Here
is Craig Murray’s response to yesterday’s news
By
Craig Murray
The government has attempted to control the narrative by finally admitting, as they have known for three weeks and just ahead of the OPCW experts coming out and saying so, that there is no evidence the substance used in the Salisbury attack was made in Russia.
The government has attempted to control the narrative by finally admitting, as they have known for three weeks and just ahead of the OPCW experts coming out and saying so, that there is no evidence the substance used in the Salisbury attack was made in Russia.
You
can see the interview with the Chief Executive Officer of Porton Down
only in this tweet from Sky here:
#Salisbury attack: Scientists have not been able to prove that Russia made the nerve agent used in the spy poisoning. Porton Down lab's chief exec reveals the details in this interview
If
anyone can make a copy and send me, or make a safe permanent posting
I can link to, I should be grateful (contact button top right). Only
a very short clip is on Sky’s website and I am anxious to preserve
it for reasons I shall explain.
In
modern Tory Britain, it should be no surprise to anybody that, to be
the Chief Executive of Britain’s chemical weapons establishment,
they recruited a radio salesman:
Aitkenhead’s
PR skills were clearly thought sufficient to get across the
government’s key propaganda points, and his struggle to do this
throughout the Sky interview is telling. Aitkenhead has been in an
extremely difficult position for the past three weeks, standing
between his scientists who are adamant they will not say the
substance was made in Russia, and the government who have been
pushing extremely hard for them to do so.
At
5 mins 30 sec into this interview Boris Johnson directly lies about
what Porton Down had told him:
It is very plain that what Aitkenhead is saying to Sky is “the scientists cannot establish it is from Russia. But the government claims to have intelligence sources that show that it is.” His struggle to fit the formulations he has been given to parrot this sense as more effective propaganda, into answers to the pretty good questions he is being asked, is almost comic: “ummm” and “errr” come into it a lot. You have to remember that the precise forms of words to be used in official parlance had been the subject of tense negotiation between the scientists and the Porton Down bureaucrats, and then between the Porton Down bureaucrats and MOD Whitehall officials, and then between MOD officials and FCO and security service officials in the Joint Intelligence Committee, before being signed off by ministers. It is a process I know intimately from the inside. This reconciliation of conflicting interests is why at the start Aitkenhead says it is “Novichok” confidently, but at 1 min 30 sec in he says the more truthful “Novichok or from that family”, which accords with the evidence Porton Down gave to the High Court.
But
the key moment comes at 3 min 27 secs in. Aitkenhead’s government
minders were evidently unhappy with the interview, and the last
passage is a statement, not in answer to any question, of the
government’s propaganda position which is a very bad edit and
clearly tacked on after the interview had finished. They get the
continuity wrong – it is not only a wider shot, the camera and
tripod have clearly been moved. It is in this final statement that,
in a desperate last minute attempt to implicate Russia, Aitkenhead
states that making this nerve agent required:
“extremely
sophisticated methods to create , something probably only within the
capabilities of a state actor.”
Very
strangely, Sky News only give the briefest clip of the interview
on this
article on their website reporting it. And the report is
highly tendentious: for example it states:
However,
he confirmed the substance required “extremely sophisticated
methods to create, something only in the capabilities of a state
actor”.
Deleting
the “probably” is a piece of utterly tendentious journalism by
Sky’s Paul Kelso.
Interestingly,
I have never seen such large scale and coordinated social media
activity by the Tories as kicked into action immediately following
Aitkenhead’s interview. Hundreds of openly identified Tory
activists sprang into action using the “state actor” line –
omitting the probably – and “government has other sources”
line. The BBC contribution was completely to ignore the Porton Down
statement and pretend nothing had happened. As part of what was
clearly a coordinated PR strategy to pre-empt the OPCW and get over
the hurdle of government lies while still blaming Russia, Boris
Johnson and Theresa May simply lay low, unavailable to the media.
I
shall post shortly a considered assessment of the wider analysis of
what could have happened in Salibury. Here is my immediate
reaction to Aitkenhead’s statement on Russia Today.
Strangely the BBC did not invite me.
EDITOR’S
NOTE: Here is Craig Murray’s interview last night on live TV where
her reiterates a crucial point: “Sources in Foreign and
Commonwealth Office told me 2 weeks ago that Porton Down were unable
to say it was Russia but were under pressure by Conservatives to say
it was” says Craig Murray as scientists have been unable to prove
Russia made the nerve agent A-234 used to poison the Skripals.”
Watch:
Author Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. This article originally appreared at Craig Murray’s blog.
P.S. I found this You Tube version of the Sky News interview
The
Poison in our Body Politic
4
April, 2018
As
Porton Down now confirm, here is a straightforward lie from the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a lie that British diplomats around
the world have been promoting to foreign governments.
The
key point is that the FCO knew it was lying. This was published six
days after I
was told by an FCO source, and published,
that Porton Down scientists were refusing to say the substance came
from Russia. The FCO knew this.
I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. 16 March 2018
There
has to be some kind of redress for this. If we accept that we live in
a society where the public bodies that are supposed to serve us, can
lie to us and to the world in order specifically to heat up a cold
war, then the future is bleak. This is a direct consequence of the
lack of suitable punishment for those involved in the crime of
creating lies to wage aggressive war on Iraq, particularly Tony
Blair, Richard Dearlove and John Scarlett. As they are not in jail,
Boris is confident he will not be either.
We
have learned nothing from the Iraq War experience, and what is most
disheartening is that officials within the FCO and security services
still do not see it as their job to prevent lies rather than to
propagate them when asked by a Minister.
Here
is a screenshot of a FCO video showing Laurie Bristow, British
Ambassador to Russia, in Moscow telling outright lies to gathered
diplomats at a briefing there. The subtitle is accurate.
I
have long held the opinion that Bristow is a deeply repulsive
individual with no morals or scruples. When I was sacked as British
Ambassador to Tashkent for criticising Uzbekistan’s human rights
record and objecting to MI6 use of intelligence from the Uzbek
torture chambers, Bristow
went to Tashkent after
my removal to assure the Uzbeks that the UK had no interest in human
rights and wished to continue “intelligence cooperation”. That
somebody like Bristow can become one of Britain’s most senior
Ambassadors says all you need to know about the United Kingdom
today.
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