MI5 went after a paedophile...

StriderX

StriderX

StriderX

Caporegime
Joined
18 Mar 2008
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So this is...disturbing.

Former agent: I was abandoned by MI5 after breakdown

He challenged senior managers when his team was tasked with looking at a suspected paedophile. Acott considered this beyond the agency's remit. The operation lasted several weeks, but he says he saw no evidence of child abuse
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What a total and utter waste of time for an agency meant to deal with espionage and terrorists.

Obviously it is the account of one man, but considering the way this country is i wouldn't put much doubt in it, though reading into it i suppose its just 'one of those things' we shan't be witness to.
 
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Shame they weren't so concerned in the 1980's instead of hiding the evidence surrounding Elm guest house and the dolphin square flats.

Pretty much unaccountable and unelectable we just have to hope they tell the current government the truth and are held to account. Governments come and go but the security services can't be voted out.
 
You do realise that if a suspected paedophile was in a position of importance for example it is highly likely that he or she would be wide open to blackmail, who knows what information they may pass on. Blackmail is one of the oldest tricks in the book.

As the article says, the former agent was not always given the finer details of an operation.
 
Depends if it was at the detriment of their capability to do their main role or not - also sounds like it was a highly sensitive case with potential for wider consequences and against an individual with potentially to much ability to influence an investigation through other channels that there might not have been a more suitable agency for.
 
What Old Coals said.

We will never know the full story so we can speculate and poo poo it all day.
The other parts of the story are more interesting, and also not wholly unexpectedly, their unreadiness for 9/11- 7/7 > onwards type threats.
 
He was given a job to do which is his remit and the wider picture was on a need to know basis. There is nothing disturbing about that. We've no idea about whether this was a waste of time or not. It seems that this is an attempt to be controversial because the word paedophile has been mentioned. Talk about making a mountain out of a slow news day.
 
"The Islamists would meet round each other's houses or in mosques which you can't get away with going into. Also, they were living in mostly ethnic areas and often you would find the only white people on the street were surveillance officers."
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No **** Sherlock, you can't do that and I have seen attempts whereby covert operatives are sent into Mosques posing as "revet" Muslims. Just stick with what the Government has decided to do instead and install puppet Muslim institutions like Quilliam and MCB.

As for the Pedophile, his job was surveillance and whilst I would like to think this falls under the local police jurisdiction it still is important to the safety and security of the public.
 
If the police cant be trusted to do their job, then why not just use the Intelligence Service to spy on the police instead and try to make it trustworthy by weening out the corruption...rather than wasting precious resources (considering they were 'unprepared before/after 2001') on likely a dirty old man...
 
StriderX said:
What a total and utter waste of time for an agency meant to deal with espionage and terrorists.
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If they have the expertise and it's government business why NOT use them?

I'd rather think that they did something constructive than sit around doing nothing at tax payers expense.

No doubt senior management had to prioritise workloads and if they had a lull what better use could the agents be put to?

If I had a child and he/she was molested by a paedophile and the government did nothing about it and I later learned that MI5 agents (with all the expertise) openly admitted that they sat around half the day scratching their bums I'd be annoyed, as would most people.
 
None of us know the wider investigation not even the MI5 agent himself. How do we know that the suspected paedophile wasn't also a spy for another country. I would think evidence of paedophilia would be pretty good at blackmailing someone to turn.

Maybe that is correct maybe not, simply knowing that someone was tasked to looking in to a suspected paedophile without knowing why is irrelevant as it is the why that is most important.
 
seems a bit odd, especially if they were also under resourced

then again, when people are so bitter about their former employers that they want to publicly criticism them you do have to wonder how much spin they've added to their stories

also, just to be pedantic, he's not an 'MI5 agent' he was employed by the service, they've stated he was a surveillance officer
 
investigating a pedophile might be relevant if he was a politician or senior civil servant

"It involved extremely powerful, wealthy people. It was a very need to know job... We were given the scantest of briefings on it. All of a sudden the job stopped. I did actually question why were we doing paedophiles - it wasn't in our remit.
"The trouble with the police is they move from job to job. Special Branch only do it for three or four years. Then they go onto CID or some other job. There was a strong suspicion of corruption within the police, whereas MI5 was more highly trusted."
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given the allegations involving former cabinet ministers etc.. and the damage such allegations could do to government then it could well be within their remit if someone involved in government or closely connected to it was involved in paedophilia

and if he is the surveillance officer, just collating some information, and has hinted that 'It was a very need to know job... We were given the scantest of briefings on it' then he's hardly in a position to know the details of the investigation anyway
 
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^^ Calling him a "spy" is inflating the job role a bit assuming he was in the role I think - not to belittle the valuable work they do but its a bit like the PCSO of the MI5 world. Their role is to collect information, not interpret or follow up on it so rarely told the whole story or even necessarily the truth depending on how sensitive it it - the paedophile aspect could have been entirely a cover story.
 
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