Crispin Black

According to Guardian Unlimited Crispin Black is:

Crispin Black MBE MPhil is an independent intelligence consultant and well-known media commentator on terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of 7-7 The London Bombs – What Went Wrong? a critical examination of the failures in intelligence and security leading up to the July 2005 bombs in which he makes suggestions for wide-ranging reform and improvement.

On passing out from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Crispin started his military career commanding a platoon of Welsh Guardsmen in the Falklands War where he survived the bombing of the RFA Sir Galahad. He finished over twenty years later as a lieutenant colonel seconded to the Cabinet Office preparing intelligence briefings for Number 10, the Joint Intelligence Committee and COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A - the government’s highest level crisis response machinery) where he was on duty on the night 11-12 September 2001. In between he did three emergency tours of Northern Ireland including a stint as intelligence officer in the Republican stronghold of West Belfast. His trials and tribulations and those of his soldiers during two years on counter-terrorist operations in the early 1990s were the subject of a popular BBC documentary by Molly Dineen In the Company of Men. He also served with the British Army of the Rhine and the United Nations Forces in Cyprus.

After graduation from the Army Staff College he specialized in intelligence and in 1996 was awarded the MBE for his role in the Defence Intelligence Staff during the crisis in Former Yugoslavia. He has degrees from both London and Cambridge – where he spent a year on a defence fellowship - and has lectured at both universities.

In, A bloody legacy: Blair's disastrous war in Iraq has made Britain a more dangerous place The Independent quotes Mr Black as follows:

Crispin Black, a former intelligence officer, says that Mr Blair was warned repeatedly about the consequences for domestic terrorism of the Iraq adventure by the intelligence services and the Foreign Office. "Regardless of what you think about the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, the question is, when warned, what did Blair do to secure the home front?"

The answer to that question, Mr Black says, is not one that shows the outgoing Prime Minister in a flattering light.

He says that Mr Blair was "badly served" by his security and intelligence services both in the run-up to the Iraq war and over the 7 July bombings, but his "corrupting" influence would cause lasting damage. The dodgy dossier had broken a "covenant of trust", undermining the credibility of all subsequent intelligence warnings. "Time and again the warnings have been shown to be exaggerated or wrong. The tragedy is we won't believe them when they are right."

He has publically condemed the leadership involved in the war in Iraq in Crispin Black: For mother and country in the Independent. He states:

One of the most corrosive aspects of the present conflict is that, for the first time in living memory, we have a ruling élite with no connections to the military. This most warlike of governments contains not a single minister with any military experience.

Michael Moore's famous complaint that only one member of Congress had a son serving in Iraq is relevant to us in Britain. There is a sense that this is a war for other people's sons and daughters to fight and that our governing politicians have little idea of the pain, worry and sacrifice involved

To an extent, the morale of our troops can be protected, even in the face of unsatisfactory political leadership, by a top brass that insists that soldiers and their families are properly treated. Yet, turning to our generals, with the odd distinguished exception they are men of little military experience. Do not be fooled by the chests full of medals - in many cases the only real soldiering they have done is confined to a few foot patrols in Northern Ireland a quarter-century ago. The soldiers in Iraq know, however well they are commanded in the field, that the top brass sitting at desks in London has little military experience.

He has also been critical of the reorganisation of the forces;

while our troops are busy in Iraq, the generals have been busy on the home front disbanding and amalgamating the very regiments that give the British Army its ability to fight in the first place - because politicians, so profligate with public money in other areas, need to save a few million pounds.