Iraqi documents
Iraq on the Record (<http://democrats.reform.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord>) is a searchable collection of over 200 specific misleading statements made by Bush administration officials about the threat allegedly posed by Iraq. The collection would be even larger if it also included statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. However, if a statement was ‘…an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, it …[has been]…excluded even if it now appears erroneous.’
The US establishment probably feels happier with another collection, the Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center’s Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents (<http://70.169.163.24/>), which allows public access to unclassified documents and media captured during ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. There’s a whole section of al-Qa’ida documents
‘……..maintained in the Department of Defense’s Harmony [sic] database. In the text of these documents, readers will see how explicit al-Qa’ida has been in its internal discussions covering a range of organizational issues, particularly regarding the internal structure and functioning of the movement as well as with tensions that emerged within the leadership.’
But before you rush to log on to the website, take heed of the following health warning: ‘The Government may monitor and audit the usage of this system, and all persons are hereby notified that use of this system constitutes consent to such monitoring and auditing.’
9/11
Readers are probably familiar with the Scholars for 9/11 Truth group of US academics,([1]) if only because it receives a regular mauling from other academics and the media.([2]) Usually singled out for special treatment is Professor Steven E. Jones, who, after being put on paid leave by Brigham Young University because of the ‘increasingly speculative and accusatory nature of [his] statements…regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center’, has now taken early retirement.([3])
On the other hand are those academics whose findings have been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. Allen M. Poteshman (happily still in post as Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Illinois), for example, has claimed that there was ‘…..evidence of unusual option market activity [in American Airlines and United Airlines stock] in the days leading up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance knowledge of the attacks.'([4]) It should also be noted that the academic publishing multinational, Elsevier, has devoted the whole of its latest edition of Research in Political Economy to 9/11.([5]) As for me, I have to admit to still being puzzled as to why WTC7 collapsed despite not being struck by a plane.([6])
Spook histories
Keith Jeffery, Professor of British History at Queen’s University Belfast, has been signed up to write the first official history of the Secret Intelligence Service. ‘I feel like a child in a sweetie shop. I have been given complete access to all of the relevant secret files for the period covered by the book, and the freedom to explore anything I find, although there are some necessary security constraints within which I will be working…'([7])
One major constraint is the fact that the forthcoming book will only cover the period 1909 to 1949 so as to protect information still considered to be ‘especially sensitive’. Care will be also be taken to ensure that SIS’s commitment to protect the identities of agents and staff is not compromised by the book’s publication. (Foreign and Commonwealth Office press release, 7 December 2005) ([8])
Murrell update
Andrew George had another day in court on 9 June when his appeal against his conviction of the murder of Hilda Murrell was rejected by the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division.([9]) However a number of interesting points did find their way into Lord Justice Moses’ judgement.
‘There was evidence from a substantial number of witnesses that … [George] could not drive. There was no dispute that the car was driven badly when leaving…[Hilda Murrell’s] house… But… [George] was not just a bad driver, but one who could not drive at all….He was unable to recognise [a] clutch or, still worse, knew how to operate it.’
Trainer prints were found in the house but ‘there was no evidence to link him with the wearing of trainer shoes at the time.’ The judge also acknowledged that there was ‘…no forensic evidence whatsoever to link … [George] with the car used to abduct Miss Murrell or the scene of the murder…’. And for good measure ‘there was evidence of a man seen running away from the scene of the murder, certainly giving rise to suspicions in the minds of the police at the time…’.([10])
Hilda Murrell’s nephew, former Royal Navy Commander Robert Green, was reported to be travelling to London from New Zealand to attend the appeal hearing. He was said to have new evidence and was speculating about ‘official involvement’ in the killing. However, it remains unclear if whatever evidence he had was taken into consideration. ([11])
George has now asked the Criminal Cases Review Commission to look into his case.
There is nothing like a Dame
Pressure from the royal household, Mohamed Al Fayed and Number 10 have been cited as reasons behind the decision of the Royal Coroner, Michael Burgess, not to hear the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed. Following a flurry of speculation, the former President of the High Court Family Division, Dame Elisabeth Butler-Sloss, was duly appointed as Deputy Coroner of the Queen’s Household for the purpose of hearing the inquests. According to the Judicial Communications Office, Dame Elisabeth will act as an ‘…independent judicial officer…[and] will take instructions from no-one in the conduct of her duties.'([12])
Another venerable figure has also become embroiled. Rush to Judgement author Mark Lane has been hired by Mohamed Al Fayed to investigate the fatal crash. Lane’s preliminary inquiry has apparently revealed ‘numerous and serious unanswered questions’.([13])
And finally, Nicholas Davies’ book, Diana: the killing of a princess, ([14]) reviewed by Richard and Judy but by nobody else, as far as I can tell. Most of it is a rehash of the Wales’ miserable marital life with the Paris revelations left until the end. In brief: MI5 carried out the killing (with the French supplying the Mercedes). The car’s seatbelts were tampered with. Henri Paul was briefed by one of his intelligence handlers and instructed to drive at speed through the Alma Tunnel as part of a plan supposedly devised by the Paris police to avoid the paparazzi. In the Tunnel the occupants of a white Fiat Uno were alerted (possibly via a wireless link) of the Mercedes’ impending arrival and duly set off a high density strobe light which disorientated Henri Paul and caused the crash. Unsurprisingly, Davies doesn’t identify his intelligence service contacts who have supplied him with the information on which he has based his account. He did, however, pass on his evidence to members of Operation Paget during an interview lasting ‘several hours’.
Hutton on the defensive
In a tone not dissimilar to that employed by the author of The Blunkett Tapes, Lord Hutton uses the pages of Public Law([15]) to lengthily justify his findings. ([16])
‘Many commentators were hoping and predicting that my report would severely damage the government, and I knew that if I delivered a report concluding that the government had deliberately misled the country about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and had acted towards Dr Kelly in a dishonourable and underhand way, I would be acclaimed in many sections of the media as a fearless and independent judge. I also knew that if I did not come to such findings it was probable that my report would be subjected to considerable criticism.’
So it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Hutton also appears to be sensitive to claims that he was ‘too ready to accept the evidence of the Prime Minister and senior officials’ and points out the dangers of adopting ‘an attitude of predetermined bias against certain witnesses and [proceeding] on the presumption that because they are politicians and civil servants their evidence is to be disbelieved unless its truth is established by irrefutable and independent evidence…’. No problem in this instance as ‘the evidence of the Prime Minister and the senior officials was strong and was consistent with the surrounding circumstances.’
Brownshirt Windsors?
Our own royal family occasionally flits through the pages of Jonathan Petropoulos’s exhaustive survey of the German aristocracy’s involvement with the Hitler Gang, Royals and the Reich: the Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). In particular, Anthony Blunt’s post-war mission to Schloss Friedrichshof on behalf of the royal family is examined in some detail (pp.337-344), with the author concluding that he was under instructions to look out for documents that might incriminate the Duke of Windsor and other members of the royal family, notably George VI and the Duke of Kent. He also concludes that Blunt was unsuccessful, as any such correspondence had either been destroyed or moved elsewhere.
Blunt was mentioned in an extract from the diaries of architectural historian James Lees-Milne.
‘Monday 5 July 1993……Polly Lansdowne…told me how she worked at the Courtauld under Anthony Blunt. Greatly admired him as an art historian, but otherwise did not like him. Thinks he may have tried to enlist her into spydom, she then being the daughter of a Minister of the Crown.'([17])
Using the Katrina Reconstruction Summit as a starting point, Eric Klinenberg and Thomas Frank provide a depressingly detailed account of how the US Department of Homeland Security (created from twenty-two federal agencies to form an umbrella organisation overseeing domestic security) has become ‘a single gigantic department committed to shifting as much work as possible from the public to the private sector’. According to the authors it has ‘[hollowed] out government and [enriched] an administration’s corporate cronies’. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina alone is likely to result in contracts of $250 billion and some observers calculate that a further $400 billion of contracts will be outsourced to the private sector by 2010.([18])
FOI
freedominfo.org has added a new, comprehensive country-by-country section that gives users access to resources about FOI laws in more than 60 countries, including legal texts, links to government bodies and organisations, and current news. The dual mission of the site still remains a virtual network linking FOI movements globally and an ‘institutional memory’ for transparency and access to information rights throughout the world. <http://www.freedominfo.org/>
Notes
[1] <http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/>
[2] See for example: Justin Pope, ‘9/11 conspiracy theorists thriving’, Associated Press Online 7 August 2006; Richard Roeper, ‘Academics fill grassy knoll spot abandoned by Oliver Stone’, Chicago Sun Times 8 August 2006; Alexander Cockburn, ‘The 9/11 conspiracy nuts’, The Nation 25 September 2006. <http://www.thenation.com/doc/ 20060925/cockburn>. For a slightly more benevolent view, see Christina Asquith, ‘Who really blew up the twin towers?’, The Guardian 5 September 2006
[3] Jane R. Porter, ‘Brigham Young U. puts physicist on leave over statements about 9/11’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 September 2006; Sheena McFarland, ‘Controversial prof to leave BYU’, The Salt Lake Tribune 21 October 2006; Tad Walch, ‘BYU professor in dispute over 9/11 will retire’, Deseret Morning News 21 October 2006. Many of Jones’s statements appear in The Journal of 9/11 Studies <www. journalof911studies.com/> which he co-edits
[4] In fairness it should be said that he seems to agree with the ‘widespread speculation…that the terrorists or their associates traded ahead in the option market on the basis of foreknowledge of the impending attacks.’ (Allen M. Poteshman, ‘Unusual option market activity and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001’, Journal of Business, 79(4), July 2006, pp.1703-1726.)
[5] Published as volume 23, it has been given the title ‘The hidden history of 9-11-2001’. Although including such provocative content as ‘What we now know about the alleged 9-11 hijackers’, ‘Initiation of the 9-11 operation, with evidence of insider trading beforehand’, ‘The destruction of the World Trade Center: why the official account cannot be true’, and ‘The military drills on 9-11: “bizarre coincidence” or something else’, there seems to have been no media coverage of its claims whatsoever. The only review that I’ve been able to track down was published on the Guerrilla News Network: < http://www.gnn.tv/B16240> Further details of the publication can be found here: <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/ homepages/PZarembka/volume23.htm>
An earlier volume in the series included a ‘…political analysis of September 11 drawing upon Peter Dale Scott’s concept of deep politics and the Hegelian-Marxist political economy of evil.’ (David MacGregor, ‘The deep politics of September 11: political economy of concrete evil’, Research in Political Economy, 20, 2002, pp.3-61.)
[6] As appears to be the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is still investigating the collapse five years after the event. See <http://wtc.nist.gov/media/ WTC7_Approach_ Summary 12Oct06.pdf> for its latest summary.
[7] Claire Regan, ‘Queen’s boffin to write official history of MI6’, Belfast Telegraph, 7 December 2005.
[8] The account will parallel the official history of the Security Service, currently being written by Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew. His appointment has been criticised by Anthony Glees, Professor of Politics at Brunel University’s Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies and co-author of Spinning the spies: open government and the Hutton Inquiry (London: Social Affairs Unit, 2004), who pointed out that a more objective account might emerge if the Security Service’s records were lodged in The National Archives and made available for all historians. He also claimed that Andrew is regarded as a safe pair of hands and may be ‘obliged’ to show MI5 in a favourable light, especially as it’s due to be published in 2009 to mark the Service’s centenary. Anthony Glees, ‘Can the spooks be spooked?’, The Times Higher Education Supplement; 17 June 2005, pp.16-17.
[9] Mike Taylor, ‘Hilda Murrell’s murderer loses appeal’, Press Association Newsfile, 9 June 2006; Anon., ‘Murrell murder riddle over’, Birmingham Post, 10 June 2006.
[10] A full transcript of the judgement (Regina v Andrew Harold George) can be viewed here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/ 2006/1652.htm
[11] Dan Eaton, ‘Nuclear activist has new evidence’, The Press (Christchurch, New Zealand), 12 May 2006.
[12] Dominic Kennedy and Frances Gibb, ‘Diana inquest coroner resigns as doubts raised over royal role’, The Times 22 July 2006; Jeff Edwards and Vanessa Allen, ‘Too many on my case: coroner anger at Di inquest meddlers’, The Mirror, 22 July 2006; Geoffrey Levy, ‘Will they ever let Diana rest in peace?’, Daily Mail, 4 August 2006; Lee Glendinning and Sophie Goodchild, ‘Senior royals to be quizzed by judge in Diana inquest…’, Independent on Sunday, 3 September 2006; Veronica Cowan, ‘Coroner’s news update’, Justice of the Peace, 170 (36), 9 September 2006, p.704. See also the Diana’s Inquest website: <www.diana-inquest.co.uk/index.html>.
[13] Anon., ‘From JFK “plot” to Diana’, The New York Post, 14 July 2006; Anon., ‘Princess Di, the CIA and deadly neckties’, TMZ.com, 14 July 2006 <http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/14/princess-di-the-cia-and-deadly-neckties/ >
[14] Brighton: Pen Press Publishers, 2006. (A self publishing organisation. <http://www.penpress.net/index.html>)
[15] Lord Hutton, ‘The media reaction to the Hutton Report’, Public Law, Winter 2006, pp.807-832.
[16] Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly C.M.G.. London: Stationery Office, 2004. Available at:<http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk>.
[17] James Lees-Milne, The Milk of Paradise: diaries, 1993-1997 (London: John Murray, 2005), p.50. Polly Lansdowne was the daughter of Sir David Eccles (later Viscount Eccles), holder of a number of ministerial posts in the 1950s. Could this have aroused Blunt’s interest?
[18] Eric Klinenberg and Thomas Frank, ‘Looting homeland security’, Rolling Stone, 990/991, 29 December 2005-12 January 2006, pp.44-46,48,52-54.