Beware enemy within
Russians and IS seeking recruits in military and government, says minister
TERRORIST groups and the Russians want to recruit ‘enemy within’ traitors inside the British Government and military, the Security Minister warned yesterday.
Ben Wallace also confirmed that the Islamic State terror group has ‘aspirations’ to carry out ‘mass casualty’ chemical attacks against the UK.
The Home Office Minister’s stark comments came amid a huge security operation to prevent a New Year’s Eve atrocity, with armed police patrolling major cities.
Mr Wallace said IS, also known as Daesh, had used chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq, and intelligence officials believe it has an ‘aspiration’ to use them in Britain.
He also disclosed that Whitehall officials recently carried out exercises to deal with what he called the UK’s ‘worst fear’.
Mr Wallace warned that terrorist groups, Russian agents and cyber criminals had all launched a concerted campaign to recruit ‘traitors’ in Government, the military and leading businesses.
‘There are traitors. We have to be on our guard for the enemy within,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘The insider threat, as we would call it, is real and it can be exploited and there are people trying to do that as we speak. If it’s hard to get in the front door, then what you try and do is get someone on the inside.’
In the wake of claims that Russia tried to influence the US election by releasing hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Mr Wallace said Britain’s ‘greatest vulnerability’ was to cyber-attacks. He described the range and frequency of attacks by Britain’s enemies as ‘quite breathtaking’ and accused big companies and banks of not taking the threat seriously enough.
Mr Wallace said: ‘There are well over 100 intelligence officers of other powers in the United Kingdom who are trying to corrupt our systems and corrupt our citizens.
‘Our companies and our banks are not, in my view, taking it seriously enough.
‘They should realise that reputational damage of data breaches not only affects their business, it affects their share price and their customers, so it is really time that some of these people took it more seriously.’ The minister’s comments on the threat of an attack with chemical weapons come at a time when the security services are on high alert over the prospect of jihadis returning to the UK from Syria. As many as 200 are thought to have travelled back to Britain.
Mr Wallace said: ‘The ambition of IS or Daesh is definitely mass-casualty attacks. They want to harm as many people as possible and terrorise as many people as possible.
‘They have no moral objection to using chemical weapons against populations, and if they could, they would in this country. The casualty figures that could be involved would be everybody’s worst fear. We have certainly seen reports them using it in Syria and Iraq [and] we have certainly seen aspirations for it in Europe.’
He said that as IS is driven out of its strongholds in the Middle East, returning jihadis will pose a growing threat to Britain.
‘We know there are a significant number of [Britons] fighting for IS in Syria. They will probably want to come home. There will also be those people who wanted to go out there but no longer can get there. Their frustration may boil over.’
Yesterday it also emerged that reports of alleged links between charities and terrorism or extremism had surged to a record high. The number of times the Charity Commission has shared concerns about links between charities and extremism with police and other agencies has nearly trebled, from 234 to 630, in just three years.
William Shawcross, the commission’s chairman, warned that extremism was ‘the most potentially dangerous and deadly’ problem faced by charities.
Mr Shawcross told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘It is the most dangerous because of the threat of Islamist extremism. It is not the most constant threat – it is the most potentially deadly threat.’