Entitled to Trust

John speaks of the "trust relationship exists between the political process and the country’s ‘intelligence’ services".



But the question of trust is apparently replicated inside the intelligence services. I understand from yesterday's newspaper that the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence himself wasn’t allowed to see the raw intelligence on which the key WMD (Mr Saddam’s fabulous weapons of mass distruction) finding was based. He was obliged to take the MI6 material on trust. (Ironically mirroring the trust with with BBC management took Andrew Gilligan's material.)



We know from fictional representations that intelligence is naturally suspicious - but surely this is a little extreme.