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MI5 and MI6 have conceded they cannot stop the publication of a book on Britain's security and intelligence agencies even though it is said to contain the names of officers who have not previously been identified, reports the Guardian.
The courts would not grant an injunction, officials said, because the book, Secret Wars - One Hundred Years of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6, by Gordon Thomas, has already been published, and is widely available, in the US. The book was published in March in the US by Thomas Dunne Books a division of Macmillan.
MI5 is publishing a vetted official history by the Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew, due in October by Penguin. While MI6's official history, by Keith Jeffrey, professor of history at Queen's University Belfast, is not due to be published until next year (Bloomsbury).
Thomas's book is due to be published in the UK on 4th May.