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.