Intelligence failure

Here we go again. Seems my old Firm got taken for a ride by a guy posing as a senior Taleban figure, whose bona fides was apparently confirmed by senior individuals in the Karzai regime's security forces.

Cue the CIA to declare that they have "long been institutionally sceptical" of dealing with "non-marquee Taleban". Long-term being since last January, when they lost eight officers after a man they were cultivating came calling wearing a C-4 waistcoat and blew up their main station in Afghanistan.  

Cue politicians to schedule a judicial inquiry; cue journopukes, who as we know always check their sources so immaculately, to jeer and to demand greater oversight. The Times (£) second leader says:

It is surely time to abandon the Intelligence and Security Committee in its present form and replace it with a joint parliamentary intelligence committee of both houses with its own independent secretariat.

Hello? Earth to the Times: these are people the best and the brightest of whom fall for the most blatant journopuke stings and whose entire existence is one long round of off-the-record briefings to the press. Not to mention going unpunished when they reveal top secret operational details in and outside Parliament, or when exposed as agents of a hostile intelligence service.

As usual, the journopukes want it the way they like their sex: both ways. Intelligence services have to work with walk-ins, and cannot avoid being vulnerable to plausible fraudsters if they are to remain open to the possibility, however remote, that the genuine article might waltz in.

Half a million quid is PEANUTS compared to what a "marquee" Taleban figure could collect.

Also as usual, the MSM is missing the key point: the validation of this turkey by senior figures in the Karzai regime, who must have known he was a fraud. Two possibilities:

1. A desire to embarrass the Brits, who are not only the ancestral enemy but are also militarily as well as politically contemptible in Afghan eyes; or
2. The Karzai regime is stocked entirely with con-men who will flee the country the moment the US pulls out, to live very well on the money they have been salting away in numbered bank accounts, and they are ready to play along with any stupidity the Allies come up with to keep the scam going as long as possible.

 A bit of both, is my bet.