What do the portents hold for Pprton Down's Garry Aitkenhead?

Deadly Truths: Will Porton Down’s Gary Aitkenhead Meet David Kelly’s Fate?

Kelly was murdered for stating facts. What do the portents hold for Aitkenhead?

Russ Fort,

4 April, 2018

Porton Down’s chief Gary Aitkenhead has a giant target sign on his back. Remember in 2003, David Kelly was found murdered close to his home just two days after he was summonsed to testify on his statements that Iraq was not in possession of chemical or biological WMD’s.


In 2003 Kelly leaked to British press that, in his professional capacity as former MoD expert on chemical and biological weapons, and as a member of the UN delegation covering such on Iraq, the middle-eastern country was not in possession of WMD’s nor had the capacity to manufacture them rapidly, as Powell would erroneously state. Kelly was also the man behind attempts to straighten out official reports, and remove presumptive, inaccurate, even pernicious data or conclusions which subordinates with ulterior motives had attempted to plant in to UN reports.


So, will Gary Aitkenhead get taken out too? Will he change or amend his statement? So far, today’s statement doesn’t look good, with SkyNews trying to spin this one back on course:

Scientists from Porton Down have not been able to establish where the novichok nerve agent used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal was made.

Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, told Sky News they were not yet able to prove it was made in Russia.

He said: “We were able to identify it as novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent.

“We have not identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to Government who have then used a number of other sources to piece together the conclusions you have come to.”

We know at this moment, the pressure’s on. In fact, as we’ve reported, the pressure’s been on for the team down over at Porton Down labs to make sure they can source the alleged Novichok sample to the Russians. And so far, and quite obviously, the team hasn’t been able to do so.

As Craig Murray, writing for Strategic Culture Foundation wrote on March 19th,

<< I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas 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.

The Russians were allegedly researching, in the “Novichok” programme a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors such as insecticides and fertilisers. This substance is a “novichok” in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China.

To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days. The government has never said the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was used by Theresa May in parliament, used by the UK at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most tellingly of all, “of a type developed by Russia” is the precise phrase used in the joint communique issued by the UK, USA, France and Germany yesterday: This use of a military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War. >>

Meanwhile, today we find these:

Back at the beginning of this whole affair, Johnson and May started making official pronouncements that the agent used in the attack was “of a type developed by Russia” that were reliably in turn ‘interpreted generously’ by British yellow press, that is the BBC and the rest of the like,  that ‘Russia was behind the attack’. How could they not, with May’s statement that its use ‘constitutes the first offensive use … since the Second World War’? That would be ‘offensive’ as opposed to, domestic, internally, terrorist, rogue, etc. Foreign governments – that’s the key phrase in understanding the meaning of ‘offensive’. But maybe they just mean it in the general adjectival sense, as ‘abusive’, not in the noun form when referring to a military phase in war. Yes, it’s all in how these words are lawyered. What words haven’t come out of anyone’s mouths are these: ‘Russia has attacked England’. They are gesturing in that direction, but not saying it. Until Johnson basically messed up his script – that’s the closest thing so far, by way of direct logical deduction.

So it’s no surprise that this was before any independent analysis of the alleged sample could be done, and yet still everyone saw where this was headed.

Think about this for a moment. Johnson began his public campaign with supposed assurances from the scientists at the Porton Down lab, that what we were looking at with this Novichok sample was most certainly of Russian origin. At appears his ‘assurances’ were that there would be someone quotable, on or off record, that they had narrowed the particular strain down, without a doubt, to something which only could have been made by the Russians – and not just any Russians, but the Russian government. It seems Johnson proceeded as if this would be the course, after Johnson would come some appropriately worded statement from a man in a white lab-coat, and that would be all the evidence we’d need.

The play was pretty standard, because we’ve seen this pattern of abuse and gas-lighting taken to levels of high diplomacy in the past. Instantly come reminders of Colin Powell at the UN lying about mobile weapons labs making weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We recalled the Dodgy Dossier, that infamous Downing Street memo, and also the Nigerian yellow cake uranium story. We remembered the lies of Bush and Blair, which have still gone unaccounted for. This brought up any number of recent claims about the Syrian government’s use of chemical or biological weapons, which wound up just like Nigerian yellow cake and Iraqi WMD’s – just lies meant to justify bellicosity.

And of course we knew this, and reported it this way from the start. It’s simple – when you have evidence, you present it. If you jump to conclusions, and moreover, jump to the punitive round that comes after those conclusions without presenting the evidence, without due process, without adhering to international norms and treaties which regulate the treating of these matters, then guess what, you’ve just got nothing.

That’s why we reported this Novichok story similarly to how any sensible journalist treated the Downing Street memo – it’s clear that the ‘facts’ are being fixed around the policy. The policy is simple – Russians are simply very bad people that must be contained, and things like transparency, due process, rule of law just don’t apply to those the West accuses of very bad things.

But what’s really nasty this time, and sad really, is the Brits couldn’t even line up the head of their own chemical weapons lab at Porton Down, to go along with the game plan. Was Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, not checking his email? Didn’t he get the memo? Will Gary Aitkenhead  go the way of David Kelly, the former MoD employee and UN weapons expert who found no WMD’s in Iraq? Keep in mind that Aitkenhead is in part running an operation which is in direct conflict with England’s own commitments under the non proliferation treaty.

When we understand Craig Murray’s piece – that the phrase used ‘of a type developed by Russia’ was ‘agreed to’ after much deliberation, pressure, and haranguing, doesn’t that tell us enough?

This tells us something pretty glaring as an admission: the labs just want to make their report that the substance’s origin can’t be identified. The word novichok is generic, literally referring to a now defunct program in the 1980’s to make nerve agents from readily available commercial products. This doesn’t work like ‘intellectual property’ where manufacturers go out of there way to use designer molecules or unique analogs meant to tie the product back to them. So what would Aitkenhead’s group hope to find? Well they were pretty clear about the parameters of their work – it would not determine the manufacturer’s origin.

It also forces us to then peer behind the ‘negotiations’ between an over-zealous government, and a government weapons lab’s boss who isn’t about to perjure himself, over what any of these other words means. ‘Military-grade’? Is that the same thing as ‘produced by a military’? Apparently not. The term ‘grade’ has over time been introduced into common parlance, but it refers to any number of things.

At core it is a marketing term; ‘military grade’ means to connote a high quality product. The US military only uses the expression ‘MIL-SPEC’ or ‘MIL-STD’ for weapons and parts meaning that the product is precisely interchangeable with those now in use as the standard, it meets those specs. Novichok is not used by any military, officially, and given its actual meaning – an agent made from readily available commercial products – seems to be something quit different from a military grade weapon. At the very most, a ‘military grade’ weapon means its of the same quality as those demanded by militaries for military use. But perhaps it is not interchangeable, it is just a layman’s expression, giving an opinion about the quality. It does not mean it was produced by or for a military, or as the outcome of a government project towards that aim.

Wouldn’t the normal course of diplomacy between two countries in fact take the opposite course from that of unfounded accusations? The rush to judgment itself speaks volumes.

This was the basic script:

1. Tell the public that Novichok is Russian and only the Russians have it. Which means if its Novichok, then it was Russia.
2. Do a bunch of hasty and irreparable things beyond the scope of due process in international law and beyond one’s own domestic procedures, like defame whole foreign governments, expel diplomats, increase the Russophobic hysteria campaign, and make sure the west can more and more posture on a war footing.
3. Keep telling the public it’s the Russians and that Novichok is Russia and Russia is Novichok.
4. Finally when Porton Down labs releases that Novichok indeed is a Russian word and that Russian words are of Russian origin, then claim that this is the laboratory evidence that *this* Novichok sample was made at the Kremlin under Putin’s direct supervision.

Unfortunately, this is not exactly what’s happened. Something went wrong between 3 and 4. Johnson appears to have ‘effed up’ pretty royally and went off script. It’s typical in sales to exaggerate. It’s typical of politicians for identical reasons. But there are moments when the script is meant to be stuck to. It must be simultaneously legally sound but also said in such a tone and within a staged context that the audience is shoved into a box of particular interpretation.

Links with the murder of David Kelly

Think that British state is incapable of attacking an ex-agent and his daughter with nerve gas to deflect from Brexit and make the case for war?

A credible view why Scripal was poisoned

Was Russian Spy Poisoned To Avert Brexit?

Zero Hedge,

15 March, 2018

Submitted by Nauman Sadiq,

In July 2003, Dr. David Kelly, a British weapons inspector who disclosed to the media that Tony Blair’s government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “sexed up,” was found dead in a public park a mile away from his home.

The inquiry into his death concluded Kelly had committed suicide by slitting his left wrist but the mystery surrounding his death has remained unresolved to date, though the obvious beneficiary of his propitious “suicide” was the British intelligence itself.

More recently, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury on March 4. 

Eight days later, another Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov was found dead in his London home and the cause of his death has not been ascertained yet.

In the case of Skripal, Theresa May promptly accused Kremlin of attempted assassination.

There are a couple of caveats, however.

Firstly, though Skripal was a double agent working for MI6, he was released in a spy swap deal in 2010. Had he been a person of importance, Kremlin would not have released him and let him settle in the UK in the first place.

Secondly, British government has concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, novichok.

A question naturally arises - why would Kremlin leave a smoking gun evidence behind that would lead prosecutors straight to Moscow when their assassins could have used a gun or a knife to accomplish the task?

Leaving mainstream media’s conspiracy theories aside, these assassination attempts should be viewed in the wider backdrop of the Brexit debate.

Both NATO and European Union were conceived during the Cold War to offset the influence of former Soviet Union in Europe. It is not a coincidence that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 and the Maastricht Treaty that consolidated the European Community and laid the foundations of the European Union was signed in February 1992.

The basic purpose of the EU has been nothing more than to lure the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe into the folds of the Western capitalist bloc by offering incentives and inducements, particularly in the form of agreements to abolish internal border checks between the EU member states, thus allowing the free movement of labor from the impoverished Eastern Europe to the prosperous countries of the Western Europe.

Reportedly, 79,000 US troops have currently been deployed in Europe out of 275,000 total US troops stationed all over the world, including 47,000 in Germany, 15,000 in Italy and 8,000 in the UK. By comparison, the number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan is only 15,000 which is regarded as an occupied country. Thus, Europe is nothing more than a client of corporate America.

No wonder then the Western political establishments, and particularly the deep states of the US and EU, are as freaked out about the outcome of Brexit as they were during the Ukrainian Crisis in November 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and tried to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting billions of dollars of loan package offered by Vladimir Putin.

In this regard, the founding of the EU has been similar to the case of Japan and South Korea in the Far East where 45,000 and 28,500 US troops have currently been deployed, respectively. After the Second World War, when Japan was about to fall in the hands of geographically-adjacent Soviet Union, the Truman administration authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to subjugate Japan and also to send a signal to the leaders of the Soviet Union, which had not developed their nuclear program at the time, to desist from encroaching upon Japan in the east and West Germany in Europe.

Then, during the Cold War, American entrepreneurs invested heavily in the economies of Japan and South Korea and made them model industrialized nations to forestall the expansion of communism in the Far East.

Similarly, after the Second World War, Washington embarked on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe with an economic assistance of $13 billion, equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars in the current dollar value. Since then, Washington has maintained its military and economic dominance over Western Europe.

There is an essential stipulation in the European Union’s charter of union, according to which the developing economies of Europe that joined the EU allowed free movement of goods (free trade) only on the reciprocal condition that the developed countries would allow free movement of labor. What’s obvious in this stipulation is the fact that the free movement of goods, services and capital only benefits the countries that have a strong manufacturing base, and the free movement of people only favors the developing economies where labor is cheap.

Now, when the international financial institutions, like the IMF and WTO, promote free trade by exhorting the developing countries all over the world to reduce tariffs and subsidies without the reciprocal free movement of labor, whose interests do such institutions try to protect? Obviously, they try to protect the interests of their biggest donors by shares, the developed economies.

Regardless, while joining the EU, Britain compromised on the rights of its working class in order to protect the interests of its bankers and industrialists, because free trade with the rest of the EU countries spurred British exports. The British working classes overwhelmingly voted in the favor of Brexit because after Britain’s entry into the EU and when the agreements on abolishing internal border checks between the EU member states became effective, the cheaper labor force from the Eastern and Central Europe flooded the markets of Western Europe, and consequently the wages of native British workers dropped and it also became difficult for them to find jobs, because foreigners were willing to do the same job for lesser pays, hence raising the level of unemployment among the British workers and consequent discontentment with the EU.

The subsequent lifting of restrictions on the Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the European Union in January 2014 further exacerbated the problem, and consequently the majority of the British electorate voted in a June 2016 referendum to opt out of the EU. The biggest incentive for the British working class to vote for Brexit is that the East European workers will have to leave Britain after its exit from the EU, and the jobs will once again become available with better wages to the native British workforce.

The developed economies of the Western Europe would never have acceded to the condition of free movement of labor that goes against their economic interests; but the political establishment of the US, which is the hub of corporate power and wields enormous influence in the Western capitalist bloc, persuaded the unwilling states of the Western Europe to yield to the condition against their national interests in order to wean away the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe from the Russian influence.

Thus, all the grandstanding and moral posturing of unity and equality aside, the hopelessly neoliberal institution, the EU, in effect, is nothing more than the civilian counterpart of the Western military alliance against the erstwhile Soviet Union, the NATO, that employs a much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare to win over political allies and to isolate the adversaries that dare to sidestep from the global trade and economic policy as laid down by the Western capitalist bloc.

It would be pertinent to mention that though Theresa May’s Conservatives-led government is in favor of Brexit, the neoliberal British deep state and European establishments led by France and Germany are fiercely opposed to Britain’s exit from the EU. They could have hired any rogue agent for the attempted assassinations on the Russian exiles that draws suspicions toward Kremlin.

Since the referendum, the British deep state and European establishments have created numerous hurdles in the way of Brexit. The First Minister of Scotland  Nicola Sturgeon is demanding more autonomy and control over Scotland’s vast oil and gas reserves and a debate is raging on over a “soft border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland which will remain in EU post-Brexit. Instead of a smooth transition to an independent state, Britain is more likely to disintegrate in its effort to leave the EU.

Finally, a New Cold War has begun. 25 out of 28 EU member states have recently signed an enhanced security cooperation agreement known as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) whose aim is to structurally integrate the armed forces of EU members. Britain along with Denmark and Malta are being left out. The main objective of the recent assassination attempts on the Russian exiles is to intimidate the Conservatives-led government that Britain will be left to fend for itself post-Brexit.

*  *  *

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.