Defence Secretary Liam Fox is today meeting with his US counterpart Robert Gates. No doubt the continued military relationship in Afghanistan and the wider world will be top if the agenda. Given what we learnt over the weekend about Fox’s choice of Special Adviser – former US Army captain Luke Coffey is causing no end of security headaches in the MOD given his intimate connections to U.S. spooks – is there any need for the meeting at all?

Coffey hasn’t been given full security clearance and probably won’t be. At a time when defence spending and the role of the MOD will be coming under intense scrutiny, is it really appropriate to have a foreign citizen, let alone one with ties to the U.S. intelligence services, thumbing through “U.K. Eyes Only” documents passing over his boss’s desk? Do the American’s already know what Liam will say at the meeting?