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

Nafeez Ahmed: "No conclusive proof of Russian complicity in Salisbury attack"

FORMER OPCW OFFICIAL: NO CONCLUSIVE PROOF OF RUSSIAN COMPLICITY IN SALISBURY ATTACK

Nafeez Ahmed

Via Hal Turner,

25 March, 2018

The US and its European allies have coordinated the largest collective expulsion of Russian diplomats in history. Russia has promised to retaliate in kind. Yet despite the sense of certainty around Russian culpability in the Salisbury incident, questions remain around the state of the available evidence.

As contradictory narratives proliferate amidst conflicting Western and Russian government statements and media reports, a clearer picture of the secret history of the nerve agent used in the Salisbury poisonings is emerging.

In an exclusive interview with INSURGE, a former senior official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from 1993 to 2006, Dr Ralf Trapp, said that at this stage there is no conclusive evidence that Russia was the source of the nerve agent used in Salisbury. He pointed to compelling evidence that Russia did run a secret research programme to create Novichok-type nerve agents — and strongly criticised Russia’s denials of that programme. While justifying grounds for suspicion, there is as yet no decisive proof that Russia retained such a Novichok programme or capability today, he said.

Dr Ralf Trapp is former Secretary of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

Inour previous story, INSURGE raised a range of questions and problems with the British government’s approach to the crisis. Dr. Trapp’s interview resolves some of these issues while raising new and alarming questions.

His insights are likely to be damaging to both the Russian and British government positions. The British government has insisted that its identification of the nerve agent points squarely and inevitably to Russia alone, even as Russian officials have insisted they have never run a programme to create what the UK had identified as ‘Novichok’.

Both these claims are flawed.

‘NO DATA’ PROVING A RUSSIAN NOVICHOK CAPABILITY

On the one hand, Dr Trapp dismissed Russia’s ongoing official denials of any involvement in a Novichok-type nerve agent research programme. These denials, he said, are inconsistent with Russian government past positions and credible statements by Russian scientists involved with the programme.

On the other, Dr Trapp pointed out that the existence of a Novichok programme in Russia has never been technically “corroborated”, and confirmed that numerous Western states will have “re-engineered” the nerve agent for defensive research purposes.

Asked whether Prime Minister Theresa May’s claim that the chemical identification of Novichok in Salisbury can only lead to two possibilities, both revolving around Russian culpabability, Dr. Trapp conceded: “No​ there are other theoretical possibilities” before suggesting that “it would depend on what else the UK knows and has not yet made public.”

He added that he “can’t immediately see motive or opportunity” for other parties, “except for the UK as suggested by Russia” — a notion which, he emphasised, “I don’t consider credible at all.”

According to Dr Trapp, the name of the secret Russian nerve agent programme in question was ‘Foliant’, and there may have been similar programmes run by the FSB, Russia’s domestic service service.

“I have no information about whether Russia continued the programme after the mid-1990s,” said Trapp, “but would not exclude the possibility that small amounts of what could be ‘explained away’ as materials needed in protective research have been retained or newly synthesized. But again — no actual data on this.”

The lack of “actual data” for the British government’s case has been most prominently criticised by Craig Murray, previously a UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and former career Foreign Office (FCO) diplomat.

Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan

Murray revealed, citing his own FCO sources, that the government was using a consistent phrase to describe the nerve agent identified in Salisbury — “of a type developed by Russia”. This peculiar choice of phrase, he said, was because although the chemical structure may be the same as the type of nerve agent originally developed by Russia decades ago, there was no proof that the agent used in Salisbury had actually been manufactured inside Russia – leaving the possibility open that other parties may have been involved.

RUSSIA DID RUN A SECRET NERVE AGENT PROGRAMME, BUT IT WASN’T CALLED ‘NOVICHOK’

That phrase carefully decided on by the FCO — “of a type developed by Russia” — has been replicated not only by the UK but by its allies in official statement after official statement. For Murray, this illustrates a concerted PR offensive to conceal the lack of chemical evidence that the nerve agent was created by Russia.

Though the British government appears to be obfuscating the degree of uncertainty that remains on this issue, the Russian government has also been decidedly economical with the truth.

Dr. Vil Mirzayanov, former Russian chemist and ‘Novichok’ whistleblower

The ‘Novichok’ programme was first revealed in 1992 by Dr. Vil Mirzayanov, a former chemist at the State Union Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GSNIIOKhT).

Mirzayanov’s initial reports on ‘Novichok’ nerve agents concerned the ecological damage of the Soviet CW programme. He later revealed that these concerns related to a much wider ranging nerve agent programme.

Some of his claims have been recently corroborated to Russian state media by Professor Leonard Rink, a Russian chemist who admitted that he ran the programme in its later stages.

Prof. Leonard Rink, retired Russian chemist and former ‘Novichok’ developer

When asked whether he was involved with creating “what the British authorities call ‘Novichok’”, Rink replied: “Yes. This was the basis of my doctoral dissertation.” He confirmed that a large group of specialists in Shikhany and Moscow worked on the programme for years before they “finally achieved very good results.”

However, Professor Rink denied that there was any programme for the creation of chemical weapons called ‘Novichok’:

“Programmes for the development of chemical munitions existed, but not with this name. After any program was completed, it was handed over to the military, and they already had decided the name… There was no such separately taken substance called ‘Novichok’ and there was no development project with this name. Rather this was simply a system of coding and registration. It is therefore absurd to talk about the formula for ‘Novichok’ under a project of the same name.”

Rink confirmed that Mirzayanov had knowledge of the secretive Russian nerve agent programme, but denied that he was involved in creating it.

Rink’s assertion that Mirzayanov had no role in actually creating the nerve agent casts some of his claims into doubt, as Mirzayanov has repeatedly told various news agencies that he was directly involved in the relevant experiments.

Dr. Vladimir Uglev, retired Russian chemist and former ‘Novichok’ developer

Another Russian scientist, Vladimir Uglev, who also led on the nerve agent programme at GSNIIOKhT, criticized the OPCW in an interview with The Bell for failing to take action on their reports to the agency about the Russian nerve agent programme:

“Why did the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) under the United Nations, if one finds their minutes from their meetings to be true, fail three times to find proof of production of this agent (searches began after the publication of Mirzayanov’s book in 2008)?

–" It’s impossible to find a black button in a dark room. Moreover, the cat simply wasn’t there, because there wasn’t any production in the USSR, and Russia then was preoccupied with other things. The fact that the OPCW totally ignored our mutual statement with Mirzayanov in 1993 about the existence of agents of chemical warfare in Russia was a gross violation of the (Chemical Weapons) Convention, as signatory countries to the Convention are required to report the development of new substances, the most powerful of which are agents of chemical warfare.”

According to the Clingandael Institute, the US did not address its concerns about Russia’s undeclared Novichok capability through the OPCW: “The US decided to address these concerns through bilateral channels, rather than directly engaging formal OPCW mechanisms.” (p. 19)

OTHER STATES HAVE ‘RE-ENGINEERED’ NOVICHOK AGENTS FOR LEGITIMATE RESEARCH PURPOSES

Dr. Trapp’s analysis throws further light on the murky details of what Russian and Western governments know about the nerve agent that was used on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. His last post at the OPCW was Secretary of its Scientific Advisory Board. Since 2006, he has been a consultant on disarmament of chemical and biological weapons for the European Commission and several UN agencies.

Dr. Trapp confirmed that at least some Western countries “would have done their own research to be able to characterise these chemicals and be able to identify them by chemical analysis should they ever be used. That is perfectly legitimate under the CWC, which allows, for good reasons, countries to continue work in chemical protection, to acquire, synthesise and investigate toxic and precursor chemicals to this end, and to work on such issues as detection, identification, protection and medical countermeasures, decontamination and other technical aspects of protection.”

Asked if Mirzayanov’s claims had ever been corroborated, Trapp said that they had been “verified in a legal sense: not corroborated.”

Referring to Russian efforts to prosecute Mirzayanov for divulging state secrets when he first criticised the Soviet CW programme, Trapp added that:

“As the original affair in Russia to an extent was played out in public, Western secret services will surely have picked up on that at the time, and some labs will have worked on ‘re-engineering’ these types of chemicals to see whether the claims could be true and to have data on these agents in their reference libraries.”

Dr Trapp explained that the primary reason the OPCW does not hold any information on Novichok is because it has not been declared by any state party under the CWC, largely due to fears about proliferation risks:

“It is my ​understanding that Novichoks have indeed not been declared as part of a CW stockpile or past CW production programme by any state party,” he said.

“Assuming that the declarations essentially have been complete and honest, that would mean that no chemical weapons using Novichoks have been stockpiled by any state party when they became members of the OPCW. The Novichok issue came up several times in the OPCW Scientific Advisory Board, as a question of whether these chemicals or their precursors should be included in the CWC control lists — the ‘Schedules’; however state parties were not ready to include such chemicals, largely because of concerns about the potential proliferation risks related to critical CW knowledge leaking into the public domain and associated risks such as with regard to misuse of such data by non-state actors or rogue states.”

He noted that Iran had provided some information on its own Novichok experiments to the OPCW:

“Some of the relevant chemicals also came to the fore when Iran submitted the analytical data of some of these chemicals for validation and possible inclusion into the OPCW analytical database used in routine verification.”

An article in Spectroscopy Now from January 2017 described how Iranian scientists had “synthesised five ‘Novichok’ agents, along with four deuterated analogues.” The “detailed mass spectral data” obtained from these experiments “have been added to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Central Analytical Database (OCAD). It is important that such databases are as comprehensive as possible so that unusual chemical weapons can be unambiguously detected.”

CWC DECLARATION RULES MEAN RUSSIA MIGHT STILL HAVE A NOVICHOK CAPABILITY

Complicating matters further are rules around declaring chemical weapons. Last year, the OPCW declared that it had verified the complete destruction of Russia’s chemical weapons programmes.

But Russia’s failure to declare its ‘Foliant’ programme, under which the nerve agents called ‘Novichoks’ were researched, raises questions about whether those programmes were destroyed. As they were never declared, it is possible that some semblance of them still exists today. But it is also possible that they were indeed destroyed, and that today no such programmes or capability exist.

There is no firm data either way:

​“​If these chemicals, the CW agents as well as their precursors, were actually in a CW stockpile when a state joined the CWC, they were declarable in great detail. My understanding is there were no Russian stockpiles of actual Novichok weapons in 1998.When a state had produced them, agent or precursors, as chemical weapons in the past, the respective production facilities, too, are declarable (including the chemicals and amounts produced) — Russia did not declare such facilities but it is likely they considered them part of the development programme. If these chemicals had been part of a CW development programme, on the other hand, the facilities, laboratories, test ranges etc. used ‘primarily’ for the development of such chemical weapons also must be declared, but the requirements are less stringently defined in the CWC — ‘primarily’ is open to interpretation and states have never been able to agree on a common understanding of how this term should be interpreted. There is no rigid format for whether or not the chemicals under development and chemical processes involved in their manufacturing needed to be declared. All that is legally required is a description of the ‘location, nature and general scope of activities’ of the facility. States parties have taken very different views on how transparent they should be under this formula and my understanding is that Russia did not include details on its novichok development work in its declaration of former CW development facilities.”

Dr. Trapp suggested, therefore, that while Russia’s official denials about the Novichok programme may well be technically correct, they are misleading because Russia privately admitted to running its nerve agent research in bilateral communications with the US:

“As for Russia, I would take their statements very literally, exactly as they have been put on record. Russia, true, has never publically admitted it had worked on these chemicals as part of its CW programme. ​The programme was not called ‘Novichoks’ — its code name was ‘foliant’ — and the Novichok term for the chemicals of interest probably had no formal standing — the agents had codenames.”

Bilateral meetings between the US and Russia did provide confirmation of the programme, however, in the context of the Wyoming Agreement and the Bilateral Destruction Agreement. The latter “never entered into force but the data exchanges and some site visits and clarification meetings were conducted between the two countries,” said Dr Trapp.

“In those discussions, the Russians never disputed the factual claims by Mirzayanov, including the research and development work on Novichoks, the agents involved etc. They merely disagreed with the US interpretation as to what, if any, of this would be declarable under the agreed rules of data exchange, which also were reflected in the rules of the CWC declaration system and ambiguities regarding what needed to be declared under development of CW.”

OPCW WILL INVESTIGATE NERVE AGENT USED IN SALISBURY

While Russia’s reticence on its ‘Foliant’ research programme vindicates suspicions of its role in the Salisbury attack, there is no firm evidence yet that the agent used proves Russia’s culpability. The OPCW may, however, be able to provide independent confirmation of the agent and its origin of manufacture:

“What is going on at the moment is a mission under a more general mandate of OPCW to provide technical assistance and evaluation support to the UK… Whatever comes out of this work will be technical in nature, it will certainly confirm the agent used, and there may be forensic information that may help establish what method of synthesis had been used, how the material was administered or disseminated, and what kind of chemical signatures there are that would allow to establish the composition of the tactical mixture used — that is, chemicals used to formulate the agent into tactical mixtures — e.g. stabilisers, chemicals that modify/moderate certain physical properties etc. If the OPCW, or the UK, would have access to the raw materials used in a suspected lab, they also would be able to establish whether or not the agent came from those specific raw materials, based on characteristic signatures such as certain impurities, or the stable isotope ratio of certain chemical elements of the agents themselves. This can be done down to the individual batch of chemical synthesis or raw material used.”

After the British government accused Russia of involvement in the Salisbury attack, the Russian government requested a sample of the agent used. This would have allowed the Russians to conduct its own such tests and, potentially, publish the findings. The UK, however, declined to provide a sample.

Leonard Rink, one of the Russian scientists who confirmed the existence of the ‘Foliant’ programme contrary to official Russian denials, has argued that the UK’s refusal to provide the sample suggests it does not exclusively point to Russian origin:

“For any country with weapons of mass destruction — the UK, the US, China and all developed countries — any country with at least some chemistry would have zero problems creating this kind of weapon. Why aren’t the British providing a sample to Moscow? Because no matter how hard [British] specialists try, a technology will always differ somewhat. This is its unique signature. It will be immediately clear that it is not a Russian-made technology.”

In summary, Dr Trapp’s interview unearths compelling evidence that Russia was indeed working on a CW programme, identified by Mirzayanov as ‘Novichok’, but not formally identified internally by that name. This raises legitimate questions regarding Russia’s declaration obligations under the CWC, whose import is heightened in light of Russia’s blanket denials. In the past, Russia claimed to have destroyed its past Novichok-capability. Trapp’s information shows that while Russia may well have retained a Novichok-capability which it refused to declare, there is as yet no direct evidence of this. And yet, while we should be wary of Russian disinformation, Trapp’s comments also reinforce questions as to why the British government is asserting absolute certainty on Russian culpability, citing scientific evidence about the nerve agent used in Salisbury — when that evidence is technically compatible with other scenarios.

All this leaves more questions than answers, but perhaps the most pertinent is this: In the absence of such evidence, is it wise for the West to rapidly escalate diplomatic tensions with Russia?

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is the founding editor of INSURGE intelligence. Nafeez is a 16-year investigative journalist, formerly of The Guardian where he reported on the geopolitics of social, economic and environmental crises. Nafeez reports on ‘global system change’ for VICE’s Motherboard, and on regional geopolitics for Middle East Eye. He has bylines in The Independent on Sunday, The Independent, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, New York Observer, The New Statesman, Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, among other places. He has twice won the Project Censored Award for his investigative reporting; twice been featured in the Evening Standard’s top 1,000 list of most influential Londoners; and won the Naples Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award created by the President of the Republic. Nafeez is also a widely-published and cited interdisciplinary academic applying complex systems analysis to ecological and political violence

Thierry Meyssan on the Scripal case

Four Days to Declare a Cold War

Thierry Meyssan

Russia Insider,

21 March, 2018

The week that has just ended was exceptionally rich in events. But no media were able to report it, because they had all deliberately masked certain of their number in order to protect the story that was being woven by their government. London had attempted to provoke a major conflict, but lost to Russia, President Trump and Syria

By hurling accusations at Russia May imagined she would deliver the "Global Britain" of her promises. It didn't go according to plan

Although it has the fourth largest army in the world, the United Kindom is unable to defy Russia without the support of allies. It therefore has to invent a casus belli to make its partners react and lead them to stand beside it.

The British government and certain of its allies, including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have attempted to launch a Cold War against Russia.

Their plan was to fabricate an attack against an ex-double agent in Salisbury and at the same time a chemical attack against the « moderate rebels » in the Ghouta. The conspirators’ intention was to profit from the efforts of Syria to liberate the suburbs of its capital city and the disorganisation of Russia on the occasion of its Presidential election. Had these manipulations worked, the United Kingdom would have pushed the USA to bomb Damascus, including the Presidential palace, and demand that the United Nations General Assembly exclude Russia from the Security Council.

However, the Syrian and Russian Intelligence Services got wind of what was being plotted. They realised that the US agents in the Ghouta who were preparing an attack against the Ghouta were not working for the Pentagon, but for another US agency.

In Damascus, the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Fayçal Miqdad, set up an emergency Press conference for 10 March, in order to alert his fellow citizens. From its own side, Moscow had first of all tried to contact Washington via the diplomatic channels. But aware that the US ambassador, Jon Huntsman Jr, is the director of Caterpillar, the company which had supplied tunneling materials to the jihadists so that they could build their fortifications, Moscow decided to bypass the usual diplomatic channels.

Here’s how things played out:

12 March 2018

The Syrian army seized two chemical weapons laboratories, the first on 12 March in Aftris, and the second on the following day in Chifonya. Meanwhile, Russian diplomats pushed the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to get involved in the criminal investigation in Salisbury.

In the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Theresa May violently accused Russia of having ordered the attack in Salisbury. According to her, the ex-double agent Sergueï Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a military nerve gas of a type « developed by Russia » under the name of « Novitchok ». Since the Kremlin considers Russian citizens who have defected as legitimate targets, it is therefore highly likely that they ordered the crime.

« Novitchok » is known by what has been revealed by two Soviet personalities, Lev Fyodorov and Vil Mirzayanov. The scientist Fyodorov published an article in the Russian weekly Top Secret (Совершенно секретно) in July 1992, warning about the extremely dangerous nature of this product, and warning against the use of old Soviet weaponry by the Western powers to destroy the environment in Russia and make it unlivable. In October 1992, he published a second article in the News of Moscow (Московские новости) with a counter-espionage executive, Mirzayanov, denouncing the corruption of certain generals and the traffic of « Novitchok » in which they were involved. However, they did not know to whom they may have sold the product. Mirzayanov was first of all arrested for high treason, then released. Fyodorov died in Russia last August, but Mirzayanov is living in exile in the United States, where he collaborates with the Department of Defense.

Russian ex-counter intelligence officer Vil Mirzayanov defected to the United States. Now 83 years old, he comments on the Skripal affair from Boston.

« Novitchok » was fabricated in a Soviet laboratory in Nurus, in what is now Uzbekistan. During the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was destroyed by a US team of specialists. Uzbekistan and the United States, by necessity, have therefore possessed and studied samples of this substance. They are both capable of producing it.

British Minister for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson summoned the Russian ambassador in London, Alexandre Iakovenko. He gave him an ultimatum of 36 hours to check if any « Novitchok » was missing from their stocks. The ambassador replied that none was missing, because Russia had destroyed all of the chemical weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union, as witnessed by the OPCW, which had drawn up a certified report.

After a telephone discussion with Boris Johnson, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in turn condemned Russia for the attack in Salisbury.

Meanwhile, a debate was under way at the UN Security Council concerning the situation in the Ghouta. The permanent representative for the US, Nikki Haley, declared - « About one year ago, after the sarin gas attack perpetrated in Khan Cheïkhoun by the Syrian régime, the United States warned the Council. We said that faced with the systematic inaction of the international community, states are sometimes obliged to act on their own. The Security Council did not react, and the United States bombed the air base from which al Assad had launched his chemical attack. We are reiterating the same warning today ».

The Russian Intelligence Services handed out documents from the US staff. They showed that the Pentagon was ready to bomb the Presidential palace and the Syrian Ministries, on the model of what it had done during the taking of Baghdad (3 to 12 April 2003).

Commenting the declaration by Nikki Haley, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had always called the attack in Khan Cheïkhoun a « Western manipulation », revealed that the false information which had led the White House into error and triggered the bombing of the Al-Chaayrate air base, had in fact come from a British laboratory which had never revealed how it came to possess its samples.

13 March 2018

The Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs published a Press release condemning a possible US military intervention, and announcing that if Russian citizens were harmed in Damascus, Moscow would riposte proportionally, since the Russian President is constitutionally responsible for the security of his fellow citizens.

Bypassing the official diplomatic channels, Russian Chief of Staff General Valeri Guerassimov contacted his US counterpart General Joseph Dunford to inform him of his fear of a false flag chemical attack in Ghouta. Dunford took this information vey seriously, and alerted US Defense Secretary General Jim Mattis, who referred the matter to President Donald Trump. In view of the Russian insistence that this piece of foul play was being prepared without the knowledge of the Pentagon, the White House asked the Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, to identify those responsible for the conspiracy.

We do not know the result of this internal enquiry, but President Trump acquired the conviction that his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was implicated. The Secretary of State was immediately asked to interrupt his official journey in Africa and return to Washington.

Theresa May wrote to the General Secretary of the United Nations accusing Russia of having ordered the attack in Salisbury, and convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council. Without waiting, she expelled 23 Russian diplomats.

Published one month and a half before the attack in Salisbury, Amy Knight’s book presents what was to become MI5’s thesis. The author herself maintains that she has not the slightest proof of what she is claiming.

At the request of President of the House of Commons Interior Committee Yvette Cooper, British Secretary for the Interior Amber Rudd announced that MI5 (Military Interior Secret Services ) is going to re-open 14 enquiries into deaths which, according to US sources, were ordered by the Kremlin.

By doing do, the British government adopted the theories of Professor Amy Knight. On 22 January 2018, this US Sovietologist published a very strange book - Orders to Kill - the Putin régime and political murder. The author, who is « the » specialist on the ex-KGB, attempts to demonstrate that Vladimir Putin is a serial killer responsible for dozens of political assassinations, from the terrorist attacks in Moscow in 1999 to the attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013, by way of the execution of Alexandre Litvinenko in London in 2006 or that of Boris Nemtsov in Moscow in 2015. However, she admits herself that there is absolutely no proof of her accusations.

The European Liberals then joined the fray. Ex-Prime Minister of Belgium Guy Verhofstadt, who presides their group in the European Parliament, called on the European Union to adopt sanctions against Russia. His counterpart at the head of their British party, Sir Vince Cable, proposed a European boycott of the World Football Cup. And already, Buckingham Palace announced that the royal family has canceled their trip to Russia.

The UK communications regulator, Ofcom, announced that it might ban the channel Russia Today as a retaliatory measure, even though RT has on no occasion violated British law.

The Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs summoned the British ambassador in Moscow to inform him that reciprocal measures would soon be indicated in retaliation for the expulsion of Russian diplomats from London.

President Trump announced on Twitter that he had fired his Secretary of State, with whom he had not yet been in contact. He was replaced by Mike Pompeo, ex-Director of the CIA, who, the night before, had confirmed the authenticity of the Russian information transmitted by General Dunford. On his arrival in Washington, Tillerson obtained confirmation of his dismissal from White House General Secretary General John Kelly.

The ex-CEO of the largest multinational in the world, ExxonMobil, thought he was untouchable. But to his great surprise, Rex Tillerson was brutally dismissed by Donald Trump. The former believed he was serving the Anglo-Saxon world, while the latter consi

Ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is a product of the Texan middle class. He and his family worked for the US Scouts, of whom he became the National President (2010-12). Culturally close to England, he did not hesitate, when he became President of the mega-multinational Exxon-Mobil (2006-16), not only to wage a politically correct campaign favouring the acceptance of young gays into the Scouts, but also to recruit mercenaries in British Guiana. He is said to be a member of the Pilgrims Society, the most prestigious of Anglo-US clubs, presided by Queen Elizabeth II, a number of whose members were part of the Obama administration.

During his functions as Secretary of State, the quality of his education provided a bond for Donald Trump, considered by US high society to be a buffoon. He was in disagreement with his President on three major subjects which allow us to define the ideology of the conspirators - 

• Like London and the US deep state, he thought it would be useful to diabolise Russia in order to consolidate the power of the Anglo-Saxons in the Western camp ; 
• Like London, he thought that in order to maintain Western colonialism in the Middle East, it was necessary to favour Iranian President Cheikh Rohani against the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei. He therefore supported the 5+1 agreement. 
• Like the US deep state, he considered that the swing of North Korea towards the United States should remain secret, and be used to justify a military deployment which would be directed in reality against the People’s Repubic of China. He was therefore in favour of official talks with Pyongyang, but opposed to a meeting between the two heads of state.

14 March 2018

While Washington was still in shock, Theresa May spoke once again before the House of Commons to develop her accusation, while all around the world, British diplomats spoke to numerous inter-governmental organisations in order to broadcast the message. Responding to the Prime Minister, Blairist deputy Chris Leslie qualified Russia as a rogue state and demanded its suspension from the UN Security Council. Theresa May agreed to examine the question, but stressed that the outcome could only be decided by the General Assembly in order to avoid the Russian veto.

The North Atlantic Council (NATO) met in Brussels at the request of the United Kingdom. The 29 member states drew a link between the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the attack in Salisbury. They then decided that Russia was « probably » responsible for these two events.

Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, and permanent representative for the United Kingdom to the North Atlantic Council Sarah MacIntosh. She is the ex-Director of Defence and Intelligence questions to the British Minister for Foreign Affairs, a

In New York, the permanent representative of Russia, Vasily Nebenzya, proposed to the members of the Security Council that they adopt a declaration attesting to their common will to shed light on the attack in Salisbury and handing over the enquiry to the OPCW in the respect of international procedures. But the United Kingdom refused any text which did not contain the expression that Russia was « probably responsible » for the attack.

During the public debate which followed, UK chargé d’affaire Jonathan Allen represented his country. He is an agent of MI6 who created the British War Propaganda Service and gives active support to the jihadists in Syria. He declared - « Russia has already interfered in the affairs of other countries, Russia has already violated international law in Ukraine, Russia has comtempt for civilian life, as witnessed by the attack on a commercial aircraft over Ukraine by Russian mercenaries, Russia protects the use of chemical weapons by Assad (…) The Russian state is responsible for this attempted murder ». The permanent representative for France, François Delattre, who, by virtue of a derogation by President Sarkozy, was trained at the US State Department, noted that his country had launched an initiative to end the impunity of those who use chemical weapons. He implied that the initiative, originally directed at Syria, could also be turned against Russia.

Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya pointed out that the session had been convened at London’s request, but that it is public at Moscow’s request. He observed that the United Kingdom is violating international law by treating this subject at the Security Council while keeping the OPCW out of its enquiry. He noted that if London had been able to identify the « Novotchik », it’s because it has the formula and can therefore make its own. He noted Russia’s desire to collaborate with the OPCW in the respect for international procedures.

15 March 2018

The United Kingdom published a common declaration which had been cosigned the night before by France and Germany, as well as Rex Tillerson, who at that moment was still US Secretary of State. The text reiterated British suspicions. It denounced the use of « a neurotoxic agent of military quality, and of a type developed by Russia », and affirmed that it was « highly probable that Russia is responsible for the attack ».

The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by Boris Johnson, while the US Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, established new sanctions against Russia. These are not connected to the current affair, but to allegations of interference in US public life. The decree nonetheless mentions the attack in Salisbury as proof of the underhand methods of Russia.

British Secretary for Defence, the young Gavin Williamson, declared that after the expulsion of its diplomats, Russia should « shut up and go away » (sic). This is the first time since the end of the Second World War that a representative of a permanent member state of the Security Council has employed such a vocabulary in the face of another member of the Council. Sergueï Lavrov commented - « He’s a charming young man. He must want to ensure his place in History, by making shock declarations [...] Perhaps he lacks education ».

Throughout its long history, England has never hesitated to lie and betray its oath in order to defend its interests. This is how it earned its French nickname of « perfide Albion » (after the Latin name for England)

Conclusion

In the space of four days, the United Kingdom and its allies have laid the premises of a new division of the world, a Cold War.

However, Syria is not Iraq and the UNO is not the G8 (from which Russia has been excluded because of its adhesion to Crimea and its support of Syria). The United States are not going to destroy Damascus, and Russia will not be excluded from the Security Council. After having resigned from the European Union, then having refused to sign the Chinese declaration about the Silk Road, the United Kingdom thought to improve its stature by eliminating a competitor. By this piece of dirty work, it imagined that it would acquire a new dimension and become the « Global Britain » announced by Madame May. But it is destroying its own credibility.

Source: Voltaire Network