The Falklands Intercept Read Free Page B

line, gathered up the key supporting documents and marched along the corridor connecting the Cabinet Office to Number 10. He was heading for the National Security Adviser’s office. A senior civil servant, she was the official who delivered the daily intelligence briefing to the prime minister. She never took anyone with her.
    Held firmly in his hand was a Cabinet Office scarlet leather folder. It was a beautiful thing. Embossed with the royal arms and the classification in gold – Top Secret Cabinet Joint Intelligence Committee. It contained the fruits of Jacot’s overnight labours entitled: “Immediate Assessment – Middle East overnight.” The National Security Adviser, Lady Nevinson, would brief the prime minister in a few minutes. On her return she would make a few changes and then instruct Jacot to issue it. Emissaries from ministerial private offices across Whitehall and the intelligence agencies would then pick up their paper copies.
    â€˜Come in Jacot. Sit down.’
    Celia Nevinson was the classic English diplomat. Understated, beautifully turned out, with a dry sense of humour and a formidable brain. She had been brought in to restore credibility to the centralized government intelligence machinery after the intelligence fiascos of the middle Blair years. Contrary to expectations, she had proved a grand success managing to clean up the system without putting too many noses out of joint. When the Coalition Government limped into power she became the first National Security Adviser. Jacot was privately amazed that she had managed to last as long as she had, but she exploited the insecurities of the new government to imprint her personality and methods on the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence.
    She was more of a sceptic than the spies were used to, and openly boasted in the presence of senior spies of various types that she had never seen a Bond film or watched what she called ‘That ridiculous television programme,
Spooks
’. For a woman in her early 60s this seemed unlikely. Rather healthily, she regarded spying as a below stairs activity and assessed intelligence as a useful guide rather than holy writ. It wasn’t clear where she stood on politicians. But whereas her predecessors had returned from their morning meetings in the prime minister’s ‘den’ charmed, stimulated and exalted by their closeness to power, Nevinson usually looked as if she could do with a stiff drink. She conceded that the public school manners of the Coalition Government were an improvement on the blokeish paranoia of the previous regime but you could tell that she did not really like professional politicians. While she believed passionately that she should serve whatever ministers had been put in place by the electoral process it did not mean she had to admire them. If you came to see her late in the evening she would often have a glass of whisky on her desk and sometimes offered her subordinates one if something that day had especially pleased or amused her. It was rather good whisky Jacot reckoned – smokey and peaty. He always accepted a glass if she offered but he preferred white burgundy or gin.
    She looked just a little bit harassed, if not hungover. She barely glanced at the briefing on the Middle East. But then she had been reading intelligence reports for over thirty years. ‘OK, so no major developments on this front but a question mark over some especially unsavoury group of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. A seedy and unattractive looking bunch those Iranian leaders. No doubt the PM is ordering what is left of the RAF into the air as we speak. Come to think of it, it’s the deputy prime minister this morning. Do you know some of his advisers really do wear shoes shaped like Cornish pasties? What a treat. But don’t go. I have a late breakfast at the Travellers’ Club. My guess is the security people would agree to me being walked across