Have we got any dirt on Sawyers so that we can discredit him as well?
A former head of Britain’s spy agency, MI6, has accused China of concealing information about its coronavirus from the rest of the world.
Sir John Sawers, who ran MI6 between 2009 and 2014, was responding to Donald Trump’s decision to withhold US funding from the World Health Organisation, on the grounds it had “covered up” the spread of the Covid-19. He told the BBC it would be more appropriate to criticise Beijing. He said:
There is deep anger in America at what they see as having been inflicted on us all by China, and China is evading a good deal of responsibility for the origin of the virus, for failing to deal with it ... initially.
... Intelligence is about acquiring information which has been concealed from you by other states and other actors. Now, there was a brief period in December and January when the Chinese were indeed concealing this from the West.
Sawyers, who has also served as the UK’s permanent representative to the UN, said the pandemic would have an impact on international relations.
The trends that are under way anyway, the growing dependence on technology, the weakening of international bodies like the United Nations, the shift of economic power to Asia - I think these are all going to move forward more rapidly now as in the context of this pandemic.
