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Note that one of the authors of this piece was deported from the UK for being a security risk.

* Agee & Hosenball : The Labour government had a chequered record on freedom of information. Whilst there was a clear commitment in the 1974 party manifesto for a FoI Act and to "place the burden on public authorities to justify withholding information" the government's instincts seemed to be more towards controlling and suppressing information. For example, it. . .also deported two Americans, Standard journalist Mark Hosenball and Philip Agee, a former CIA operations officer, on the grounds they were security risks. --------Response by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom to the Freedom of Information Bill via 31 posted on 05/19/2005 2:27:44 PM PDT by Fedora | To 29 |

Yep, I noticed Hosenball was at it again with this one. An interesting piece of background with reference to the present article--interesting in light of Panetta's Clintonian connections--is that when Hosenball aroused the British intelligence community's wrath for that, his cause was defended by Group 68, a UK antiwar group Clinton had been involved with, on which more here:

Road to Moscow: Bill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow

With the Vietnam War ending, Group 68 changed its name in 1974 to Concerned Americans Abroad (CAA). CAA remained active until 1978, working with other leftover antiwar groups, such as the VVAW offshoot Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Winter Soldier Organization (VVAW/WSO). CAA also partnered with antiwar elements of the US Democratic Party, which organized voters in Britain as Democrats Abroad (UK) and sent a representative to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. CAA and its allies campaigned for a range of causes which included the release of political prisoners, amnesty for draft dodgers, the impeachment of President Nixon, the abolition of the CIA, and the defense of renegade CIA agent Philip Agee and his journalist colleague Marc Hosenball (now with Newsweek), who were facing deportation proceedings for disclosing classified information about UK signals intelligence operations. Recent disclosures have confirmed that at this time Agee was cooperating with Soviet and Cuban intelligence to expose CIA operations.

For more info see the rest of the article and the appendix profile of Group 68.

The upshot is that the same network that was working to undermine Western intelligence during the Watergate era not only remains active, but has advanced considerably in political power.