The latest Wikileaks revelations show US intelligence agents feared Cheryl Cole’s Geordie accent posed a credible threat to national security, writes Crispin Fisher.
CIA staff spent months decoding some of the X Factor star’s comments in the belief that she was sending secret coded messages to terrorist cells in Britain and the US.
And surveillance of the only attractive female from Tyneside was stepped up when it emerged Simon Cowell was plotting to sneak her into America as part of his US X Factor launch plan.
A field agent cabled Washington with the message: “This British celebrity uses the term ‘Why aye man,’ clearly a call to arms to terrorists operating out of Yemen.”
Three weeks later on October 28 the same operative sent an urgent dispatch to his superiors which read: “Situation critical: CC now using term ‘aye kidda’, without question a direct address to Al Qaeda bombsquads”.
US officials were so concerned about the apparent code that they instructed homeland security forces to move to red alert every time Cheryl uttered a Geordie term.
When intercepted phone messages contained frequent comments urging support for the ‘Toon Army’, American officials even went as far as trying to ban Cheryl from entering the US.
It was only when American spies spoke with their counterparts in London that they discovered the ‘Toon Army’ were a group of grossly overweight, tatooed football supporters and not a secret terror group operating out of Tunisia.
After months of careful surveillance and detailed background checks American officials finally concluded that the singer didn’t pose an immediate threat to national security. But rather than take any chances they recruited special agent and part-time dancer Derek Hough to carry out under cover manoeuvres to ensure that she had no terrorist links.
Derek used his skills as a secret agent to rescue Cheryl when rogue foreign agents tried to assassinate her using a special poison dart which leaves the victim with all the symptoms of the deadly Malaria virus.
When we quizzed Cheryl’s PA about the contents of the leaked documents she said: “These claims are utter rubbish, Cheryl is totally innocent, she hasn’t got any time for terrorists because she is too busy trying to conquer the world.”
