Secret police target government critics

The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin

LONDON

– Jacqui Smith, the United Kingdom's home secretary who already is embattled over claims she has "misappropriated" housing allowances, now has approved a new and ultra-secret intelligence unit to spy on groups opposed to government policies, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Called the Confidential Intelligence Unit, the agency will be housed in a high-security annex at Scotland Yard and will report directly to Smith.

The unit will have the same powers as MI5 to mount secret surveillance operations and recruit informers who will provide details of "domestic extremists" – this will include those in discussion to call strikes affecting rail and air transport.

Alarmed human rights organizations have described CIU as being "no different to the East German Stasi or the old KGB."

The unit is modeled on one that MI5 ran during the Cold War when the Security Service was ordered to spy on trade unionists and anti-nuclear campaigners. It led to the compiling of files on students at British universities in the 1960s and 1970s.

Among the files MI5 still holds are surveillance records on two senior members of the present Gordon Brown government, Business Secretary Lord Peter Mandelson and Justice Minister Jack Straw.