Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5. Photograph: PA
It was in the middle of 2008 that Jonathan Evans, director general of MI5, delivered a bombshell confession to the previously compliant parliamentarians of the intelligence and security committee.
He told them, in strict secrecy as usual, that assurances of MI5 innocence previously accepted without demur by the politicians had in fact been false.
The committee, which was supposed to supervise MI5's policies, had already published a reassuring report on the basis of what it had been told. That report, based on testimony from Eliza Manningham-Buller, Evans's predecessor, informed the world that MI5 had been unaware of any ill-treatment dished out by its US allies to Binyam Mohamed.
The opposite was true. As the appeal court has now finally revealed, detailed briefings had been supplied at the time by Washington on the CIA's "new strategy" for softening up Mohamed and others, for which it demanded British help. This new American "war on terror" involved the use of prolonged sleep deprivation, shackling and threats that Mohamed would be "disappeared", applied to the point where his mental stability corroded and he apparently became suicidal.
These interrogation tactics, of systematic ill-treatment which might amount to torture, had supposedly been banned by Britain since 1972, when it came to light that the British army was using them on IRA suspects.
But far from denouncing or even criticising US behaviour, MI5 officers co-operated with it. The secret files, when they eventually emerged, revealed that an MI5 officer had travelled to Karachi to help with the interrogation of Mohammed. Other MI5 desk officers and "more senior" figures also knew the contents of the CIA files, according to judgments of the British high court. That these facts had been kept from the ISC was a demonstration of the committee's impotence. Critics say the ISC is a useless government poodle, and the Binyam Mohamed affair appears to strengthen their case.
Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie said yesterday: "The ISC is not … able to get to the truth. The chairman is a prime ministerial appointee. This has allowed a revolving door between chairmanship of the ISC and the government front bench. That door should be closed."
The MI5 head finally felt obliged to confess to the ISC in 2008 and hand over the documents, because disclosure orders obtained by Mohamed's lawyers and enforced by the courts had led to the discovery of 42 incriminating files.
All had originally been kept from the ISC, which, despite its supposed special access within Whitehall's "ring of secrecy", is powerless to compel disclosure of documents, even if its under-resourced members had any idea of what to ask for.
Public protests from the ISC about such impotence have been ignored by No 10 in the past. In this case, the ISC was forced to admit in 2009 that the "new information [which] had come to light about the Binyam Mohamed case … had been overlooked during the committee's original rendition inquiry".
No public explanation has been offered of why the files were originally suppressed. Nor has the public been told how and by whom they were eventually unearthed within the bowels of Thames House. These may be matters for any future judicial inquiry into a cover-up.
The anonymous MI5 officer who went to Karachi and subsequently gave evidence to the high court that nothing was known of US malpractice has been targeted as a potential criminal suspect. It has been announced that a police inquiry is being held into his behaviour. This has been used as a justification by ministers, MI5 and ISC itself to remain silent. But the investigation has produced no tangible results, more than 18 months later.
The ISC claimed in March 2009 to have conducted its own "detailed investigation" into the scandal, having been confronted with it, and to have sent a private letter to the prime minister as a result.
It managed to do this without interviewing any witness who alleged direct knowledge of British complicity in torture – neither campaigners such as Human Rights Watch, nor media investigators, nor any of the alleged victims themselves.
The ISC only saw witnesses in secret once again, from MI5, MI6 and the Foreign Office, and has failed to publish any of its purported findings.
Had it not been for the judges defying repeated heavy pressure from the executive and going public, British voters would have learnt little from the ISC's activities. The ISC has so far only provided them with false information in its 2007 report, followed by a lack of information in subsequent reports.
This is nothing new, critics say. Its heavily censored reports have long been derided as establishment whitewash.
Not appointed by parliament, gagged by the Official Secrets Act, and even forced to meet outside Westminster, the ISC's members are more emasculated even than conventional select committees. The chairmanship is usually awarded as a sop to a former government minister, currently Kim Howells. Downing St has enforced a 'convention' under which only its chair is allowed to give interviews.
The committee has had only had a tiny secretariat of half a dozen clerks, and no investigative capacity of its own.
In March last year Gordon Brown promised reform. He said: "We will … enshrine an enhanced scrutiny and public role for the ISC. This will lead to more parliamentary debate on security matters, public hearings … and … greater transparency over appointments to the committee."
But nothing was done. Brown also promised to publish fresh guidance to bar MI5 from colluding in torture. Last autumn, the ISC protested that no guidance had materialised. A draft was then sent to the committee, but nothing has yet been published. Similarly, the ISC's latest annual report is still sitting in Downing St, awaiting censorship.
Another parliamentary committee has been tougher. Last august, the joint committee on human rights concluded the UK government was "determined to avoid parliamentary scrutiny" and said an independent inquiry was the only way to restore public confidence.
How the ISC was misled
There was a secret session of the ISC on 23 November 2006 at the Cabinet Office. The then head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, pictured, testified about MI5's role in the US interrogation of Binyam Mohammed that took place under her predecessor, Stephen Lander.
A heavily censored ISC report published in July 2007 showed Manningham-Buller and her team had claimed to lack knowledge that Mohamed was being ill-treated. The ISC – chaired by former Northern Ireland secretary Paul Murphy – was told: "A member of the security service did interview [Mohamed] once for a period of approximately three hours while he was detained in Karachi in 2002." The interrogator, later known as Witness B, was "an experienced officer" who conducted the interview "in line with the services' guidance to staff on contact with detainees".
The ISC recorded: "The security service denies that the officer told [Mohamed] he would be tortured as he alleges … He did not observe any abuse and … no instances of abuse were mentioned by [Mohamed]."
Murphy's committee reported that MI5 had "lack of knowledge at the time of any possible consequences of US custody of detainees." That statement now appears to have been untrue.
The six key questions posed by Human Rights Watch to the government
1. What steps as a matter of policy does the UK government, including all intelligence and security agencies, take to ensure that torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are not used in any cases in which it has asked the Pakistani authorities for assistance or co-operation?
2. What does the UK government do when it learns that torture or ill-treatment has occurred in a particular case?
3. What conditions has the UK government put on continuing co-operation and assistance with Pakistan in counter-terror and law enforcement activities?
4. Has the UK government ever conditioned continuing co-operation or assistance with Pakistan on an end to torture and other ill-treatment?
5. Has the UK government ever withdrawn cooperation in a particular case or cases because of torture or ill-treatment?
6. What is the policy and legal advice in force to ensure that UK officials and agents do not participate or acquiesce in, or are complicit in torture or ill-treatment?
"A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it's really retaliation," McMillen told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. Calls to McMillen by The Associated Press late Wednesday went unanswered...
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