"There are friendly foreign governments ..."

"... but there are no friendly foreign Intelligence Agencies." Kim reports on the brouhaha over US-only contractors building the new Yank embassy building in old Blighty:

Hell, I wouldn’t even want the new embassy to use British sub-contractors, because they’ll be riddled with spies and saboteurs. (As was the case in Moscow, not long ago, where the new U.S embassy was riddled with listening devices.)

The only surprise here is that a lot of folks are acting surprised. Intelligence Agencies have a long and sordid interesting history of planting bugs in other country's embassys. Kim doesn't point out that our new Moscow embassy building was so riddled with bugs, that we tore it down and built another one.

So while the UK Daily Mail is getting a bit of the vapors over this, they should have a sit down with a nice hot cup of cool-your-jets. Kim's right, that EU laws have no jurrisdiction in our embassy, but more importantly, our government is doing precisely the right thing. If you don't control all phases of construction - and I mean all - then there's no way to show that the new embassy building can keep secrets in.

It's been quite some time since anyone's believed that "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail." Even in Her Britannic Majesty's realm.