CIA activities in the United Kingdom
In January 2014, newly released documents revealed that Margaret Thatcher had been warned while she was Prime Minister that the CIA did not always give sufficient notice in advance when it carried out operations in the UK.[5] As Peter Wright confirmed in his book Spycatcher, Wilson was the victim of a protracted, illegal campaign of destabilisation by a rogue element in the security services.Prompted by CIA fears that Wilson was a Soviet agent - put in place after the KGB had, the spooks believed, poisoned Hugh Gaitskell, the previous Labour leader - these MI5 men burgled the homes of the prime minister's aides, bugged their phones and spread black, anti-Wilson propaganda throughout the media.[7] One memo was dated May 1983, shortly before the UK general election, and stated that the CIA was concerned about certain figures in the Labour Party, such as then-leader Michael Foot and deputy leader, Denis Healey, accusing them of "aping anti-American rhetoric".A British security source told me that somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent of CIA activity designed to prevent a new terrorist spectacular on American soil is now directed at targets in the UK.Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East expert on the NSC for three presidents, who has just been appointed to head Barack Obama's overhaul of Afghan strategy, told me: 'The 800,000 or so British citizens of Pakistani origin are regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single biggest threat environment that they have to worry about.[10] In January 2022, former CIA agent-turned whistleblower, John Kiriakou revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy—a non-profit corporation created in the 1980s by President Ronald Reagan and funded by the United States Congress—had funnelled millions of dollars into British independent media groups since 2016.The National Endowment for Democracy, like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, countless Washington-area 'think tanks', and Radio/TV Martí, are the vehicles for that propaganda", referring to the US broadcaster that transmits to Cuba.