At the heart of the 'US-UK' special relationship is not nuclear weapons or cultural ties, but a siamese twin in which two intelligence establishments are joined at the hip by the signals/electronic and communications intelligence apparatus called Echelon. But, as often with Siamese twins, there is a dominant and a subordinate party: the NSA-- the American operation -- is the key player and GCHQ, the Australian and New Zealand signals intelligence apparatuses are partners of decreasing weight. The NSA has a repertoire of sattelite feeds and covert plugins to communication networks in other countries which make it the 800 lb gorilla in that relationship. Most of the sigint/elint intelligence 'take' is American-produced and then 'shared'.

The great prestige of hi-tech intelligence gathering--- the rise of which has matched the computer mania of the 1990s -- has created an area of significant vulnerability.

For the problem with the technology-heavy mass production of sigint is that it generates large numbers of 'false positives' and 'false negatives' (For a discussion of this see my comments at
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/02/305121.html )

But intelligence apparatuses need to move quickly in response to apparent threats. And most are willing to pay a lot of attention to a meaningful-looking "grey" clump of data before they dismiss it as a 'false positive'. Indeed, 'chatter' which seems meaningful will be held as potentially significant for a very long time.

What has been suggested by non-US/UK intelligence boffins is that the UK, in the run up to the Iraq War and in the so-called 'War on Terror', has been systematically manipulated by elements in the US intelligence apparatus and indeed by Israel.

The problem for Britain is that it has no genuinely independent signals intelligence gathering and analysis capacity. It is not necessary for those who wish to manipulate British policy to place an objective lie in the system. All they need to do is to create through 'chatter' an environment of threat, to run a delicate diffused 'false flag' operation -- a hitech equivalent to the Lavon affair (for which see  http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/lavon.html ).

One of the roots of the independence of France's foreign policy is its autonomous and secure intelligence gathering system. When will British patriots begin to realize the dangers of their dependence on the United States?