Mick Smith - Times Online - WBLG

Wanted: The New Miss Moneypenny

MI6 is searching for the new Miss Moneypenny, the loyal personal assistant to the head of the secret service who never succumbed to James Bond’s charms. A job advertisement on the TimesOnline website comes shortly after the death of Lois Maxwell, the actress who played Moneypenny in 14 Bond movies over 25 years, although intelligence contacts tell me that it is a pure coincidence. There is of course already a new Miss Moneypenny in the films, the actress Samantha Bond (no relation).

Was Martin McGuinness an MI6 Agent?

A very interesting article by David Sharrock in today’s Times on allegations by Martin Ingram, a former British Army agent, that Martin McGuinness was secretly working for MI6. There will of course be a great deal of scepticism surrounding these allegations but Ingram is not the first to have made them. They have also been made in the past by sources in the then RUC, although I must say I cannot remember them being published before. The first question to ask is how would RUC officers and British Army intelligence agents get to know if McGuinness was an MI6 agent. That sort of information would have been very tightly held, and what was MI6 doing in Northern Ireland anyway. It is the foreign intelligence service so in theory should not be involved in northern Ireland. McGuinness himself has refused to comment but the story has been predictably dismissed by Sinn Fein, who said: “We have heard this all before,” a spokesman said. “It is rubbish. It is nonsense.” Indeed we have heard this before. But it is unlikely to go away and strange as it may seem there is interesting evidence that some might see as backing up Ingram’s claims.