelligence task would at the very least have very close ties to British intelligence, if not be a member of such an agency himself.

The most telling line in Haines’s ASI resumé specifies that he is “security cleared to DV level.”

“Developed Vetting” is the highest of the five main levels of the British government’s national security checks. Those who pass it – including all MI6 officers – can be given “frequent and uncontrolled” access to top secret security files and codewords, as well as to foreign intelligence.

Haines is put forward in ASI’s Tunisia bid as an intelligence adviser.

According to the bid, he led teams managing cooperation on “counter-terror” investigations “between security services in Oman, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria and Israel/OPT and their [British government] counterparts.”

In other words he managed cooperation between British and Israeli spies.

His LinkedIn profile says he was based in the British consulate in Jerusalem in the mid-1990s, helping the Palestinian Authority establish itself “with particular focus on capacity building” – similar language to his later work building up Omani intelligence.

The money

Some of the ASI bids contain detailed budgets, giving an indication of the kind of fees commanded by the organization’s consultants.

The files show that David Robson was allocated $285,000 for leading ASI’s “AJACS” program in Syria between 2015 and 2016.

The Tunisia bid is missing a detailed budget breakdown, meaning we do not know how much John Deverell and David Haines were paid. But the project as a whole was allocated almost $500,000 of UK government funds.

It is unclear if the Tunisia bid was successful.

David Haines was allocated almost $43,000 for 52 days work on another ASI intelligence role in Jordan in 2018, which was funded by the Foreign Office.

Michael Frayne was allocated $23,000 for 40 days work in South Sudan in 2017 and 2018.

Junior imperialist partners

Anthony Malkin, Michael Frayne and David Robson did not respond to requests for comment.

David Haines did not respond to a request for comment sent via the Foreign Office news desk.

The ASI files give important new insights into the role that the UK plays as a junior partner in the US empire.

The documents make clear the subservient role that British military and intelligence forces play in the West Bank, under overall US control.

And ultimately, all three entities – the US, the UK and the PA – are in bed with Israel and its occupation of Palestine.

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Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and associate editor with The Electronic Intifada. Kit Klarenbergis an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

Click here to read the full documents.

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Recruited, Arrested, On Trial: Yemeni Spies Tell of Their Reluctant Work for CIA, MI6

By Ahmed Abdulkareem

Source

The CIA and MI6 have recruited hundreds of Yemenis to work as mercenaries and spies gathering intelligence and coordinates of Yemeni military positions, promising them money and even passports for the dangerous work.

SANA’A, YEMEN — There is little dispute that the United States and the United Kingdom have been major benefactors to the Saudi Kingdom in its six-year-long attempt to use military might to bring Yemen to heel. Both countries have provided billions in hi-tech weapons, intelligence information, and training to what is arguably the Middle East’s most repressive monarchy. But according to the confessions of six men arrested last month amid the ongoing battle over Yemen’s strategic Marib province, Western support for the Saudi-led Coalition goes much farther than conventional military support.

Arrested Yemeni spies speak to MintPress

The CIA and MI6, its British counterpart, have recruited hundreds of Yemenis to work as mercenaries and spies gathering intelligence and coordinates of Yemeni military positions in Marib, al-Mahrah, Sana’a and Sadaa, and providing that information to their handlers, according to confessions given to the Yemeni Security Intelligence Service (YSIS) by at least six Yemeni nationals currently on trial in Sana’a for violating Article 130 of Yemen’s Penal Code.

The six men, who are being held in a detention facility in Sana’a, agreed to speak to MintPress about their experiences. They insist that abject poverty as a result of the ongoing war drove them to participate in the operation, which they said came with the promise of a $300 payout.

According to the men, the operation was carried out primarily at the Ghaydah Airport in eastern al-Mahrah. There, they joined dozens of young Yemenis recruited by the CIA for training by  American and British officers on how to properly identify and describe; the use of cameras, sophisticated software programs and devices used to share coordinates; information gathering; and how to find and identify military leaders and headquarters, workshops, factories, laboratories, warehouses, checkpoints and launching sites for missiles and drones. Even the locations of the personal homes and vehicles of Ansar Allah members and other vocal opponents of the Saudi intervention were sought, according to the men.

A careful recruitment process

Their recruitment process was long and delicate, beginning when the men were approached by Yemeni officers working for the Aden-based National Security Agency. After agreeing to travel to al-Mahrah to learn more, the men were housed in hotels before being brought to special cottages at the Ghaydah Airport where they were interviewed by American and British intelligence officers. Muhammad Har, one of the six charged, told MintPress that he was initially approached by Fayez Muhammad Ismail Al-Muntaser, a former officer of the National Security Agency and commander of the Saudi-led Coalition’s Special Missions Battalion.

“When it was my turn, I entered the [unintelligible] and was surprised that members of the committee were Americans. One was asking the questions, the second was writing data, the third was taking fingerprints, while the fourth black-skinned one was translating,” Ali Mohammed Abdullah al-Jomani, a 34-year-old detainee from Haddah recalled. Al-Jomani, who says he used to earn the equivalent of about $10 per day, was put up in the Taj Al-Arab Hotel for three months during the initiation process. “When we went back to conduct the second interview, we did not find the Americans, but rather British officers. They repeated the previous questions about our ability to use maps, drive cars, and use computers.” This tracks with allegations by the Yemeni Security Intelligence Service that the CIA was recruiting young Yemenis and handing them over to British officers for training and further handling.

According to the men, there were two separate camps at the airport, one American and the other Saudi. “After we were accepted, we were trained on how to describe people, cars, and homes and how to share data and photos through WhatsApp,” recalled Basem Ali Ahmed al-Kharouga, a 29-year-old detainee from Sana’a. “The training included field exercises inside and outside of the airport.” Al-Kharouga had long dreamed of traveling abroad and thought that he had finally found his way to flee the violence when he was promised a foreign passport in exchange for the work.

Few options for young Yemenis

In addition to poverty and unemployment, there are other reasons that Yemen’s youth would risk life and freedom to work with foreign intelligence services, perhaps the most prominent being the blockade levied against the country by the Saudi Coalition since 2015. Before the war, Yemenis would regularly leave the country for business, pleasure and to seek medical care. Now — with seaports and airports, especially the once-bustling Sana’a International Airport, effectively shuttered by the Saudi Coalition — Yemenis are no longer able to flee the violence in their country or travel abroad, leaving many desperate young Yemenis with few options.

Hospitals, schools, office buildings, and infrastructure like water wells and sewage networks have been destroyed in the wake of Saudi bombing campaigns, which are often carried out with U.S. and British targeting information gleaned from their network of recruited spies. Funerals, weddings, homes, and other civilian facilities have been targeted, leading to the death and wounding of thousands of civilians and making American and British intelligence services complicit, at best, in the wanton violence.

“We were sent to Marib, me and another guy who went by the name of ‘Akram Amer,’ on one mission that lasted for four days. We were assigned by [a man named] ‘George’ to spy on the home of Ali Salem al-Huraizy near al-Rawda Park,” Aymen Mujahid Qaid Muhammad Harish, one of the six detainees, told MintPress. Among Harish’s tasks was to monitor sites in the city of Arhab, north of Sana’a, where the Saudi Coalition would later target a home where a funeral was taking place. The double-tap airstrike left a child and nine women dead and, according to Harish, his Western handlers, who were responsible for providing the Saudis with targeting data, are to blame for the attack.

The UK Is Russia’s Greatest Security Threat In Europe Behind The US

By Andrew Korybko

Source

18 MARCH 2021

The UK’s recently completed Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy claimed that “Russia remains the most acute threat to our security”, but in reality it’s actually the UK that remains the most acute threat to Russia’s security in Europe behind the US of course.

The British are masterful perception managers and have a centuries-long history of reversing the truth. This strategic characteristic was on full display earlier this week after its recently completed Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy claimed that “Russia remains the most acute threat to our security”. As can be expected, the reality is actually the opposite: the UK remains the most acute threat to Russia’s security in Europe, though behind the US of course. I explained last summer how “MI6 Might Become The CIA’s Proxy For Stopping Europe From Moving Towards Russia” after London’s spree of fake news attacks against Moscow encompassing everything from the Skripal false flag saga to allegations of a secret Russian spy base in the French Alps. Last month, “Intrepid Journalists Exposed The UK’s Information-Driven Hybrid War On Russia”, which includes a continental network of media proxies in Latvia and other former Soviet countries.

From these revelations, it can be concluded that the UK considers itself to be in a “spy war” with Russia, which it’s waging both in pursuit of its own traditional divide-and-rule interests in Europe as well as on behalf of its American ally which shares the same goal. Manipulatively presenting Russia as the UK’s greatest threat is nothing more than a means of justifying further aggression against it under the pretext of so-called “self-defense”. It’s noteworthy to also point out that the same Integrated Review also disclosed London’s plans to increase its nuclear warhead arsenal by an astounding 40% in a move that Moscow decried as “a decision that harms international stability and strategic security” where “an ephemeral threat from Russia was voiced as justification.” The Eurasian Great Power might therefore have no choice but to defend its interests in line with international law by taking whatever countermeasures it considers to be appropriate in the face of this threat.

The present dynamic of British-Russian rivalry is a modern-day remix of their traditional competition all across the 19^th century. At that time, the so-called “Great Game” mostly played out in Central Asia and parts of West and South Asia, the latter of which concerned the then-Persia and Afghanistan respectively. The British Empire was actively seeking to contain the Eurasian Great Power as a continuation of the historical trend whereby sea-based (thalassocratic) states seek to contain land-based (tellurocratic) ones. This International Relations theory is increasingly being confirmed as practically being akin to a law at this point as evidenced from this example and other related ones such as the US’ complementary efforts against other multipolar tellucorcatic civlization-states like China and Iran. It’s therefore understandable why the UK has submitted itself to being the US’ “Lead From Behind” junior partner to this end in Europe, though mostly in the Hybrid War sense.

With this in mind, the contours of the New Cold War are becoming increasingly apparent and might possibly remain enduring. The historical trend of thalassocracies versus tellucorcacies continues insofar as the US and its junior UK partner are actively seeking to contain Russia, China, and Iran. The Western Eurasian front of this global strategic competition remains complex considering the fact that Germany is dominated by thalassocratic influences despite being a tellucrocratic state. This explains its schizophrenic stance of simultaneously waging its own Hybrid War on Russia in parallel with attempting to stabilize relations with Moscow through Nord Stream II, which is vehemently opposed by its American patron. It can therefore be predicted that the outcome of the New Cold War in Europe will be greatly determined by Germany’s ability to promote its sovereign interests vis-a-vis Russia despite heavy pressure from the US and the UK to keep the two apart.