Corbyn under pressure to be open about Iron Curtain spy contacts

EarthRod

Jeremy's speech gives the impression he's (quietly without fuss) thrown a small grenade into the mix with bits of shrapnel flying everywhere - political in nature without giving much away.

At a glance, it could backfire by forcing many Tory rebels to change their minds and vote with Theresa in the next Commons vote to stay in the customs union.

On the other hand, there could be a sub-harmonic message in his speech in that Jeremy's idea of negotiating a new customs strategy with the EU actually ties in with Theresa's idea of pulling out and then re-negotiating a different customs plan.

At a guess, both leaders could quietly be ticking the same boxes which will carry a new customs strategy through parliament. Wishful thinking maybe.

Cliff

At last Cornyn has talked about the meetings. But of course he makes it sound quite a normal thing, as everyody met with spies! His supporters will believe him of course.
As with Ireland, he was doing it in the interests of peace. But we all know he was a junior MP with no authority at all.
Being a bit of a cynic, I suspect his admission was probably timed for today, hopefully buried by his Brexit speech.
www.itv.com/news/2018-02-26/corbyn-czech-comment/

EarthRod

Did Corbyn know Sarkocy was a spy when he met him in the 1980s?

Did Sarkocy have "INTELLIGENCE AGENT" written across his forehead, assuming there was enough room - in which case the word "SPY" would fit.

Corbyn said he met American diplomats as well at that time, were they also SPIES?

Corbyn met a hell of a lot of people, maybe they were all SPIES.

Bl4ckGryph0n

Ah bless him, he remains consistent.....I didn't just meet east bloc people I also met Americans.

What a guy....

Sonic67

Pretty sure if you were around in the Cold War you should treat anyone from behind the Iron Curtain as a SPY. Why else were they meeting you? SPIES don't come labelled. Hence the name.

I was briefed on something by a GCHQ spook once on something. It turned out when she went to the US, they had put something on her phone while going through customs and it was taken away briefly.

Lesson. Any foreign power treat as hostile. They are out for themselves.

Sonic67

I assume this guy knows something.

Take it from a former spy: the accusations against Jeremy Corbyn should be taken very seriously

Firstly, there is the codename given to Corbyn by the StB, "COB". If the StB had allocated him a pseudonym, it meant that they had opened an operational file. They would only do that if they had reason to be interested in him as a target and they had assessed him as someone with whom to develop a relationship.

Secondly, there is the absurd suggestion that Corbyn could not have know that Sarkocy was a Czechoslovak intelligence officer. It was well known at the time that the StB was active on behalf of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, and there was a well established pattern that the StB had followed in trying to recruit British politicians, including three MPs that they had recruited successfully in 1960s.

Sir Richard Dearlove was head of the Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004

Toko Black

We were still doing business with countries behind the iron curtain, as members of this forum have talked about their own experiences of being involved in.
Diplomacy, trade, charities, organisations, international and regional issues etc were all reasons why large numbers of UK citizens, political activists, politicians etc have held meetings with representatives of what were at the time soviet block countries.

Sonic67

Indeed. And reasons why they would be targeted by enemy intelligence services. Easy to steal someone else's development than invest yourself. Hence "Concordski."

Junior MPs rise in power. You think they wouldn't open a file on him? They did. The Soviets would track a young lieutenant all the way from Sandhurst  because one day some of them get somewhere.

Someone who could be in charge of the armed forces, wants to get rid of our troops, ban nukes, and says Nato is a danger to the world would be interesting to them.

Anyway I'd go off the opinion of the head of an intelligence service. Cheers.

weaviemx5

So a UK spy once told you that their phone had been taken off them by US customs and something was put on it?  Surely if someone who is actually a trained GCHQ spy was caught out by US customs taking their phone from themso they could put 'something' on it, I assume you're considerably more worried about that than what the low-level backbench MP may have told the Diplomat 30 years ago?

EarthRod

Is that what she told you?

How sweet of her.