Category Archives: Current Affairs

Security forces endanger agent lives, not whistleblowers…

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Our esteemed gov­ern­ments, intel­li­gence agen­cies and police forces always attack whis­tleblowers and organ­isa­tions such as Wikileaks on the grounds that unau­thor­ised dis­clos­ure of clas­si­fied inform­a­tion puts the lives of agents and inform­ants at risk.

Bob_QuickAgent iden­tit­ies, along with ongo­ing oper­a­tions (as Former Assist­ant Com­mis­sion­er of Spe­cial Oper­a­tions at the Met­ro­pol­it­an Police, Bob Quick, found to his cost two years ago) and sens­it­ive invest­ig­at­ory tech­niques, are indeed in need of pro­tec­tion.  Much else is not — par­tic­u­larly inform­a­tion about lies, cov­er-ups, incom­pet­ence and crime.

Indeed, once you delve behind the scream­ing head­lines that whis­tleblower dis­clos­ures have risked agent lives, you often find that this is abso­lutely not the case — in fact their motiv­a­tion is usu­ally to pre­vent fur­ther need­less tor­ture, death and war crimes.  So the US Defence Sec­ret­ary, Robert Gates, was forced to admit that Wikileaks had indeed not endangered lives with the pub­lic­a­tion of the Afghan War Logs last year, and Dav­id Shayler­’s tri­al judge, in his form­al rul­ing, stated that “no lives had been put at risk” by his whistleblowing.

Instead, there is a grow­ing body of evid­ence to sug­gest that the secur­ity forces are the very organ­isa­tions not tak­ing the pro­tec­tion and after­care of their agents seriously.

Mark Kennedy, the under­cov­er police officer who spied on UK envir­on­ment­al protest groups, has gone on the record to say that the super­vi­sion, care and psy­cho­lo­gic­al sup­port provided to him was woe­fully lack­ing.   Kev­in Fulton, a serving sol­dier who infilt­rated the IRA on behalf of the notori­ous Forces Research Unit, has sim­il­arly been hung out to dry and is now attempt­ing to sue the Brit­ish Gov­ern­ment to provide the prom­ised, adequate aftercare.

Mar­tin McGart­land, who worked as a source in North­ern Ire­land at the height of “The Troubles” and is cred­ited with sav­ing 50 lives, has also borne the brunt of this lais­sez faire atti­tude since he stopped work­ing for intel­li­gence.  He has the scars to prove it too, hav­ing sur­vived assas­sin­a­tion attempts, and once blindly leap­ing out of a third floor win­dow in an frantic attempt to escape tor­ture at the hands of the IRA.  As he says:

“Who would put their lives on the line nowadays when they can read what hap­pens to those who did?”, McGart­land says. “I can’t go home and the IRA are sup­posed to be a former ter­ror­ist group. Nobody is hunt­ing down my attack­ers and nobody in author­ity seems to care. That has a dir­ect impact on recruit­ing agents.…”

Denis_DonaldsonThe most egre­gious case is of Denis Don­ald­son, Sinn Féin’s Head of Admin­is­tra­tion at Stor­mont in North­ern Ire­land who was outed as a MI5 and police spy by Gerry Adams in 2006.  He was bru­tally murdered a few months later, allegedly by the Real IRA, hav­ing received little pro­tec­tion or sup­port from his erstwhile spook handlers.

So who is really more likely expose cur­rent agents to the risk of psy­cho­lo­gic­al dam­age, tor­ture and death, or to deter future agents from volun­teer­ing to work with the secur­ity forces?  Prin­cipled whis­tleblowers who expose crime and incom­pet­ence with due care for pro­tect­ing real secrets, or the spooks who take a cava­lier approach to the pas­tor­al care of their agents, and then hang them out to dry once their use­ful­ness is at an end?

Libya: my enemy’s enemy is my friend, until he becomes my enemy again…

Posted on by Annie Machon
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UK Prime Min­is­ter, Dav­id Camer­on, reportedly made the start­ling state­ment recently that the mil­it­ary inter­ven­tion in Libya “unlike Iraq, is neces­sary, leg­al and right”. 

Blair_takes_the_oathWould it not be won­der­ful if he could take the next logic­al step towards joined-up think­ing and con­sider send­ing our esteemed Middle East Peace Envoy, a cer­tain Mr T Blair, over for a spot of por­ridge at the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­in­al Court in The Hag­ue?  After all, Camer­on has now clearly implied that the Iraq war was “unne­ces­sary, illeg­al and wrong”.….

But back to Libya.  With the ongo­ing crisis — now war — much is being writ­ten about how the pre­vi­ous UK gov­ern­ment col­lab­or­ated with the Gad­dafi régime in the last dec­ade — while tacitly glossing over the last year of Coali­tion gov­ern­ment where, no doubt, sim­il­ar levels of coöper­a­tion and back-slap­ping and money-grub­bing were going on at the highest levels to ensure the con­tinu­ing flow of oil con­tracts to the UK.

But, yes, we should be dis­sect­ing the Labour/Gaddafi power bal­ance.  Gad­dafi had New Labour over the pro­ver­bi­al (oil) bar­rel from the late 1990s, when MI5 whis­tleblower Dav­id Shayler exposed the failed and illeg­al MI6 assas­sin­a­tion plot against Col­on­el Gad­dafi, using as fall-guys a rag-tag group of Islam­ic extrem­ists.  The newly-elec­ted Labour gov­ern­ment’s knee-jerk response at the time was to believe the spook’s deni­als and cov­er-up for them.  Per­haps not so sur­pris­ing, as the gov­ern­ment min­is­ters of the day were uncom­fort­ably aware that the spies held files on them.  But this craven response did leave the gov­ern­ment pos­i­tion exposed, as Gad­dafi well knew.

MoS_G_Plot-credible_1997The CIA was fully cog­nis­ant of this failed plot at the time, as were the French intel­li­gence ser­vices.  The Gad­dafi Plot is once again being ref­er­enced in the media, includ­ing the Tele­graph, and a recent edi­tion of the Huff­ing­ton Post.  The details are still rel­ev­ant, as it appears that our enter­pris­ing spooks are yet again reach­ing out to a rag-tag group of rebels — primar­ily Islam­ists and the Senussi roy­al­ists based around Benghazi. 

The les­sons of the reck­less and ill-thought out Gad­dafi Plot were brushed under the car­pet, so his­tory may yet again be doomed to repeat itself.  Yes, Gad­dafi has been one of the biggest back­ers of ter­ror­ism ever, and yes he has bru­tal­ised parts of his own pop­u­la­tion, but if he were deposed how can the West be sure that those step­ping into the power vacu­um would not be even more dangerous?

Musa_Kousa_Hillary_Clinton_NY_2010The Liby­an gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to use the 1996 MI6 assas­sin­a­tion plot as lever­age in its nego­ti­ations with the New Labour gov­ern­ment right up until (pub­licly at least) 2009.  Musa Kousa, the cur­rent For­eign Min­is­ter, played a key role through­out.  For many years Kousa was the head of the Liby­an Extern­al Secur­ity Organsi­ation and was widely seen as the chief archi­tect of inter­na­tion­al Liby­an-backed ter­ror­ism against the USA, the UK and France. 

Anoth­er appar­ent example of this mor­al black­mail caught my eye recently — this report in the Daily Mail.  Saif al-Islam Gad­dafi was afforded MI6-backed pro­tec­tion when he was finally allowed into the UK in Septem­ber 2002 to study at the LSE. 

The tim­ing was par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing, as only months earli­er Saif had won a libel case against the UK’s Sunday Tele­graph news­pa­per.  A grov­el­ling apo­logy was made by the news­pa­per, but Saif refrained from ask­ing for “exem­plary dam­ages” — which he would almost cer­tainly have won.  The res­ult­ing pay-off for this restraint appears to be that a mere five months later he was wel­comed into the UK with MI6-facil­it­ated protection.

Saif’s rela­tions with the UK had not always been so rosy. As back­ground to this case, in 1995 the Sunday Tele­graph had fallen hook, line and sinker for a MI6 clas­sic pro­pa­ganda oper­a­tion.  As The Guard­i­an repor­ted, the secret­ive MI6 media manip­u­la­tion sec­tion, Inform­a­tion Oper­a­tions, (I/Ops), had suc­cess­fully spun a fake story to hap­less spook hack, Con Cough­lin, that Gad­dafi Juni­or was involved in cur­rency fraud.  This story was fake, but the paper trail it pro­duced was used by the spies as a pre­text to pre­vent Saif from enter­ing the UK at the time. 

Saif_Prince_AndrewBy 2002 this was all old his­tory, of course.  Saif was wel­comed to the UK, offi­cially to study for his MA and PhD at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics (and show­ing his grat­it­ude to that august insti­tu­tion with a hefty dona­tion of £1.5 mil­lion — it makes the new tuition fees for UK stu­dents seem bet­ter value for money), and unof­fi­cially to chum up to vari­ous Estab­lish­ment ena­blers to end Liby­a’s pari­ah status, open up luc­rat­ive trade chan­nels, and get the SAS to train up Liby­a’s spe­cial forces. 

The UK mil­it­ary must be just lov­ing that now.….

So I get the feel­ing that the UK gov­ern­ment has over the last dec­ade indeed “danced with the dev­il”.  After dec­ades of view­ing Libya and Col­on­el Gad­dafi as a Pri­or­ity One JIC intel­li­gence tar­get, the UK gov­ern­ment fell over itself to appease the Gad­dafi régime in the wake of the bungled assas­sin­a­tion attempt in 1996 and the libelling of his son.  These were the sticks Gad­dafi used; the car­rots were undoubtedly the Saif/MI6-facil­it­ated oil con­tracts. 

Of course, all this is now pretty much a moot point, fol­low­ing Dave Camer­on’s “neces­sary, leg­al and right” mil­it­ary inter­ven­tion.  If the wily old Col­on­el man­ages to hang on grimly to some semblence of power (and he has an impress­ive track-record of sur­viv­ing against the odds), then I doubt if he’ll be happy to coöper­ate with Brit­ish oil com­pan­ies in the future.  At the very least. 

Gad­dafi has already threatened “ven­geance” against the West, and it was repor­ted today that MI5 is tak­ing this all-too-pre­d­it­able risk seriously.

If Gad­dafi is deposed, who can real­ist­ic­ally pre­dict the inten­tions and cap­ab­il­it­ies of those who will fill the power vacu­um?  We should have learnt from Afgh­anistan and Iraq: my enemy’s enemy is my friend — until he becomes my enemy again.….

 

The spies and Libya — time to dust off their conscience

Posted on by Annie Machon
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As I’ve men­tioned before, the former heads of UK intel­li­gence agen­cies have a charm­ing habit of speak­ing out in sup­port of the rule of law, civil liber­ties, pro­por­tion­al­ity and plain com­mon sense — but usu­ally only after they have retired. 

Per­haps at their leav­ing parties their con­sciences are extrac­ted from the secur­ity safe, dus­ted off and giv­en back  — along with the gold watch?

DearloveEven then, post-retire­ment, they might try to thrice-deny poten­tially world-chan­ging inform­a­tion, as Sir Richard Dear­love did when ques­tioned by the fear­less and fear­somely bright Silkie Carlo about the leaked Down­ing Street Memo at his recent speech at the Cam­bridge Uni­on.  (The links are in two parts, as the film had to be mirrored on You­tube — Dear­love claimed copy­right on the orgin­al Love Police film and had it taken down.)

And “out of con­text”, my left foot — he could poten­tially have saved mil­lions of lives in the Middle East if he’d gone pub­lic with his con­sidered pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion about the intel­li­gence facts being fit­ted around a pre­con­ceived war policy in the run-up to the inva­sion of Iraq.

Would­n’t it be lovely if these esteemed ser­vants of the state, replete with respect, status and hon­ours, could actu­ally take a stand while they are still in a pos­i­tion to influ­ence world events?

Eliza_Manningham_BullerMy former boss, Bar­on­ess Eliza Man­ning­ham-Buller, has been unusu­ally voci­fer­ous since her retire­ment in 2007 and elev­a­tion to the peer­age.  She used her maid­en speech to the House of Lords to object to the pro­posed plans to increase police deten­tion of ter­ror­ist sus­pects without charge from 28 to 42 days; she recently sug­ges­ted that the “war on ter­ror” is unwinnable and that we should, if pos­sible, nego­ti­ate with “Al Qaeda” (well, it worked with the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA); and that the “war on drugs” had been lost and the UK should treat recre­ation­al drug use as a health rather than a crim­in­al issue. She steals all my best lines.…

But cred­it where cred­it is due.  Des­pite the fact that she used the full power of the Brit­ish state to pur­sue ter­ror­ist sus­pects up until 2007 and invest­ig­ate drug bar­ons in the 1990s, she did appar­ently try to make a stand while en poste in the run-up to the Iraq War.  Last year she gave evid­ence to the Chil­cot Enquiry, stat­ing that she had offi­cially briefed the gov­ern­ment that an inva­sion of Iraq would increase the ter­ror­ist threat to the UK.

So it’s obvi­ous that once a UK Prime Min­is­ter has come over all Churchil­lian he tends to ignore the coun­sel of his chief spooks, as we’ve seen with both the Down­ing Street Memo the Chil­cot Enquiry. 

With that in mind, I’ve read with interest the recent press reports that the UK author­it­ies appar­ently knew about Col­on­el Gad­dafi retain­ing stock­piles of mus­tard gas and sar­in (des­pite the fact that the world was assured in 2004 that it was his renun­ci­ation of WMDs that allowed him back into the inter­na­tion­al dip­lo­mat­ic fold) . 

So the key ques­tion is surely: is this anoth­er erro­neous “45 minutes from attack” moment, with Gad­dafi’s alleged stock­piles of WMD a per­fect scare­mon­ger­ing pre­text to push for a full-on régime change in Libya; or is this genu­ine, and we were all lied to about Gad­dafi’s destruc­tion of his WMD stock­piles for eco­nom­ic advant­age and fat, juicy oil contracts?

The Wall Street Journ­al recently ran an art­icle quot­ing the con­cern of “gov­ern­ment insiders” about Gad­dafi’s poten­tial future ter­ror­ism threat against the West, up to and includ­ing WMDs, should he cling on to power.  Well, yes, it would hardly be sur­pris­ing if he were now to be as mad as a wasp with his ex-new best bud­dies.  Des­pite the sor­did rap­proche­ment in the last dec­ade, he has been for much of his life an invet­er­ate enemy of the West and spon­sor of world­wide terrorism.

Rather than wait­ing for his “K” and his retire­ment, would it not be won­der­ful if the cur­rent head of MI5, Jonath­an Evans, could extract his con­science from that dusty secur­ity safe and make a use­ful and informed state­ment to shed some light on the mess that the Liby­an war is rap­idly becom­ing?  He could poten­tially change the course of world his­tory and save untold lives.

Tony Soprano meets Joe McCarthy

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Now I’m not a huge fol­low­er of US polit­ic­al the­at­rics.  Give it a few years and the US of A will prob­ably exit from the world stage pur­sued by a bear (or panda).  So why waste your time on a dying beast?  All you can do is try to avoid the death throes as best you can. 

But this did piqué my interest, purely from the Hol­ly­wood-block­buster schlock value.  The new Chair of the US Home­land Secur­ity Com­mit­tee, Repub­lic­an Con­gress­man for New York Peter King, has opened a hear­ing called  “The Extent of Rad­ic­al­iz­a­tion (with a “z”) in the Amer­ic­an Muslim Com­munity and that Com­munity’s Response.” 

Here is the  Down­load Full_text and here’s the video of King’s open­ing statement:


 

Now isn’t it won­der­ful that esteemed politi­cian Peter King has woken up to the dangers of “the enemy with­in” — or not?  Over the last last few months he has flag­rantly dis­played his pro­found ignor­ance vis a vis the concept of ter­ror­ism.  Last Decem­ber he called for the des­ig­na­tion of Wikileaks, the high-tech con­duit extraordin­aire for pub­lic-spir­ited whis­tleblowers around the world, as a “ter­ror­ist organistion”. 

And this from a politi­cian who is repor­ted to be a life-long sup­port­er of the polit­ic­al wing of the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA — anoth­er reli­gious minor­ity group that fought for its self-pro­claimed ideals — and was for dec­ades the “enemy with­in” the UK. 

In fact, until 9/11 the US Irish com­munity was by far the biggest fun­der of PIRA ter­ror­ism for dec­ades — so don’t believe everything that is writ­ten about Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya. 

I sup­pose it still holds true that one man’s ter­ror­ist is anoth­er man’s free­dom fight­er, and Rep Peter King is clearly adher­ing to that point of view.….

Look­ing at the above video, I can­’t get out of my head that it’s a bit like put­ting the fic­tion­al organ­ised crime boss, Tony Sop­rano, in charge of a gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee invest­ig­at­ing organ­ised crime.

But it gets worse.  King even men­tions the dread phrase “des­pite what passes for con­ven­tion­al wis­dom in cer­tain circles, there is noth­ing rad­ic­al or un-Amer­ic­an in hold­ing these hear­ings”.  Was­n’t that also what a cer­tain Sen­at­or Joe McCarthy said in the 1950s about the Com­mun­ist witchhunts?

Osama_bin_Laden_portraitSuch mor­on­ic state­ments would poten­tially be amus­ing — if it were not for the fact that Peter Chair is the King of the Home­land Secur­ity Com­mit­tee of the world’s dying and des­per­ate super-power, the USA. 

Oops, silly me, I muddled the words.….

But sadly he is, and no doubt the whole world will feel the reper­cus­sions of this.  The morph­ing of the fic­tion­al Tony Sop­rano and para­noid Joe Kennedy has spawned a hellish brat — let’s call him Emmanuel Gold­stein, for ease of reference.

 

RTTV interview — dancing with the devil — how not to deal with “rogue” states

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Here is an inter­view I did for RTTV on 3 March 2011 about the pos­sib­il­ity of West­ern inter­ven­tion in the unfold­ing Liby­an crisis:

 

Inter­est­ingly, a radio record­ing of the Dutch “res­cue” mis­sion I men­tioned has appeared on the inter­net.  It appears that the pilots were less than hon­est about their flight plans and inten­tions, say­ing that they were head­ing to their ship south of Malta rather than back towards Tripoli.… where they are even­tu­ally caught.

Also, do have a read of this excel­lent art­icle by Seamus Mil­ne of The Guard­i­an about rami­fic­a­tions of pos­sible West­ern intervention.

That said, it looks like this view­point is being ignored.  The Daily Mail repor­ted today that MI6 officers and SAS sol­diers are mass­ing in the East of Libya to assist the rebels.  Well, at least they’re doing it openly now, unlike the illeg­al and failed Gad­dafi Plot of 1996.

Alleged Wikileaks source, Bradley Manning, faces the death penalty

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Bradley_manningAlleged Wikileaks source US Private Brad­ley Man­ning is now charged with “aid­ing the enemy”, amongst a bewil­der­ing array of 22 new charges.  This is appar­ently a cap­it­al offence, although the US mil­it­ary has cosily said that they would­n’t push for this bar­bar­ic sentence.

So just life without the hope of parole then.….

Put­ting aide the minor ques­tion of wheth­er the USA should even be entitled to call itself a mod­ern demo­cracy when it still has the death pen­alty on its books, let’s just remind ourselves of what Man­ning is alleged to have revealed: the “Col­lat­er­al Murder” mil­it­ary shoot-up, where inno­cent chil­dren, civil­ians and journ­al­ists were gunned down by US forces in a par­tic­u­larly nasty snuff video game that was then delib­er­ately covered up by the Pentagon for years; many oth­er hein­ous war crimes and records of daily bru­tal­ity in Afgh­anistan and Iraq; and an “embar­rass de richesses” of dip­lo­mat­ic cables.

I think “embar­rass” is the key word here, on so many levels, and goes a long way to explain­ing the USA’s des­per­a­tion to des­troy Wikileaks founder, Juli­an Assange, by any means necessary.

But the phrase from the list of charges against the hap­less Man­ning that leaps out at me is “aid­ing the enemy”.  If — and it’s still a big leg­al if — Man­ning was indeed the source of all this cru­cial inform­a­tion, whom was he actu­ally aiding?

Inform­a­tion that has appeared on Wikileaks over the last few years has been eclect­ic, inter­na­tion­al and very much in the pub­lic interest.  It’s covered such nas­ties as Trafigura, the BNP, Sci­ento­logy, Cli­mateg­ate, Guantanamo, the Aus­trali­an inter­net black­list, Sarah Pal­in, and much more.

It’s cer­tainly not just restric­ted to the inform­a­tion that hit the head­lines last year about the US hege­mony.  How­ever, there is no doubt that it was the release of the Afghan, Iraq and dip­lo­mat­ic files that stirred up this par­tic­u­larly unpleas­ant hor­nets’ nest.

As glob­al cit­izens I would sug­gest that we have every right to know what is done in our name. But, hav­ing said that, accord­ing to these new charges against poor Brad­ley Man­ning, the bene­fi­ciar­ies of Wikileaks — ie all of us —  have now become the enemy.

When did we, the people, the glob­al cit­izenry, become the enemy?  It seems that our esteemed rulers are at last show­ing their true colours.…

On that note, do have a look at this video of former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dear­love, speak­ing recently at the Cam­bridge Uni­on Soci­ety.  An inter­est­ing per­spect­ive on the Brit­ish Estab­lish­ment’s line on Wikileaks and Juli­an Assange:

Bleat: the assassination of dissidents

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Black_sheep?OK, so I’m not sure if my concept of Bleats (half blog, half tweet) is being grasped whole­heartedly.  But so what — it makes me laugh and the Black Sheep shall perservere with a short blog post.….

So I’m a bit puzzled here.  UK Prime Min­is­ter Dave Camer­on is quoted in today’s Daily Tele­graph as say­ing that:

“It is not accept­able to have a situ­ation where Col­on­el Gad­dafi can be mur­der­ing his own people using aero­planes and heli­copter gun­ships and the like and we have to plan now to make sure if that hap­pens we can do some­thing to stop it.”

But do his Amer­ic­an best bud­dies share that, umm, humane view?  First of all they have the CIA assas­sin­a­tion list which includes the names of US cit­izens (ie its own people); then those same “best bud­dies” may well resort to assas­sin­at­ing Wikileak­s’s Juli­an Assange, prob­ably the most high pro­file dis­sid­ent in inter­na­tion­al and dip­lo­mat­ic circles at the moment; plus they are already waging remote drone war­fare on many hap­less Middle East­ern coun­tries — Yeman, Afgh­anistan, Pakistan.….

Oh, and now the UK gov­ern­ment seems poised to launch cov­ert spy drones into the skies of Bri­tain.  Even the UK’s most right-wing main­stream news­pa­pers, the Daily Tele­graph and the Daily Mail, expressed con­cern about this today.  Appar­ently these drones have yet to be weapon­ised.….

It’s a slip­pery slope down to an Orwellian nightmare.

 

TrebleThink: the new American hypocrisy

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George Orwell is just so old-world, retro and quaintly Brit­ish.  Gone are the days of simple Double­Think.  The Amer­ic­ans inev­it­ably had to super­size the concept.

Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton was last week speak­ing at the George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity about polit­ic­al act­iv­ism and free­dom of expression:


 

Now we appear to have entered the realm of TrebleThink.

McGovern_injuries1 McGovern_injuries2At the meet­ing Ray McGov­ern, army vet­er­an, long-term CIA ana­lyst, and now inter­na­tion­ally-renowned peace act­iv­ist chose to exer­cise his right to free­dom of expres­sion by stand­ing up and silently turn­ing his back on Clin­ton dur­ing her speech.

For his pains 71-year-old McGov­ern sus­tained pain­fully injur­ies while being for­cibly removed by name­less “secur­ity per­son­nel”, before end­ing up in a tiny police cell.  On his even­tu­al release he had to take a taxi to hos­pit­al for treat­ment.

Hil­lary Clin­ton did not even stumble over her words dur­ing McGov­ern’s arrest.

The start­ling hypo­crisy of Clin­ton’s speech is clear on three dif­fer­ent fronts:

1) She is defend­ing the rights of act­iv­ists in the Middle East to speak out against cor­rupt gov­ern­ments, while ignor­ing the bru­tal­isa­tion of a fel­low cit­izen for silently using those very rights in America.

2) She’s doing so while speak­ing out about the vital role of inter­net freedoms — indeed stand­ing behind a podi­um with the words “Inter­net Free­dom” writ­ten on it — in inform­ing cit­izens and spread­ing demo­cracy.  Yet at the same time a secretly-con­vened US Grand Jury is frantic­ally scrab­bling around for any pre­text what­so­ever to pro­sec­ute Juli­an Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.  And yet anoth­er is invest­ig­at­ing attacks against the col­lab­or­at­ing US cor­por­a­tions that pulled the plug on Wikileaks sup­port last year.  Iron­ic­ally, on the same day as Clin­ton’s speech, Twit­ter was in court fight­ing US gov­ern­ment attempts to obtain per­son­al inform­a­tion of alleged Wikileaks sup­port­ers.  No doubt Clin­ton would con­demn the former Egyp­tian gov­ern­ment if it had done the same thing.

3) And let’s not for­get that the USA is host­ing the UNESCO World Press Free­dom Day this year too.  This was announced on the very day Juli­an Assange was arres­ted in the UK.

The hypo­crisy is flag­rant. As I said, wel­come to the world of Treb­le­Think.  You read it here first.…

 

Varsity newspaper interview, February 2011

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The Secret Ser­vice: “A very Brit­ish mess”

Olivia Crel­lin inter­rog­ates Annie Machon on her life after MI5

by Olivia Crellin

Thursday 3rd Feb­ru­ary 2011

Annie Machon, former MI5 agent, is the image of glam­our and guts. Her blonde hair, of the bomb­shell vari­ety, frames a face that, far from being that of the reserved and stealthy spook, exudes energy, enthu­si­asm, and openness.

Andrew_Griffin_Varsity_Newspaper_2011Unlike her former part­ner, the whis­tleblower Dav­id Shayler, Machon seems to have emerged rel­at­ively unscathed from the years imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the couple’s attempts to reveal ser­i­ous MI5 blun­ders in 1996.

Now work­ing as a self-pro­fessed “author, media pun­dit, journ­al­ist, cam­paign­er and prom­in­ent pub­lic speak­er”, she has made a “new way of life” out of selling her­self, her past, and her story. And she’s doing a good job.

Machon, who stud­ied Clas­sics at Cam­bridge, is the most recent in a long line of fam­ous spies to have emerged from the Uni­ver­sity – most not­ably the Cam­bridge Spies who defec­ted to the Rus­si­ans dur­ing the Cold War.

Best known for her whistle-blow­ing on issues such as MI5’s alleged involve­ment in the attemp­ted assas­sin­a­tion on Gad­dafi, Machon is an oft-con­sul­ted expert on cur­rent affairs top­ics such as Wikileaks, the infilt­ra­tion of act­iv­ist groups, and the 9/11 Truth Move­ment, cri­tiquing what she sees as con­tem­por­ary society’s des­cent into a “police state”.

Com­ment­ing on the “very Brit­ish mess” that is the cur­rent UK Intel­li­gence Ser­vices, Machon’s answers to my ques­tions blend per­son­al anec­dote with hard-hit­ting asser­tions. She sounds con­vin­cing. Des­pite no longer hav­ing any insider inform­a­tion, she still has plenty to say.

Recruited dur­ing the “mar­gin­ally golden eth­ic­al era” of the 1990s, Machon’s exper­i­ence of MI5 was nev­er­the­less riddled with anti­qua­tion, con­fu­sion, insu­lar­ity and suffocation.

Draw­ing atten­tion to MI5 and MI6’s “cul­ture of just-fol­low-orders”, an eth­os that former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rim­ing­ton also acknow­ledged, Machon believes that the UK Intel­li­gence Ser­vices have, for a long time, been their own worst enemy.

Entrenched in unne­ces­sary laws, a “hangover” from the organisation’s counter-espi­on­age ori­gins, Machon states that until the spooks “open up a little bit to con­struct­ive cri­ti­cism from the oth­er side, so that [MI5] can get a bit of fresh air, they’re going to spir­al down into… tor­ture and things.”

While Machon asserts that there was no use of tor­ture in her time with the agency – it was con­sidered “counter-pro­duct­ive” and “uneth­ic­al” – she did hear some hor­ror stor­ies from the older boys’ exper­i­ence in North­ern Ire­land includ­ing one case con­cern­ing an agent, code­named Steak Knife, who was per­mit­ted to tor­ture and even kill his fel­low intel­li­gence officers in order to keep his cov­er in the “Nut­ting Squad” of the IRA – “A sick James Bond got­ten out of hand.”

Machon refers to these stor­ies as “a sort of petri dish of the abuses that we are see­ing now with the Muslim com­munity”. Just as the trend to tar­get one group of soci­ety returns, the use of tor­ture, as exper­i­enced in Ire­land, comes full circle. “It makes me shiver,” Machon tells me, “that people who were per­haps my friends, ideal­ist­ic twenty-somethings when I was an officer, who I might’ve had drinks with, had din­ner with, whatever, might be those people now.”

While there seems to be a “demo­crat­ic will” to get rid of “some of the more Dra­coni­an laws from under the last gov­ern­ment”, Machon believes that instances such as Mark Kennedy’s under­cov­er infilt­ra­tion of an act­iv­ist group demands soci­ety to take a closer look at the ways in which we pro­tect nation­al secur­ity. “Once you start erod­ing someone’s civil liber­ties on one front, it’ll cas­cade. That’s how Ger­many found itself in a Fas­cist state in the 1930s,” the former-spy asserts. “They didn’t wake up one morn­ing and Hitler was in power. It’s a very slip­pery slope.” This is why Machon, above all oth­er issues, is call­ing for an “adult debate” about the work­ings of Secret Intel­li­gence in a “mature democracy”.

One organ­iz­a­tion that Machon sees as con­trib­ut­ing to this debate is Wikileaks. Machon praised this form of new media, call­ing it “fant­ast­ic” as a “high-tech con­duit to enable whis­tleblowers” in con­trast to the “self-cen­sor­ship and fear” of the main­stream press, which blocks the flow of such inform­a­tion to the public.

Machon advised stu­dents at the Cam­bridge Uni­on to find altern­at­ive sources of inform­a­tion for their news, cit­ing coun­tries’ decept­ive use of false-flag ter­ror­ism. “I’m not say­ing that every major ter­ror­ist atro­city might be a dirty trick, but you have to keep that pos­sib­il­ity in the back of your mind,” she warned.

“It’s all about a sort of breach of trust,” Machon con­cludes, which is “cor­ros­ive for a demo­cracy.” Wheth­er it’s an issue like 9/11, or the bail­ing out of the banks or the war in Iraq, Machon asserts that the erosion of civil liber­ties is finally for­cing soci­ety to “become demo­crat­ic­ally engaged again, which can­not be bad.”

In many ways Annie Machon is serving her coun­try as stealth­ily and determ­inedly as if she had nev­er left MI5. Tak­ing the “same sort of fun­da­ment­al drive to try and make a dif­fer­ence, to try and change things for the bet­ter,” into this new arena of her work, she hands me a red-and-black busi­ness card with her shades-tot­ing self on it and the phrase “Using Our Intel­li­gence” emblazoned on the front.

“There’s always the debate,” she tells me cryptic­ally, “is it bet­ter to be inside the tent piss­ing out or out­side the tent piss­ing in?”

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)

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LEAP_logo

Law Enforce­ment Against Pro­hib­i­tion (LEAP).

Pro­hib­i­tion has nev­er worked, as proven through­out history. 

Around the world many judges, law­yers, officers from the police, cus­toms, and intel­li­gence organ­isa­tions, as well as many oth­er experts, are chal­len­ging the failed concept of the “war on drugs”.   This policy, in place for dec­ades now in many coun­tries des­pite its mani­fest, abject and repeated fail­ure, crim­in­al­ises great swathes of our pop­u­la­tions, causes health prob­lems, social prob­lems and untold suf­fer­ing, and funds organ­ised crime and ter­ror­ist groups, rather than provid­ing poten­tially enorm­ous tax rev­en­ue to the state. 

It is time for a mature, calm debate about the issue, rather than hys­ter­ic­al, tabloid headlines.

I am hon­oured to be one of this group speak­ing out.


 

LEAP State­ment of Principles

1. LEAP does not pro­mote the use of drugs and is deeply con­cerned about the extent of drug abuse world­wide. LEAP is also deeply con­cerned with the destruct­ive impact of viol­ent drug gangs and car­tels every­where in the world. Neither prob­lem is remedied by the cur­rent policy of drug pro­hib­i­tion. Indeed, drug abuse and gang viol­ence flour­ish in a drug pro­hib­i­tion envir­on­ment, just as they did dur­ing alco­hol prohibition.

2. LEAP advoc­ates the elim­in­a­tion of the policy of drug pro­hib­i­tion and the inaug­ur­a­tion of a replace­ment policy of drug con­trol and reg­u­la­tion, includ­ing reg­u­la­tions impos­ing appro­pri­ate age restric­tions on drug sales and use, just as there are age restric­tions on mar­riage, sign­ing con­tracts, alco­hol, tobacco, oper­at­ing vehicles and heavy equip­ment, vot­ing and so on.

3. LEAP believes that adult drug abuse is a health prob­lem and not a law-enforce­ment mat­ter, provided that the abuse does not harm oth­er people or the prop­erty of others.

4. LEAP believes that adult drug use, how­ever dan­ger­ous, is a mat­ter of per­son­al free­dom as long as it does not impinge on the free­dom or safety of others.

5. LEAP speak­ers come from a wide diver­gence of polit­ic­al thought and social con­science and recog­nize that in a post-pro­hib­i­tion world it will take time to strike a prop­er reg­u­lat­ory bal­ance, blend­ing private, pub­lic and med­ic­al mod­els to best con­trol and reg­u­late “illi­cit drugs.” LEAP speak­ers are free to advoc­ate their view of bet­ter post-pro­hib­i­tion stratagems without toe­ing a LEAP “party line.”

6. LEAP recog­nizes that even in a post-pro­hib­i­tion world, still, drugs can be dan­ger­ous and poten­tially addict­ive, requir­ing appro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tion and con­trol. Even in a free-mar­ket eco­nomy, reas­on­able reg­u­la­tion for the pur­poses of pub­lic health is a long-stand­ing, accep­ted prin­ciple. Such reg­u­la­tion must not allow cas­u­al, unfettered or indis­crim­in­ate drug sales.

7. LEAP believes that gov­ern­ment has a pub­lic health oblig­a­tion to accur­ately ascer­tain the risks asso­ci­ated with the use of each “illi­cit drug” and a duty to clearly com­mu­nic­ate that inform­a­tion to the pub­lic by means of labeling and warn­ings sim­il­ar to what is done regard­ing food, tobacco, alco­hol and medicine.

8. LEAP believes that an inor­din­ate num­ber of people have been mis­guidedly incar­cer­ated for viol­a­tion of zero-tol­er­ant, non­vi­ol­ent, con­sen­su­al “drug crimes.” The end of drug pro­hib­i­tion will allow those per­sons to be promptly released, to have their record of con­vic­tion expunged, and their civil rights com­pletely restored. How­ever, the repeal of drug pro­hib­i­tion does not imply the exon­er­a­tion from charges for con­nec­ted offenses, such as viol­ent crimes, gun crimes, theft, or driv­ing under the influ­ence of drugs. Fur­ther­more, LEAP believes that people using alco­hol or oth­er drugs must be held account­able for any mis­be­ha­vi­or, which harms oth­er people or prop­erty of oth­ers, while under the influ­ence of mind-alter­ing substances.

9. LEAP believes that per­sons suf­fer­ing from drug abuse afflic­tions and addic­tion, who want help, should be provided with a vari­ety of help, includ­ing drug treat­ment and drug main­ten­ance, even for unin­sured addicts. LEAP believes that with an end to drug pro­hib­i­tion and regained con­trol of crim­in­al justice expendit­ures, a frac­tion of those sav­ings would be more than suf­fi­cient to pay for expan­ded addic­tion services.

10. LEAP recog­nizes that dif­fer­ent “illi­cit drugs” pose dif­fer­ing risks of harm. As such, in a post-pro­hib­i­tion world, LEAP recog­nizes that an appro­pri­ate set of reg­u­la­tions and con­trol for one sub­stance may not be a suit­able or suf­fi­cient reg­u­la­tion and con­trol for anoth­er sub­stance. LEAP believes that the nation states of the world and vari­ous states with­in the United States must be giv­en the reg­u­lat­ory lat­it­ude to try new mod­els that wisely bal­ance the notions of free­dom over one’s own body with the need for com­mon sense reg­u­la­tion of drugs to reduce death, dis­ease, addic­tion and harm.

Drug_tax_revenue

 

 

The murder of Pat Finucane

Posted on by Annie Machon
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Mov­ing swiftly past the pruri­ent, thigh-rub­bing glee that most of the old media seems to be exhib­it­ing over the alleged details of Juli­an Assange’s love life, let’s re-focus on the heart of the Wikileaks dis­clos­ures, and most import­antly the aims under­pin­ning them: trans­par­ency, justice, and an informed cit­izenry liv­ing with­in fully-func­tion­ing demo­cra­cies.  Such quaint notions.

In the media mael­strom of the Cableg­ate dis­clos­ures, and the res­ult­ing infant­ile and thug­gish threats of the Amer­ic­an polit­ic­al class, is easy to lose sight of the fact that many of the leaked doc­u­ments refer to scan­dals, cor­rup­tion and cov­er-ups in a range of coun­tries, not just the good old US of A.

Pat_FinucaneOne doc­u­ment that recently caught my atten­tion related to the notori­ous murder twenty-one years ago of civil rights act­iv­ist, Pat Finu­cane, in North­ern Ire­land.  Finu­cane was a well-known law­yer who was shot and killed in front of his wife and three small chil­dren.  There has long been spec­u­la­tion that he was tar­geted by Prot­est­ant ter­ror­ist groups, in col­lu­sion with the NI secret police, the army’s notori­ous and now-dis­ban­ded Forces Research Unit (FRU), and/or MI5.

Well, over a dec­ade ago former top plod, Lord (John) Stevens, began an inquiry that did indeed estab­lish such state col­lu­sion, des­pite hav­ing his inquiry offices burnt out in the pro­cess by person/s allegedly unknown half-way through the invest­ig­a­tion.  Stevens fought on, pro­du­cing a damning report in 2003 con­firm­ing the notion of state col­lu­sion with Irish Loy­al­ist ter­ror­ist activ­it­ies, but nev­er did cla­ri­fy exactly what had happened to poor Pat Finucane.

How­ever, Finu­cane’s trau­mat­ised fam­ily has nev­er stopped demand­ing justice.  The recent dis­clos­ure shines a light on some of the back-room deals around this scan­dal, and for that I’m sure many people thank Wikileaks.

The “Troubles” in North­ern Ire­land — such a quint­es­sen­tially Brit­ish under­state­ment, in any oth­er coun­try it would have been called a civil war — were decept­ive, murky and vicious on both sides.  “Col­lu­sion” is an elast­ic word that stretches bey­ond the strict notion of the state.  It is well-known that the US organ­is­tion, NORAID, sup­por­ted by many Amer­ic­ans claim­ing Irish ances­try, was a major fun­drais­ing chan­nel for, um, Sinn Féin, the polit­ic­al wing of the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA, from the 1970s onwards. 

Peter_kingSuch net­works provided even more sup­port than Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya with his arms ship­ments, and the cash well only dried up post‑9/11.  As you can see in this recent art­icle in the The Tele­graph, even the incom­ing Chair­man of the House Home­land Secur­ity Com­mit­tee, New York Con­gress­man Peter King (who iron­ic­ally called for the des­ig­na­tion of Wkileaks as a “for­eign ter­ror­ist organ­isa­tion”) appears to have been a life long sup­port­er of Sinn Féin.

With this in the back of our minds, it appears that Dub­lin and Wash­ing­ton kept push­ing for a full inquiry into Finu­cane’s murder — and in 2005 it looked like MI5 would finally co-oper­ate. 

How­ever, the dev­il was in the detail. Coin­cid­ent­ally, 2005 was the year that the UK gov­ern­ment rushed through a new law, the Inquir­ies Act, which scan­dal­ously allowed any depart­ment under invest­ig­a­tion (in this case MI5) to dic­tate the terms and scope of the inquiry. 

Col­lu­sion by any state in the unlaw­ful arrest, tor­ture, and extraju­di­cial murder of people — wheth­er its own cit­izens or oth­ers — is state ter­ror­ism.  Let’s not mince our words here.  Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al provides a clear defin­i­tion of this concept.

As the The Guard­i­an  art­icle about Finu­cane so succintly puts it:

“When a state sanc­tions the killing of cit­izens, in par­tic­u­lar cit­izens who are law­yers, it puts the rule of law and demo­cracy in jeop­ardy. And when a state enlists aux­il­i­ary assas­sins, it cedes its mono­poly over state secrets: it may feel omni­po­tent, but it is also vul­ner­able to disclosure.”

Mercenaries1Indeed.  North­ern Ire­land was like a Petri dish of human rights abuses: tor­ture, Dip­lock courts (aka mil­it­ary tribunals), kid­nap­pings, curfews, shoot-to-kill, inform­ers, and state col­lu­sion in assassinations.

The infec­tion has now spread.  These are pre­cisely the tac­tics cur­rently used by the US, the UK and their “aux­il­i­ary assas­sins” across great swathes of the Middle East.  Per­haps this explains why our nation states have been out­flanked and have ceded their mono­poly over secrets.

Will justice ever be done?  In the past I would have said, sadly, that would be highly unlikely.  How­ever,  cour­ageous organ­isa­tions like Wikileaks and its ilk are improv­ing the odds.

The Ghost of Daniel Ellsberg

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Pentagon_papers This is an excel­lent art­icle from a European tech­no­logy strategist and futur­ist.  It suc­cinctly sums up all that is wrong with the old medi­a’s cov­er­age of the Wikileaks story over the last year, where people obsess about the tech­no­logy, the web­site and the per­son­al life of Juli­an Assange.

As the art­icle says, we should be focus­ing on the core issues: illeg­al wars, war crimes, murder, tor­ture, cor­por­ate and polit­ic­al cor­rup­tion, and dip­lo­mat­ic duplicity.

Let’s address the mes­sage, not attack the mes­sen­ger, and cer­tainly not the medium.