SHOCKING (BBC Radio): UK Minister admits spying on Annan - Katherine Gun released

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004 23:09:26 +0100, "Oelewapper"
wrote:

Why do you keep referring to the BBC Hutton saga: that story is no longer
relevant,

No, it is eminently relevant to a consideration of the contemporary
conflict between the government and the BBC.

since the original Gilligan report is now widely accepted to have
been correct and accurate,

Widely accepted by people who prefer to believe in accordance with
their prejudices.

Almost every claim

*Almost*.....

by Gilligan immediately turned out to be accurate, except

.....*except* for the one the government chose to challenge them over.

He made a lot of claims, most of which were not suported by the
available evidence. Reporting individual spook's gossip as gospel was
idiotic when the senior spook management were always going to line up
behind the government.

Isn't it odd that the govt. picked on a single 6.07am unscripted broadcast
containing an accurate and sincere, but 'insufficiantly substantiated'
(because 'single-sourced') claim -

No, it's not odd at all. The government picked on one of the few
things they knew any inquiry would vindicate them over, and the BBC
were stupid enough to accept a challenge on those grounds. You don't
like it? Tough. Meanwhile you're letting your annoyance at their
tactical awareness cloud your judgement. The larger issues about
going to war or not were never part of the Hutton remit.

On Iraq, Tony Blair hasn't only committed faul play, both domestically and
internationally; by bugging the U.N.'s Secretary General office he has just
also 'crash-tackled' the referee. It's high time for regime change in
Whitehall.

So exercise your vote after applying some objective judgement to the
situation. End of problem.

Gavin Bailey

"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...
I think that the US and UK both have tremendous reason to doubt both his
credibility and impartialty.

I disagree, but if that's what they think then they should come out and say
so. As it is it just looks like we're in the dirty tricks business.

As it is widely known now, a good deal of high-ranking UN officials were
taking massive kickbacks from Saddam via the corrupted 'Oil-For-Food'
program, and had absolutely no interest in seeing that come to an end.

As opposed to replacing it with a War for Oil program?

Si

"Simon Robbins" wrote in message
...
"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...
I think that the US and UK both have tremendous reason to doubt both his
credibility and impartialty.

I disagree, but if that's what they think then they should come out and
say
so. As it is it just looks like we're in the dirty tricks business.


I think they have pretty much done just that, in many, many ways.

If anyone over the last two years hasn't gotten the point that the US and
the UK don't trust the UN and it's officials, then they have either been
living under a rock or are hopelessly dense.

The UN is fast becoming an adversarial, if not an all-out enemy
organization. We have the absolute right and responsibility to spy on our
adversaries and enemies.

Hell, from time to time, it's prudent to even spy on friends. Such is the
nature of international relations.


As it is widely known now, a good deal of high-ranking UN officials were
taking massive kickbacks from Saddam via the corrupted 'Oil-For-Food'
program, and had absolutely no interest in seeing that come to an end.

As opposed to replacing it with a War for Oil program?

HA! Yes, of course. That is just soooo clever.

You people just can't seem to let go of that one, despite all the evidence
to the contrary. We haven't commandeered the Iraqi oil industry, we are
fixing it and giving it back to them in July. In fact, our oil prices have
gone up slightly.

But I guess 'war for oil' just has too much of a ring to it to let go of, no
matter how laughable it's become.

"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message ...
"Simon Robbins" wrote in message
...
"Brian Colwell" wrote in message
news:QTx%b.626023$ts4.537678@pd7tw3no...
It just amazes me how everyone seems to be surprised by these recent
events, every country is constantly carrying out security (spying)
operations on a continuous basis. The only thing different in this case,
was the leakage of information.

I find it very disturbing that someone employed in a highly sensitive
occupation would go public. The ramifications of this type of behavior
in
a
world that is vulnerable to terrorist attacks is, in my opinion,
criminal.

I don't find it shocking, just saddening. What possible justificatoin
could
there be under the grounds of national security for spying on the head of
the UN? Unless they doubt his impartiality or credibility, the only
reason
seems to be to help us load the decks in our favour during negotiations,
knowing what conversations he'd had with other council members or his own
private advisors. Maybe we should ask ourselves whether we'd be as happy
as
our governments seem to be at brushing it aside if for example it had been
Iraq, Syria, or even France or the Russians that had been caught at it? I
very much doubt it would be being treated so casually by Downing Street or
Washington if the culprits weren't members of our allied Axis of Angels.


I think that the US and UK both have tremendous reason to doubt both his
credibility and impartialty.

As it is widely known now, a good deal of high-ranking UN officials were
taking massive kickbacks from Saddam via the corrupted 'Oil-For-Food'
program, and had absolutely no interest in seeing that come to an end.

That's right, even China was getting a piece of the lucrative Iraqi
post-sanction redevelopment pie. Well, except US and UK, whos oil
companies were shut out by Saddam since 1990 (hence the two
invasions).

I think it is also widely known now, the false pretext of WMD was a
ploy for US and UK to get their oil companies back into the region
thru colonialism and imperialism, the same modus operandi since 1953
vis-à-vis Iran.

"charles liu" wrote in message
m...
"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...
"Simon Robbins" wrote in message
...
"Brian Colwell" wrote in message
news:QTx%b.626023$ts4.537678@pd7tw3no...
It just amazes me how everyone seems to be surprised by these
recent
events, every country is constantly carrying out security (spying)
operations on a continuous basis. The only thing different in this
case,
was the leakage of information.

I find it very disturbing that someone employed in a highly
sensitive
occupation would go public. The ramifications of this type of
behavior
in
a
world that is vulnerable to terrorist attacks is, in my opinion,
criminal.

I don't find it shocking, just saddening. What possible justificatoin
could
there be under the grounds of national security for spying on the head
of
the UN? Unless they doubt his impartiality or credibility, the only
reason
seems to be to help us load the decks in our favour during
negotiations,
knowing what conversations he'd had with other council members or his
own
private advisors. Maybe we should ask ourselves whether we'd be as
happy
as
our governments seem to be at brushing it aside if for example it had
been
Iraq, Syria, or even France or the Russians that had been caught at
it? I
very much doubt it would be being treated so casually by Downing
Street or
Washington if the culprits weren't members of our allied Axis of
Angels.


I think that the US and UK both have tremendous reason to doubt both his
credibility and impartialty.

As it is widely known now, a good deal of high-ranking UN officials were
taking massive kickbacks from Saddam via the corrupted 'Oil-For-Food'
program, and had absolutely no interest in seeing that come to an end.

That's right, even China was getting a piece of the lucrative Iraqi
post-sanction redevelopment pie. Well, except US and UK, whos oil
companies were shut out by Saddam since 1990 (hence the two
invasions).

Man, you people are really living on another planet. Don't you see how far
you have to go to stretch reality to make it fit your own political
worldview?

You say we have been looking to get our oil companies back into Iraq, "hence
the two invasions", although before the FIRST invasion our companies WERE
there. Our companies had to leave BECAUSE we invaded. If it were about oil,
we would have valued our relationship with Saddam and never invaded in the
first place. And if it were about simply taking over their oil fields, why
did we even leave in the first place? We controlled most of the country, and
taking Baghdad would have been easy at that point. But we pulled out after
Iraq left Kuwait. If it were really 'about oil' wouldn't we have stayed? It
just isn't logical, considering that after the first gulf war, we ended up
with LESS oil available than we started with.


I think it is also widely known now, the false pretext of WMD was a
ploy for US and UK to get their oil companies back into the region
thru colonialism and imperialism, the same modus operandi since 1953
vis-à-vis Iran.

Again, logic and reality seem to escape you. Our 'oil companies' have been
active in every country in the region except Iraq for the last 10 years.
Iraq has an archaic and low-yield oil production capability. We waged a war
costing over $100 Billion so far, and sure to cost more. We are fixing the
Iraqi infrastructure at our taxpayers expense, then turning it over to the
Iraqi government, at a cost not even determined yet. If we were really
looking to make some kind of a profit from all of this, it just is not going
to happen. Ever. It is just not possible. Will we then be able to purchase
oil from Iraq? Sure. Will it be at a relatively favorable rate? Probably.
Will it ever balace what we have spent or are going to spend? Nope. From a
business standpoint, it is simply a bad deal.

Now, if profit were truly the sole motivating factor in our relationship
with Iraq, it would have been FAR more cost effective to simply leave Saddam
in power, lift sanctions and renew diplomatic ties, thus allowing all of our
oil companies back in there, free to profit from Saddam's relative stability
as a brutal dictator. THAT would have been profitable. Reprehensable, but
profitable. Ironically, that is almost exactly what many of our 'allies' who
were against the invasion were doing. And that is why they didn't want the
invasion, because it would have cost them money.

So eliminating profit as a motivating factor in the invasion, what's left?
Hmmmm..... maybe it was about security after all.

But I'm sure you won't let logic and facts and reality get in your way. Your
ilk never have before, why start now?

"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...
If anyone over the last two years hasn't gotten the point that the US and
the UK don't trust the UN and it's officials, then they have either been
living under a rock or are hopelessly dense.

That's nonsense. What we don't trust the UN to do is buy into our slapdash
intelligence and extrapolated speculation to endorse a war. So we couldn't
convince a majority of members that there were WMDs and an immediate threat.
Well hey, they were right. I think it's more the other way around. On the
whole the UN is a respectable organisation, and it's members simply don't
trust us.

You people just can't seem to let go of that one, despite all the evidence
to the contrary. We haven't commandeered the Iraqi oil industry, we are
fixing it and giving it back to them in July. In fact, our oil prices have
gone up slightly.

But I guess 'war for oil' just has too much of a ring to it to let go of,
no
matter how laughable it's become.

It's not about comandeering the industry, but about ensuring it's kept in
friendly hands that are more willing to do business our way to our financial
advantage. I find it laughable that anybody discounts the oil angle, since
it's painfully obvious there was no military threat, and ordinarily we don't
give two hoots about human rights.

Si

"Simon Robbins" wrote in message
...

"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...
If anyone over the last two years hasn't gotten the point that the US
and
the UK don't trust the UN and it's officials, then they have either been
living under a rock or are hopelessly dense.

That's nonsense.

No, it's reality.

What we don't trust the UN to do is buy into our slapdash
intelligence and extrapolated speculation to endorse a war.

Actually, the UN depends wholly on our intelligence for nearly all of it's
major policy decisions.

So we couldn't
convince a majority of members that there were WMDs and an immediate
threat.
Well hey, they were right.

That's total bull****. NOBODY at the UN or anywhere else had said that
Saddam didn't have WMD's before the war. Everyone believed that he had them,
and everyone was wrong. Period. Hell, there's even evidence that Saddam
himself thought he had them.

The arguments being made at the UN against the war were that Saddam (and his
sons after him) could be 'contained' in perpetuity (by our military and at
our expense of course). We now know that most of those arguments were being
made by individuals and entities which were taking massive kickbacks to the
tune of several billion dollars per year by Saddam himself, through the
horrendously corrupted 'oil for food' program. So they had just a tiny bit
of a hidden agenda.


I think it's more the other way around. On the
whole the UN is a respectable organisation, and it's members simply don't
trust us.

Now that is truly laughable. The UN... which gives countries led by brutal
dictators the same voice as liberal democracies, is a respectable
organization? The UN, whose 'human rights' council is chaired by none other
than Lybia and Iran? Respectable? HA!

The fact that they 'don't trust us' is probably far more of a compliment
then a derision.


You people just can't seem to let go of that one, despite all the
evidence
to the contrary. We haven't commandeered the Iraqi oil industry, we are
fixing it and giving it back to them in July. In fact, our oil prices
have
gone up slightly.

But I guess 'war for oil' just has too much of a ring to it to let go
of,
no
matter how laughable it's become.

It's not about comandeering the industry, but about ensuring it's kept in
friendly hands that are more willing to do business our way to our
financial
advantage.

What's wrong with that? And if at the same time we can stem funding to
terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas (which Saddam openly funded), save
millions of people from a dictator, and possibly set up a working democracy
in the Middle East, why not? To me, that sounds like a major step towards
making the world a better and more secure place.

I find it laughable that anybody discounts the oil angle, since
it's painfully obvious there was no military threat, and ordinarily we
don't
give two hoots about human rights.

Yeah, sure. And the UN does? Quite frankly, the state of 'human rights' in
the world would be far better right now if the UN just didn't exist.


And for the record, bugging the UN has been going on since day one, by us
and pretty much everyone else in the world:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/ne...un-bugging.htm
"If the reaction at the United Nations is more subdued, it may reflect the
recognition that wiretapping at the United Nations is as old as the
institution itself.

"The U.N. has been monitored by bugging or surveillance from day one," said
Stephen C. Schlesinger, author of "Act of Creation: The Founding of the
United Nations," an account of the 1945 San Francisco conference that
created the body.

John E. Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a nonprofit security policy
group in Alexandria, Va., was even blunter. "You could say that there are
more spooks in that building than any other on the planet," he said.

"Everyone knows that there is a lot of spying and eavesdropping that goes on
at the U.N. and during the cold war, it was a hotbed of Soviet espionage,"

Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian ambassador, said his country was not a
participant. He added, "I think it is illegal, but this shows that the
British intelligence service at least technically are very professional." "

Evidence of recent bugging activity emerged Friday in BBC interviews with
former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and a former Iraq weapons
inspector, Richard Butler.

Mr. Boutros-Ghali said: "From the first day I entered my office, they told
me, `Beware, your office is bugged, your residence is bugged.' It is the
tradition that member states that have the technical capacity to bug will do
it without hesitation."

Mr. Butler said, "There was abundant evidence that we were being constantly
monitored." He said that if he had something sensitive to discuss, "I had to
go to the basement cafe in the U.N. where there was heaps of noise or I'd go
and take a walk in Central Park."

According to Mr. Schlesinger, there were three intelligence agencies at work
in San Francisco in 1945. "The Army Signal Corps was intercepting all the
cable traffic among the diplomats, so we knew in advance the negotiating
strategies of practically all the 46 countries coming to San Francisco," he
said. "Second was the F.B.I., which was tapping the phones of many of the
American visitors and observers at the conference, and there was some belief
that they were also tapping the calls of the members of the U.S. delegation
itself. "

"Thomas J. Paladino Jr." wrote in message
...

That's total bull****. NOBODY at the UN or anywhere else had said that
Saddam didn't have WMD's before the war. Everyone believed that he had
them,
and everyone was wrong. Period.

We now know that at least the British intelligence services never really
believed that Saddam in 2002-2003 had any operational WMD... Dossiers like
the "September Dossier" or the "Dodgy Dossier" and General Powell's
"Presentation to the UN Security Council" were largely forged and
manipulated propaganda stunts. We know indeed that the French President,
who was promoting the continuation of the peaceful disarmement and
containment which had worked until the US invasion, had said that "There was
an inspections regime which destroyed more weapons in Iraq than were
destroyed throughout the Gulf War and which, in particular, resulted in the
complete, almost complete eradication in all likelihood - at any rate
according to what the inspectors say - of Iraq's nuclear programme... There
are some [weapons] certainly. Missiles with a longer than permitted range
are being destroyed. There are probably other weapons."
(http://www.elysee.fr/ang/actus/iraq/march10.htm and
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe...rac/index.html),
but Germany's foreign minister let it be known that (""My generation learned
you must make a case, and excuse me, I am not convinced. That is my problem,
I cannot go to the public and say, 'these are the reasons', because I don't
believe in them." (Joschka Fischer speaking to Donald Rumsfeld at the Munich
Sicherheitskonferenz, 08 February 2003). And for sure Syria, which was also
on the UN Security Council, did not buy into the story. Not to mention
Richard Butler, Scott Ritter, David Kelly and other former UN weapons
inspectors...


Now here is what happened:

.. After the second Gulf War in 1991, the UN ordered Iraq to disarm and to
allow inspectors in to oversee this process. ("the inspections regime")
.. In 1998 the Iraqi government threw the inspectors out, in protest against
the illegal no-fly zones that were imposed by the US and the UK over Iraqi
territory, and in protest against the presence of secret agents and other
intelligence officers that were members of the so-called 'independent' UN
inspection teams - both claims we now know, were absolutely justified.
.. After letting the inspectors back in, Iraq kept on protesting against,
disobeying or ignoring some of the (minor) instructions and requests of the
UN inspectors. However: most of the demands, such as disarmement and
dismantlement of the WMD, were met, which is why both Blix and El Barradei
at the beginning of 2003 could not point to any existence of WMD or WMD
programs. At the same time however, they could not be 100% sure that all
the weapons and weapons programs had been destroyed, given the lack of time
originally given to them by the UNSC, which is exactly why they asked for
more time. Saddam did not kick Blix and his team of UN inspectors out of
the country: the US forced them to leave on the eve of the illegal (no
second resolution, remember?) invasion - so in fact Bush and Blair made the
inspectors leave the country, despite Bush's repeated claims to the
contrary. In the meantime, Iraq kept on disarming as it continued to
undergo the illegal no-fly bombings of both its military and civilian
infrastructure.
.. Launching an un-UN-sanctioned war hence caused serious international and
domestic legal problems, especially for Tony Blair and his defence secretary
Geoff Hoon. We now know that Blair never bothered (or dared?) to inform
about the real nature of Saddam's WMD, depsite personally writing the
foreword to some of the dossiers that were presented to Parliament and to
the UK public opinion. (on this issue, once again I refer to GEOFF HOON's,
Britain's Defence Minister, interview with BBC Radio on 5 February 2004:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/audio/geoffhoon.ram and the ensuing
clarification and exposure of the lies:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/li...n_20040205.ram ).

We know now that the information that was provided to us by both the UK and
US governments was false. The intelligence that was provided to those same
governments - but not to us - however wasn't: most analysts agreed that
their was no imminent threat, that there were almost certainly no deployable
WMD and that there were no operational ballistic or other strategic weapons
to effectively deliver any such WMD. At the same time, the IntelS could not
tell for sure what happened to the original 1991 stocks of WMD (which by
2003 would have expired anyway), while they weren't 100% sure about the
status of Iraq's "WMD programs".

In other words, there was no imminent threat and there were no WMD - which
is why Chirac told the international press that France would not back a
further UNSC resolution until any such imminent WMD threat was reported on
by the UN inspectors or until it was clear that Saddam would not allow the
UN inspectors to do their work (disarming the country). Chirac never said
that he would "NEVER" back a second UN resolution, which it appears to be
was Tony Blairs (flawed) ratio decidendi in his casus belli...


Of course everyone knew that Saddam was a dangerous man, with the apparent
ambition to develop WMD programs - which is why the 15 member countries of
the UNSC voted Resolution 1441. That is not to say however, as you put it,
that "NOBODY at the UN or anywhere else had said that Saddam didn't have
WMD's before the war" or that "everyone believed that he had them,and
everyone was wrong"...

And even if that were the case, which it was clearly not, then this
pre-emptive war is still illegal. Iraq could have been disarmed and
monitored with other, peaceful means. Despite all the bugging and
diplomatic pressure, there simply (still) is no second UN resolution to
approve the invision.

No WMD have been found, precisely as was predicted by the (UK's)
intelligence services.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Intelligence chief's bombshell: 'We were overruled on dossier'
The Independent, London - 04 February 2004
"The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the Hutton inquiry has
suggested that not a single defence intelligence expert backed Tony Blair's
most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/pol...p?story=487557

---

We were overruled, says former intelligence chief, and the result was a
dossier that was misleading about Iraqi WMD
Brian Jones: 'There was a lack of substantive evidence... We were told there
was intelligence we could not see'

In his statement to the Commons on the Hutton report last week, Tony Blair
declared that "we can have a debate about the war, about WMD and about
intelligence". Yesterday, he made clear an independent investigation would
finally go ahead.

In the Commons and in his evidence to MPs yesterday, the Prime Minister
referred to my own concerns about the Government's assessment of the Iraqi
threat. Now that the Hutton report has been published, I feel able to speak
on what is in the public domain and on the issues that I believe should be
examined by any investigation into "intelligence failure".

It is clear from the evidence to the Hutton inquiry that the experts of the
Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who dealt with chemical and biological
warfare, including those working directly with me, had problems with some
aspects of what was being said in various drafts of the dossier that was
published on 24 September 2002.

The problem was that the best available current evidence that Saddam
actually had chemical and biological weapons (CW and BW) was the inference
that this must be so from the claim of an apparently unproven original
source that such weapons could be "deployed" within 45 minutes. Although the
information was relayed through a reliable second source, there was no
indication the original or primary source had established a track record of
reliability. Furthermore, the information reported by the source was vague
in all aspects except, possibly, for the range of times quoted.

I believe the DIS experts who worked for and with me were the foremost group
of analysts in the West on nuclear, biological and chemical warfare
intelligence. It is their job to consider all other related evidence. What
was missing was, for example, strong evidence of the continuing existence of
weapons and agents and substantive evidence on production or storage.

There was no indication that the Iraqi military had practiced the use of CW
or BW weapons for more than a decade. But it was known that Iraq had
previously possessed CW and BW capabilities and used chemical weapons.
Further, Saddam had failed to satisfy the UN that the capability had been
eliminated.

On balance the DIS experts felt it should be recorded that a CW or BW
capability at some level was a probability, but argued against its statement
in stronger terms. Despite pointing this out in comments on several drafts,
the stronger statements did eventually appear in the executive summary, the
part of the dossier "owned" by the chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee.

Without such a strong summary, the translation of a probability into a
certainty that occurred in the foreword drafted by Alastair Campbell, the
Prime Minister's former director of communications, would have been more
noticeable.

My recollection is that the disagreement of the experts in the DIS was not
so much resolved as finessed. My belief is that right up to the publication
of the dossier there was a unified view amongst not only my own staff but
all the DIS experts that on the basis of the intelligence available to them
the assessment that Iraq possessed a CW or BW capability should be carefully
caveated.

But we were told there was other intelligence that we, the experts, could
not see, and that it removed the reservations we were expressing. It was so
sensitive it could not be shown to us. It was held within a tight virtual
"compartment", available only to a few selected people.

The two DIS representatives on the dossier-drafting group were told at the
last drafting meeting on 17 September that the compartmented intelligence
would be shown by the SIS (MI6) to only the two most senior members of the
DIS, the Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI) and his deputy (DCDI).

At a subsequent DIS meeting on that day, the DCDI ruled that he was
satisfied by the SIS reassurance and that no further objections on the
contentious issues should be raised with the Cabinet Office Assessment
Staff. It transpired from evidence to the Hutton inquiry that the clinching
intelligence was never seen by the DCDI.

By the time I returned from leave on 18 September to a very disgruntled team
the deadline for production of the dossier was fast approaching. I examined
the relevant reports and discussed them with my experts and decided they
were right to be concerned.

My experience of the intelligence process made me suspicious of what was
happening. I was not reassured when my boss said he had been assured by a
representative of the SIS that the new sensitive material was reliable and
negated our concerns. My boss was brand new to the intelligence business,
unfamiliar with the assessment process and not in the compartment.

I considered who might have seen this ultra-sensitive intelligence and
reached the conclusion that it was extremely doubtful that anyone with a
high degree of CW and BW intelligence expertise was among the exclusive
group.

It was becoming clear that it was very unlikely we could achieve the balance
we desired in the dossier and it was important to register our misgivings
formally.

Earlier in my intelligence career, I and others in my branch had not taken
similar precautions and suffered for it. We believed that no large
stockpiles of chemical weapons, such as those present in 1990/91, existed
because if they did they would probably have been detected by intelligence.
The smaller quantities of chemical weapons that might exist would be hard to
find, as would small but significant amounts of BW agents and delivery
systems.

I foresaw that after the likely invasion and defeat of Iraq, it was quite
possible that no WMD would be found. If this happened scapegoats would be
sought, so I decided that we should record our concerns about the dossier in
order to protect our reputation. But this is a big step to take and I wanted
to be as sure of my ground as possible.

The UK intelligence community is not large and you can usually find your way
to someone "in the know." They need not stray beyond the limits of what they
are allowed to reveal, but they can still be of assistance. I eventually
found someone who was in the relevant compartment. Information was not
volunteered and I did not ask about the detailed content of these reports. I
explained the reservations that we had about the draft dossier and asked
whether the compartmented intelligence resolved any of these concerns. I was
advised they did not.

A draft of the dossier arrived on the 19 September. We were told this was
the "final" version for proof-reading and no substantive comment would be
considered. In any case the DCDI had ruled that no further objections should
be made.

I arranged the short meeting with David Kelly and others that I have
described in testimony to Lord Hutton to satisfy myself that the basis of Dr
Kelly's view that the dossier was "good" did not contradict our own
position. By the end of the day I was confident of my ground and I sent a
memorandum to my director and copied it to the DCDI, who, as a member of the
JIC, could still intervene if he chose to do so.

Once my initial memo was in, my deputy, who was also the CW expert in my
branch, was able to contribute a more detailed and direct explanation of our
concerns in the light of yet another "final" draft that had appeared.

Neither memo produced a direct response. We could only suppose that the
compartmented intelligence seen by the CDI was clear and unambiguous for him
to disregard, without discussion, the recorded views of two senior analysts
who, although only of middle rank were, like the late Dr Kelly, the UK's
foremost experts in their field.

During the course of their own inquiry, the Intelligence and Security
Committee was given sight of the relevant intelligence and, despite the fact
that they are not expert intelligence analysts, they reported rather
enigmatically that they could "understand the basis on which the CDI and the
JIC took the view they did".

But with all that has and has not happened since, I believe the advice I
received in September 2002 about the compartmented intelligence was valid.
Now that it is being so widely suggested that Britain went to war on the
back of an "intelligence failure", it is important that the nature of that
failure is understood. An intelligence failure can be the result of many
things. The absence of significant "raw" intelligence would be a collection
failure. There was a self-inflicted dearth of information on Iraq following
the withdrawal of Unscom inspectors before Operation Desert Fox in 1998 and
an additional degree of uncertainty once their constraining influence was
lost.

A failure can result if the significance of a piece of "raw" intelligence is
not recognised, or its analysis is flawed, or its context misunderstood.
This would be an assessment failure. The failure of policy-makers to accept
or act on information can also be called an intelligence failure because of
the inadequacy of its presentation by the intelligence community.

Whether or not there was a failure of intelligence assessment should be
judged, not on the dossier, but on relevant JIC papers. Similarly, whether
or not there was a failure in intelligence collection should be judged on
the reports the collectors issued. Arguably, the dossier revealed more about
the top end of the process and the fashioning of a product that has hitherto
been alien to the UK intelligence community.

In my view the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS were overruled in the
preparation of the dossier in September 2002 resulting in a presentation
that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities.

It would be a travesty if the reputation of the DIS and its dedicated people
was besmirched and the organisation as a whole undermined. The DIS includes
the only significant body of dedicated professional intelligence analysts in
the UK intelligence community and they are a much under-valued and
under-resourced national asset. It is the intelligence community leadership
at the level of the membership of the JIC and the upper echelons of the
DIS - those who had access to and may have misinterpreted the compartmented
intelligence - that had the final say on the assessment presented in the
dossier.

Lord Hutton describes the JIC as, "the most senior body in the Intelligence
Services charged with the assessment of intelligence". But this is
misleading.

The members of the JIC are mostly extremely busy officials. Some are
effectively the chief executives of large organisations with large budgets
and all that goes with that responsibility. Others have a wide range of
other responsibilities. All will have a limited time to study personally
intelligence reports and the related archives in detail. Most will have had
quite limited experience of analysing intelligence.

From my perspective the JIC's function is to oversee the assessment of
intelligence and question and challenge the experienced and dedicated
analysts and intelligence collectors on issues where they, the JIC, might
understand the broader relevance and significance of a particular
assessment. When they take it upon themselves to overrule experienced
experts they should be very sure of their ground, and if a decision to do so
is based on additional sensitive intelligence unknown to the experts, it
must be incontrovertible.

Events have shown that we in the DIS were right to urge caution. I suggest
that now might be a good time to open the box and release from its
compartment the intelligence that played such a significant part in
formulating a key part of the dossier.

I recognise this could possibly be one of a few exceptional circumstances
that means the content of the compartmented intelligence remains sensitive
even after the fall of Saddam. If this is the case it should be clearly
stated. Otherwise the simple act of opening this box and explaining who had
the right to look into it before the war could increase the transparency and
hasten the progress of the new inquiry.

Dr Brian Jones was formerly head of the branch within the Scientific and
Technical Directorate of Defence Intelligence Staff that was responsible for
the analysis of intelligence from all sources on nuclear, biological and
chemical warfare. He retired in January 2003


The Independent, London - 04 February 2004

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Here is an article by Richard Tomlinson, another 'intelligence whistle
blower', who was also jailed after trying to release a book on his work at
MI6:

Who was that at the shredder?
The joint intelligence committee chairman, John Scarlett, was well-placed to
cherry-pick intelligence

Richard Tomlinson
The Guardian, Monday February 9, 2004

The Butler inquiry will irritate the secret intelligence service, the
Foreign Office and the defence intelligence service, none of which will
welcome such unprecedented delving into their procedures and integrity. But
I am confident that Lord Butler's report will exonerate all three principal
players in the intelligence bureaucracy. John Scarlett, the joint
intelligence committee chairman, may, however, be sleeping less easily.
I worked in SIS's operational counter-proliferation department from 1993
until 1995. My principal targets were Iran and Libya, and my objectives were
to penetrate, disrupt and gather intelligence on the operations by those two
countries to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. I did not work
directly on operations against Iraq, but I shared an office with those who
did and was privy to SIS operations against Iraq, and the intelligence we
were gaining from them.

I will not divulge details of the operations that we undertook. But I will
make two observations. First, I was struck by how poorly sighted we were in
the mid-90s on the countries in our sights. We had few well-placed and
reliable sources in Iraq, Libya or Iran. Second, the balance of our
intelligence suggested that Iraq was in disarray after the first Gulf war
and the imposition of UN sanctions, and did not have active programmes to
develop biological and nuclear weapons.

Iraq could have changed course radically after I left SIS, but this is
unlikely. In the mid-90s, there were not only no significant stocks of WMD,
there was no volition to replace them. My conviction is that the balance of
SIS's intelligence prior to the invasion last year indicated that Iraq did
not have strategically significant WMD - just as Hans Blix argued before the
invasion and David Kay has confirmed in the aftermath.

So how can it be that the picture presented by the prime minister to
parliament and to the British public was so radically different? The only
plausible explanation is that intelligence was "cherry-picked" and that spin
further exaggerated the threat.

It would be illegal for Iraq to possess any form of nuclear, biological or
chemical weapons, and the belated discovery of even a trace of activity
would let the prime minister off the hook on a technicality. But the war
could only be justified if we find evidence of strategically significant
WMD.

This would require that Iraq had developed a deployable nuclear warhead -
but we know it did not have the technology to do this. Chemical weapons were
within Iraq's capability, and we may yet find small stocks in Iraq. But
chemical weapons are tactical battlefield weapons - and poor ones at that.
Illegal, yes. Nasty, yes. But WMD? No.

SIS intelligence never provides exact judgments. Rather, it passes its
various reports, along with an assessment of the motivation, access and
reliability of each source, to the analysts in the DIS and FCO, who would
judge the overall picture.

If intelligence reports from reliable, well-placed sources saying that Iraq
had no strategically important biological or nuclear weapons were slipped
into the shredder, while reports from unreliable, financially motivated
sources saying that Iraq still had a few shells loaded with mustard gas were
slipped into the dossier, then it would be possible on a technicality for
the prime minister to stand up before parliament and honestly say that he
had intelligence that Iraq possessed WMD.

But who was busy with the shredder? It is inconceivable that SIS itself
would have cherry-picked its intelligence. Supplying false intelligence is a
"hanging crime" in the SIS, and there is a very strong corporate culture
against it. Manipulating intelligence does occasionally happen in SIS, but
it is impossible to imagine how it could be systematic enough to mislead
government.

For similar reasons, I am sure that the principal customers of
intelligence - the DIS and the FCO - would never have distorted their
analysis of the raw intelligence. Dr Brian Jones has convincingly defended
the DIS and I think the Butler inquiry will concur.

So who does that leave? The finger of suspicion points to the JIC, and in
particular to one man, its chairman, John Scarlett. Scarlett was the first
JIC chairman from the "production" side of the intelligence apparatus. This
put the cart before the horse: the JIC chairman was too close to SIS, and
this may have led to a bypassing of the tried-and-trusted methods by which
intelligence is impartially analysed. Normally, the JIC chairman would never
see dubious or minor intelligence reports. But given the close working
relationship between Scarlett and the SIS chief, Sir Richard Dearlove, and
Scarlett's knowledge of the workings of SIS, he could have had an unusually
intimate knowledge of the raw intelligence. He certainly could have
cherry-picked intelligence.

But why would he have done so? Dearlove is due to retire in August, and
Scarlett undoubtedly had his eye on the job. Scarlett's relationship with
Alastair Campbell is "matey", and the influence that Campbell held with the
prime minister is well documented. Here is a potential mechanism worthy of
investigation by the Butler inquiry, by which the prime minister's desire to
find intelligence to support a war has subverted the usual safeguards built
into the Whitehall system.

As a result, more than 50 British soldiers, 500 other coalition soldiers and
15,000 Iraqis are dead, and all three counts are still rising. We deserve
some credible answers.

· Richard Tomlinson worked for MI6 from 1991 to 1995. He was jailed under
the Official Secrets Act for attempting to publish his memoirs

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

'Blair could go to prison' - Katharine Gun case aftermath

The debate on the legality of the Iraq war has been reignited

Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian

Observer
Editorial, February 29
"The dramatic collapse of the case brought under the Official Secrets Act
against Katharine Gun, the GCHQ translator, raises concerns ... A trial,
though personally harrowing, would have flushed out more crucial detail
about the circumstances surrounding the Iraq war. In order to press home the
'necessity' case, Mrs Gun's lawyers would have forced the government to
release [the attorney general] Lord Goldsmith's advice to the prime minister
about the legality of the Iraq war in the absence of a second, supportive UN
resolution.
"We now know, following a statement last week from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the
former deputy legal adviser at the foreign office who resigned on the eve of
war, that the legal team believed that the war was illegal. Her statement
adds weight to the growing evidence that the government may have been
advised that it was launching an illegal war and that the attorney general
was reluctant to continue with the prosecution of Mrs Gun because a trial
would have revealed evidence of this advice."

Sunday Times
Editorial, February 29
"The dropping of charges ... against Mrs Gun ... has, partly thanks to Clare
Short, opened up a new front against the prime minister. The former
international development secretary [alleged] the attorney general, Lord
Goldsmith, was manipulated or 'leant upon' to produce an opinion justifying
the legality of the war ...
"Tony Blair was in good company in getting it wrong over weapons of mass
destruction. He made a more serious misjudgment in believing until the 11th
hour there would be a second UN resolution authorising war. With that,
questions about the war's legality would have evaporated. Without it, the
mood in Whitehall was something like panic, a scramble to provide legal
justification for joining the United States in invading Iraq ...
"[Mr Blair's] weakness is that he tries to be all things to all men. The war
was one of the tough choices he keeps telling us about. One day he will have
to tell his critics, particularly in his own party, to stop carping and
accept that reality."

Peter Carter
Independent on Sunday, February 29
"The justification - and the only justification - relied upon was the
persistent breach of UN security council resolutions on disarmament ... Iraq
made life difficult for [the] inspectors so that various other security
council resolutions followed, ending in resolution 1441, adopted on November
8 2002. This gave Iraq what it termed a 'final opportunity to comply with
its disarmament obligations' and threatened 'serious consequences' should it
fail to do so. As a justification for war, the US and the UK argued that
Iraq was in breach of resolution 1441 ... [which] concluded by saying that
the security council is to 'remain seized of this matter' ...
"In international law, states are not allowed to be vigilantes claiming to
act on behalf of the security council. Such claims are spurious. The result
is that any acts taken without security council authorisation are unlawful,
unless justified as self-defence ... The invasion was unlawful."
· Peter Carter QC is chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and
Wales

Sunday Telegraph
Editorial, February 29
"The most striking thing about this debate is its pointlessness. The
'legality' or otherwise of the war is a non-subject, for the simple reason
that there is no binding body of inter-national law which compels obedience,
either in morality or in fact, from the sovereign nations of the globe ...
"'International law', in so far as it ventures beyond the law of the sea, is
almost entirely bogus. The 'principles of international law', allegedly held
in such reverence by their advocates, have never been mandated by the
peoples of the nations to whom they are meant to apply ...
"The point ... is that the whole issue of 'international legality' is a
gigantic irrelevance. The only thing that counts in a democracy ... is
whether the people who elected the government support the war which their
government has declared. If a solid majority of the British people can be
persuaded that the Iraq war was right and just, then Mr Blair's problems
with it will be at an end. If they cannot be so persuaded, he will pay a
price at the next general election."

John Laughland
Mail on Sunday, February 29
"If it turns out that the Iraq war was illegal, then Mr Blair could go to
prison. In 2000, the United Kingdom ratified the Rome Treaty which created
the international criminal court. In the run-up to the conflict, therefore,
the government was well aware that an illegal war could spark a prosecution
against senior ministers ... The case against the British government over
Iraq is strong ... There was no United Nations authorisation for the
attack - whatever Mr Blair and Geoff Hoon [the defence secretary] try to
claim now, resolution 1441 was not a mandate for war - and there was no
claim that a war was necessary to combat an alleged humanitarian crisis, as
in Kosovo ...
"Opponents of the war would take pleasure in seeing Mr Blair walk into a
trap of his own making ... If our attorney general failed to act, some would
be delighted at the thought of foreign judges indicting Mr Blair. But that
would be a terrible day for British democracy."

"Simon Robbins" wrote in message
...
It's not about comandeering the industry, but about ensuring it's kept in
friendly hands that are more willing to do business our way to our
financial
advantage. I find it laughable that anybody discounts the oil angle,
since
it's painfully obvious there was no military threat, and ordinarily we
don't
give two hoots about human rights.


So sad that it's true.
Jim D

Si