Annie Machon

Libya, MI6, and torture - interview on Press TV

Libya, MI6, torture, and more happy subjects discussed recently on "Africa Today" on Press TV. 

The programme was interesting, informed and balanced.  Do have a watch:

Libyans caught between a rock and a hard place

This article in today's New York Times, particularly these following two paragraphs, sent a shiver down my spine for the fate of the Libyan people:

"The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda.The growing influence of Islamists in Libya raises hard questions about the ultimate character of the government and society that will rise in place of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s autocracy.....

....Mr. Belhaj has become so much an insider lately that he is seeking to unseat Mahmoud Jibril, the American-trained economist who is the nominal prime minister of the interim government, after Mr. Jibril obliquely criticized the Islamists."

The Libyans, finally free of Gaddafi's 42-year dictatorship, now seem faced with a choice between an Islamist faction that has stated publicly that it wants to base the new constitution on Sharia - a statement that must have caused a few ripples amongst Libya's educated and relatively  emancipated women - or a new government headed up by an American-trained economist. 

And we all know what happens to countries when such economists move in: asset stripping, the syphoning off of the national wealth to transnational mega-corps, and a plunge in the people's living standards.  If you think this sounds extreme, then do get your hands on a copy of Naomi Klein's excellent "Shock Doctrine" - required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the growing global financial crisis.

Of course, this would be an ideal outcome for the US, UK and other western forces who intervened in Libya. 

Mr Belhaj is, of course, another matter.  Not only would an Islamist Libya be a potentially dangerous result for the West, but should Belhaj come to power he is likely to be somewhat hostile to US and particularly British interests.  

Why?  Well, Abdul Hakim Belhaj has form.  He was a leading light in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a terrorist organisation which bought into the ideology of "Al Qaeda" and which had made many attempts to depose or assassinate Gaddafi, sometimes with the financial backing of the British spies, most notably in the failed assassination plot of 1996.

Of course, after 9/11 and Gaddafi's rapprochement with the West, this collaboration was all air-brushed out of history - to such an extent that in 2004 MI6 was instrumental in  kidnapping Belhaj, with the say-so of the CIA, and "extraordinarily rendering" him to Tripoli in 2004, where he suffered 6 years' torture at the hands of Libya's brutal intelligences services.  After this, I doubt if he would be minded to work too closely with UK companies.

So I'm willing to bet that there is more behind-the-scenes meddling from our spooks, to ensure the ascendency of Jibril in the new government.  Which will be great for Western business, but not so great for the poor Libyans.....

Spy documents found in Libya reveal more British double dealing

A cache of highly classified intelligence documents was recently discovered in the abandoned offices of former Libyan spy master, Foreign Minister and high-profile defector, Musa Kusa.  

These documents have over the last couple of weeks provided a fascinating insight into the growing links in the last decade between the former UK Labour government, particularly Tony Blair, and the Gaddafi regime.  They have displayed in oily detail the degree of toadying that the Blair government was prepared to countenance, not only to secure lucrative business contracts but also to gloss over embarrassing episodes such as Lockerbie and the false flag MI6-backed 1996 assassination plot against Gaddafi. 

These documents have also apparently revealed direct involvement by MI6 in the "extraordinary rendition" to Tripoli and torture of two Libyans.  Ironically it has been reported that they were wanted for being members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the very organisation that MI6 had backed in its failed 1996 coup. 

The secular dictatorship of Col Gaddafi always had much to fear from Islamist extremism, so it is perhaps unsurprising that, after Blair's notorious "deal in the desert" in 2004, the Gaddafi regime used its connections with MI6 and the CIA to hunt down its enemies.  And, as we have all been endlessly told, the rules changed after 9/11...

The torture  victims, one of whom is now a military commander of the rebel Libyan forces, are now considering suing the British government.  Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary at the time, has tried to shuffle off any blame, stating that he could not be expected to know everything that MI6 does. 

Well, er, no - part of the job description of Foreign Secretary is indeed to oversee the work of MI6 and hold it to democratic accountability, especially about such serious policy issues as "extraordinary rendition" and torture.  Such operations would indeed need the ministerial sign-off to be legal under the 1994 Intelligence Services Act.

There has been just so much hot air from the current government about how the Gibson Torture Inquiry will get to the bottom of these cases, but we all know how toothless such inquiries will be, circumscribed as they are by the terms of the Inquiries Act 2005.  We also know that Sir Peter Gibson himself has for years been "embedded" within the British intelligence community and is hardly likely to hold the spies meaningfully to account.

So I was particularly intrigued to hear that the the cache of documents showed the case of David Shayler, the intelligence whistleblower who revealed the 1996 Gaddafi assassination plot and went to prison twice for doing so, first in France in 1998 and then in the UK in 2002, was still a subject of discussion between the Libyan and UK governments in 2007. And, as I have written before, as late as 2009 it was obvious that this case was still used by the Libyans for leverage, certainly when it came to the tit-for-tat negotiations around case of the murder in London outside the Libyan Embassy of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984.

Of course, way back in 1998, the British government was all too ready to crush the whistleblower rather than investigate the disclosures and hold the spies to account for their illegal and reckless acts.  I have always felt that this was a failure of democracy, that it seriously undermined the future work and reputation of the spies themselves, and particularly that it was such a shame for the fate of the PBW (poor bloody whistleblower).

But it now appears that the British intelligence community's sense of omnipotence and of being above the law has come back to bite them.  How else explain their slide into a group-think mentality that participates in "extraordinary rendition" and torture?

One has to wonder if wily old Musa Kusa left this cache of documents behind in his abandoned offices as an "insurance policy", just in case his defection to the UK were not to be as comfortable as he had hoped - and we now know that he soon fled to Qatar after he had been questioned about the Lockerbie case.

But whether an honest mistake or cunning power play, his actions have helped to shine a light into more dark corners of British government lies and double dealing vis a vis Libya....

Last chance to find out what happened to Dr David Kelly - help needed

Many will be aware of the controversy surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the world-renowned weapons inspector who was said to have blown the whistle about the "sexing-up" of the intelligence case that took our countries into the 2003 Iraq War.

Ignoring all standard British legal requirements, there has never been an inquest into Dr Kelly's sudden death in 2003.  Subsequent government enquiries have tried to assert over the years that he committed suicide. However, a group of senior British doctors has consistently challenged these findings and stated that his death was not proved to be suicide beyond all reasonable doubt.

The current senior legal advisor to the UK Coalition government, Attorney General Dominic Grieve, promised before last year's election that he would consider a formal inquest into Dr Kelly's death.  However, since coming to power Grieve has retreated from that.  In addition, all the evidence surrounding the death of Dr Kelly will, exceptionally, remain classified for 70 years.

The British doctors, led by Dr David Halpin, have one last chance to get to the truth.  This week, they are applying for a Judicial Review of Grieve's decision.

The legal papers need to be filed by 8th September, and the costs of this case will be at least £50,000, much of which has already been contributed by the doctors and supporters.  They are asking for donations to cover the remainder.  Please help if you can, spread the word to all your contacts, and ask them to make a financial pledge at this site.

RTTV Interview: Libya - the perfect storm

My RTTV interview today about Libya, torture, and UK double-dealing:

 

Book review in The Sunday Express

Nothing like being paid to read a book - a win-win situation for me. 

Here's a link to my review in the Sunday Express newspaper of a new history of MI6, called "The Art of Betrayal" by Gordon Corera, the BBC's Security Correspondent.

And here's the article:

REVIEW: THE ART OF BETRAYAL - LIFE AND DEATH IN THE BRITISH SECRET SERVICE
Friday August 19, 2011
By Annie Machon

THE Art of Betrayal: Life and Death in the British Secret Service
Gordon Corera Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £20

THE INTRODUCTION to The Art Of Betrayal, Gordon Corera's unofficial post-war history of MI6, raises questions about the modern relevance and ethical framework of our spies. It also provides an antidote to recent official books celebrating the centenaries of MI5 and MI6.

Corera, the BBC's security correspondent, has enjoyed privileged access to key spy players from the past few decades and, writing in an engaging, easy style, he picks up the story of MI6 at the point where the "official" history grinds to a halt after the Second World War.

Spy geeks will enjoy the swashbuckling stories from the Cold War years and he offers an intelligent exploration of the mentality of betrayal between the West and the former Soviet Union, focusing on the notorious Philby, Penkovsky and Gordievsky cases among many others.

For the more cynical reader, this book presents some problems. Where Corera discusses the aimless years of MI6 post-Cold War attempts at reinvention, followed by the muscular, morally ambiguous post-9/11 world, he references quotes from former top spies and official inquiries only, all of which need to be read with a healthy degree of skepticism. To use a memorable quote from the Sixties Profumo Scandal, also mentioned in the book: "Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?"

In Corera's view, there has always been inherent tension in MI6 between the "doers" (who believe that intelligence is there to be acted upon James Bond-style and who want to get their hands dirty with covert operations) and the "thinkers" (those who believe, a la George Smiley, that knowledge is power and should be used behind the scenes to inform official government policy).

He demonstrates that the "doers" have often been in control and the image of MI6 staffed by gung-ho, James Bond wannabes is certainly a stereotype I recognise from my years working as an intelligence officer for the sister spy organisation, MI5.

The problem, as this book reveals, is that when the action men have the cultural ascendancy within MI6 events often go badly wrong through establishment complacency, betrayal or mere enthusiastic amateurism.

That said, the opposing culture of the "thinkers", or patient intelligence gatherers, led in the Sixties and Seventies to introspection, mole-hunting paranoia and sclerosis.

Worryingly, many former officers down the years are quoted as saying that they hoped there was a "real" spy organisation behind the apparently amateur outfit they had joined, a sentiment shared by most of my intake in the Nineties.

Nor does it appear that lessons were learned from history: the Operation Gladio debacle in Albania and the toppling of Iran's first democratically-elected President Mossadeq in the Fifties could have provided valuable lessons for MI6 in its work in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya over the past two decades.

Corera is remarkably coy about Libya despite the wealth of now publicly-available information about MI6's meddling in the Lockerbie case, the illegal assassination plot against Gaddafiin 1996 and the dirty, MI6-brokered oil deals of the past decade.

Corera pulls together his recurring themes in the final chapters, exploring the compromise of intelligence in justifying the Iraq war, describing how the "doers" pumped unverified intelligence from unproven agents directly into the veins of Whitehall and Washington.

Many civil servants and middle-ranking spies questioned and doubted but were told to shut up and follow orders. The results are all-too tragically well known.

Corera does not, however, go far enough.

He appreciates that the global reach of MI6 maintains Britain's place in an exclusive club of world powers. At what price, though?

Here is the question he should perhaps have asked: in light of all the mistakes, betrayals, liberties compromised, lessons unlearned and deaths, has MI6 outlived its usefulness?

Annie Machon is a former MI5 intelligence officer and author.

Verdict 4/5

Alastair Campbell - guilty of breaching the OSA?

I have long suspected that Alastair Campbell, Labour's former Director of Communications, may potentially have broken the UK's Official Secrets Act.  Now prima facie evidence is beginning to emerge that he did indeed breach the "clear bright line" against unauthorised disclosure of intelligence. 

I know that the Metropolitan Police have their hands full investigating the meltdown that is the News of the World hacking scandal - and also trying to replace all those senior officers who had to resign because of it - but they do have a duty to investigate crime.  And not just any old crime, in this case, but one that has potentially threatened the very basis of our national security.

Why do I say this? 

You'll no doubt have some vague recollection that, in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, the British government produced a couple of reports "making a case for war".  The first, the September Dossier (2002), is the one most remembered, as this did indeed sex up the case for war, as well as include fake intelligence about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire uranium from Niger.  Most memorably it led to the "Brits 45 minutes from Doom" front-page headline in Rupert Murdoch's The Sun newspaper, no less, on the eve of the crucial war vote in Parliament.

There was also the notorious leaked Downing Street Memo, where the then-head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove (C), was minuted as saying that the intelligence and facts were being fitted around the [predetermined war] policy.

However, for the purposes of a possible Regina v. Campbell day in court, it is the second report that requires our attention.

It was published in February 2003, just before "shock and awe" was launched to liberate the grateful Iraqi people.   This report became known as the "Dodgy Dossier", as it was largely lifted from a 12 year old PhD thesis that the spin doctors had found on the internet.  However, it also included nuggets of brand-new and unassessed intelligence from MI6.  Indeed, even the toothless Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament stated in paragraph 82 of its 2002-2003 Annual Report ( Download ISC_2003) that:

"We believe that material produced by the [intelligence] Agencies can be used in publications and attributed appropriately, but it is imperative that the Agencies are consulted before any of their material is published. This process was not followed when a second document was produced in February 2003. Although the document did contain some intelligence-derived material it was not clearly attributed or highlighted amongst the other material, nor was it checked with the Agency providing the intelligence or cleared by the JIC prior to publication. We have been assured that systems have now been put in place to ensure that this cannot happen again, in that the JIC Chairman endorses any material on behalf of the intelligence community prior to publication."

At the time it was reported that Blair and Campbell had spontaneously distributed this report to journalists travelling with them on a tour of the Far East.   The ISC confirmed that the intelligence had been passed to journalists without the permission of MI6 in its September 2003 special report - "Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction: Intelligence and Assessments" (see pars 131 to 134):

"The document was originally given to a number of journalists over the weekend of
1 and 2 February and then placed in the Library of the House on 3 February. The Prime
Minister described the document as follows:

“We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of
concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports, but I hope
that people have some sense of the integrity of our security services. They are not
publishing this, or giving us this information, and making it up. It is the intelligence
that they are receiving, and we are passing on to people. In the dossier that we
published last year, and again in the material that we put out over the weekend, it is
very clear that a vast amount of concealment and deception is going on.”

"Conclusions:

"The Committee took evidence on this matter from the Chief of the SIS on both
12 February and 17 July and separately from Alastair Campbell on 17 July. Both agreed
that making the document public without consulting the SIS or the JIC Chairman was
a “cock-up”. Alastair Campbell confirmed that, once he became aware that the
provenance of the document was being questioned because of the inclusion of
Dr Al-Marashi’s work without attribution, he telephoned both the Chief of the SIS and
the JIC Chairman to apologise.

"We conclude that the Prime Minister was correct to describe the document as
containing “further intelligence... about the infrastructure of concealment.... It is the
intelligence that they [the Agencies] are receiving, and we are passing on to people.”

"However, as we previously concluded, it was a mistake not to consult the
Agencies before their material was put in the public domain. In evidence to us the
Prime Minister agreed. We have reported the assurance that we have been given
that in future the JIC Chairman will check all intelligence-derived material on
behalf of the intelligence community prior to publication."

Crucially, Blair and Campbell had jumped the (old Iraqi super-) gun by issuing this information, but Campbell seems to have got away with it by describing such a breach of the OSA as a "cock-up".  Or perhaps just another precipitous "rush of blood to the head" on his part, as recently described in the long-suppressed testimony of SIS2 revealed around the Chilcot Enquiry and reported in The Guardian:

"Papers released by the Chilcot inquiry into the war show that an MI6 officer, identified only as SIS2, had regular contacts with Campbell: "We found Alastair Campbell, I think, an enthusiastic individual, but also somewhat of an unguided missile." He added: "We also, I think, suffered from his propensity to have rushes of blood to the head and pass various stories and information to journalists without appropriate prior consultation" (my emphasis).

So why do I suggest that Campbell could be liable for prosecution?  It appears that he was a "notified person" for the purposes of Section 1(1) of the OSA.  While not employed by the intelligence agencies, notified persons have regular access to intelligence material and are subjected to the highest clearance - developed vetting - in the same way as the full-time spooks.  As such, they are also bound by the law against disclosure of such material without the prior written permission of the head of the agency whose intelligence they want to disseminate.  There is no room for manoeuvre, no damage assessment, and no public interest defence.  The law is clear. 

And a report in today's Telegraph about Andy Coulson and the phone-hacking scandal seems to show clearly that Campbell was just such a notified person:

"Unlike Alastair Campbell and other previous holders of the Downing Street communications director role, Mr Coulson was not cleared to see secret intelligence reports and so was spared the most detailed scrutiny of his background and personal life.....

"The only people who will be subject to developed vetting are those who are working in security matters regularly and would need to have that sort of information.

"The only special advisers that would have developed vetting would be in the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and maybe the Home Office. Andy Coulson's role was different to Alastair Campbell's and Jonathan Powell.

"Alastair Campbell could instruct civil servants. This is why [Coulson] wasn't necessarily cleared. Given [the nature of] Andy Coulson's role as more strategic he wouldn't have necessarily have been subject to developed vetting."

So it would appear that Alastair Campbell is bang to rights for a breach of the Official Secrets Act under Section 1(1).  He released new, unassessed and uncleared MI6 intelligence within the dodgy dossier.  This is not just some technical  infraction of the law - although even if it were, he would still have a case to answer.

No, this report led inexorably to our country going to war against Iraq, shoulder to shoulder with the US, and the resulting deaths, maimings, poisonings and displacement of millions of innocent Iraqi people.  It has also directly increased the terrorist threat to the UK, as Tony Blair was officially warned pre-Iraq war by the then-head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller.  With the dodgy dossier, Campbell has directly harmed countless lives and our national security.

Of course, many of us might fantasise about warmongers getting their just deserts in The Hague.  But perhaps the OSA could prove to be Al Campbell's Al Capone-style tax evasion moment.

Now, what about The Right Honourable Tony Blair?

UK Intelligence and Security Committee to be reformed?

The Guardian's spook commentator extraordinaire, Richard Norton-Taylor, has reported that the current chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in the UK Parliament, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, wants the committee to finally grow a pair.  Well, those weren't quite the words used in the Grauny, but they certainly capture the gist.

If Rifkind's stated intentions are realised, the new-look ISC might well provide real, meaningful and democratic oversight for the first time in the 100-year history of  the three key UK spy agencies - MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, not to mention the defence intelligence staff, the joint intelligence committee and the new National Security Council .

For many long years I have been discussing the woeful lack of real democratic oversight for the UK spies.  The privately-convened ISC, the democratic fig-leaf established under the aegis of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act (ISA), is appointed by and answerable only to the Prime Minister, with a remit only to look at finance, policy and administration, and without the power to demand documents or to cross-examine witnesses under oath.  Its annual reports are always heavily redacted and have become a joke amongst journalists.

When the remit of the ISC was being drawn up in the early 1990s, the spooks were apoplectic that Parliament should have any form of oversight whatsoever.  From their perspective, it was bad enough at that point that the agencies were put on a legal footing for the first time.  Spy thinking then ran pretty much along the lines of "why on earth should they be answerable to a bunch of here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians, who were leaky as hell and gossiped to journalists all the time"?

So it says a great deal that the spooks breathed a huge, collective sigh of relief when the ISC remit was finally enshrined in law in 1994.  They really had nothing to worry about.  I remember, I was there at the time.

This has been borne out over the last 17 years.  Time and again the spies have got away with telling barefaced lies to the ISC.  Or at the very least being "economical with the truth", to use one of their favourite phrases.  Former DG of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander, has publicly said that "I blanche at some of the things I declined to tell the committee [ISC] early on...".  Not to mention the outright lies told to the ISC over the years about issues like whistleblower testimony, torture, and counter-terrorism measures.

But these new developments became yet more fascinating to me when I read that the current Chair of the ISC proposing these reforms is no less than Sir Malcolm Rifkind, crusty Tory grandee and former Conservative Foreign Minister in the mid-1990s.

For Sir Malcolm was the Foreign Secretary notionally in charge of MI6 when the intelligence officers, PT16 and PT16/B, hatched the ill-judged Gaddafi Plot when MI6 funded a rag-tag group of Islamic extremist terrorists in Libya to assassinate the Colonel, the key disclosure made by David Shayler when he blew the whistle way back in the late 1990s.

Obviously this assassination attempt was highly reckless in a very volatile part of the world; obviously it was unethical, and many innocent people were murdered in the attack; and obviously it failed, leading to the shaky rapprochement with Gaddafi over the last decade.  Yet now we are seeing the use of similar tactics in the current Libyan war (this time more openly) with MI6 officers being sent to help the rebels in Benghazi and our government openly and shamelessly calling for regime change.

But most importantly from a legal perspective, in 1996 the "Gaddafi Plot" MI6 apparently did not apply for prior written permission from Rifkind - which they were legally obliged to do under the terms of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act (the very act that also established the ISC).  This is the fabled, but real, "licence to kill" - Section 7 of the ISA - which provides immunity to MI6 officers for illegal acts committed abroad, if they have the requisite ministerial permission.

At the time, Rifkind publicly stated that he had not been approached by MI6 to sanction the plot when the BBC Panorama programme conducted a special investigation, screened on 7 August 1997.  Rifkind's statement was also reported widely in the press over the years, including this New Statesman article by Mark Thomas in 2002.

That said, Rifkind himself wrote earlier this year in The Telegraph that help should now be given to the Benghazi "rebels" - many of whom appear to be members of the very same group that tried to assassinate Gaddafi with MI6's help in 1996 - up to and including the provision of arms.  Rifkind's view of the legalities now appear to be somewhat more flexible, whatever his stated position was back in the 90s. 

Of course, then he was notionally in charge of MI6 and would have to take the rap for any political fall-out.  Now he can relax into the role of "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?".  Such a relief.

I shall be watching developments around Rifkind's proposed reforms with interest.

How the Light Gets In festival - my talk

My recent talk at the excellent How the Light Gets In philosophy festival at Hay-on-Wye.  With credit and thanks to IAI TV and the staff of the Institute of Art and Ideas, the organisers the event.

 

Former head of MI6 says that fact and fiction get mixed up

Former head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett - he of the dodgy September Dossier fame that led inexorably to the UK's invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the death, maiming, depleted-uranium poisoning and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people - has complacently stated during his recent talk at the Hay Literary Festival that:

"One of the problems of intelligence work is that fact and fiction get very easily mixed up.  A key lesson you have to learn very early on is you keep them separate.”

Well, no doubt many, many people might just wish he'd listened to his own advice way back in September 2002.

Scarlett is, of course, the senior UK spook who made the case for the Iraq war.  Here's the link:  Download Iraq_WMD_Dossier. 

No doubt you will remember the li(n)es: not only that Iraq's non-existent  "weapons of mass destruction" could be launched within 45 minutes, but also that fake intelligence documents had persuaded MI6 that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger , as Colin Powell asserted during his persuasive speech to the UN in 2003.

Scarlett publicly took the rap and, by protecting Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, was rewarded with the top job at MI6 and the inevitable knighthood.  No doubt a suitable recognition for his entirely honourable behaviour.

But it gets worse - now he has apparently landed a lucrative job as an advisor on the situation in Iraq working for Norwegian oil mega-corporation, Statoil.

You couldn't make it up...

... or perhaps you could if you're a former top spy with an undeserved "K" and a lucrative oil contract who has difficulty separating fact from fiction......

 

Frontline Club/New Statesman (FCNS) whistleblower debate with Julian Assange

"This house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place."

I was honoured to be asked to say a few words at the recent debate about the value of whistleblowers in London on 9th April 2011.

The Frontline Club and the left-wing New Statesman magazine jointly hosted the event, which starred Julian Assange, editor in chief of Wikileaks.  Here is the debate in full:

   

Needless to say, the opposition had an uphill battle arguing not only against logic, the fair application of law, and the meaning of a vibrant and informed democracy, but also against the new realities in the worlds of journalism and technology. 

The first more diplomatically-minded oppositionist adopted a policy of appeasement towards the audience, but the last two had to fall back on the stale and puerile tactics of name-calling and ad hominem attacks.  So good to see that expensive educations are never a waste....

The proposition was supported enthusiatically by the sell-out crowd, a resounding vote of confidence in the democratic notions of accountability and transparency.

Here's a snippet of my (brief) contribution to a fantastic afternoon:

 

Libya: my enemy's enemy is my friend, until he becomes my enemy again...

UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, reportedly made the startling statement recently that the military intervention in Libya "unlike Iraq, is necessary, legal and right". 

Would it not be wonderful if he could take the next logical step towards joined-up thinking and consider sending our esteemed Middle East Peace Envoy, a certain Mr T Blair, over for a spot of porridge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague?  After all, Cameron has now clearly implied that the Iraq war was "unnecessary, illegal and wrong".....

But back to Libya.  With the ongoing crisis - now war - much is being written about how the previous UK government collaborated with the Gaddafi regime in the last decade - while tacitly glossing over the last year of Coalition government where, no doubt, similar levels of cooperation and back-slapping and money-grubbing were going on at the highest levels to ensure the continuing flow of oil contracts to the UK.

But, yes, we should be dissecting the Labour/Gaddafi power balance.  Gaddafi had New Labour over the proverbial (oil) barrel from the late 1990s, when MI5 whistleblower David Shayler exposed the failed and illegal MI6 assassination plot against Colonel Gaddafi, using as fall-guys a rag-tag group of Islamic extremists.  The newly-elected Labour government's knee-jerk response at the time was to believe the spook's denials and cover-up for them.  Perhaps not so surprising, as the government ministers of the day were uncomfortably aware that the spies held files on them.  But this craven response did leave the government position exposed, as Gaddafi well knew.

The CIA was fully cognisant of this failed plot at the time, as were the French intelligence services.  The Gaddafi Plot is once again being referenced in the media, including the Telegraph, and a recent edition of the Huffington Post.  The details are still relevant, as it appears that our enterprising spooks are yet again reaching out to a rag-tag group of rebels - primarily Islamists and the Senussi royalists based around Benghazi. 

The lessons of the reckless and ill-thought out Gaddafi Plot were brushed under the carpet, so history may yet again be doomed to repeat itself.  Yes, Gaddafi has been one of the biggest backers of terrorism ever, and yes he has brutalised parts of his own population, but if he were deposed how can the West be sure that those stepping into the power vacuum would not be even more dangerous?

The Libyan government continued to use the 1996 MI6 assassination plot as leverage in its negotiations with the New Labour government right up until (publicly at least) 2009.  Musa Kousa, the current Foreign Minister, played a key role throughout.  For many years Kousa was the head of the Libyan External Security Organsiation and was widely seen as the chief architect of international Libyan-backed terrorism against the USA, the UK and France. 

Another apparent example of this moral blackmail caught my eye recently - this report in the Daily Mail.  Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was afforded MI6-backed protection when he was finally allowed into the UK in September 2002 to study at the LSE. 

The timing was particularly interesting, as only months earlier Saif had won a libel case against the UK's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.  A grovelling apology was made by the newspaper, but Saif refrained from asking for "exemplary damages" - which he would almost certainly have won.  The resulting pay-off for this restraint appears to be that a mere five months later he was welcomed into the UK with MI6-facilitated protection.

Saif's relations with the UK had not always been so rosy. As background to this case, in 1995 the Sunday Telegraph had fallen hook, line and sinker for a MI6 classic propaganda operation.  As The Guardian reported, the secretive MI6 media manipulation section, Information Operations, (I/Ops), had successfully spun a fake story to hapless spook hack, Con Coughlin, that Gaddafi Junior was involved in currency fraud.  This story was fake, but the paper trail it produced was used by the spies as a pretext to prevent Saif from entering the UK at the time. 

By 2002 this was all old history, of course.  Saif was welcomed to the UK, officially to study for his MA and PhD at the London School of Economics (and showing his gratitude to that august institution with a hefty donation of £1.5 million - it makes the new tuition fees for UK students seem better value for money), and unofficially to chum up to various Establishment enablers to end Libya's pariah status, open up lucrative trade channels, and get the SAS to train up Libya's special forces. 

The UK military must be just loving that now.....

So I get the feeling that the UK government has over the last decade indeed "danced with the devil".  After decades of viewing Libya and Colonel Gaddafi as a Priority One JIC intelligence target, the UK government fell over itself to appease the Gaddafi regime in the wake of the bungled assassination attempt in 1996 and the libelling of his son.  These were the sticks Gaddafi used; the carrots were undoubtedly the Saif/MI6-facilitated oil contracts. 

Of course, all this is now pretty much a moot point, following Dave Cameron's "necessary, legal and right" military intervention.  If the wily old Colonel manages to hang on grimly to some semblence of power (and he has an impressive track-record of surviving against the odds), then I doubt if he'll be happy to cooperate with British oil companies in the future.  At the very least. 

Gaddafi has already threatened "vengeance" against the West, and it was reported today that MI5 is taking this all-too-preditable risk seriously.

If Gaddafi is deposed, who can realistically predict the intentions and capabilities of those who will fill the power vacuum?  We should have learnt from Afghanistan and Iraq: my enemy's enemy is my friend - until he becomes my enemy again.....

 

RTTV interview - West caught between a rock and a hard place re Libya

Here is an interview I did today for RRTV about the evolving war in Libya:

 

The spies and Libya - time to dust off their conscience

As I've mentioned before, the former heads of UK intelligence agencies have a charming habit of speaking out in support of the rule of law, civil liberties, proportionality and plain common sense - but usually only after they have retired. 

Perhaps at their leaving parties their consciences are extracted from the security safe, dusted off and given back  - along with the gold watch?

Even then, post-retirement, they might try to thrice-deny potentially world-changing information, as Sir Richard Dearlove did when questioned by the fearless and fearsomely bright Silkie Carlo about the leaked Downing Street Memo at his recent speech at the Cambridge Union.  (The links are in two parts, as the film had to be mirrored on Youtube - Dearlove claimed copyright on the orginal Love Police film and had it taken down.)

And "out of context", my left foot - he could potentially have saved millions of lives in the Middle East if he'd gone public with his considered professional opinion about the intelligence facts being fitted around a preconceived war policy in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Wouldn't it be lovely if these esteemed servants of the state, replete with respect, status and honours, could actually take a stand while they are still in a position to influence world events?

My former boss, Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, has been unusually vociferous since her retirement in 2007 and elevation to the peerage.  She used her maiden speech to the House of Lords to object to the proposed plans to increase police detention of terrorist suspects without charge from 28 to 42 days; she recently suggested that the "war on terror" is unwinnable and that we should, if possible, negotiate with "Al Qaeda" (well, it worked with the Provisional IRA); and that the "war on drugs" had been lost and the UK should treat recreational drug use as a health rather than a criminal issue. She steals all my best lines....

But credit where credit is due.  Despite the fact that she used the full power of the British state to pursue terrorist suspects up until 2007 and investigate drug barons in the 1990s, she did apparently try to make a stand while en poste in the run-up to the Iraq War.  Last year she gave evidence to the Chilcot Enquiry, stating that she had officially briefed the government that an invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat to the UK.

So it's obvious that once a UK Prime Minister has come over all Churchillian he tends to ignore the counsel of his chief spooks, as we've seen with both the Downing Street Memo the Chilcot Enquiry. 

With that in mind, I've read with interest the recent press reports that the UK authorities apparently knew about Colonel Gaddafi retaining stockpiles of mustard gas and sarin (despite the fact that the world was assured in 2004 that it was his renunciation of WMDs that allowed him back into the international diplomatic fold) . 

So the key question is surely: is this another erroneous "45 minutes from attack" moment, with Gaddafi's alleged stockpiles of WMD a perfect scaremongering pretext to push for a full-on regime change in Libya; or is this genuine, and we were all lied to about Gaddafi's destruction of his WMD stockpiles for economic advantage and fat, juicy oil contracts?

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article quoting the concern of "government insiders" about Gaddafi's potential future terrorism threat against the West, up to and including WMDs, should he cling on to power.  Well, yes, it would hardly be surprising if he were now to be as mad as a wasp with his ex-new best buddies.  Despite the sordid rapprochement in the last decade, he has been for much of his life an inveterate enemy of the West and sponsor of worldwide terrorism.

Rather than waiting for his "K" and his retirement, would it not be wonderful if the current head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, could extract his conscience from that dusty security safe and make a useful and informed statement to shed some light on the mess that the Libyan war is rapidly becoming?  He could potentially change the course of world history and save untold lives.

RTTV interview - dancing with the devil - how not to deal with "rogue" states

Here is an interview I did for RTTV on 3 March 2011 about the possibility of Western intervention in the unfolding Libyan crisis:

 

Interestingly, a radio recording of the Dutch "rescue" mission I mentioned has appeared on the internet.  It appears that the pilots were less than honest about their flight plans and intentions, saying that they were heading to their ship south of Malta rather than back towards Tripoli.... where they are eventually caught.

Also, do have a read of this excellent article by Seamus Milne of The Guardian about ramifications of possible Western intervention.

That said, it looks like this viewpoint is being ignored.  The Daily Mail reported today that MI6 officers and SAS soldiers are massing in the East of Libya to assist the rebels.  Well, at least they're doing it openly now, unlike the illegal and failed Gaddafi Plot of 1996.

Alleged Wikileaks source, Bradley Manning, faces the death penalty

Alleged Wikileaks source US Private Bradley Manning is now charged with "aiding the enemy", amongst a bewildering array of 22 new charges.  This is apparently a capital offence, although the US military has cosily said that they wouldn't push for this barbaric sentence. 

So just life without the hope of parole then.....

Putting aide the minor question of whether the USA should even be entitled to call itself a modern democracy when it still has the death penalty on its books, let's just remind ourselves of what Manning is alleged to have revealed: the "Collateral Murder" military shoot-up, where innocent children, civilians and journalists were gunned down by US forces in a particularly nasty snuff video game that was then deliberately covered up by the Pentagon for years; many other heinous war crimes and records of daily brutality in Afghanistan and Iraq; and an "embarrass de richesses" of diplomatic cables. 

I think "embarrass" is the key word here, on so many levels, and goes a long way to explaining the USA's desperation to destroy Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, by any means necessary.

But the phrase from the list of charges against the hapless Manning that leaps out at me is "aiding the enemy".  If - and it's still a big legal if - Manning was indeed the source of all this crucial information, whom was he actually aiding?

Information that has appeared on Wikileaks over the last few years has been eclectic, international and very much in the public interest.  It's covered such nasties as Trafigura, the BNP, Scientology, Climategate, Guantanamo, the Australian internet blacklist, Sarah Palin, and much more.

It's certainly not just restricted to the information that hit the headlines last year about the US hegemony.  However, there is no doubt that it was the release of the Afghan, Iraq and diplomatic files that stirred up this particularly unpleasant hornets' nest.

As global citizens I would suggest that we have every right to know what is done in our name. But, having said that, according to these new charges against poor Bradley Manning, the beneficiaries of Wikileaks - ie all of us -  have now become the enemy.

When did we, the people, the global citizenry, become the enemy?  It seems that our esteemed rulers are at last showing their true colours....

On that note, do have a look at this video of former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove, speaking recently at the Cambridge Union Society.  An interesting perspective on the British Establishment's line on Wikileaks and Julian Assange:

 

Coda: As you can see from the above, copyright laws were used to spare Dearlove's blushes once this video was publicised. He was also, at the time, the Chairman of the governing committee of the Cambridge Union. However, the film was mirrored:

 

Bleat: the assassination of dissidents

OK, so I'm not sure if my concept of Bleats (half blog, half tweet) is being grasped wholeheartedly.  But so what - it makes me laugh and the Black Sheep shall perservere with a short blog post.....

So I'm a bit puzzled here.  UK Prime Minister Dave Cameron is quoted in today's Daily Telegraph as saying that:

"It is not acceptable to have a situation where Colonel Gaddafi can be murdering his own people using aeroplanes and helicopter gunships and the like and we have to plan now to make sure if that happens we can do something to stop it."

But do his American best buddies share that, umm, humane view?  First of all they have the CIA assassination list which includes the names of US citizens (ie its own people); then those same "best buddies" may well resort to assassinating Wikileaks's Julian Assange, probably the most high profile dissident in international and diplomatic circles at the moment; plus they are already waging remote drone warfare on many hapless Middle Eastern countries - Yeman, Afghanistan, Pakistan.....

Oh, and now the UK government seems poised to launch covert spy drones into the skies of Britain.  Even the UK's most right-wing mainstream newspapers, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, expressed concern about this today.  Apparently these drones have yet to be weaponised.....

It's a slippery slope down to an Orwellian nightmare.

 

The Ghost of Daniel Ellsberg

This is an excellent article from a European technology strategist and futurist.  It succinctly sums up all that is wrong with the old media's coverage of the Wikileaks story over the last year, where people obsess about the technology, the website and the personal life of Julian Assange.

As the article says, we should be focusing on the core issues: illegal wars, war crimes, murder, torture, corporate and political corruption, and diplomatic duplicity.

Let's address the message, not attack the messenger, and certainly not the medium.

 

 

RTTV interview - in defence of Wikileaks

On 6 December I appeared on RTTV's CrossTalk discussion programme alongside whistleblowing UK ex-diplomat Carne Ross, to talk about the implications of Wikileaks:

 

 

Secrecy laws come out of the closet

Finally the true intentions behind the draconian British law, the Official Secrets Act, and similar espionage-related laws in other countries such as the USA, have been laid bare.  All is revealed - these laws apparently have nothing whatsoever to do with protecting national security and countering espionage - their primary purpose is to stifle dissent and legitimate criticism of the state.

How can I tell?  Well, look at the reaction to the ongoing Wikileaks revelations, as opposed to today's UK spy scandal involving the parliamentary assistant of a hitherto unremarkable MP. 

The now-notorious Wikileaks site has been going since 2007 and, in this brief time, has shone a bright light on such nasties as Trafigura, the BNP, Scientology, Climategate, Guantanamo, the Australian internet blacklist, Sarah Palin, and much more.

The site achieved world-wide notoriety this year with four big stories - starting with the harrowing film "Collateral Murder", which demonstrated clearly that the Pentagon had been lying to the distraught families of the victims of this video-game nasty for years. 

Since then Wikileaks has cleverly worked with selected media oulets such as The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel in Germany to give us the Afghan War logs and Iraq war files, which exposed endemic brutality, torture and war crimes (all in the name of spreading democracy, of course), and culminating over the last week with the ongoing Cablegate expose.

The response?  Well the majority of the old media, particularly those that didn't share in the juicy scoops, has been in attack mode: condemning whistleblowing; vilifying the character of Wikileaks spokesperson, Julian Assange; and gleefully reporting the widespread cyberspace crackdown (Amazon pulling the site, Paypal stopping contributions, the ongoing hack attacks). 

But this is just so much hot air - what about the real substance of the disclosures?  The violent horror, war crimes, and government lies?  Why is our so-called Fourth Estate not demanding a response to all this terrible evidence?

However, it is the reaction of the US political class that is most gob-smackingly shocking.  The half-wits call for Assange's prosecution under the US Espionage Act (even though he's an Australian); to have him executed, assassinated by drone attack, or unlawfully disappeared as an "unlawful combatant"; and make hysterical calls for Wikileaks to be placed on the US list of proscribed foreign terrorist organisations.  Daniel Ellsberg, the famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower, fears for Assange's life.

Well, you can always tell how effective a whistleblower is by the response you engender when telling truth to power, and this is a pretty striking vindication.

Of course, Julian Assange is not strictly speaking a whistleblower per se.  He is the next generation - a highly-capable, high-tech conduit, using his "hackivist" skills to out-pace and out-smart those who seek to conceal vital information.

As he said during a TED.com interview last summer, he strives to live by the ideal that to be a man is to be "capable and generous, not to create victims, but to nurture them...".  And this is indeed the protection Wikileaks offers, an avenue of secure disclosure for people of conscience on the inside, without their having to go public to establish the bona fides of what they are saying, with the resulting victimisation, loss of career, liberty, and possibly life.

Still, politicians seem unable to make the distinction - they are solely focused on loss of face, embarrassment, and shoring up the wall of secrecy that allows them to get away with lies, torture and war crimes.  I hope that common sense will prevail and Assange will not become another sacrificial victim on the altar of "national security".

So why did I say at the start that the secrecy laws have come out of the closet?  Well, in the wake of all this recent media and political hysteria about Wikileaks, this little espionage gem appeared in the UK media today.   Essentially, the UK Home Secretary is booting out an alleged Russian spy, Ms Katia Zatuliveter who, despite getting through security vetting (MI5, anyone?), was really an SVR agent  working as the Parliamentary assistant to Mike Hancock MP - a man who happens to have a special interest in Russia and who serves on the UK's Parliamentary Defence Select Committee.

Now, in the old days such alleged activity would mean an automatic arrest and probable prosecution for espionage under the Official Secrets Acts (1911 and 1989). If we go with what the old media has reported, this would seem to be a clear-cut case.  During the Cold War foreign spies working under diplomatic cover could be discreetly PNGed (the jargon for declaring a diplomat persona non grata).  However, this young woman was working in Parliament, therefore can have no such diplomatic cover.  But deportation and the avoidance of embarrassment seems to be the order of the day - as we saw also with the explusion of the Russian spy ring from the US last summer).

Which demonstrates with a startling clarity the real intentions behind the British OSA and the American Espionage Act.  The full force of these laws will automatically be brought to bear against those exposing crime in high and secret places, pour enourager les autres,  but will rarely be used against real spies. 

Proof positive, I would suggest, that these laws were drafted to prevent criticism, dissent and whistleblowing, as I've written before, but not meaningfully to protect our national security.  One can but hope that the Wikileaks debacle acts as the long-overdue final nail in the OSA coffin.

Would it not be wonderful if our "esteemed" legislators could learn from recent events, draw a collective deep breath, and finally get to grips with those who pose a real threat to our nations - the people who lie to take us into illegal wars, and intelligence officers involved in torture, assassination and espionage?