Police find body in bag at MI6 man's London flat

[Jan Klimkowski]

The "mystery mediterranean couple" might be a blatant red herring and/or might have been two visiting colleagues from the Mediterranean coast of Israel??

Foreign report: Israel has one of world's largest 'eavesdropping' intel bases.

The base, near Kibbutz Urim, is central to the activities of the main Israel Defense Forces signals intelligence unit, 8200, according to report in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Christer - welcome to DPF.

I agree that it's entirely possible that the "mystery mediterranean couple" were visitors from Israeli Defense Forces signals intelligence unit 8200. Indeed, it's likely that they were from a nominally friendly intelligence service.

If they were say Hamas, I don't think they could have strolled casually into a highly secure MI6 safe house in the heart of spooky London.

However, speculatively, if this is so, and our mysterious med couple were Israeli intelligence, then MI6 and the NSA will already have identified them. The 36 Alderney Street safe house must be crawling with CCTV - even if most of the footage would never be disclosed outisde intelligence circles.

And there's the point. If the charming Club Med couple are Israeli SigInt, (or even Mossad), then the spooks won't want this all over the newspapers, and Det Chf Insp Jacqueline Sebire of Scotland Yard will be told to butt out on grounds of national security.

Mossad's Dubai assassination only became public knowledge because western intelligence couldn't control the release of CCTV and other incriminating evidence to the press.

I bet there are D-notices all over this story.

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*In Britain, a Defence Advisory Notice or DA-Notice (called a Defence Notice or D-Notice until 1993) is an official request to news editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects for reasons of national security.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-notice