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"It's The Cover-Up" - UK Foreign Office Deletes Tweet, Posts False Transcript, Issues New Lies
4
April, 2018
When a scandal breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more reprehensible than the original deeds.
The
British government is trying to cover-up the lies it made with its
false allegations against Russia. The cover-up necessitates new lies
some of which we expose below.
Yesterday
the head of the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton
Down stated that
the laboratory can not establish that the poison used in the alleged
'Novichok' attack in Salisbury was produced by Russia. This was a
severe blow to the British government allegations of Russian
involvement in the poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal.
Now
the British government tries to hide that it said that the poison
used in the Salisbury was 'produced in Russia' and that Porton down
had proved that to be the case. The government aligned media are
helping to
stuff the government lies down the memory hole.
We
all need to make sure that the new lies get exposed and that the
attempts to change the record fail.
Yesterday
the British Foreign Office deleted this from its Twitter account:
The
March 22 tweet was part of a now interrupted thread which
summarized a briefing on the UK government's response to the
Salisbury incident given by the British Ambassador to Russia, Dr
Laurie Bristow, to the international diplomatic community in Moscow.
After
the silent scrubbing of the record was publicly questioned the
Foreign Office admitted that
it deleted the tweet:
After it emerged on Wednesday that the tweet had been deleted, the Foreign Office said the post was removed because it "did not accurately report" the words of Laurie Bristow, the UK's ambassador to Russia, which the tweet was supposed to be quoting.
Hmm
- fool me once ...
All
the tweets in
the thread used quotation marks, but none was a literal reproduction
of the ambassador's briefing. Only one of the tweets was deleted.
A look at the transcript and video of the briefing shows that all
the tweets,
including the deleted one, "accurately reported" the
speech. The cover-up of the false statement the ambassador made thus
includes at least one new lie.
The
original tweet said "Analysis by world-leading experts at the
Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton
Down made clear that this
was a
military-grade Novichok nerve
agent produced
in Russia.
.."
The
transcript of the briefing in Moscow - "exactly as it was
delivered" - is
(still) available at
the Foreign Office website.
The
ambassador, reading from a prepared script, recapitulates the event
and, according to the posted transcript, then says:
Four days later the analysts at Porton Down, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in the UK, established and made clear that this was a military-grade chemical weapon. One of the Novichok series; a nerve agent as I said produced in Russia. Porton Down is an Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons accredited and designated laboratory.
..
First, there is no doubt that the weapon used in the attack was the military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok series. This has been confirmed by specialists, our specialists. An Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission is in the UK now to independently confirm this analysis.
There is also no doubt that Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state.
The
last line in the -"exactly as it was delivered" -
transcript is false. Here is my transcription from a short
Foreign Office video of the briefing (saved
copy)
which includes the uncut passage of the last two paragraphs quoted
above:
... there is no doubt that the weapon used in the attack was the military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok series. This has been confirmed by specialists, our specialists. On Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission is in the UK now to independently confirm this analysis.
There is also no doubt that the Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state.
The
written "exactly as it was delivered" transcript of the
briefing says "... that Novichok was produced ...". At 0:20
in the video I clearly hear the ambassador saying "...
that the Novichok
was produced ...". A tiny but very important difference.
The
person who put the official captions on the official Foreign Office
video agrees with what I hear and transcribed.
The
ambassador referred to "the Novichok", the Novichok
he specifically mentioned earlier in the speech. The Novichok
that he said had been detected by Porton Down. The transcript on the
Foreign Office website leaves out the definite article "the".
It makes it look as if the ambassador referred to some unspecified
batch of the substance.
The
deleted tweet was a faithful rendition of what the ambassador said,
it "accurately reported" it. The transcript the Foreign
office posted on its website is false. The ambassador clearly accused
Russia of having produced the very batch that Porton Down analyzed.
Three
days earlier Bristow's boss, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, made the
same false
claim (vid
at 5:32) in an interview
with DW.
Porton
Down has now said that
it made no such claim. The ambassador's claim was false. The Foreign
Office attempt to cover this up by deleting its tweet and by posting
a not-so-exact transcript only amplifies the falsehood of the
original claims.
The
briefing continued to emphasize the "produced in Russia"
meme. The phrase occurs four times.
...
Russia’s claims that Novichok could have been produced elsewhere have no credibility. We have no information to indicate that this agent could have been produced anywhere else except in Russia. So we have no doubt that the nerve agent was produced in Russia.
...
So the fact that the Novichok was produced in Russia, the fact that Russia has a history of state-sponsored assassinations, and the fact that Russia has responded with the usual playbook of disinformation and denial left us with no choice but to conclude that this amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.
The
Foreign Office may want to claim that all the above uses of "produced
in Russia" were only references to decades old research and
development in the Soviet Union, not to the "Skripal" case.
The highlighted details shows that this is not the case. Any listener
to the briefing surely got the impression that the UK ambassador was
talking about the specific batch analysed by Porton Down.
It
highlighted paragraph of Ambassador Bristow's briefing includes
several other lies. 'Novichok' agents can and have been produced in
other countries than Russia.
In
2016 five nerve agents of the 'Novichok' series were synthesized by
Iranian scientists in cooperation with the OPCW. Details of their
production process were
published.
In 1998 the US Army’s Edgewood Chemical and Biological
Center produced
and catalogued 'Novichok'
agents. It added the data for the substances to the National
Institute of Standards and Technology Mass Spectral Library. The data
was later removed and U.S. diplomats were
ordered to suppress all
international discussion about 'Novichok' agents.
The
U.S. military chemical weapon laboratories work in close cooperation
with Porton Down. Porton Down continues
to receive tens
of millions of U.S. military research money for its chemical weapon
experiments including tests on animals.
The UK government surely knew
that 'Novichok' agents can and have been produced by other actors
than Russia.
British
and U.S. media aligned with the ongoing anti-Russia campaign now
downplay the earlier claims of the British government.
"... Russia requested the meeting to address the UK government's suggestion that it was behind the poisoning ..."
The
British government did not make a mere "suggestion". Its
ambassador and other officials stated outright that Russia was the
culprit:
"... the fact that the Novichok was produced in Russia .. left us with no choice but to conclude... "
The British authorities have blamed Russia for the March 4 poisoning, with Foreign Minister Boris Johnson suggesting it was “overwhelmingly likely” that President Vladimir V. Putin had ordered the attack.
On
March 16, when the NYT first
wrote about Johnson's claims against Russia, it surely
did not convey that
they were only 'suggestive':
Mr. Johnson’s remarks were a significant escalation in the dispute between London and Moscow, directly linking the Russian leader to the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the English city of Salisbury.
[T]he Government have concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Based
on that 'conclusion' the British government threw out 23 Russian
diplomats from their embassy in London. There was nothing
'suggestive' with that.
Off-Guardian points
out that
another tactic to divert from the earlier false claims is to now
declare Russia guilty of not cooperating with the investigation:
The UK’s flagrant hysteria of the last weeks, the war cries and spittle-flecked abuse is all being airbrushed away and being replaced with the idea the UK simply requested Russian co-operation and Russia refused – preferring to make nasty insinuations instead.
To
claim that Russia did not cooperate is another lie told to cover up
for the now debunked ones. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which
Britain and Russia have signed, dictates the procedures that must be
taken when chemical weapon allegations are made. They foresee the
involvement of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW).
It
was the British government that rejected the involvement of the OPCW
in the investigation. It only agreed to do so after
Russia insisted on it:
[Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov] added that a case of alleged use of chemical weapons should be handled through the proper channel, being the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) – of which both Russia and Britain are members.
“As soon as the rumors came up that the poisoning of Skripal involved a Russia-produced agent, which almost the entire English leadership has been fanning up, we sent an official request for access to this compound so that our experts could test it in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC],” Lavrov said. So far the request has been ignored by the British side, he added.
The
request from the British government to the OPCW was
sent on March 14,
ten days after the
incident happened, two days after the
Prime Minister made her "highly likely" claims against
Russia and one day after Lavrov
publicly insisted on OPCW involvement.
It
is obviously the British government which at first rejected OPCW
involvement and not the Kremlin.
The
OPCW is by
statute a technical agency, not a court. It will release a technical
assessment of the involved agent and not a judgment on responsibility
or guilt.
The
attempted cover-up by the Foreign Office of the lies the British
government spread about the case has already failed. To play
down the original strong claims against Russia as mere 'suggestions'
is comical. Allegations that Russia was or is holding up a serious
international investigation are also false. It was Britain which at
first rejected the CWC and OPCW involvement.
The
fact that the British government even makes these attempts must be
seen as acknowledgement that it has no case and lied in it its
official statements to the global public. It now covers its trail
with more lies.
What
else is the British government lying about?
---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case:
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case:
- March 12 - Theresa May's "45 Minutes" Moment
“There is no doubt the novichock was produced in Russia” – UK Ambassador to Russia, March 22
Off-Guardian,
4 April, 2018
British Ambassador to Russia Dr Laurie Bristow briefed the international diplomatic community in Moscow on the UK Government response to the Salisbury attack, March 22 2018. The tweets have been scrubbed, spokespeople are currently lying or weasel-wording, but here are his own words.
… there is no doubt that the weapon used in the attack was the military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok series. This has been confirmed by specialists, our specialists. On Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission is in the UK now to independently confirm this analysis.
There is also no doubt that the Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state. Laurie Bristow, Uk Ambassador to Russia, March 22 2018
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