Craig Muuray on the "Novochok" lies

Here is Craig Murray’s response to yesterday’s news

Craig Murray: Johnson and May are Hiding as Their ‘Novichok’ Lies Dissolve

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.

You can see the interview with the Chief Executive Officer of Porton Down only in this tweet from Sky here:

Sky News

✔@SkyNews

#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

3:22 AM - Apr 4, 2018

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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

Craig Murray,

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. 

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.

The secrets of Porton Down

A few days I posted the following investigative reporting on Porton Down - REVEALED: Pentagon’s $70 Million Chemical & BiologicalProgram at Porton Down in UK

Here is a documentary made a few years ago that, because it was made then, cannot be accused on ‘fear-mongering” or any other excuse made by trolls.


Secret files: Porton Down

http://tapnewswire.com/2018/03/secret-files-porton-down/

15 March, 2018

It’s not only the occasional Russian spy. Serving servicemen. Ordinary people too can be affected. Britain leads the world when it comes to lethal substances and concoctions.

That and the creation of debt slavery. The stress people are living under is rising year on year. If that doesn’t kill them, then there’s always a bit of selective spraying. Alexandr Litvinenko, Sergei and Yulia Skripal are not the only victims – not by a long way.

ADD TO THAT –

The British government is talking war with Russia over a mysterious incident that is claimed to have taken place on Sunday March 4, just a few kilometres from the secrecy shrouded British biological and chemical warfare research and development facility at Porton Down in Wiltshire. I say claimed since we have very little information confirming what exactly took place outside of government statements and we have seen no photographs of the alleged victims in their hospital beds to convince us that the alleged victims did fall ill and are being treated. However, let us assume that the incident as described did take place.

The mystery consists in the fact that the victims, former Russian colonel of military intelligence, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, were not under any known threat from Russia. Skripal was charged and convicted in Russia in 2006 of being an asset of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and handing over secret information to the British. He was jailed, but in a spy swap in 2010 was pardoned and allowed to leave Russia for Vienna, then Britain, where he has been living ever since. Why he was pardoned is difficult to determine, unless it was necessary legally to effect the swap with the British. In any even the Russians had washed their hands of him but it seems the British had other uses for him, as their expendable man for a provocation against Russia.

The facts as the British government states them are that Skripal and his daughter, visiting from Russia, met for lunch in Salisbury, the town outside of which Porton Down is located. The purpose of the daughter’s visit is not known. According to ever changing media accounts witnesses in a restaurant reported that Skripal appeared to be agitated and angry and left in that state with his daughter following. Agitated and angry about what we do not know.

Half an hour later it is said that the two of them were found slumped over on a public bench. Some early media accounts state that it was thought they had taken too much fentanyl and were vomiting and that their illness may have been self-induced. But very quickly the British government claimed that they had been poisoned by some chemical or nerve agent and immediately cast the blame on Russia though the investigation had just begun. The incident was immediately taken out of the hands of the local police and handed over to the Counter-Terrorism Police, formerly known as Special Branch, though the government refused to call it a terrorist incident. A meeting of the British government high-level emergency committee, Cobra, was called. Why this was done for what appears to be an assault or attempted murder or a self-induced accident is a good question. But the answer lies in the immediate propaganda campaign mounted in the British press against Russia.

On Thursday the 8th of March the British government claimed that they had identified a “nerve agent” as the substance used. Yet the BBC quotes on the same day a woman physician who attended at the scene saying that she found Mrs. Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench vomiting and fitting. She had lost control of her bodily functions. The physician, who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved the daughter into the recovery position and opened her airways as others tended to her father. The doctor stated that the she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical agent on her face or body and that though she had been worried she would be affected by a nerve agent so far she “feels fine.”

Yet, the British media published on Thursday a photograph of a police officer who they say attended the scene and who they claim was made ill and placed in intensive care but is now stable and recovering. The two stories do not add up, as it would seem the doctor was in closer physical contact with the two victims than the police officer yet the doctor has suffered no symptoms at all.

The Guardian quoted Andrei Lugovoi, another former Russian agent, accused of Litvinenko’s murder by the British as stating that Skripal had been pardoned in Russia so no one from there is after him. ““I don’t rule out that this is another provocation by British. Whatever happens on British territory, they start yelling: ‘He was killed, he was hung, he was poisoned!’ and that Russiais to blame for everything. This is to their advantage.” Igor Sutyagin, yet another Russian traitor flown to Russia in 2010 in an exchange of spies-also said, “I don’t think that Mr. Skripal would be targeted, because he was pardoned.”

To add to the mystery the British government refuses to name the alleged nerve agent. To create more drama the British Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, stated that it was not Sarin or VX but something “very rare.” I think we can expect that they will choose the right dramatic moment to name something and state that only Russian labs can make it. That is their modus operandi. They certainly do not want to state that VX was involved since VX was developed in 1952 at Porton Down near the sight of the incident; for that would lead to necessary investigations into security at that facility and whether personnel there were involved. However, despite the fact that Porton Down is in the business of manufacturing chemical warfare agents including nerve agents and that logic would dictate that the Porton Down authorities would be barred from being investigators into a case in which they could be involved the British government immediately assigned Porton Down to identify the substance that might have been used.

That the Russians may be correct that this incident is another NATO arranged provocation must be seriously considered. Despite the fact there is no evidence whatsoever that Russia had anything to do with this incident, the British government was quick to label Russia as the villain of the piece and the mass media dutifully acted in lock step and put out the word. Boris Johnson called Russia a “malign and disruptive force’ and made threats about pulling the UK out of the World Cup to be held in Russia this year. The attempts by the NATO alliance to throw Russia out of the Olympics on trumped up doping charges were largely successful and now we see another attempt to disrupt a sports event that is important to world football fans and to Russia. Johnson added that Britain would act “robustly’ of Moscow is found to be involved.

The Russian embassy in London stated the allegations of Russian involvement are untrue and that the “script of yet another anti-Russian campaign has already been written.” It seems so and the script has some pages to run yet. One has to wonder what the role of the British intelligence services is in this for the BBC also reports that Skripal still kept the company of British intelligence agents. So one has to ask, for what reason? What was his continuing role as an asset of MI6? What was their role on that day?

But that line of inquiry will not be followed. All the British media are linking this incident to the case of Alexander Litvinenko, another Russian who was supposedly poisoned with radioactive tea. Evidence that cronies of his were involved were ignored in favour the line that Russia was behind it though no evidence has ever been put forward to support that claim. They are also making the claim that this “very rare” substance must be from a state military stockpile, so the statements to come from the British government can be predicted.

This incident has echoes of the case of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident killed in London in 1978 by a ricin pellet injected into his leg by means of an umbrella it was said, though it was no doubt done with an air pistol. That murder was quickly blamed on the KGB and Bulgarian government agents but there is evidence that in fact the murder was arranged by MI6 as was the murder of media magnate Robert Maxwell in 1991, who had documents relating to the Markov murder in his possession, according sources such as Richard Cottrell in his book Gladio and accounts by former British intelligence agent Gordon Logan.

The Skripal incident also brings to mind the death of Dr. David Kelly in 2003 whose mysterious death in woods near his home, was officially attributed to “suicide.” He is thought by many to have been assassinated by the British secret services and CIA to keep him from revealing secrets about the war in Iraq. He worked at Porton Down as head of microbiology.

He in turn is connected to other scientists at Porton Down who have died under questionable circumstances, for instance, Dr. Richard Holmes, whose body was found in the same woods as Dr. Kelly, in 2012, two days after going for a walk, and one month after resigning from Porton Down, and to Vladimir Pasechnik’s death in November 2001, another Russian defector, who allegedly died of a stroke. His death was not announced until a month later and by British intelligence. Dr. Kelly had been involved in his debriefing when he left Russia.

Sir Edward Leigh, a member of the Parliamentary Defence Committee, in the British Parliament stated, “the circumstantial evidence against Russia is very strong. Who else would have the motive and the means?” The answer to that of course is that the British government has the motive and the means. What would Russia benefit from harming a has-been like Skripal and causing all this fuss? None. What benefit does Britain have and NATO? The answer again is provided by Sir Richard who went on to state “The only way to preserve peace is through strength,” carefully echoing Trump’s foreign policy. He continued, “and if Russia is behind this, this is a brazen act of war, of humiliating our country and defence is the first duty and spending 2% of the budget on defence is not enough.” There is the motive right there. To justify an increase on defence spending and to hit Russia yet again with propaganda warfare to justify NATO’s continuing aggression against Russia.

Russia has volunteered to cooperate in the “investigation” but to what end? The script is already written, the drama will unfold, the consequences will flow and they will lead not to peace and cooperation but to more hostility and war.

*

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Propaganda from Channel 4

Inside Porton Down: Preparing For Gas Attacks

Craig Murray points out editing of the Porton Downs statement on Sky News

There are very few heroes in the Salisbury poisoning case but one is ex-Ambassador Craig Murray (the other is Jeremy Corbyn).

He has been absolutely vindicated in his report that Porton Down were reluctant to parrot the government line that Novichok came from Russia.

Of A Type Developed By Liars

In the RT interview below he points out that the statement  by Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down appears to have been edited with a statement seeming to support the government line added later on.

Watch the video HERE carefully. At 0.48 seconds you will see that there has been splicing with material seemingly added in.

I have also noted that that I have been unable to find this footage on You Tube.

http://www.manxradio.com/news/uk-news/porton-down-experts-unable-to-identify-precise-source-of-novichok-that-poisoned-spy/

This was written in the hours leading up to today’s news.

Breaking News: Porton Down to Make Public Statement

Craig Murray,

3 April, 2018

The government is putting up the Chief Scientist at Porton Down to give a press interview on Sky News this afternoon on the Skripal affair.

If the government were not confident he would implicate the Russian state, they would not be doing this. But nevertheless I would be surprised if the Chief Scientist were to lie outright*, and we need to study his language very carefully. Much of course will depend on the questioning, and undoubtedly Sky News (a Fox affiliate) has been selected as unlikely to be be forensic or difficult. I have however passed to the producers, who contacted me for potential comment, the three questions I would ask given the chance:

Are you saying definitely this can ONLY be made in Russia?

How long from contact would this agent take effect?

If it is an extreme military grade nerve agent (according to Boris Johnson “novichocks” are “ten times more powerful”) then why was it thankfully comparatively ineffective?

We shall see if Sky are anything like this challenging. My fear is they will rather feed him questions like “How do you react to claims it was Porton Down that produced this nerve agent” in order to allow him to appear pained and wronged.

I shall post again after the interview. Thank you to the many people who expressed concern for my welfare at my recent sudden silence, following the rather nasty personal attacks I was encountering – I traveled last week to a family funeral at my childhood home, and was just reflecting for a few days.

*On the other hand another Porton Down scientist, Dr David Kelly, told the truth to a journalist in a broadly comparable situation and met an extremely suspicious death as a result.

Listen to this interview where Craig Murray points out the editing of the Sky News item.

Craig Murray: Foreign Office sources told me 2 weeks ago that Porton Down couldn't say it was Russia

Here is an article from a few days ago which is worthwhile reading

On Being a Dissenting Voice in 2018

Craig Murray,

20 Mar, 2018

The site is just back up at 16.42 on 21 March having managed to slip like the Tardis into another dimension and thus dodge the massive DOS attack we are under. over 50,000 separate IP addresses simultaneously throwing up millions of hits. The attack has not actually stopped and does seem to have a human intelligence changing terms and directing it, which could make for an interesting afternoon. Once our excellent techs get a minute from fighting it, we will post the cloudfare graphs as evidence.

I just thought I might give you a little taste of what it means to your personal life to express dissent from the government line in the UK in 2018. Let me start with this combined effort from the UK’s most popular website, Guido Fawkes, which fanatically supports the government, and the Blairite crew at “The Guardian”.

The red ink is original.

Now it is true that, when I was sacked as Ambassador by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for blowing the whistle on extraordinary rendition and the Blair government’s misuse of intelligence from torture, I went into a terrible depression and voluntarily spent ten days or so in St Thomas Hospital (not a mental illness facility) for treatment. I have never tried to keep this secret, indeed it is a major part of my memoir “Murder in Samarkand”. It is also true, as I have always acknowledged, that I have had other less serious depressive episodes treated at home and been diagnosed as bipolar since I was 20.

That we stigmatise anybody who has ever had a mental illness, write them off and view their views, on anything, as invalid, is an attitude I had hoped we had moved past last century. Indeed, if this hatchet job was done on anybody writing within the Overton window, then the Guardian would be dedicating editorials to condemning it. We have in fact moved to the old Soviet position, where disagreement with the official line equals mental illness. I quite confess this sort of thing does in fact hurt me – if you cut me, do I not bleed?

The use of the term “conspiracy theorist” has been used to denigrate my views, ever since Jack Straw as Foreign Secretary lied to Parliament denying that the UK ever obtained intelligence from torture and denying the existence of the extraordinary rendition programme, which I was supposed to have fantasised. Anyone interested in this history can watch this series of videos of my evidence to a Parliamentary Committee on the subject. It explains why I start nowadays from a position of being so hated by the British state and its acolytes, and also of course enables you to judge for yourself whether I should be ignored as insane.

Ever since then, the state and corporate media have described me as a “conspiracy theorist”. Even though there is now acceptance that extraordinary rendition did happen and presumably they, somewhere inside, know I was telling the truth. I find people are taken aback to discover, for example, that I broadly accept that there was no US government involvement in 9/11 (other than minimising the Saudi role) and 9/11 discussion is banned on this blog – [warning it still is].

I cannot in fact conceive of a more outlandish conspiracy theory than that the Russian government secretly manufactured and stockpiled novichoks, hidden from the OPCW, and secretly trained assassins, only to blow the whole operation on a retired spy they let out of jail ages ago. Yet nobody calls Boris Johnson a “conspiracy theorist” for positing that.

But the abuse is not confined to what people publish about me. I receive some extremely unpleasant emails of which this is an example:

I do hope Mr Temis can get money back on his anger management sessions. But there has been rather a lot of this, including some by old fashioned mail. which I find myself prodding suspiciously before opening :-).

There is of course an open effort to extend the term “anti-semitic” to embrace any criticism of Israel. It is also particularly used by Blairites to attack anybody taking any position seen as supportive of Jeremy Corbyn. I am not in the least anti-semitic. Jewish people have made a disproportionate, indeed magnificent, contribution to the world in the fields of science, music, literature, commerce and others. That does not alter the fact that Israel is a rogue state when it comes to chemical weapons, the subject currently under discussion. It refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroy its chemical weapons stocks, and refuses to join the OPCW.

Plainly someone attacked the Skripals. In stating that it is not the case that Russia was the only state who could have done it, I have included Israel amongst other possibilities. Israel might wish to frame Russia for the deed, as Russian actions in Syria have severely conflicted with Israeli ambitions in Syria and Lebanon. But I have never said it was, or was most likely to be, Israel – it could be the CIA framing Russia, it could be a non-state actor entirely (which I am inclined to think most likely – this could come from those close to a victim of Skripal’s treachery, though I still think the Orbis intelligence connection has been overlooked).

Some of the most vitriolic abuse has come from state and corporate media journalists. Falsely categorising me as an insane racist allows them to ignore any challenge to the establishment line on Salisbury and absolves them, in their own minds, from any dereliction of duty in not questioning it.

In a chilling example of the way they move to crush dissent, here a prominent Blairite corporate media journalist, James Bloodworth, attempts to ensure that consideration of other possibilities than the government line is not carried even in the private domain. He harasses and bullies an individual attempting to force him to accept Mr Bloodworth’s version of what I had said, rather than what I had actually said. When Mr Law (who as a lecturer in philosophy presumably has an attachment to intellectual honesty) refuses, Bloodworth sanctions him by pulling out of his literary festival.

It is very difficult to understand what is happening in the UK today, but when the BBC on its flagship news programme holds a discussion of the Salisbury attack under a huge photo-shopped picture of the leader of the opposition in a Russian hat standing outside the Kremlin, it is plain a fundamental shift has happened in society. The Salisbury attack has perhaps taught us something massively more important than any of the stuff about chemical weapons, and that is that Britain is further along the road to becoming an authoritarian state than we had realised.