Conference tallis::celt

1248.0. "Order your S.S. booklet today!" by TALLIS::DARCY (Alpha Migration Tools) Mon Jul 19 1993 19:20

	LONDON (UPI) -- Britain's internal security service MI5 broke its
traditional secrecy Friday by publishing a glossy brochure with selected
details about the organization and allowing the first official
photographs of its director.
	The 36-page booklet, titled simply ``The Security Service,''
discusses in general terms the functions and history of the service that
until recently the government refused to officially acknowledge existed.
	Selected photographers and television crews were also allowed to take
pictures of the service's Director General Stella Rimington in her
office and entering the Home Office for a meeting.
	Following Rimington's appointment late last year, national newspapers
published details of her private life to show how easy it was to obtain
information about security officers, but no official information had
been allowed until Friday.
	Home Secretary Michael Howard said the government took the steps to
publicize MI5 because it wanted to pursue a policy of openess in all
departments.
	``By its very nature, much of the service's work must be carried out
in secret,'' Howard said. ``But above all it is a service, and one which
is publicly funded.
	``It is a service which has to exist in the interests of the United
Kingdom and its citizens,'' Howard said.
	The service's booklet is available to the public in government book
stores for $7.40.
	The booklet says the service has 2,000 employees, half of them women
and half under the age of 70.
	MI5's budget is still a secret, but the booklet says 70 percent of
MI5's resources are devoted to countering terrorism, 25 percent on anti-
espionage work and 5 percent to counter subversion.
	Howard said while the collapse of communism and the East bloc had
consigned the Cold War to history, spying and industrial espionage still
occurred in Britain.
	``The booklet succeeds in explaining the changing threats to national
security and how the service is organized to tackle them,'' he said.
	The latest example of MI5's work was evident Wednesday when the
security service and police arrested a suspected Irish Republican Army
sympathizer carrying a bomb in north London. The arrest coincided with
the arrest of seven people in Scotland in anti-terrorist operations to
counter the threat of IRA attacks in Britain.
	The booklet advises anyone wanting to tip MI5 off to subversive,
terrorist or espionage matters to write to the security service in
London.
	``All correspondence will be treated in strict confidence and
acknowledged,'' it says.

    -1
>	The booklet says the service has 2,000 employees, half of them women
>and half under the age of 70.
    
    That means that half of them are over 70 years old !!!
    
    Given their less than successful record I suppose it figures...
    

I believe the figure quoted was that half were under 40 - not 70.

Mark