'Fight Smart' - 22 July 2007

Don't Take the Bait - Fight Smart
ANIMATED 911 SUMMARY - CLICK HERE
Who is the enemy?

Rogue State Britain
MI6 As Agent For Big Oil
The Hidden Powers Behind British Foreign Policy
John Scarlett's Evil Empire
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/watscarlett.htm
New Allegations Emerge About Post Cold-War
MI6-BP Sponsored Coup D'Etat In Azerbaijan

Now New Allegations From A Former BP Insider Reveal More Of Scarlett's Track Record
In Subversive 'Regime Change' Activities

"BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts. The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant [...according to] Les Abrahams, who led BP's successful bid for a multi-million-pound deal with one of the former Soviet republics [Azerbaijan] ... While employed by BP, Mr Abrahams says he was persuaded to work for MI6 by John Scarlett .... Some of Mr Abrahams' most intriguing claims surround the alleged co-operation between BP and the British intelligence services to secure a more pro-Western, pro-business regime in the country. He says the operation, masterminded by Scarlett in Moscow, contributed to the coup in May 1992 which saw President Ayaz Mutalibov toppled by Abulfaz Elchibey, and then to a second change a year later which saw Haydar Aliyev take power. Just months after Aliyev was installed, BP signed the so-called 'contract of the century', a £5 billion deal which placed BP at the head of an oil exporting consortium. ..... 'BP supported both coups, both through discreet moves and open political support. Our progress on the oil contracts improved considerably after the coups.' [said Abrahams] Subsequently released Turkish secret service documents claimed BP had discussed an 'arms for oil' deal with the assistance of MI6, under which the company would use intermediaries to supply weapons to Aliyev's supporters in return for the contract... When the documents emerged in 2000, BP denied supplying arms - although sources admitted its representatives had 'discussed the possibility'.... [T]he Foreign Office said of Mr Abrahams' claims: 'We neither confirm nor deny anyone's allegations in relation to intelligence matters.'"
Hookers, spies, cases full of dollars... how BP spent £45m to win 'Wild East' oil rights
Daily Mail, 12 May 2007

Above - The 12 May 2007 article which revealed new allegations of MI6's foreign-government regime change efforts on behalf of British oil company BP in Azerbaijan. The operation is reported to have been mastermined by then MI6 Moscow station chief John Scarlett. Scarlett later became responsible for regime change in Iraq (another Islamic country with important oil reserves which BP has ambitions to exploit), as a result of his authorship of the infamous 'Dodgy Dossier' of September 2002. Including their predecessors, MI6 and BP have been playing together at this ruthless values-free secret game for the best part of a century. The latest disclosures come from Les Abrahams, a former BP manager in Azerbaijan. They follow less detailed allegations of  BP's 'arms for oil' coup activities in Azerbaijan previously reported by the Sunday Times.

Click here to view screen-save of above article published 12 May 2007 on Mail web site Click here to view screen-save of extended version of the article published 20 May 2007 on Mail web site Html copies of the articles can be also viewed at the following sites: 12 May 2007 version - Click Here or Here 13 May 2007 version (same content as 12 May) - Click Here or Here (bottom of page) 20 May 2007 extended version  - Click Here (includes article photographs) or Here and Here and Here BP denies to Azeri-Press Agency the allegations made by Les Abrahams  - Click Here

"Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war. The comments from the most senior European oil executive.... will ... serve to underline concern that the US is primarily concerned with seizing control of Saddam Hussein's oil and handing it over to companies such as ExxonMobil rather than destroying his weapons of mass destruction..... Lord Browne's views will be listened to carefully in Downing Street because the BP executive team has such close links with the UK government that it was once dubbed Blair Petroleum." BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches Guardian, 30 October 2002 "A representative for Hands Off Iraqi Oil (HOIO) said that an Iraqi oil law could mean that international companies may receive full control of Iraqi oil fields for more than two decades, Iraq Directory reported. It was also mentioned that Shell Company has been working hand in hand with the United States and Britain to arrange an international policy to permit multinational companies to receive solitary control of Iraq's oil fields. A lobby has been set up who is represented by major energy companies such as BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Total and ENI, and has been advised by the British government on approaches for persuading the Iraqi regime." International oil companies could receive sole control of Iraq's oil Middle East North Africa Financial Network, 21 May 2007 "Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi, the head of the Iraqi oil workers' union, was in London last week campaigning against a new law which, he says, will give the oil giants unprecedented rights to his country's vast reserves....  'One of our criticisms is the way the law was proposed - under a veil of secrecy.'... Al Assadi warned any multinationals planning to invest in the country that they could face fierce opposition from the Iraqi people. 'I have warned the oil companies before, there will be some consequences,' he said." Fight for control: Iraq oil under pressure Observer, 15 July 2007 "An agreement on how to divide oil profits among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish areas is one of 18 key benchmarks of progress to be reviewed by the U.S. in September. More than 90 percent of Iraq's revenue comes from the export of oil. But the report, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the issues the three sides are too far apart to agree on are the 'role of foreign companies in the oil sector;' and the division of the oil profits. The report also includes a grim assessment of the possibility of an increase of oil output in Iraq despite its huge reserves. It concludes that security in Iraq is so unstable 'it is unlikely that any major foreign oil company will be able to invest in Iraq during 2008 (unless they are heavily underwritten by the U.S. government).' The report says the Kurds favor foreign oil companies playing a larger role, but that is opposed by many Shi'a in the south 'because of a fear they will lose control of their assets to outsiders.'" Secret Report: No Iraq Oil Deal by September ABC News, 20 July 2007

MI6 And Big Business

"Duplicity and chicanery are their stock-in-trade, so is it any surprise that spies sometimes break their own rules? More surprising is the mess that [MI6] the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) has made of dealing with Richard Tomlinson, a renegade spook whom it fired in 1995. Running a secret intelligence organisation is a difficult business, now that the moral discipline of the cold war has crumbled: when spying for your country is about making its big businesses richer, rather than subverting totalitarianism, patriotism may not be enough to keep a disgruntled ex-employee quiet."
Breach birth
The Economist, 25 January 2001

"A retired MI6 officer has been appointed to a top post at BP-Amoco, the British-based oil company..... John Gerson was director of security and public affairs at the agency and was embroiled in attempts to suppress disclosures by the former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. Mr Gerson took early retirement from what was effectively the post of deputy head of MI6 at the end of last year. Last month he became one of BP's vice-presidents for government and public affairs. His appointment was approved by the cabinet secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. MI6 has close links with oil companies, the 'revolving door' syndrome, in the same way as armed forces officers have close links with defence companies. Rolls-Royce has employed former MI6 officers to help win contracts in the Middle East, and merchant banks have taken some on. During the first reading of the intelligence services bill, Lord Mackay, the conservative lord chancellor, told peers in 1994 that MI6 protected the 'economic wellbeing' of the country by keeping 'a particular eye on Britain's access to key commodities, like oil...'"
Former MI6 officer gets top post at BP
Guardian, 8 May 2000

"The problem is that because everything is so secret you don't know what's going on. Spies like my husband are asked to do things but they might not be told why, and so very often they can't see the bigger picture. This means that sometimes they don't know whether their actions are noble and resulting in good things ... or whether they are creating hostilities. There's often a lot of tension for them then, and I never knew how Harry would be when he returned from a job. My husband had to go off and do his job and I never knew how he was going to be when he came back."
'Nicky', Wife Of An MI6 Agent - Interview
The spy who loved me
Guardian, 24 January 2007

With The Latest MI6 Azerbaijani 'Oil-For-Arms' Coup Allegations From A Former BP Insider
How Much More Evidence Is Needed Before
This Ever-Present British Cancer Is Stopped From Spreading Its Corrosive Poison Further Into Relationships Within The Global Family Of Nations
As 'Peak Oil' Looms?

"Humanity is approaching an unprecedented crisis when not enough oil and gas will be produced to keep industrial civilisation running, the world's top oilmen  warned last week. The warning – which is being hailed as a 'tipping point' on both sides of  the Atlantic – marks the first time that the industry has accepted that it may soon no longer be able to meet demand for its products. In Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, it gives authoritative support to concern about impending shortages, following a similar alert by the International Energy Agency less than two weeks ago. The 420-page report, the most comprehensive study ever carried out into the industry, has been produced by the National Petroleum Council, a body of 175 authorities that reports to the US government. It includes the heads of the world's big oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum, Shell and BP. Oil and gas may run short by 2015, say industry experts.... It says that 'many observers think that 80 per cent of existing  oil production will need to be replaced by 2030' to keep up present supplies 'in addition to volumes required to meet existing demand.' But, it adds, there are  'accumulating risks to replacing current production and increasing supplies'.... And the crunch could  come sooner, with oil production becoming 'a significant challenge as  early as 2015'. This chimes with the International Energy Agency's prediction that oil  supplies could become 'extremely tight' in five years. Chris Skrebowski, editor of the Energy Institute's Petroleum Review, said the report's publication showed the industry 'fessing up that it really has a problem on its hands'. Until now, he said, 'companies, full of share options, have been terrified of frightening the markets' by revealing the truth."
Oil and gas may run short by 2015, say industry experts
Independent On Sunday, 22 July 2007

Scarlett And His Predecessors Have Been At It For Decades

'Our Values'
Oil, Arms, And Money

".....Tomlinson says that in 1993, MI6 helped British Aerospace [now BAE Systems] win a £500m deal to sell Hawk jets to Indonesia by supplying them with details of a competing bid from the French aircraft manufacturer, Dassault. Similar information was allegedly passed to help BAe win Hawk sales to Malaysia. Such covert gathering of economic and commercial information is nothing new. GCHQ and MI6 have being doing it for years."
Useless spies
Guardian, 23 March 2000

"At the heart of the Department of Justice investigation into BAE Systems will be a secret account held by the Bank of England on behalf of the Saudi Arabian Government. This escrow account is the conduit through which £43 billion has been passed to BAE over the past 22 years to pay for Tornado fighter jets and other military equipment. It was set up as part of the 1985 al-Yamamah oil-for-arms agreement between Britain and Saudi Arabia. Over the years the account has fallen into deficit but more recently has held a significant surplus. It is this surplus that has sparked the recent allegations of corruption in BAE’s dealings with the Saudis. Payments totalling more than £1 billion made to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi Ambassador to the US, are believed to have come from this surplus at the request of the Saudi Government. The money was signed off by the Ministry of Defence, as agreed under the al-Yamamah contract, and transferred through BAE to the projects identified by the Saudis. In the case of Prince Bandar, the money is alleged to have been transferred to an account held by Riggs Bank in the US. The MoD claims that it is unaware of the existence of the account but government officials have confirmed its use. The account was set up because, in the1980s, Saudi Arabia paid for its arms with oil. It transferred oil production to BP and Shell and they paid cash into the Bank of England account. The money was then forwarded to BAE to pay for arms. When the price of oil slumped in the early 1990s the account fell into deficit, embarrassing the Saudis who were forced to make cash top-ups. Since then the account has been kept in surplus. In distributing the surplus, the Saudis have maintained the payment method agreed under al-Yamamah and that is why BAE has become embroiled. The DoJ investigation into BAE will therefore lead directly back to the MoD and a Bank of England account that the Government claims does not exist."
Secret account under spotlight
London Times, 27 June 2007

'No Lie Too Big' If There's Enough Oil At Stake

"It's a long way from Rothesay Academy to the art deco HQ of MI6 on the banks of the Thames at Vauxhall Cross. But Andrew Fulton did it. In fact, this gentlemanly, erudite son of a Scottish reverend rose so rapidly through the ranks of the Secret Intelligence Service that he became the sixth most powerful spy in the United Kingdom.  Today, Fulton faces losing his job as co-ordinator of Glasgow University's Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit following investigations into his MI6 career. Revelations that he was one of the most glittering talents in MI6 have destroyed claims by the briefing unit that its self- appointed task of briefing the world's press over Lockerbie was carried out with the highest standards of impartiality and fairness... Fulton volunteered his services to the unit when he was asked by the university to join as a visiting professor to the School of Law. The work of the unit is funded by the university, although the US Justice Department's Office for the Victims of Crime and the Law Society of Scotland sponsored the production of a trial hand-book co-written by Fulton. The unit has given hundreds of briefings to journalists and coached a variety of news organisations, including the entire Washington press corps, on aspects of the trial. So far its website has received 1.7 million hits. .... Fulton, who has never practised law, is not listed as a certified lawyer in Scotland."
MI6 link to Lockerbie briefings
Sunday Herald, 21 May 2000

"A former Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated. The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.... The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses 'wrote the script' to incriminate Libya.... A source close to Megrahi's defence said: 'Britain and the US were telling the world it was Libya, but in their private communications they acknowledged that they knew it was the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command]'. 'The case is starting to unravel largely because when they wrote the script, they never expected to have to act it out. Nobody expected agreement for a trial to be reached, but it was, and in preparing a manufactured case, mistakes were made.'"
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
Scotsman, 28 August 2005

"It is more than 18 years since the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 killed 270 people in Lockerbie. Yet serious questions remain over who was behind the worst mass murder in British history..... Last week a Scottish judicial body ruled that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was sentenced to 27 years in a Scottish prison for his role in the attack, might have been wrongly convicted....In November 1991 the Americans and British jointly accused the pair of the Lockerbie bombing ....last week, after a three-year investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission announced that it was referring his case to the Scottish Court of Appeal. It dismissed claims by lawyers for Megrahi that vital evidence, including the circuit board from the Mebo timer, had been planted among the debris by police..... But, crucially, the commission did say it had identified six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice 'may have occurred'. While the commission has inexplicably refrained from publishing details of each of these grounds, it is clear that doubts about Gauci’s testimony form the core of its concerns."
Unpicking the Lockerbie truth
London Times, 1 July 2007

Downing St, The City Of London, And British Foreign Policy

"Police investigating the cash for honours scandal seized evidence that Downing Street had plotted to hand peerages to eight of the 12 businessmen who had bankrolled Labour’s 2005 election campaign. A draft honours list, drawn up in September 2005, showed that the plan to offer peerages to businessmen who had loaned Labour millions of pounds had involved twice as many lenders as previously disclosed.... The Sunday Times has also discovered that there was a second key piece of evidence – a diary kept by [biotechnology entrepreneur Sir Christopher] Evans that allegedly details a series of meetings at the House of Lords in 2004 with Lord Levy, Blair’s chief fundraiser, to discuss a peerage. One well-placed Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) source said the diary was 'dynamite' and provided 'spectacular' evidence of an alleged 'agreement' for Evans to be ennobled in return for a £1m loan. Evans’s name was removed from the honours list after Downing Street discovered that his company was the subject of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. A CPS official said that these two pieces of evidence formed the core of the 16-month police investigation, which the Yard believed until recently would lead to charges against key Downing Street aides. However, the investigation was effectively halted at a meeting on July 4 when a leading government barrister, David Perry QC, ruled that the diary was not admissible as evidence....The CPS announced last week it would not be charging anyone.....  Government insiders revealed that the police were shocked at the decision not to prosecute. An official said the police and the CPS had worked side by side on the case for 18 months until there was a 'sudden change that pulled the plug'. The official said: 'All those eight people gave massive loans, then shortly after they all appeared on No 10’s peerages list. It looked pretty odd, to say the least. Were the Met right to investigate it? Yes, they f****** were.'.... Government sources revealed Evans’s diaries were central to the investigation. The Sunday Times has established that there are entries apparently recording discussions between Evans and Levy in 2004. In these meetings, the diaries allegedly explicitly link the offer of a loan to the promise of a peerage. Levy told police he had never made any such offer. 'If those diaries ever get into the public domain, the effect will be spectacular,' said one person who has read them.”
No 10 honours plot: four new names
London Times, 22 July 2007

"Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder, Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone, and Tony Hayward, John Browne’s replacement at BP, are among a string of high profile City executives who have been recruited to advise Gordon Brown and his new cabinet on business.The list of FTSE 100 chief executives who will serve on the newly formed Business Council for Britain also includes and Jean-Paul Garnier, GlaxoSmithKline chief, Stephen Green of HSBC and Tesco’s Sir Terry Leahy. The impressive list of business leaders is central to the prime minister’s efforts to improve relations between the City and the government."
Brown leans on City for business advice
Financial Times, 29 June 2007

"A lavish contributor to Labour's coffers, Sir Ronnie [Cohen] has quietly secured a coveted place at [Gordon] Brown's side, and appears to be lined up for something far surpassing the fundraiser-cum-fixer's job once done by Lord Levy....The latest Sunday Times Rich List estimates his fortune at £260 million, making him the sixth wealthiest man in the City.... after a decade on the fringes of the Blairite court, he understands the size of the role Brown has in mind for him. Just as the outgoing Prime Minister surrounded himself with advisers whose stature and influence was equal to, if not greater than, members of the cabinet, so Sir Ronald and a few other key Brownites are about to find themselves in similarly elevated positions. While his first task will be to rebuild Labour's depleted finances before the next election, his real job is likely to be as a globetrotting uber-envoy, bypassing the Foreign Office and reporting directly to the prime minister, and with a particular focus on the Middle East."
Mr Brown's smoothy
Sunday Telegraph, 17 June 2007

"Tony Blair's controversial Middle East envoy Lord Levy is leaving too and attention is turning to Ronnie Cohen, a man some believe may play an equivalent role for Gordon Brown for the new Labour leader. He is rich, secretive, and controversial - an important donor to the Labour party and man with a key role in British diplomacy as it relates to the Middle East.  Sir Ronald is an Egyptian-born Jew and fluent in Arabic. He fled persecution to Britain as a child. His career background is in finance, not politics. At 26 he set up Apax Partners, a Private Equity firm that is regarded as the grand-daddy of an industry Cohen made hundreds of millions of pounds [from] until he started looking for a change two years ago. It was his role at the Portland Trust that caught Gordon Brown's attention. More4 News has learnt Sir Ronald will not have any official role under Brown in the way that Levy was a formal 'envoy' to Blair, but that does not mean that he will not be a hugely powerful figure. A source close to Cohen told us Sir Ronald believes his power will be in inverse proportion to his profile, so he could stay out of the public eye, while acting as a key policy adviser or maker behind the scenes."
Gordon Brown's rich friend
Channel 4 News, 19 June 2007

"The financier Sir Ronald Cohen, who has been one of the Chancellor's most trusted informal advisers for the past decade, recently made the surprising decision to retire from active business life. This was an extremely significant move: he will shortly emerge from the shadows of the City to become one of the most senior   members of the inner circle of the next Prime Minister.... Initially, Sir Ronald will be entrusted with the task of restoring Labour Party finances. The party is bankrupt at the moment - a direct consequence of the cash for peerages affair. Sir Ronald will be asked to help find the money to fight the next General Election, without leaving Labour cripplingly dependent on union donations. He will also be brought into the heart of government in other ways. Gordon Brown already employs Sir Ronald as a foreign policy adviser, just as Tony Blair used Lord Levy.... His stature will be far greater than that of mere Cabinet ministers. The truth is that Sir Ronald, Treasury Minister Ed Balls and just one or two other key Brownites will run the country. Anyone who wishes to understand what Britain under Gordon Brown will be like has no choice but to understand Sir Ronald Cohen, who he is and what he does... Sir Ronald is the founder of the private equity business, which makes massive profits out of buying, restructuring and then selling on great chunks of British business and which controls about a quarter of the country's private industry. This makes him a businessman of enormous importance.....he is a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies - a very wellconnected think tank specialising in political and military conflict.... Sir Ronald (who has personally given some £1.5 million to Labour since 2001 alone) is one of a group of private equity moguls who have made very substantial donations to the Labour Party.... the large donations to the Labour Party [are] mainly from people who, like Sir Ronald, showed no interest in Labour until it was on the verge of power..."
Worrying questions over Brown's private banker
Daily Mail, 3 March 2007

'The Special Relationship'
'Our Values' - Anglo-American Partners Backing Of Oil Rich Dictatorships

"Foreign Secretary David Miliband has insisted that the US will continue to be the UK's 'single most important bilateral partner in the world'.  Mr Miliband said: 'Nothing has changed. ......Our shared values give us real strength.'"
Miliband defends UK-US relations
BBC Online, 14 July 2007

"In the control room of Azerbaijan's sprawling oil terminal near the capital, Baku, Bala Mirza sits peering at a fuzzy map on a computer monitor. The outline of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey looks like little more than a jumble of hills and farming towns. But for the engineer, 41, what lies underground has rocked his world: a new 1,100-mile oil pipeline, which in recent months has tied this tiny country on the edge of the Caspian Sea to the huge Western market....This Muslim republic [Azerbaijan], directly north of Iran and tucked into the southwest corner of the vast former Soviet empire, is suddenly a central player in one of the West's most distressing problems: how the U.S. and Europe will secure enough oil and gas to power cities, factories, airplanes and cars--in short, how to keep our entire modern lives afloat. Since last June, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day have surged through a pipeline running from Baku through Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Named the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), the $4 billion pipeline is one of the world's longest and is operated by the British-American oil company BP, with partners that include U.S. oil companies Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Hess. By spring, about 1 million bbl. a day will move down the pipe, and BP could increase that soon after to about 1.5 million bbl. a day. A parallel BP pipeline opened last month to send hundreds of billions of cubic feet of natural gas from the Caspian to Western Europe, in order to break the Continent's overwhelming reliance on Russia.... Fifteen years after the Soviet Union's collapse, it's tempting to think of the cold war as history--until you land in Baku. This is the front line of a new East-West contest, one that is as consequential as the nuclear-weapons face-off of the past: the battle for energy supplies among countries heavily dependent on imported oil and gas, which include the U.S. and the E.U., plus the rocketing economies of China and India. That necessity is a powerful weapon in this new battle.....Azerbaijan might be secular, but it is hardly democratic. Local elections in 2005 and the presidential vote that brought Ilham Aliyev to power in 2003 were both flawed, according to U.N. and American election observers. A free press? Hardly. One afternoon in December, TIME's team was taken to a police station near Baku and questioned for three hours about our activities.... Some Azeris believe Western governments prefer energy security to political freedom, as was sought in the 2004 revolution in Ukraine--a major transhipper of natural gas to Western Europe. 'The U.S. will never support democrats in Azerbaijan because of their oil interests,' says [Vafa] Guluzadeh [former adviser to President Heydar Aliyev]."
Oil's Vital New Power
TIME, 12 January 2007

What Was Really At Stake In The Ukrainian Elections Of 2004? - Click Here

"Those who dare challenge the [Saudi] regime or its policies are punished severely. There is no constitution, no political parties and no legislature. It was under such an environment of repression that Osama Bin Laden and most of his followers first emerged. Long shielded by their willingness to supply the United States with cheap oil, to subsidize the American arms industry with major weapons purchases and to make lucrative deals with other major U.S. corporate interests, the United States has allowed this family dictatorship to get away with practices that would have been considered unacceptable for almost any other country..... Much of this comes down to the fact that it is easier to manipulate and make deals with unaccountable despots than it is with an unwieldy democratic system that has to be responsive to the desires of the people.... In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abel-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Arabian kingdom that now bears his family's name, and forged the alliance that remains to this day: in return for open access to Saudi oil, the United States would protect the royal family from its enemies, both external and internal....."
Time to Question the US Role in Saudi Arabia
Foreign Policy in Focus, 27 May 2003

Meanwhile The Battle For The World's Energy
As Peak Oil Looms Britain And America's Undeclared Struggle Against China And India Rages On

"[UK Foreign Secretary] David Miliband gave a rousing defence of Britain’s special relationship with America yesterday, vowing to uphold what he called this country’s 'single most important' alliance. Days after government ministers hinted that Gordon Brown may distance himself from Washington, the Foreign Secretary used his first important foreign policy speech to defend staunchly Britain’s support for President Bush. 'If we want Britain to be a global hub we need a strong relationship with the leading global power,' he said in a speech at Chatham House, the foreign policy think-tank in London. 'The US is our single most important bilateral partnership, yes because of shared values, but also because of political reality.'...The alliance with the US was one that would grow and deepen over time. Mr Miliband predicted that over the next two decades, with the growing strength of China and India, the bilateral relationship with America would become 'more, not less, important'."
Miliband rallies support for Bush with a defence of vital alliance
London Times, 19 July 2007

"The first hard truth is that [energy] demand is accelerating. Energy use in 2050 may be twice as high as it is today, or higher still. The main causes are population growth, from six to more than nine billion people, and higher levels of prosperity. China and India are entering the energy-intensive phase of their development. This is the point when people buy their first television or car, or board a plane for the first time, and start to consume much more transport fuel and electricity. And most people in China and India have never boarded a plane yet! The pace of change is startling. Last year, China enlarged its electricity capacity by roughly the equivalent of Great Britain’s entire stock of power stations.....The second hard truth is that the growth rate of supplies of 'easy oil', conventional oil and natural gas that are relatively easy to extract, will struggle to keep up with accelerating demand. Just when energy demand is surging, many of the world’s conventional oilfields are going into decline.... The world now produces 135 million barrels oil equivalent a day of oil and natural gas. We could still raise that number with new technologies, but only gradually and certainly not indefinitely....The world’s energy system is entering a turbulent phase, and the only question is: how turbulent? A cooperative world will respond more effectively than a fragmented one... The alternative is a global market failure, and future generations would pay the price."
Jeroen van der Veer, Chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell
High hopes and hard truths dictate future
London Times, 25 June 2007

"This International Energy Strategy is the product of cross-government work, particularly between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I'm glad to welcome Mike O'Brien back to the Foreign Office to launch it with me. The Government's Energy White Paper last year identified a dual energy challenge: to maintain Britain's access to secure and affordable energy supplies, while mitigating the effects of climate change.Both issues are vital to our prosperity and security. And both require not just domestic but international action. That is what this International Energy Strategy is about..... The second part of the energy challenge which this strategy addresses is the need for secure and affordable energy supplies. Our economy, our public services and our security rely on them. For the United Kingdom, our growing need for energy over the next decades has to be seen in a changing context – that of a probable fall in our own domestic production, as North Sea reserves are run down. We are likely to become net importers of gas by 2006 and of oil by 2010. By 2020, we will probably be importing three-quarters of our primary energy needs – and we will need to adapt to that..... By 2020, around half of global oil demand will probably be met by countries with significant risk of internal instability – and that will require more focus on policies which tackle the potential causes of conflict, and spread the benefits of energy wealth.... Energy is one of the eight international priorities which we identified in the FCO's Strategy last December. On this and on all of those priorities, we can only meet our objectives by working closely together, across government and outside. We are publishing this International Energy Strategy – the first time that we have done so – to help us to do that. I will be tasking our Ambassadors and High Commissioners in priority posts overseas to take personal charge of implementing this Strategy and delivering its objectives. We will be developing with them individual Country Action Plans on energy and climate change. And we will be enhancing our posts' capacity on energy issues and making better use of our network of energy attachés, with a particular focus on the large new consumers of energy such as China and India, and producers such as Russia."
Jack Staw, Foreign Secretary,
Launch of the UK International Energy Strategy, Foreign Office, 28 October 2004

Scarlett As Today's Manipulator In Chief For The City Of London
As Peak Oil Looms

"When John Scarlett begins his new job this morning as head of MI6 his first task will be to defend himself against yet another damaging allegation about falsifying intelligence to help Tony Blair. This latest controversy has prompted many in the intelligence community to question whether Mr Scarlett is too much of a liability to run the Secret Intelligence Service. The growing view in Whitehall is that he is 'damaged goods', dogged by scandal, who for the sake of the agency should stand down to allow MI6 the chance to restore its credibility. Mr Scarlett faces claims that in March he clumsily tried to distort a crucial report by the Iraq Survey Group, (ISG), the international body set up to hunt for Saddam Hussein’s supposed arsenal of banned armaments. Just before the 1,400-strong team of inspectors were due to report on how they had failed to turn up any trace of weapons of mass destruction they were reportedly contacted by Mr Scarlett. He was still head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and suggested that the ISG report should be cut from 200 pages of detailed analysis to 20, and left sufficently vague to protect Mr Blair’s stand on Iraq’s weapons menace. He wanted the report to keep alive the prospect that deadly weapons could still be found. In a confidential e-mail sent to the ISG team in Baghdad, Mr Scarlett is alleged to have asked them to add ten 'golden nuggets' to their report which prolonged the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction. One of these alleged 'nuggets' was that Iraq was developing smallpox weapons. He also wanted mention that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories and sophisticated equipment for use in nuclear weapons research..... His growing army of critics inside Whitehall argue it will be impossible to restore MI6’s credibility while he remains in charge. One security expert decribed his reported intervention with the Iraq Survey Group as 'staggering'..... His appointment was met by claims in some quarters of Whitehall that it was a reward from Mr Blair as many had expected MI6’s deputy head, Nigel Inkster, to succeed Sir Richard Dearlove as 'C'.... This damaging view was reinforced when Downing Street took the unusual step of going on the record robustly to support Mr Scarlett’s suitability for the job."
New MI6 chief walks into storm over 'ties to Downing Street'
London Times, 2 August 2004

"Oil ruled the 20th century; the shortage of oil will rule the 21st.... Last Tuesday the lead story in The Financial Times was the latest report from the International Energy Agency. The FT quoted the IEA as saying: 'Oil looks extremely tight in five years’ time,' and that there are 'prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade'. For an international agency, that is inflammatory language....  27 of the 51 oil-producing nations listed in BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy reported output declines in 2006. One projection of world crude oil production actually forecasts a 10 per cent reduction in total world output between 2005 and 2015. That would be a revolution..... Some analysts think that the peak oil moment has already been reached; some still think that it will not come until 2020 – which is itself only 12 years away. Market trends and the statistics both support the IEA’s view that consumption is accelerating and supplies falling faster than expected. Of course, if the 'crunch' point is only five years’ away for oil, and closer for natural gas, it has, for practical purposes, already arrived....The shortage of oil and natural gas, relative to demand, had already changed the balance of world power. Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers. Political motivations are always mixed, but oil is an essential national interest of the United States. If the US is now deciding to withdraw from Iraq, the price will have to be paid in terms of loss of access to oil.... The world is coming to the end of the age of oil, which produced its own technology, its balance of power, its own economy, its pattern of society. It does not greatly matter whether the oil supply has peaked already or is going to peak in five or 12 years’ time. There is a huge adjustment to be made. There will be some benefits, including higher efficiencies and perhaps a better approach to global warming. But nothing will take us back towards the innocent expectation of indefinite expansion of the first months of the new millennium."
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Are these the last days of the Oil Age?
London Times, 16 July 2007

British Intelligence Has Been Working
For BP For The Best Part Of A Century

"It would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, but one of Ireland’s most republican counties is celebrating the life of the founder of Britain’s intelligence agencies. William Melville was born in the Kerry village of Sneem to a publican’s family and fled his roots to forge a stellar career in London as a detective fighting terrorism. When he 'retired' in 1903 from the Metropolitan Police at the height of his fame, he went on to establish the forerunner of MI5, providing the inspiration for James Bond’s boss in Ian Fleming’s books.... In 1903 Melville announced that he was retiring to spend more time with his family and garden. Instead he moved into offices in Victoria Street, adjacent to Scotland Yard, and under the nameplate William Morgan, General Agent, created a cover story that allowed him to gather intelligence for the War Office. He reported under the alias 'M'. In that year the War Office set up a Directorate of Military Operations and Melville was head-hunted for the role of field operative to act as a controller for agents abroad as well as to undertake missions himself. One of his first was to help to secure British access to Persian oil. In this he succeeded by derailing French negotiations and allowing a British syndicate to seal the deal. The company that emerged from the machinations became BP. In 1909 the Secret Service Bureau was set up to coordinate intelligence work under two sections, home and foreign, which became, respectively, MI5 and MI6."
M: Britain's first spymaster was an Irishman who played patriot game
London Times, 2 July 2007

Iraq 'Dodgy Dossier' John Scarlett
Rogue State Britain's 'Regime Change' King

Back in March 2000 the Sunday Times reported on a Turkish intelligence report which claimed that oil companies BP and Amoco were behind a coup d'etat in Azerbaijan in 1993 in order to help install ruthless dictator Haydar Aliyev, shown above right meeting Tony Blair at Downing St in 1998 to conclude an ensuing multi-billion $ BP oil deal Now, following the ignominious departure of BP's Chief Executive Lord Browne at the beginning of May, one of his former managers has revealed to a British newspaper more of the full scale of these 'regime change' plots in Azerbaijan, including an earlier BP backed coup in 1992 and the central role played in both by MI6's John  Scarlett, above left, who was later to become author of the most infamous of the Downing St Iraq regime change 'Dodgy Dossiers'

"It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Tomorrow New Labour’s ethical policy will drown symbolically in a poisonous cocktail of blood and oil when the Queen shakes hands with Azerbaijan’s President Aliev. Her Majesty may be forgiven for thinking this is one export-driven photo-opportunity too many. The Queen has dutifully entertained tyrants of all stripes but she has never had to shake hands with a SMERSH agent before.... Today, as President of Azerbaijan his secret police regularly arrest scores of critics allegedly plotting against him and thousands languish in his old haunts, the ex-KGB prisons. Others simply disappear. Yet Aliev’s Azerbaijan is respectable. There is one word to explain this bizarre fact: Oil.... Azeri democracy was uniquely Aliev-style.... oil decreed that Aliev had won 98.9% of the votes - a modest 1% fall from his last Soviet-era total... A gaggle of ex-Tory MPs and former Foreign Office diplomats know the value of keeping in with Aliev. So does a host of stars of George Bush’s Administration... [now] Tony Blair is wining and dining Aliev..."
Aliev In Britain
Daily Mail, 20 July 1998

Governments Come And Governments Go
But For Decades Oil And MI6's Secret Influence Over British Foreign Policy
Has Been A Persistent If Largely Invisible Presence
Their Roles In Iran 1953, Suez 1956, And Azerbaijan 1993, For Example,
Have Only Surfaced In Fuller Detail Since 2000

"He was the Sun King: the brightest star in British business, a global power and an adored confidant of prime ministers. Then, last week, he managed to lose both his job and his reputation....On Monday evening Lord Browne of Madingley, then still chief executive of BP, gathered a few close friends for dinner at his home in Chelsea. The mood was sombre; for John Browne, who had entertained Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the same table, this was a humble last supper.... Dapper, diminutive and urbane, Browne has always seemed the antithesis of the Texan oilman portrayed in Hollywood films. But oil was in Browne's blood: his father, a former Army officer, worked for the Anglo-Persian oil company, the forerunner of BP."
End of the affair
Daily Telegraph, 5 May 2007

"Fifty years ago this week, the CIA and the British SIS [MI6] orchestrated a coup d'etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh [in Iran]. The prime minister and his nationalist supporters in parliament roused Britain's ire when they nationalised the oil industry in 1951, which had previously been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company [or Anglo-Persian Oil Company later renamed as BP]. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves. The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup... By the end of Operation Ajax, some 300 people had died in firefights in the streets of Tehran. The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah... The author of All the Shah's Men, New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, argues that the coup planted the seeds of resentment against the US in the Middle East, ultimately leading to the events of September 11.... The coup and the culture of covert interference it created forever changed how the world viewed the US, especially in poor, oppressive countries. For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered. Perhaps because Mossadegh represents a future denied, his memory has approached myth."
The spectre of Operation Ajax
Guardian, 20 August 2003

'Operation Ajax' - More Details - Click Here

'Our Values'
And So It Goes On - British 'Oil-For-Arms' Deal With Saudi Dictatorship

"At the heart of the Department of Justice investigation into BAE Systems will be a secret account held by the Bank of England on behalf of the Saudi Arabian Government. This escrow account is the conduit through which £43 billion has been passed to BAE over the past 22 years to pay for Tornado fighter jets and other military equipment. It was set up as part of the 1985 al-Yamamah oil-for-arms agreement between Britain and Saudi Arabia. Over the years the account has fallen into deficit but more recently has held a significant surplus. It is this surplus that has sparked the recent allegations of corruption in BAE’s dealings with the Saudis. Payments totalling more than £1 billion made to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi Ambassador to the US, are believed to have come from this surplus at the request of the Saudi Government. The money was signed off by the Ministry of Defence, as agreed under the al-Yamamah contract, and transferred through BAE to the projects identified by the Saudis. In the case of Prince Bandar, the money is alleged to have been transferred to an account held by Riggs Bank in the US. The MoD claims that it is unaware of the existence of the account but government officials have confirmed its use. The account was set up because, in the1980s, Saudi Arabia paid for its arms with oil. It transferred oil production to BP and Shell and they paid cash into the Bank of England account. The money was then forwarded to BAE to pay for arms. When the price of oil slumped in the early 1990s the account fell into deficit, embarrassing the Saudis who were forced to make cash top-ups. Since then the account has been kept in surplus. In distributing the surplus, the Saudis have maintained the payment method agreed under al-Yamamah and that is why BAE has become embroiled. The DoJ investigation into BAE will therefore lead directly back to the MoD and a Bank of England account that the Government claims does not exist."
Secret account under spotlight
London Times, 27 June 2007

Fighting Breaks Out Amongst Thieves - Why The US Department Of Justice Is Gunning For BAE Systems - Click Here

"The Ministry of Defence is understood to be seeking legal advice before deciding whether to provide unfettered help to the DoJ. A government official said the MoD would need to 'advise and consult' on what would be released. The Foreign Office could also be reluctant to see confidential information released."
BAE faces threat of fines in US probe
Financial Times, 27 June 2007

"BAE, under Dick Evans'schairmanship, moved its whole worldwide system of agent payments to Switzerland. What it did was not illegal, but the firm constructed what might well be called a global money-laundering machine. For a supposedly reputable public company, the methods used were surprising. Britain's Serious Fraud Office later concluded: 'The whole system is maintained in such conditions of secrecy that there is a legitimate suspicion concerning the real purpose of the payments.' The system was run from a secure block, Warwick House, at BAE's Farnborough premises. 'HQ Marketing Services' was headed by Hugh Dickinson, who was also responsible for company liaison with MI6.....just before Britain signed up to the OECD [anti-bribery] convention in 1997, the filing cabinets and safes containing the agent details were loaded into a van and driven by trusted staff from Farnborough to Geneva.... The purpose of these tortuous arrangements seems to have been to ensure that nothing questionable involving the hiring of agents took place within UK legal jurisdiction. But a further secret payment system was also needed for BAE to transfer large sums in cash to those agents.... We have traced secret payments going to agents in South America, Tanzania, Romania, South Africa, Qatar, Chile and the Czech Republic.... BAE set up a second front company, purely to handle the Saudi commission payments for al-Yamamah. 'Poseidon Trading Investments Ltd' was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands on June 25 1999. Those close to it say more than £1bn has passed through its accounts to Saudi agents, in transfers made by Lloyds TSB."
BAE's Secret Money Machine
Guardian, 'The BAE Files' Web Archive

Of Course The British Foreign Office And MI6 Never Have Anything Criminal To Hide Do They?
The British Sewer Runs Deep, Very Deep

'Arms To Iraq' - British Intelligence And The Astra Scandal - Click Here

"The problem is that because everything is so secret you don't know what's going on. Spies like my husband are asked to do things but they might not be told why, and so very often they can't see the bigger picture. This means that sometimes they don't know whether their actions are noble and resulting in good things ... or whether they are creating hostilities. There's often a lot of tension for them then, and I never knew how Harry would be when he returned from a job. My husband had to go off and do his job and I never knew how he was going to be when he came back."
'Nicky', Wife Of An MI6 Agent - Interview
The spy who loved me
Guardian, 24 January 2007

The Bigger Picture? - It's The Money Stupid

"A retired MI6 officer has been appointed to a top post at BP-Amoco, the British-based oil company..... John Gerson was director of security and public affairs at the agency and was embroiled in attempts to suppress disclosures by the former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. Mr Gerson took early retirement from what was effectively the post of deputy head of MI6 at the end of last year. Last month he became one of BP's vice-presidents for government and public affairs. His appointment was approved by the cabinet secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. MI6 has close links with oil companies, the 'revolving door' syndrome, in the same way as armed forces officers have close links with defence companies. Rolls-Royce has employed former MI6 officers to help win contracts in the Middle East, and merchant banks have taken some on. During the first reading of the intelligence services bill, Lord Mackay, the conservative lord chancellor, told peers in 1994 that MI6 protected the 'economic wellbeing' of the country by keeping 'a particular eye on Britain's access to key commodities, like oil...'"
Former MI6 officer gets top post at BP
Guardian, 8 May 2000

"A private intelligence firm with close links to MI6 spied on environmental campaign groups to collect information for oil companies, including Shell and BP. MPs are to demand an inquiry by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, into whether the secret intelligence service used the firm as a front to spy on green activists. The firm's agent, who posed as a left-wing sympathizer and film maker, was asked to betray plans of Greenpeace's activities against oil giants. He also tried to dupe Anita Roddick's Body Shop group to pass on information about its opposition to Shell drilling for oil in a Nigerian tribal land. The Sunday Times has seen documents which show that the spy, German-born Manfred Schlickenrieder, was hired by Hakluyt, an agency that operates from offices in London's West End. Schlickenrieder was hired by Mike Reynolds, a director of Hakluyt and MI6's former head of station in Germany. His cover was blown by a female colleague who had worked with him. Last night he refused to comment. Reynolds and other MI6 executives left the intelligence service after the cold war ended to form Hakluyt in 1995. It was set up with the blessing of Sir David Spedding, the then chief of MI6, who died last week. Christopher James, the managing director, had been head of the MI6 section that liaised with British firms. The firm, which takes its name from Richard Hakluyt, the Elizabethan geographer, assembled a foundation board of directors from the Establishment to oversee its activities, including Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Ian Fleming's model for James Bond. Baroness Smith, the widow of John Smith, the late Labour leader, was a director until the end of last year. The company has close links to the oil industry through Sir Peter Cazalet, the former deputy chairman of BP, who helped to establish Hakluyt before he retired, last year, and Sir Peter Holmes, former chairman of Shell, who is president of its foundation. MPs believe the affair poses serious questions about the blurring of the divisions between the secret service, a private intelligence company and the interests of big companies. Hakluyt refutes claims by some in the intelligence community that it was started by MI6 officers to carry out 'deniable' operations.... Hakluyt was reluctant to discuss its activities. Michael Maclay, one of the agency's directors and a former special adviser to Douglas Hurd when he was Conservative foreign minister, said: 'We don't ever talk about anything we do. We never go into any details of what we may or what we may not be doing.'"
MI6 'Firm' Spied on Green Groups
Sunday Times, 17 June 2001

"The Joint Intelligence Committee agrees on the broad intelligence requirements and tasking (National Intelligence Requirements) for SIS [MI6] and GCHQ and oversees the activities of the Security Service's. It prepares summary assessments for selected Ministers and circulates the weekly 'Red Books' to the Cabinet's Defence and Overseas Committee, chaired by the PM. Traditionally it meets every Wednesday morning and includes representatives from UKUSA and the COS secretariat. This is the 'key' committee involved in the Intelligence Community.  Originally formed as the Inter-Service Intelligence Committee (ISIC) under the Chiefs of Staff in January 1936, renamed the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in July 1936. Moved to foreign Office control in July 1939. In 1957 control moved to Cabinet Office and in 1968 the post of Intelligence Co-Coordinator was created within the Cabinet Office to oversee its functions. In 1982 following the Falklands War the Foreign Office ceased to have any control and the JIC became a Cabinet Office organization with direct access to the Prime Minister. The JIC is reported to have a staff of 20 with a further 30 in the 'JIO' or ISG. Closely involved with the major City institutions particularly Banking, the Economic Sub-Committee of JIC also includes representatives of both the Treasury and the Bank of England (which also an SLO to receive intelligence reports directly from the JIC)."
The Mechanisms of an Oppressive State - UK Intelligence And Security Report
AFI Research, August 2003

"With the end of the Cold War, MI6's role has fundamentally changed and it now has many more potential targets. Terrorist groups, and so-called 'rogue' states, are now high profile targets. Networks of new agents will be required as intelligence 'needs' constantly shift. Industrial espionage, furthering British trade interests has moved into the area of national interest. Gathering intelligence on friendly governments, obtaining advanced knowledge of their negotiating positions or changes in alliances, are also now ever more important targets for MI6. The Intelligence Services Act 1994 formerly acknowledged its existence.... R6 Industrial, Commercial & Financial. Worked closely with both the Treasury and the Bank of England, as well as Merchant Bankers such as Hill Samuel; Hambro's; Kleinwort Benson; Morgan Grenfell; Brandts; Cootes and the Midland. Solicitors firms such as Slaughter & May were also part of the network of important contacts, along with Thomas Cook; ICI; BP; Shell; Lonrho and RTZ."
The Mechanisms of an Oppressive State - UK Intelligence And Security Report
AFI Research, August 2003

Who Are AFI Research? - Click Here

Where The Problem Resides
'Ceausescu Towers' And The Greedy Dolts In The City Of London

"... there needs to be proper supervision and surveillance of the security services if trust in them is to be maintained. The Government's record can fill no one with confidence. Look how it dealt with John Scarlett, who as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee was responsible for the dodgy dossier which took us to war in Iraq. Was he disciplined or sacked? On the contrary, he was awarded a knighthood and made head of MI6."
A question of trust, not just security
Daily Mail, 4 May 2007

Scarlett's Lair - Capital Of The Evil Empire

MI6 HQ Building Off Vauxhall Bridge London Otherwise Known As 'Ceausescu Towers' After The Architectural Style Favoured By Former Romanian Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu

"The MI6 building is known to some staff at Vauxhall Cross as 'Ceausescu Towers', after the former Romanian dictator with a penchant for grandiose and inhuman architecture. Designed by the Terry Farrell, who was unaware of the intended tenants, it originally cost pounds 240m to build. But to accommodate its occupants a further pounds 86m of public money needed to be spent to cope with the service's needs. The building, which opened in 1994, includes a shooting range and arsenal, a garage for adapting and maintaining MI6's fleet of special cars, secure areas where eavesdropping is impossible, and a array of computer and radio communication rooms. There are rooms for the development of specialist espionage equipment of the type made famous by 'Q' the fictional boffin of the James Bond films, and a forgery section where counterfeit documents are produced. Details of the building are covered by the Official Secrets Act which every member of the staff is obliged to sign. The former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson, who now lives in Italy, visited the building many times before he left the service in 1996. 'If I told you what was in the building I would be open to prosecution,' he said yesterday.... For top secret meetings there is a special 'silent' room.... According to the author Stephen Dorrill there is also a secure command and control room to run major operations... On a second floor is a powerful computer set-up in which all the data sent in by MI6's officers and spies is collated. This is the information that enables MI6 to produce the CX reports - the weekly intelligence briefings that go to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary."
MI6 MISSILE ATTACK: Hi-tech fortress where secrecy reigns supreme
Independent, 22 September 2000

Few People Are Likely To Have Read The Latest Azerbaijan Revelations About MI6
But Now That Blair Has Gone
They Merit Mass Demonstrations Outside 'Ceausescu Towers'
Calling For Scarlett's Sacking And Prosecution

Dolts In The City

'You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet'

"The world is facing an oil supply 'crunch' within five years that will force up prices to record levels and increase the west’s dependence on oil cartel Opec, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog has warned. In its starkest warning yet on the world’s fuel outlook, the International Energy Agency said 'oil looks extremely tight in five years time' and there are 'prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade'....Oil demand will grow at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent during the next five years, up from a previous estimate of 2 per cent, to reach 95.8m barrels a day in 2012. China, the Middle East and other emerging countries will lead the increase. Rex Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, said recently that he thought non-Opec oil production was close to levelling off. He told the FT: 'We still see capacity for a little more growth, but pretty modest, and then in our own energy outlook it begins to plateau. And that results then in this call on Opec.' UK oil production is set to suffer a dramatic decline from today’s 1.7m barrels a day to just 1.0m b/d in 2012, according to the IEA. The IEA estimates Opec would have to supply about 36.2m b/d in 2012, up from today’s 31.3m b/d. That would reduce the oil cartel’s spare capacity to a 'minimal level' of 1.6 per cent of global demand, down from 2.9 per cent in 2007. The IEA said that supply was falling faster than expected in mature areas, such as the North Sea or Mexico, while projects in new provinces such as the Russian Far East, faced long delays. Meanwhile consumption is accelerating on strong economic growth in emerging countries. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that supply from non-members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase at an annual pace of 1 per cent, or less than half the rate of the demand rise. The widening gap between rising consumption and lagging non-Opec supply will force Opec to sharply increase its production in the next five years."
World will face oil crunch ‘in five years’
Financial Times, 9 July 2007

"Oil ruled the 20th century; the shortage of oil will rule the 21st.... Last Tuesday the lead story in The Financial Times was the latest report from the International Energy Agency. The FT quoted the IEA as saying: 'Oil looks extremely tight in five years’ time,' and that there are 'prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade'. For an international agency, that is inflammatory language....  27 of the 51 oil-producing nations listed in BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy reported output declines in 2006. One projection of world crude oil production actually forecasts a 10 per cent reduction in total world output between 2005 and 2015. That would be a revolution..... Some analysts think that the peak oil moment has already been reached; some still think that it will not come until 2020 – which is itself only 12 years away. Market trends and the statistics both support the IEA’s view that consumption is accelerating and supplies falling faster than expected. Of course, if the 'crunch' point is only five years’ away for oil, and closer for natural gas, it has, for practical purposes, already arrived....The shortage of oil and natural gas, relative to demand, had already changed the balance of world power. Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers. Political motivations are always mixed, but oil is an essential national interest of the United States. If the US is now deciding to withdraw from Iraq, the price will have to be paid in terms of loss of access to oil.... The world is coming to the end of the age of oil, which produced its own technology, its balance of power, its own economy, its pattern of society. It does not greatly matter whether the oil supply has peaked already or is going to peak in five or 12 years’ time. There is a huge adjustment to be made. There will be some benefits, including higher efficiencies and perhaps a better approach to global warming. But nothing will take us back towards the innocent expectation of indefinite expansion of the first months of the new millennium."
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Are these the last days of the Oil Age?
London Times, 16 July 2007

And All The Time The CBI Are Running The Show In Order To Keep Us Dependent On Fossil Fuels
You Can Expect More Jihadi Terrorist Attacks On Britain

"A good source tells me that the British government is well aware that its target for cutting carbon emissions - 60% by 2050 - is too little too late, but that it will go no further for one reason: it fears losing the support of the Confederation of British Industry. Why this body is allowed to keep holding a gun to our heads has never been explained, but Gordon Brown has just appointed Digby Jones, its former director-general, as a minister in the department responsible for energy policy. I don't remember voting for him. There could be no clearer signal that the public interest is being drowned by corporate power. The government's energy programme, partly as a result, is characterised by a complete absence of vision. You can see this most clearly when you examine its plans for renewables.....Until recently I guessed that the maximum contribution from renewables would be something like 50%: beyond that point the difficulties of storing electricity and balancing the grid could become overwhelming. But three papers now suggest that we could go much further. ....The government must immediately commission studies to discover how much of our energy could be produced without fossil fuels, set that as its target and then turn the economy round to meet it. But a power shift like this cannot take place without a power shift of another kind: we need a government which fears planetary meltdown more than it fears the CBI."
George Monbiot - Stop doing the CBI's bidding, and we could be fossil fuel free in 20 years
Guardian, 3 July 2007

Before The Invasion Of 2003 There Was No Iraqi Terrorist Threat To The UK
But Things Are Different Now

"An Iraqi doctor has become the first person to appear in court charged in connection with the suspected car bomb plots in London and Glasgow.... The 27-year-old, who was arrested after a flaming Jeep was driven into Glasgow Airport a week ago, is accused of conspiring to cause explosions."
Iraqi doctor remanded over car bomb plot
Daily Telegraph, 7 July 2007

"A ten-man MI5 team followed the ringleader of the 21/7 bombers on the night he left Britain for terrorist training in Pakistan, The Times has learnt.....Counter-terrorist sources have told The Times that Ibrahim was driven to Heathrow on December 11, 2004, by an Iraqi man who was a high-priority terrorist suspect. Their car was being followed. The man, Rauf Mohammed, has been named in Home Office documents as being 'actively engaged' in providing support to the insurgency in Iraq."
How MI5 left ringleader free to acquire recruits and explosives
London Times, 11 July 2007

Oil, Arms, And Money - 'Our Values'
Forget 'Freedom And Democracy'
Rogue State Britain's Corrupt Support For Dictatorship In Azerbaijan

Jack Straw, Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, meeting 'His Excellency' Mr Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, in London, 14 December 2004 (above right), and Prime Minister Tony Blair greeting Aliyev's father, the previous dynastic president of Azerbaijan, during a UK visit to sign a deal with BP in 1998 Mr Aliyev Jnr assumed the Presidency from his father in 2003 after rigged elections to which the western world turned a blind eye due to the importance of maintaining access to Azerbaijan's oil supplies via the ruling regime

"A secret intelligence report accuses BP, Britain's biggest company, of backing a military coup which installed a ruthless KGB hardman in the former Soviet state of Azerbaijan. An intelligence officer says BP... later consolidated its position with the new regime when the middlemen arranged to supply the incoming government with military equipment in an 'arms-for-oil' deal.... Aliyev's arrival was welcomed by Britain and America, which have a strategic interest in securing oil rights. BP has close links to British intelligence and employs several former MI6 officers... The Turkish intelligence document, a report on the alleged role of BP and Amoco in the events surrounding the 1993 uprising, claims the companies were 'behind the coup' in which president Abulfaz Elchibey was overthrown and some 40 people died. The report says: 'As a result of our intelligence efforts, it has been understood that two petrol giants BP and Amoco, British and American respectively, which together forms the AIOC [Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium], are behind the coup d'état carried out against Elchibey in 1993.... Lord Simon of Highbury, Tony Blair's former trade minister... was BP's group chief executive at the time of the coup..."
BP accused of backing 'arms for oil' coup
Sunday Times, 26 March 2000

'Oil-For-Arms' In Azerbaijan

"A spy has been lurking around in Baku, but his identity is no secret to movie fans. Britain's famous Agent 007, James Bond-as portrayed by actor Pierce Brosnan-paid a visit to Azerbaijan this past spring to film the 19th installment of the Bond series: 'The World is Not Enough.' Since the movie's plot revolves around the struggle to control the world's oil supply, Azerbaijan proved to be an ideal setting. The movie, which will premiere in November 1999, marks the 37th year that Bond movies have been playing throughout the world."
Agent 007 Movie Scenes Shot in Baku
Azerbaijan International, Autumn 1999

For John Scarlett 'The World Is Not Enough'

"In the control room of Azerbaijan's sprawling oil terminal near the capital, Baku, Bala Mirza sits peering at a fuzzy map on a computer monitor. The outline of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey looks like little more than a jumble of hills and farming towns. But for the engineer, 41, what lies underground has rocked his world: a new 1,100-mile oil pipeline, which in recent months has tied this tiny country on the edge of the Caspian Sea to the huge Western market....This Muslim republic [Azerbaijan], directly north of Iran and tucked into the southwest corner of the vast former Soviet empire, is suddenly a central player in one of the West's most distressing problems: how the U.S. and Europe will secure enough oil and gas to power cities, factories, airplanes and cars--in short, how to keep our entire modern lives afloat. Since last June, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day have surged through a pipeline running from Baku through Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Named the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), the $4 billion pipeline is one of the world's longest and is operated by the British-American oil company BP, with partners that include U.S. oil companies Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Hess. By spring, about 1 million bbl. a day will move down the pipe, and BP could increase that soon after to about 1.5 million bbl. a day. A parallel BP pipeline opened last month to send hundreds of billions of cubic feet of natural gas from the Caspian to Western Europe, in order to break the Continent's overwhelming reliance on Russia.... Fifteen years after the Soviet Union's collapse, it's tempting to think of the cold war as history--until you land in Baku. This is the front line of a new East-West contest, one that is as consequential as the nuclear-weapons face-off of the past: the battle for energy supplies among countries heavily dependent on imported oil and gas, which include the U.S. and the E.U., plus the rocketing economies of China and India. That necessity is a powerful weapon in this new battle.....Azerbaijan might be secular, but it is hardly democratic. Local elections in 2005 and the presidential vote that brought Ilham Aliyev to power in 2003 were both flawed, according to U.N. and American election observers. A free press? Hardly. One afternoon in December, TIME's team was taken to a police station near Baku and questioned for three hours about our activities.... Some Azeris believe Western governments prefer energy security to political freedom, as was sought in the 2004 revolution in Ukraine--a major transhipper of natural gas to Western Europe. 'The U.S. will never support democrats in Azerbaijan because of their oil interests,' says [Vafa] Guluzadeh [former adviser to President Heydar Aliyev]."
Oil's Vital New Power
TIME, 12 January 2007

"In September 1992, BP pulled off a coup that unnerved its competitors and appeared to put the British firm back on top. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher arrived in Baku and handed the Azerbaijani government two BP checks totaling $30 million. The money was a down payment for a proven field called Chirag and for an unproven bloc called Shak-Deniz. To Azerbaijani officials, a deal with BP was tantamount to a deal with the British government; not only did visiting British officials lobby relentlessly for the company, but for months Britain's diplomatic mission to Azerbaijan had operated out of the BP offices."
A British 'Coup'
Washington Post, 4 October 1998

"[Azerbaijani dictator President] Aliyev's arrival was welcomed by Britain and America, which have a strategic interest in securing oil rights.... Blair gave [Aliyev] red-carpet treatment when he visited London in 1998 to sign a friendship treaty and $13 billion (£9.5 billion) in contracts with BP and other British firms...."
BP accused of backing 'arms for oil' coup
Sunday Times, 26 March 2000

"The elections allowed Ilham Aliyev to succeed his father, Heider Aliyev, longtime leader of the Soviet-era Communist Party, who returned to power in 1993 after a military coup. Senior opposition figures are among 100 said still to be in jail after post-election riots. So is Ilgar Ibrahimogul, imam of a mosque in the capital, and founder of Azerbaijan’s Centre for Religious Freedom, together with Rauf Arifoglu, editor of the biggest-circulation newspaper."
Bush's officers parade policy contradiction
London Times, 5 December 2003

"It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Tomorrow New Labour’s ethical policy will drown symbolically in a poisonous cocktail of blood and oil when the Queen shakes hands with Azerbaijan’s President Aliev. Her Majesty may be forgiven for thinking this is one export-driven photo-opportunity too many. The Queen has dutifully entertained tyrants of all stripes but she has never had to shake hands with a SMERSH agent before.... Today, as President of Azerbaijan his secret police regularly arrest scores of critics allegedly plotting against him and thousands languish in his old haunts, the ex-KGB prisons. Others simply disappear. Yet Aliev’s Azerbaijan is respectable. There is one word to explain this bizarre fact: Oil.... Azeri democracy was uniquely Aliev-style.... oil decreed that Aliev had won 98.9% of the votes - a modest 1% fall from his last Soviet-era total... A gaggle of ex-Tory MPs and former Foreign Office diplomats know the value of keeping in with Aliev. So does a host of stars of George Bush’s Administration... [now] Tony Blair is wining and dining Aliev..."
Aliev In Britain
Daily Mail, 20 July 1998

"A Turkish secret service intelligence report has revealed that the British oil giant BP was allegedly involved in backing a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Azerbaijan in 1993. In testimony included in the report, a former intelligence officer accused BP of trading arms for oil in an effort to secure a better deal on oil concessions in the country. The intelligence report, leaked to the Sunday Times of London, documents how BP, using bribes and a supply of military arms, systematically undermined the government of Azerbaijan, and perpetuated the overthrow of President Abulfaz Elchibey. The coup caused the death of 40 people, along with violence and repression of Azeri citizens. 'As a result of our intelligence efforts, it has been understood that two petrol giants, BP and Amoco, British and American respectively, which together form the AIOC [Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium], are behind the coup d'etat carried out against Elchibey in 1993,' said the report."
BP LINKED TO OVERTHROW OF AZERBAIJAN GOVERNMENT
Drillbits and Tailings, Volume 5, Number 6, April 17, 2000

"Using his KGB methods [Aliyev] has been oppressing and persecuting all active opponents of his regime. Thousands of innocent people have been arrested on fabricated charges of treason, coup d`etat and terror against the President... The country is run by a police regime created by this usurper... we must admit that the oil driven politics of western countries with respect to Azerbaijan helped to create a tolerable and sometimes positive attitude towards Heidar Aliyev's anti-people policies.... Many thousands have died who could be alive today."
Statement of Rasul Gouliev, Chairman, Azerbaijan Democratic Party
US Congressional Human Rights Caucus, 3 December 2002

"Azerbaijan President Heydar Aliyev is in London for a state visit that will include talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair and meetings with businessmen expected to focus on investment opportunities in his country. Azerbaijan is the location of large reserves of oil and gas that are expected to play an important role in helping to meet the world's rising demand for energy into the 21st century. The 75-year-old former Soviet politburo member is expected to appeal for more British investment in the oil and gas sector of the small Caucasus country of some 7.5 million people. One of his key engagements is an address on Wednesday to a conference in London on 'Doing Business in Azerbaijan'. Press reports say he is expected to sign three oil deals with British firms (Ramco, British Petroleum and Monument Oil and Gas), expected to be worth more than $5 billion to Azerbaijan. Aliyev will also address the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Wednesday). He is expected to focus on Azerbaijan's place in the world, and the importance of its hydrocarbon reserves. He is also due to meet with Foreign Secretary Robin Cook... Aliyev is also expected to discuss the route of export pipelines to carry Caspian Sea oil and gas to western markets. Azerbaijan, like other oil-rich countries in the region, lacks access to the open seas, meaning that their energy exports will have go overland. Aliyev has declared in favor of a main export pipeline on the Baku-Ceyhan route through Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean. Aliyev's talks with Blair are scheduled for tomorrow afternoon (15:30 CEST). He will then meet Defense Secretary George Robertson. They are expected to discuss cooperation with NATO under the Partnership for Peace program. Aliyev first became leader of Azerbaijan 29 years ago as Communist Party secretary. He spent five years in the Soviet politburo in the 1980s before being sacked by Mikhail Gorbachev. He made a political comeback in Azerbaijan in 1993."
Azerbaijan: President Visits Britain To Talk Business
Radio Free Europe, 20 July 1998

"BP (British Petroleum) took the initial step when, through intermediaries, it bought off key members of the government just before the coup. The idea was to steal a march on the other western companies and the Russians in the battle for Azerbaijan’s huge reserves of oil and gas, estimated at 200 billion barrels of top-quality crude.... Soon after the coup, BP’s middlemen arranged to supply the new government with military equipment in what was described as an 'arms-for-oil' deal. The move was designed to 'consolidate BP’s position' with the new regime, according to one secret service agent. Only a few months later, BP secured the leadership of the consortium of western companies that dominate the oil scene in the country. The £5 billion contract–– described as 'the contract of the century' was signed by Hayder Aliyev. BP and Amoco merged in 1998 and now have a virtual monopoly of rights to exploit Azerbaijan’s oil wealth....Both companies also have a reputation for working closely with their country’s intelligence organizations. BP, for example, now employs several former MI6 officers. It is therefore, understandable that company officials and Aliyev, a former KGB senior officer, should find each other congenial company and plot together for mutual gain. Aliyev had been warmly congratulated by both London and Washington on becoming president, and was given red-carpet treatment during his state visits to the two capitals. The Azeri president was warmly greeted by the British prime minister, Tony Blair, when he visited London in 1998 to sign a friendship treaty and contracts worth $13 billion with BP and other British firms. Blair (whose government claims to pursue an ethical foreign policy, and to support democratic regimes in the ‘developing world’) apparently had no inhibitions about endorsing a former KGB operative brought to power by a military coup."
BP and Amoco behind coup installing Aliyev as president of Azerbaijan
Crescent International, 16-31 May 2000

"One of the former Soviet Union's most tenacious leaders will surrender his throne this week, passing it to his son in what is widely seen as an attempt to keep the scale of corruption under wraps. The presidential election in Azerbaijan on Wednesday is causing concern, not just because it is rigged, but also because the West has invested billions in the oil-rich republic... Billions of pounds in investment from BP and from American oil companies mean that stability is critical. The biggest project is the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which will cost almost £2 billion. The first oil is scheduled to flow in 2005, carrying one million barrels a day from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean...."
West seeks smooth handover as Azeri rule passes to son
London Times, 13 October 2003

"...oil executives say they have no problem with the younger Aliyev taking power [in Azerbaijan].... The United States, despite declarations that it supports none of the candidates, has made only token protests about the violent intimidation of opposition candidates during the election campaign".
Oil angst
London Times, 13 October 2003

"Azerbaijan is rated as one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the region, with more than 40 per cent of its people living below the poverty line. It has been ruled most of the time since its independence from Russia by Heydar Aliyev, a hardline former KGB chief who was succeeded by his son, Ilham, in 2003. But this secular Islamic state on the Caspian Sea is also a key element of the United States’s strategy to contain Iran and secure access to the Caspian’s huge oil and gas reserves. A staunch US ally, Azerbaijan was one of the few Muslim states that sent troops to Iraq....Over the past few months the Government has repeatedly used riot police to break up opposition rallies in the centre of Baku, injuring dozens of people. It has also broken up youth groups that tried to emulate movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. When Rasul Guliyev, an exiled opposition leader, tried to return to Azerbaijan this month after nine years of self-imposed exile in the US, the Government refused to let his plane land and detained hundreds of opposition supporters. Two days later Mr Aliyev sacked a dozen senior officials and had two of them, the economy and health ministers, arrested for allegedly planning to stage a coup with Mr Guliyev. The European Union and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe expressed concern. But President Bush sent a letter to Mr Aliyev, welcoming his 'commitment to a free and fair election'. He added: 'I look forward to working with you after these elections.' Under Western pressure, Mr Aliyev issued a decree this month allowing the use of indelible ink to mark voters’ fingers and permitting foreign-funded NGOs to monitor the vote. But critics dismiss that as too little, too late, and opposition supporters are preparing for violent clashes with riot police after the results. Mr Gassanly is likely to be in the thick of them. Earlier this month he was detained for six hours after police broke up a rally. The British Embassy had to intervene to get him released. It is a far cry from his political activity at home, where he worked on Frank Dobson’s attempt to become mayor of London and campaigned for a hospital bus to be reinstated in the constituency of Westminster. But he said that he was driven by fear that Azerbaijan’s people may lose faith in the ideals of democracy and free markets and embrace Islamic extremism. 'The West is making a mistake thinking that short-term stability is more important than long-term democracy,' he said. 'Next time the flags won’t be orange. They’ll be green.'”
West balks at backing revolution as elections loom in oil-rich state
London Times, 4 November 2005

"The Bush Administration put huge effort yesterday into preaching two contradictory messages on democracy. On one side, we had Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, in north Africa to champion the cause of democracy and human rights. On the other, we had Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, congratulating the President of Azerbaijan on his landslide October poll victory, which even the State Department has said was tarnished by fraud, and which triggered street riots. But the contradiction is not between Powell and Rumsfeld, notorious though their different views of the world are. It lies at the heart of the Administration’s foreign policy: does it always want to promote democracy, when that would produce a government hostile to its interests? That is the question the US faces in Iraq, above all — one it has chosen so far to duck. First Rumsfeld, who stopped in Baku on his way from Brussels to Kabul. The reason for the US’s interest is no mystery. Azerbaijan’s Caspian oilfields are an attraction as the US looks for alternatives to the Gulf.... Rumsfeld emphasised the closeness of those links yesterday: 'We have a military-to-military relationship, as well as political and economic relationships. And certainly we intend to continue that military-to-military relationship with the new administration here in this country.'  The problem is the nature of that administration. The elections allowed Ilham Aliyev to succeed his father, Heider Aliyev, longtime leader of the Soviet-era Communist Party, who returned to power in 1993 after a military coup. Senior opposition figures are among 100 said still to be in jail after post-election riots. So is Ilgar Ibrahimogul, imam of a mosque in the capital, and founder of Azerbaijan’s Centre for Religious Freedom, together with Rauf Arifoglu, editor of the biggest-circulation newspaper. The State Department has called for an investigation into intimidation and ballot-rigging. In that light Rumsfeld’s remarks amount to a bald statement of the bargain that the US will strike to pursue its strategic interest."
Bush's officers parade policy contradiction
London Times, 5 December 2003

"Washington's support for [Georgia] Shevardnadze's overthrow certainly had nothing to do with its love of democracy, which was not much in evidence when Azerbaijan, just east of Georgia and another pipeline country, held even more outrageously rigged elections in October. For the Bush administration, the goal is to freeze Russia out of the new oil bonanza in the Caspian and Caucasus countries, all former Soviet fiefdoms, and Shevardnadze's crime was to be too accommodating to the Russians. ... when Shevardnadze signed a deal last year with the Russian gas giant Gazprom, Washington went ballistic. Bush's energy adviser Steven Mann flew in to warn Shevardnadze not to go ahead with the deal, Mikhail Saakashvili denounced it - and Shevardnadze signed it anyway.   So no illusions about America's motives for opposing him ....."
The power to dismiss
Dawn (Pakistan), 12 January 2004

Peak Oil, BP, and Azerbaijan

"While important to the oil market in the short term, the FSU [former Soviet Union] contributes only 10-15% to world production.... Peak production from the FSU is expected between 2008 and 2014... The most likely outcomes for non-OPEC oil production can be obtained by combining the forecasts for the FSU and the rest of non-OPEC. Non-OPEC oil production is predicted to reach a peak between 2007 and 2011...   The US Energy Information Administration forecasts non-OPEC oil production to rise to about 54 million b/d (about 20 billion bbl/year) by 2025. Based on the analysis presented here, non-OPEC oil production at this level in 2025 is highly unlikely..... This analysis.... represents a shortfall to the EIA forecast of non-OPEC supply of 20 million b/d in 2025. The failure of non-OPEC to meet a large part of incremental demand, as it has done for more than 20 years, is likely to precipitate the first crisis in oil supply. Depending on demand and FSU supply, this crisis is practically upon us and is expected to be acute after 2005.... The rapid increase in the call on OPEC after 2010 is due to the widening gap between non-OPEC supply and forecast demand. The world's spare oil production capacity (essentially only OPEC maintains spare capacity) has declined steadily since the mid-1980s as OPEC has curtailed investment in the face of rising non-OPEC production. Surplus capacity has declined from 10 million b/d in 1987 to 3-4 million b/d in 2003 and to probably less than 1.5 million b/d in 2004. Most analysts consider that spare capacity of 2-3 million b/d is required to ensure smooth oil supply... Depending on the rate of decline of OPEC's capacity (possibly as high as 4% /year), current spare capacity will be fully utilized sometime in 2005 if demand remains high or by end 2007 if demand moderates...Apart from political factors, the expansion of OPEC's production capacity will be constrained by the maturity of OPEC's fields and the scale of effort, investment and pace of decision-making required, primarily in Persian Gulf countries. At capacity costs of $6,000-10,000/b/d, the investment required between now and 2020 to achieve the high demand case is £300-500 billion - a rate of $20-30 billion per year.  There is no indication that the major OPEC countries are embarking on oil production capacity investments on this scale. The lead time on major capacity expansion projects are 3-5 years. Unless the principal Persian Gulf producers initiate major capacity expansion within the next few years, there will be a further supply crisis later in this decade driven by the complete elimination of spare capacity...."
Oil supply challenges - 1: The non-OPEC decline
Oil and Gas Journal, 21 February 2005
(The Author: Peter. R.A. Wells is managing director of Neftex Petroleum Advisors Ltd. He spent 12 years with Shell International in positions that included exploration manager for eastern Nigeria, followed by 4 years with BP PLC, where he was chief negotiator for Azerbaijan in 1992-3.)

'The Special Relationship'
Anglo-American Dirty Oil Games In The Caucasus

'The Special Relationship'
Anglo-American Dirty Oil Games In The Caucasus

Find Out How Dirty Games Are Being Played In The Caucasus
As The Oil Makes Its Way From The Caspian To The Coast Of Former Yugoslavia
Via The Black Sea Region
Click Here

"Aliyev had been warmly congratulated by both London and Washington on becoming president[of Azerbaijan], and was given red-carpet treatment during his state visits to the two capitals. The Azeri president was warmly greeted by the British prime minister, Tony Blair, when he visited London in 1998 to sign a friendship treaty and contracts worth $13 billion with BP and other British firms.... But although the western consortium and governments, and Aliyev, may have ample cause to celebrate, Azerbaijan is a land-locked country and third parties will have to be dealt with to secure the shipment of the oil and gas to the outside world. The only oil-route open to them was the pipeline from Baku to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossysk, which previously passed through Chechenya. The war there meant a prolonged suspension of oil shipments and considerable loss to the oil companies as well as Azerbaijan. Now the Russians say that they have completed refurbishing the pipeline, which now by-passes Chechnya, and Baku is preparing to resume oil exports."
BP and Amoco behind coup installing Aliyev as president of Azerbaijan
Crescent International, 16-31 May 2000

(Who is Michael Maloof? - Click Here)

"The American people have been seriously misled about the origins of the al Qaeda movement blamed for the 9/11 attacks, just as they have been seriously misled about the reasons for America’s invasion of Iraq. The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies. Americans were eager to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be 'the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet.' To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called 'Arab Afghan' warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda. In country after country these 'Arab Afghans' have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin. America’s sponsorship of drug-trafficking Muslim warriors, including those now in Al Qaeda, dates back to the Afghan War of 1979-89, sponsored in part by the CIA’s links to the drug-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). It was part of CIA Director Casey’s strategy for launching covert operations over and above those approved and financed by a Democratic-controlled Congress.... The most conspicuous example of this alliance with drug-traffickers in the 1980s was the Contra support operation. Here again foreign money and drug profits filled the gap after Congress denied funds through the so-called Boland amendments; in this case government funds were used to lie about the Contras to the American people. This was followed by a massive cover-up, in which a dubious role was played by then-Congressman Lee Hamilton, later of the 9/11 Commission... Repeatedly al Qaeda terrorists were protected by FBI officials from investigation and prosecution.... In part America’s limited covert assistance to al Qaeda after 1989 was in order not to offend al Qaeda’s two primary supporters which America needed as allies: the intelligence networks of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But unquestionably the entry of United States oil companies into oil-rich Azerbaijan was achieved with the assistance of a U.S.-organized covert program using 'Arab Afghan' operatives associated with bin Laden. Oil was the driving force of U.S. involvement in Central and South Asia, and oil led to U.S. coexistence with both al Qaeda and the world-dominating Afghan heroin trade.... U.S. support for al Qaeda elements, particularly in Azerbaijan and Kosovo, has increased dramatically the flow of heroin to Western Europe and the United States.... In the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, Arab Afghans clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the region. In 1991-92, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos and Iran-Contra, turned up in Baku under the cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil. MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian influence. As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord, Aderholt, Dearborn, and their men engaged in military training, passed 'brown bags filled with cash' to members of the government, and above all set up an airline on the model of Air America which soon was picking up hundreds of Mujahideen mercenaries in Afghanistan.... The triple pattern of drugs, oil, and al Qaeda was seen again in Kosovo in 1998, where the Al-Qaeda-backed Islamist jihadis of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) received overt American assistance from the U.S. Government. Though unmentioned in mainstream books on the war, both the al Qaeda and drug backgrounds of the KLA are recognized by experts .... In short, the al Qaeda terror network accused of the 9/11 attacks was supported and expanded by U.S. intelligence programs and covert operations, both during and after the Soviet Afghan War. Congress should rethink their decision to grant still greater powers and budget to the agencies responsible for fostering this enemy in the first place. "
9/11 in Historical Perspective: Flawed Assumptions
Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism:
A briefing for Congressional staff, July 22, 2005
New Criminologist, 6 August 2005

"The vast expanses of the former Soviet Union harbor oil and gas riches which will be crucial in fueling the global economy in the next century. The huge oil reserves, estimated at over 25 billion barrels, under the Caspian Sea and in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are similar to those in Kuwait and larger than those in Alaska's Northern Slope and the North Sea combined. Control over these energy resources and export routes out of the Eurasian hinterland is quickly becoming one of the central issues in post-Cold War politics. Like the 'Great Game' of the early 20th century, in which the geopolitical interests of the British Empire and Russia clashed over the Caucasus region and Central Asia, today's struggle between Russia and the West may turn on who controls the oil reserves in Eurasia. The world now faces a choice between the cooperative exploitation by the East and West of natural resources or a wasteful struggle that could cost a fortune in blood and treasure. Regional conflicts in the Caucasus and Central Asia threaten to deny Western access to the vital oil and gas reserves the world will need in the 21st century. .......The U.S. needs to ensure free and fair access for all interested parties to the oil fields of the Caucasus and Central Asia. These resources are crucial to ensuring prosperity in the first half of the 21st century and beyond. Access to Eurasian energy reserves could reduce the West's dependence on Middle East oil and ensure lower oil and gas prices for decades to come..... the West has a paramount interest in assuring that the Caucasian and Central Asian states maintain their independence and remain open to the West. Otherwise, Moscow will capture almost monopolistic control over this vital energy resource, thus increasing Western dependence upon Russian-dominated oil reserves and export routes.... The U.S. should support a pipeline route through the territory of Georgia and Turkey that will bring oil from Eurasia to a Mediterranean port such as Ceyhan in Turkey..... One of the main goals of the Russian attack on Chechnya in December of 1994 was to ensure control of the oil pipeline which runs from Baku, via Grozny, the Chechen capital, to the Russian city of Tikhoretsk. The pipeline ends at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, designed by Russia to be the terminal for the proposed Kazakh and Azerbaijani pipelines. In addition, Grozny boasts a large refinery with a processing capacity of 12 million tons per year.... Russia launched a massive but covert military action in the fall of 1994 to support opponents of Dudayev. In 1994, Dudayev turned to radical Islamic elements in the Middle East and Central Asia for support. This exacerbated the religious aspect of the conflict between the Muslim Chechens and Christian Orthodox Russians.... Another conflict affecting potential oil routes is occuring in the Caucasus republic of Georgia. Russia wants to prevent oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan from going the 'Western' route through Georgia to Turkey. Moscow's support of civil strife in Georgia is directly connected to its goal of perpetuating conflict in the Caucasus.... Another dangerous conflict is smoldering in Abkhazia, a breakaway region in Georgia. The bitter war in Abkhazia, which began in 1992, has claimed over 35,000 lives. It was precipitated by the Russian military backing the Abkhaz separatist minority against the Georgian government in Tbilisi. One purpose of the Russian intervention was to weaken Georgia and curb Turkish and Western influence in the region. But more important was the Russian goal of controlling access to oil. By acting as it did, Russia gained de facto control over the long Black Sea coastline in Abkhazia. Moscow also was protecting the Russian Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk and Tuapse and moving closer to the Georgian oil exporting ports in Poti, Supsa, and Batumi. In August 1995, Georgia's beleaguered President Shevardnadze agreed to place four Russian military bases on Georgian soil, thus assuring Russia's control of the oil exporting routes via the Black Sea coast.....The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh is important because of the immense oil reserves controlled by Azerbaijan. Since the late 19th century, the oil in Azerbaijan has played a key role in the economies of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, as well as in the global energy market. International business interests, such as the Nobel and Rothschild families, and even conquerors like Adolf Hitler have all vied at different times for control of Azerbaijan's oil. Even after 100 years of Russian imperial and Soviet exploitation, Azerbaijan still has some of the largest reserves in the world..... On October 9, 1995, the Azerbaijani International Oil Consortium (AIOC) announced that 'early' oil (approximately 80,000 barrels a month) would be split between two pipelines. The northern line would go to the Russian port of Novorossiysk (via unstable Chechnya) and the western line to the Georgian port of Supsa in two separate pipelines. This was a compromise decision supported by the Clinton Administration and aimed at placating Moscow, but it failed to do so.... Moscow has gone beyond words to establish its power in the Caucasus. The Russians are setting up military bases in the region in order to gain exclusive control over all future pipelines. Georgia now has four Russian bases and Armenia has three, while Azerbaijan is still holding out under severe pressure from Moscow. In addition, members of the Commonwealth of Independent States are required to police their borders jointly with Russian border guards, and thus are denied effective control over their own territory..... The struggle to reestablish a Russian sphere of influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia started in early 1992. While not a full-scale war, this struggle employs a broad spectrum of military, covert, diplomatic, and economic measures. The southern tier of the former Soviet Union is a zone of feverish Russian activity aimed at tightening Moscow's grip in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. The entire southern rim of Russia is a turbulent frontier, a highly unstable environment in which metropolitan civilian and military elites, local players, and mid-level officers and bureaucrats drive the process of reintegration...... Much is at stake in Eurasia for the U.S. and its allies. Attempts to restore its empire will doom Russia's transition to a democracy and free-market economy. The ongoing war in Chechnya alone has cost Russia $6 billion to date (equal to Russia's IMF and World Bank loans for 1995). Moreover, it has extracted a tremendous price from Russian society. The wars which would be required to restore the Russian empire would prove much more costly not just for Russia and the region, but for peace, world stability, and security..... Eurasian oil resources are pivotal to economic development in the early 21st century. The supply of Middle Eastern oil would become precarious if Saudi Arabia became unstable, or if Iran or Iraq provoked another military conflict in the area.... The oil and gas reserves of the Caucasus and Central Asia are vital to Western geostrategic and economic interests in the 21st century..... A major campaign to assert influence in the Russian 'near abroad' would be a setback for U.S. interests. In addition, control of the Caucasus and Central Asia would allow Russia geographical proximity to, and closer cooperation with, the anti-Western regimes in Tehran and Baghdad. Together, an anti-Western Russia, Iran, and Iraq, if they desired, could pursue a common interest in driving up the price of oil...."
The New 'Great Game': Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia
The Heritage Foundation, 25 January 1996

"As the intelligence newsletter Stratfor -- which Time magazine ranked as the nation's top intelligence site in 2003, and which Barron's described as 'a private quasi-CIA' -- pointed out a few months ago, with Ukraine now firmly in the West's orbit, America, with NATO and the EU, has managed to succeed exactly where Hitler and Napoleon failed: it has dismantled the Russian empire, leaving the rump state exposed, weakened and essentially at the West's mercy....  In the wake of the Beslan massacre in September, 2004, in which hundreds of children were killed during a Chechen separatist seizure of a school in southern Russia, President Putin went on television and blamed certain foreign powers for supporting the terrorists with the aim of defanging Russia for good, breaking it apart, and seizing its valuable resources. He did not name the United States, but it was clear whom he meant. .....Stratfor, whose politics could be described as something between patriotic-American and realpolitik, agreed. According to its Kremlin sources, Putin specifically named the U.S. and Great Britain during private meetings. And as Stratfor noted in its April report, there is plenty of evidence to support the Kremlin's claim. In the first place, while Muslim separatist militants from other conflict zones are shunned and even violently pursued by the U.S., the Chechen separatist representatives are routinely given haven and official voice in both the U.K. and America. ... As Stratfor notes, the British connection to the Chechen separatists goes farther back. 'During the first Chechen war -- from 1994 to 1996 -- retired U.K. special forces officers trained British Muslim recruits in British territory to fight in Chechnya,' Stratfor claims, echoing reports out of Russia. 'Some militants who attended that training and were later captured told the Russian government.' After Chechnya gained de facto independence, a scandal apparently erupted in Russia-U.K. relations when de-mining instructors from a private security firm, which included American ex-military personnel, were caught 'training Chechen militants how to launch mine and bombing attacks against Russian troops,' according to Stratfor.."
Dividing Russia
AlterNet, 29 June 2005

How British Intelligence Conned Geoff Hoon
Over Regime Change In Iraq

Post Hutton and Butler Everyone Knows British Intelligence Didn't Have Any Corroborated Evidence Of WMDs In Iraq
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon May Not Have Lied About Iraq But MI6 Surely Lied To Him
(He Says The Intelligence Community Told Him They Were 'Absolutely Sure')
And It Appears Hoon Now Realises This

"But Geoff Hoon, who was defense secretary in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government from 1999 until 2005, said intelligence officials had believed Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and that the allies did not lie about why they went to war...Hoon defended the decision to go to war on the basis of intelligence that believed Iraq was building up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction — intelligence he now accepts was wrong. 'I've been present at a number of meetings where the intelligence community was fixed, and looked in the eye and asked are you absolutely sure about this? And the answer came back  'Yes, absolutely sure,' Hoon was quoted as saying. Hoon said he felt no need to apologize."
Cheney Iraq role reviewed in Britain
Associated Press, 2 May 2007

"Mr Hoon also expressed regret over the government's claim in the run-up to war that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, which, he now accepts, turned out to be false. He said he had 'gradually come to the acceptance' the weapons did not exist. But he insisted the government had acted in good faith. He still does not understand why the intelligence proved to be false. 'I've been present at a number of meetings where the intelligence community was fixed, and looked in the eye and asked are you absolutely sure about this? And the answer came back 'Yes, absolutely sure'. Mr Hoon added: 'I saw intelligence from the first time I came into office, in May 1999 - week in, week out - that said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction  ... I have real difficulty in understanding why it was, over such a long period of time, we were told this and, moreover, why we acted upon it.... ' 'Whatever else I did, even if say people say it was catastrophically wrong, I wouldn't agree with it, but I could live with it. But I can't live with the idea that I was telling lies, because I wasn't."
Hoon admits fatal errors in planning for postwar Iraq
Guardian, 2 May 2007

"Britain ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq. Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down. The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added....Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq. Sources in both the British and US intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war....Many in British intelligence believe the planned parliamentary inquiry by MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee will pass the blame for the use of selective intelligence to the JIC, which includes senior intelligence figures. Intelligence sources say this would be unfair as they claim the JIC was following political instructions."
Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair
Sunday Herald, 8 June 2003

"Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability.....According to two of those present at the briefing.... this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, .....On the same day, in London, Tony Blair’s government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret—that Iraq had sought to buy 'significant quantities of uranium' from an unnamed African country... President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought 'significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'....Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes.... Some I.A.E.A. investigators.... speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy.... Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections....A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to, among other things, spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program—part of its Information Operations, or I/Ops—was known to a few senior officials in Washington.... dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips—data known as inactionable intelligence—[were] to be funnelled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere. 'It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn’t move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world,' the former officer said. There was a series of clandestine meetings with MI6, at which documents were provided, as well as quiet meetings, usually at safe houses in the Washington area..... None of the past and present officials I spoke with were able to categorically state that the fake Niger documents were created or instigated by the same propaganda office in MI6 that had been part of the anti-Iraq propaganda wars in the late nineteen-nineties (An MI6 intelligence source declined to comment.)....[However] What is generally agreed upon, a congressional intelligence-committee staff member told me, is that the Niger documents were initially circulated by the British—President Bush said as much in his State of the Union speech—and that 'the Brits placed more stock in them than we did.' It is also clear, as the former high-level intelligence official told me, that 'something as bizarre as Niger raises suspicions everywhere.'... "
WHO LIED TO WHOM?
New Yorker, 24 March 2003

"The Secret Intelligence Service has run an operation to gain public support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq. The government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert. A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation. 'There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons that the public needed to know, said the official. The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material. 'The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was,' Ritter said last week. He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. 'Stories ran in the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes (to produce weapons of mass destruction),' said Ritter. 'They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were garbage.' .....Blair justified his backing for sanctions and for the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that intelligence reports showed Saddam was working to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The use of MI6 as a 'back channel' for promoting the government's policies on Iraq was never discovered during the Hutton inquiry and is likely to cause considerable disquiet among MPs. A key figure in Operation Mass Appeal was Sir Derek Plumbly, then director of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office and now Britain's ambassador to Egypt. Plumbly worked closely with MI6 to help to promote Britain's Middle East policy. The campaign was judged to be having a successful effect on public opinion. MI6 passed on intelligence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction and rebuilding its arsenal. Poland, India and South Africa were initially chosen as targets for the campaign because they were non-aligned UN countries not supporting the British and US position on sanctions. At the time, in 1997, Poland was also a member of the UN security council. Ritter was a willing accomplice to the alleged propaganda effort when first approached by MI6's station chief in New York. He obtained approval to co-operate from Richard Butler, then executive chairman of the UN Special Commission on Iraq Disarmament. Ritter met MI6 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal at a lunch in London in June 1998 at which two men and a woman from MI6 were present. The Sunday Times is prevented by the Official Secrets Act from publishing their names. Ritter had previously met the MI6 officer at Vauxhall Cross, the service's London headquarters. He asked Ritter for information on Iraq that could be planted in newspapers in India, Poland and South Africa from where it would 'feed back' to Britain and America. Ritter opposed the Iraq war but this is the first time that he has named members of British intelligence as being involved in a propaganda campaign. He said he had decided to 'name names' because he was frustrated at 'an official cover-up' and the 'misuse of intelligence'. 'What MI6 was determined to do by the selective use of intelligence was to give the impression that Saddam still had WMDs or was making them and thereby legitimise sanctions and military action against Iraq,' he said."
Revealed: how MI6 sold the Iraq war
Sunday Times, 28 December 2003

So Why Did Blair Promote Scarlett After The Scandal Of The Iraq Dossier Intelligence 'Failure' And Contrary To Established Protocol?
Either Blair Was Conned Too Or He Was In On The Scheme
Which Is It?

"A Knighthood for the MI6 chief behind the sexed-up 'dodgy dossier' that helped take Britain into the Iraq war was branded an abuse of the honours system last night.... No reason for the award is given except for his 'diplomatic service'.... At the time of the dodgy dossier Scarlett was chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.... Scarlett has spent more than 30 years working for MI6 ..."
SIR SEX-UP
Daily Mirror, 30 December 2006

Why Did Blair And Omand
Promote Scarlett After The Iraq Scandal
When He Should Have Been Demoted?

"... there needs to be proper supervision and surveillance of the security services if trust in them is to be maintained. The Government's record can fill no one with confidence. Look how it dealt with John Scarlett, who as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee was responsible for the dodgy dossier which took us to war in Iraq. Was he disciplined or sacked? On the contrary, he was awarded a knighthood and made head of MI6."
A question of trust, not just security
Daily Mail, 4 May 2007

John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee responsible for the 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq in September 2002, was inexplicably promoted to Head Of MI6 following his leading role in the biggest British Foreign Policy disaster since Suez

"John Scarlett, who took responsibility for the error-ridden dossier that justified the war in Iraq, is knighted in today's New Year's Honours list.... Sir John, the head of MI6, played a key role in the Hutton Inquiry hearings into the death of the weapons expert David Kelly, three years ago. He steadfastly defended the dossier, which contained the notorious claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. And he dismissed accusations he had bowed to pressure to 'sex up' the document's conclusions. As chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, he told the inquiry he had 'overall charge and responsibility' for the dossier."
Scarlett, author of the Iraq war dossier, is knighted
Independent, 30 December 2006

A Repeat Of Suez?
Was It Impossible For Downing St To Sack Scarlett
Because He Knew They Knew?

"To mark the 50th anniversary of the Suez Crisis of 1956, Professor Scott Lucas examines the key role played by the British intelligence services in the ill-fated invasion of Egypt. He uses new evidence to uncover how MI6 planned for the overthrow of the Egyptian President Nasser, how it shocked CIA colleagues with the proposal to use Israel in the attempt, and how it eventually produced the unsuccessful plan for psychological warfare, with catastrophic results for the Eden government."
Archive Hour: Suez - the Missing Dimension
Saturday 28 October 2006 20:02-21:00 (Radio 4 FM)

"With hindsight it's clear that Eden was already committed to military action [against Egypt in 1956]. Approaching the problem through the United Nations was unlikely to work, since in international law Nasser probably was within his rights to nationalise the Suez Canal Company. With the likelihood of armed conflict in mind, in fact  Eden would ultimately engage in an illegal secret pact with France and Israel to provide a pretext to start it..... no one outside of a very few close confidants knew of Eden's single minded commitment to a military solution, and still less about the very secret plan hatched with the French and Israelis to provide a pretext for that military action to start.... Government preparations for war went largely unreported in detail having been the subject of two 'D' notices. That's the system by which press and broadcasters agree voluntarily to restrict reporting of matters relating to national security. Meanwhile unknown to any but his closest inner circle the plan for the Israelis to invade Egypt, thus allowing Britain and France to intervene on the pretext of keeping the waring sides apart, was ready to be put into action."
'A Comfort to the Enemy'
BBC Archive Hour, Saturday 4 November 2006 20:00-21:00 (Radio 4 FM)

"No MI6 official was punished for the Suez failure, although quietly the service was reorganised to prevent any repetition of its Middle Eastern scheming.... Instead Anthony Eden was left to carry responsibilty alone for one of Britain's greatest foreign misadventures ever ..... There's one final twist to our tale, however. More than fifty years after Suez, Anthony Eden's call for action against evil dictators is echoed by his successors. Britain is once again involved with regime change in the Middle East, albeit one led by a different imperial power...."
Suez - The Missing Dimension
BBC Radio 4, 28 October 2006

"I expressed my concern about the hard-line rightwingers around Bush and warned him [Blair] that many of them would regard it as a bonus in the present crisis if we were driven from office and replaced by a Conservative government. He laughed and said, 'Regime change is for Baghdad. It is not for here.'"
Diary of Robin Cook, former British Foreign Secretary - 5 March 2003
London Times, 5 October 2003

"As the London Times 20 June put it 'No 10 may have 'cherry-picked' the intelligence — Robin Cook’s colourful phrase — but there had to be cherries for the picking. Who grew them?' ...Indeed, there is little doubt now that somebody within the system 'sexed' things up in making the case against Iraq, albeit often in ways that have not featured strongly in the current debate. If the Prime Minister is really convinced of his own integrity, and by implication the rest of Downing St, then why is he not demanding an investigation of the intelligence services given all that we now know?"
Iraqgate 2003
'Fight Smart', Special Report, October 2003

"When John Scarlett begins his new job this morning as head of MI6 his first task will be to defend himself against yet another damaging allegation about falsifying intelligence to help Tony Blair. This latest controversy has prompted many in the intelligence community to question whether Mr Scarlett is too much of a liability to run the Secret Intelligence Service.... Mr Scarlett faces claims that in March he clumsily tried to distort a crucial report by the Iraq Survey Group, (ISG), the international body set up to hunt for Saddam Hussein’s supposed arsenal of banned armaments. Just before the 1,400-strong team of inspectors were due to report on how they had failed to turn up any trace of weapons of mass destruction they were reportedly contacted by Mr Scarlett. He was still head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and suggested that the ISG report should be cut from 200 pages of detailed analysis to 20, and left sufficently vague to protect Mr Blair’s stand on Iraq’s weapons menace. He wanted the report to keep alive the prospect that deadly weapons could still be found. In a confidential e-mail sent to the ISG team in Baghdad, Mr Scarlett is alleged to have asked them to add ten 'golden nuggets' to their report which prolonged the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction. One former intelligence officer said last night: 'This is the worst possible start for him as he begins his new job. He wanted a fresh start for the service but you get the sinking feeling this is never going to end while he is around.'... His growing army of critics inside Whitehall argue it will be impossible to restore MI6’s credibility while he remains in charge. One security expert decribed his reported intervention with the Iraq Survey Group as 'staggering'.... His appointment was met by claims in some quarters of Whitehall that it was a reward from Mr Blair as many had expected MI6’s deputy head, Nigel Inkster, to succeed Sir Richard Dearlove as 'C'. This damaging view was reinforced when Downing Street took the unusual step of going on the record robustly to support Mr Scarlett’s suitability for the job."
New MI6 chief walks into storm over 'ties to Downing Street'
London Times, 2 August 2004

Why Was There Special Treatment For Scarlett
And On Whose Instructions?

"Tony Blair provoked an unprecedented political storm last night by surprisingly appointing the man who helped to clear him in the Hutton inquiry as Britain’s top spymaster. Risking charges of cronyism, the Prime Minister made John Scarlett, whose high-profile evidence countered charges that Downing Street had 'sexed up' the dossier on Iraqi weapons, the head of MI6. It was a break with tradition because deputies of MI6 usually succeed to the top job and the current holder of that post, Nigel Inkster, had been groomed to take over. Last night Mr Inkster’s future was in doubt.... The Times has confirmed that Mr Blair approved without question the recommendation of Mr Scarlett that came from a selection panel chaired by Sir David Omand, the intelligence and security coordinator. The panel found that Mr Scarlett was 'on merit' the top candidate. The only other candidate on the shortlist was Mr Inkster, the current deputy to Sir Richard Dearlove. Sir Richard had appointed him to the No 2 slot with the understanding that he was the chosen insider to take over. Previous assistant chiefs had all moved up to become the head of MI6. This was the case with Sir Richard himself."
Cronyism row over new MI6 spymaster
London Times, 7 May 2004

"The tradition of incumbent chiefs appointing deputies goes back to at least 1985, according to MI6 records, although some sources said they believed it might have started 50 years ago. The deputies did not always automatically become the chief, Foreign and Commonwealth Office sources said. Whitehall insiders said that for Mr Blair a less controversial candidate would have been Mr Inkster. It has been reported that Mr Inkster was Sir Richard’s chosen successor but The Times has been told by an informed source that Sir Richard had the 'highest possible opinion' of Mr Scarlett.... Whitehall sources insisted yesterday that Mr Scarlett had been selected instead of the MI6 deputy chief partly because after three years as chairman of the JIC and 30 years in MI6, he had broader experience and excellent contacts with Washington as a result of his role as head of the intelligence committee."
Cronyism row over new MI6 spymaster
London Times, 7 May 2004

"After the Commons staged its first full debate on the Iraq war since 2004, the government defeated an opposition motion calling for such an inquiry by 298 votes to 273 – a majority of 25. However, the prime minister’s victory came on a night of confusion for the government when a cabinet minister appeared to break with the Downing Street line by confirming a new inquiry into the Iraq war would definitely be held at some stage. Throughout the day, Downing Street had sought to keep all discussion about a possible future inquiry somewhat vague, saying that when British troops finally left, 'people will want to look back'. However, in a BBC TV interview, Des Browne, the defence secretary, went a good deal further, firming up the government’s commitment by saying: 'When the time is right, of course there will be such a inquiry.' Mr Browne’s comment means the UK will almost certainly hold an inquiry into the war, probably after Mr Blair leaves office next year. But a government insider later said Mr Browne’s comments had been 'a slip of the tongue' and that he fully supported the government’s Iraq policy."
Blair survives parliamentary rebellion over Iraq
Financial Times, 31 October 2006

The Role Of Sir David Omand

"The PMOS [Prime Minister's Official Spokesman] informed journalists that the Foreign Secretary was confirming today the appointment of John Scarlett as the next Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). .....   Jack Straw said, 'John Scarlett has the operational background, personal qualities and wide experience to be a worthy successor to Richard Dearlove'.... In answer to further questions, the PMOS said that it was normal procedure for the Foreign Secretary to make the appointment under Section 2(1) of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 on the basis of recommendations from a selection panel following Civil Service Commission practice. In this case, the panel had been chaired by Sir David Omand. Under this procedure, the Prime Minister was consulted at the end of the process. Asked if people had been asked to apply for the job or if it had been advertised, the PMOS said that he had no intention of getting drawn into a detailed discussion of the process. Asked if there had been any other candidates for the job, apart from John Scarlett, the PMOS repeated that the appointment had been made on the recommendation of the selection panel. Asked who else had sat on the panel, apart from Sir David Omand, the PMOS said that it wasn't our policy to provide details of Civil Service Commission practice."
John Scarlett
Downing St Press Briefing, 6 May 2004

"What has already emerged - but been largely ignored - from the Hutton inquiry is the existence of a dark, almost Jacobean, cabal at the core of the Blair administration. It is a group of powerful, unelected people few would have heard of were it not for the evidence given to Hutton: Sir David Manning, the prime minister's foreign policy adviser; Sir David Omand, his security coordinator; and John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee. Until he resigned, the group also included Alastair Campbell, Blair's communications director. Indeed, he was a prime mover in establishing this inner circle. Manning was widely respected as a high-flying diplomat and ambassador to Nato. Scarlett was MI6 station chief in Moscow responsible at one time for handling the KGB defector, Oleg Gordievsky. Omand was praised as director of GCHQ and top civil servant at the Home Office. Then they were brought to the centre of power in Downing Street to be seduced by the smell of high-octane politics, and threw away their professional independence. Above all, they allowed themselves to be embraced by Campbell and opened the door to the tainting of intelligence by politics. You could hear it in their calculating treatment of Kelly who, in Scarlett's chilling words, should have been subjected to a 'security style interview'....The 45-minute claim was inserted at the last minute on the word, we now know, of an MI6 informant - whether a defector or not remains unclear - talking to a senior Iraqi armed forces officer. MI6 allowed Scarlett to include that 'intelligence' despite opposition in an intelligence community concerned - as much now as it was before the war - about how its work was being abused. This is the most damaging episode for MI6 since the Falklands. But then it was about complacency. Now its integrity is in question. As long as Scarlett remains in his post, that damage will not be repaired."
There is a dark cabal around Blair
Guardian, 11 September 2003

"Relations between Sir Richard Dearlove, the present C [head of MI6] , and Mr Scarlett have not been good. Mr Scarlett, it is said, has for long sought Sir Richard's job. It is no secret that Sir Richard was grooming Nigel Inkster, appointed last year as deputy head of MI6, as his successor."
The odd couple: the new chief of MI6 and his 'mate' from No 10
Guardian, 7 May 2004

"Nigel Inkster, the deputy at MI6, poised by custom and practice to take over when Sir Richard Dearlove retired, wasn't appointed on his 'merits'. John Scarlett was.... But come back to the newness - the unrealised, process-transforming impact - of Omand's own role. I quote the Downing Street notice explaining his original appointment. 'John Scarlett CMG,' it explains, 'will continue to chair the joint intelligence committee and will be the director for intelligence and security matters in the Cabinet Office. He will be accountable to the security and intelligence coordinator.' In short, for day-to-day working within the office, Scarlett became Omand's own deputy..... He has worked close by Scarlett for nearly two years and knows his strengths. He also knows whose judgment he trusts and can second to the prime minister. He would want, too, a 'C' who can work easily with the Blair team."
The man who is always there
Guardian, 10 May 2004

"Mr Reid has proposed splitting up the Home Office so that a ministry of interior takes charge of police, immigration, MI6, community cohesion and anti-terrorism activities. Some of the security functions now with the Cabinet Office, and not subject to direct political accountability, would also go to the interior ministry, or a department of national security.... The idea has met resistance from civil servants, especially senior security figures in the Cabinet Office. It may not match plans being drawn up by Gordon Brown but some ministers believe the resistance is coming from civil servants, and not from senior Labour politicians. It is being argued that MI6 should remain under the political purview of the Foreign Office since the foreign secretary is best placed to sanction security operations in the knowledge of the potential diplomatic damage if the operation goes wrong or is exposed."
MI6 poised to remain under control of Foreign Office
Guardian, 1 February 2007

Who Is Sir David Omand?
What Was His Role At The Cabinet Office In The Preparation Of Scarlett's Iraq Dossier
And Later In The Handling Of The Subsequent Kelly Affair?
When It Came To The Appointment Of The Head Of MI6 Was Omand
An Interested Party In Wanting To Keep Suppressed Internal Dissent Within MI6 Which Knew The Iraq Intelligence Had Been Massaged?

"Omand stands at the heart of this action. Sir David, appointed in the summer of 2002, is the first-ever 'permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office and security and intelligence coordinator'. A totally new post after 9/11. He's not the top dog at No 10, your actual cabinet secretary, but he is the Sir Humphrey of homeland security as well as supreme office manager. The man who's always there. He chairs every important cross-Whitehall security committee, vets every account and sits alongside every intelligence chief. When the boss of GCHQ gets duffed up by the public accounts committee, Omand's on hand, batting for the defence. When Sir John Stevens runs one of his gloomy roadshows warning of 'inevitable terrorist attack', Omand does the drums and whistles. He has a seat at the table when dossiers are compiled. He started the hunt for Gilligan's mole. He is omnipresent in an invisible kind of way. So how did John Scarlett get to be head of MI6? Here's the official Downing Street spokesman in lobby meeting minutes. It was the foreign secretary's appointment - as laid down in Section 2 (1) of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 - based on the recommendation of a selection panel, following Civil Service Commission practice, chaired 'in this case' by Sir David Omand. 'The procedure used ... was the same as the one which had been followed for the appointment of Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5, and David Pepper, director of GCHQ,' he said. 'It was also the same process used for the appointment of permanent secretaries.' Asked about concerns 'that Mr Scarlett was 'too close to Downing Street' in as much as he would be too willing to do No 10's bidding, the spokesman repeated that the appointment 'had been made using the usual procedures', only involving the PM at the end. It had been based entirely on merit on the recommendation of a panel chaired by Sir David Omand.' Asked for how long this process had been in use, he referred journalists to the Cabinet Office for further detail ... Asked if there had been any other candidates for the job, apart from John Scarlett, he repeated that the appointment had been made on the recommendation of the selection panel. Asked who else had sat on the panel, apart from Sir David Omand, he said 'that it wasn't our policy to provide details of Civil Service Commission practice'. Very good. If there's one thing clear from all this, it is that Sir David Omand was a huge cheese here (and that Tony Blair played mini-mouse with barely a sliver of received cheddar to munch on). Nigel Inkster, the deputy at MI6, poised by custom and practice to take over when Sir Richard Dearlove retired, wasn't appointed on his 'merits'. John Scarlett was. But come back to the newness - the unrealised, process-transforming impact - of Omand's own role. I quote the Downing Street notice explaining his original appointment. 'John Scarlett CMG,' it explains, 'will continue to chair the joint intelligence committee and will be the director for intelligence and security matters in the Cabinet Office. He will be accountable to the security and intelligence coordinator.'  In short, for day-to-day working within the office, Scarlett became Omand's own deputy. He retained his 'personal responsibility' for putting JIC judgments to ministers, but there was a new and very influential man on his block to be accountable to. And now that chap, with barely a peep from the PM, has helped make him 'C at 6'. Hot deputy dog."
The man who is always there
Guardian, 10 May 2004

"John Scarlett, the intelligence chief accused of becoming too close to Downing Street in the approach to the Iraq war, was under pressure last night to withdraw as the next head of MI6. The Telegraph has learned that Sir Richard Dearlove, the outgoing chief of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, opposed him as his successor. He backed Nigel Inkster, his vice-chief, instead. 'Dearlove was not happy with Scarlett's appointment,' a Cabinet minister said.... Sir Richard, who retires this month, told Cabinet ministers it would be wrong for Mr Scarlett to be made the next 'C' after the row over his role in the writing of the September 2002 dossier on WMD. He is said to be worried about the closeness between the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee - the co-ordinating body that advises the Government on intelligence - and No 10. He is also concerned that Mr Scarlett has become too much of a public figure to run a secret organisation.Tony Blair overruled Sir Richard's objections and confirmed the appointment, which was recommended by a panel of permanent secretaries, led by Sir David Omand, the security and intelligence co-ordinator and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office. The only previous occasion on which a government rejected the advice of a head of MI6 was in the 1960s when George Brown, then foreign secretary, appointed Sir John Rennie, a diplomat, with a brief to reform MI6.... During the Hutton inquiry, Mr Scarlett took full responsibility for the dossier by insisting that he, rather than No 10, had 'ownership' of it.... Iain Duncan Smith, who strongly supported the Iraq war when he led the Conservative Party, said that Mr Scarlett should not become the new head of MI6. His intervention is significant because he received security briefings as the war loomed. He said the flaws in the dossier identified in Lord Butler's report made Mr Scarlett's appointment untenable. The Joint Intelligence Committee was meant to be independent and at 'arm's length' from the politicians, he said. But Mr Scarlett, as the head of the committee, had 'taken ownership' of the dossier and therefore must take responsibility for the fact that the intelligence service's qualifications had 'knowingly' been left out of it."
Spymaster pressed to stand down
Daily Telegraph, 16 July 2004

"Sir Rodric Braithwaite, one of his successors at the JIC and former ambassador to Moscow, aimed a scathing attack at Mr Scarlett. The JIC, he told the the Royal Institute for International Affairs at the end of last year, had 'stepped outside its traditional role ... It entered the prime minister's magic circle. It was engulfed in the atmosphere of excitement which surrounds decision-making in a crisis'. One of those in the circle is Sir David Omand, Mr Blair's security and intelligence coordinator whose main responsibility is domestic security. He was chairman of the selection panel who recommended Mr Scarlett's appointment....Mr Scarlett was saved by Lord Hutton, who concluded that he was only 'subconsciously influenced' by the prime minister's pressure for a strongly worded weapons dossier. The subsequent outburst of the former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, who, according to the Mail on Sunday, called Scarlett a 'lying s*** and did what Blair wanted', did him no harm. Mr Scarlett, 55, will take over Sir Richard's seat in MI6's Terry Farrell-designed headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the banks of the Thames, where, he indicated yesterday, he will return to the shadows, never to say anything again until he retires."
The odd couple: the new chief of MI6 and his 'mate' from No 10
Guardian, 7 May 2004

"Britain ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq. Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down. The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added....Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq. Sources in both the British and US intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war....Many in British intelligence believe the planned parliamentary inquiry by MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee will pass the blame for the use of selective intelligence to the JIC, which includes senior intelligence figures. Intelligence sources say this would be unfair as they claim the JIC was following political instructions."
Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair
Sunday Herald, 8 June 2003

"A report from the Hutton Inquiry by the London Times 16 September states 'Earlier, the two most senior members of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), the Ministry of Defence branch of the intelligence service, explained why they decided not to pass on concerns of their own staff about the draft dossier. Dr Brian Jones, a manager in the technical wing of the DIS, said that he and some staff felt the 45-minute point was too strong and the dossier should not imply that chemical weapons were in production. Air Marshal Sir Joe French, Chief of Defence Intelligence, said the written concerns of Dr Jones and one of his staff were counteracted by other intelligence information'. This is a description uncomfortably close to Ritter's portrayal of Operation Rockingham as an intelligence 'cherry picking' exercise. The Times then continued with 'Tony Cragg, Sir Joe’s deputy at the time of the dossier and a fellow member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said he received Dr Jones’s letter of concerns on September 19 but 'I took the view that since all of the issues had either been discussed with the Cabinet Office or were well within the general thrust of known intelligence, it was not necessary to raise the issues with the JIC.' ' Now are we getting close to it? Was the situation being manipulated from both ends given that Ritter claims Rockingham was operating on political instructions from the highest level? What was the role of the Cabinet Office mentioned here? Tucked away at the bottom of its report the Times also goes on to say that 'An internal BBC note made by Gavyn Davies, the BBC Chairman, states that he received a phone call from an MP who claimed that he had discussed the September dossier with an MI6 official. 'The MI6 official said that the provisos which related to the 45-minute claim were removed from the original intelligence reports before the September dossier was published. He said that this had been done by Alastair Campbell,' says the memo'. Somehow that claim didn't make it into a Times headline, although it did in the Daily Telegraph the same day. However, it doesn't seem to have gone much further. It would certainly be interesting to interview that MI6 official."
Iraqgate 2003
'Fight Smart', Special Report, October 2003

"Mr Tenet abruptly announced that he had decided to step down as the head of the CIA..... Mr Tenet's decision to step down is in stark contrast to the fate of John Scarlett, the chairman of Whitehall's Joint Intelligence Committee, who will succeed Sir Richard Dearlove as the head of MI6 next month. Mr Scarlett not only endorsed the claim that Saddam had attempted to by uranium from Niger. He also backed the notion that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so, a judgment that Mr Tenet forced the White House to withdraw from its website. In Westminster, a powerful lobby is emerging in favour of Mr Scarlett following Mr Tenet's example, even before the Butler Commission on pre-war intelligence is due to report next month."
The first fall guy
Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2004

Why Was Scarlett's Appointment Made Before Butler Had Reported?

"In a dramatic break with past practice the Conservatives criticised Mr Scarlett’s appointment, even though Michael Howard would have to work closely with him if he defied the odds to become prime minister next year. The Tory leader went as far as saying that it was 'a mistake' to choose Mr Scarlett while the Butler inquiry into intelligence on weapons of mass destruction had still to report. 'It’s vital that the people of our country have confidence in the Secret Intelligence Service,' he said. 'John Scarlett is clearly at the heart of the investigation which is currently being carried out. In my view the appointment of John Scarlett at this time is inappropriate.'”
Cronyism row over new MI6 spymaster
London Times, 7 May 2004

A Consummate Insider - 30 Years With MI6
What Else Has John Scarlett Been Doing During That Time?

"... his biography, those bits we are allowed to know about, is well documented."
Profile: John Scarlett
BBC Online, 26 August 2003

"After leaving Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1970 with a first-class degree in modern history, Mr Scarlett spent the next 30 years in MI6, including a stint as head of its Moscow station, before joining the JIC in September 2001, just as the al-Qaida attacks on the US were to place western intelligence agencies under unprecedented public gaze."
The odd couple: the new chief of MI6 and his 'mate' from No 10
Guardian, 7 May 2004

Who Trusts The Official Story?
Blair Didn't Ask Scarlett About The Nature Of The Alleged Weapons?
And Scarlett Didn't Volunteer To Tell Him?
How Credible Is That?

"My briefing took place in February at my residence at Carlton Gardens, where I was visited by John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. We spoke for almost an hour and - as always - I found him professional, dispassionate and frank in his replies. When I put to him my conclusion that Saddam had no long-range weapons of mass destruction but may have battlefield chemical weapons, he readily agreed. When I asked him why we believed Saddam would not use these weapons against our troops on the battlefields, he surprised me by claiming that, in order to evade detection by the UN inspectors, Saddam had taken apart the shells and dispersed them - with the result that it would be difficult to deploy them under attack. Not only did Saddam have no weapons of mass destruction in the real meaning of that phrase, neither did he have usable battlefield weapons. I put these points to the prime minister a couple of weeks later. The exchange is recorded in my diary on March 5 2003. Tony Blair gave me the same reply as John Scarlett, that the battlefield weapons had been disassembled and stored separately. I was therefore mystified a year later to hear him say he had never understood that the intelligence agencies did not believe Saddam had long-range weapons of mass destruction. I have been told that Tony Blair does not recall me telling him that Saddam had no long-range weapons. But did nobody else tell him? How often did he meet before the war with the chief of defence staff, who would certainly have known the weapons the enemy was believed to possess? Why did Tony Blair himself never ask John Scarlett whether he was talking about long-range or battlefield weapons? Given that the prime minister was justifying war to the nation on the grounds that Saddam was a serious threat to British interests, he showed a surprising lack of curiosity as to what that threat actually was. We are asked to accept that from September to March the prime minister was allowed to think that Saddam had long-range chemical weapons, while the intelligence agencies assessed he had only battlefield weapons, despite the Joint Intelligence Committee sending to Downing Street three separate assessments on Saddam's weapons capacity. This must represent the most extraordinary failure of communication in the history of the British intelligence agencies."
Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary
Blair and Scarlett told me Iraq had no usable weapons
Guardian, 12 July 2004

"There was no discussion with the Prime Minister that I can recall about the 45 minutes point in connection with battlefield or strategic systems. Indeed I do not remember a discussion with the Prime Minister about the 45 minutes point at all."
Evidence Given By John Scarlett Concerning The Prime Minister's September 2002 'Dodgy' Dossier On Iraq
Hutton Inquiry, 23 September 2003

"Mr Scarlett was exonerated of wrongdoing by Lord Hutton, but that alone should not suffice to damn him. The simplest way of putting the matter is to say that the man responsible for a huge failure of intelligence assessment has now been made responsible for the service which bungled the original intelligence collection....Mr Blair takes refuge from criticism for the appointment by saying that he merely endorsed the recommendation of a committee. Not good enough. The obvious course when the intelligence service is close to crisis, and is said to be short of talent, is to import an outsider. .... In reality, Mr Blair has probably appointed Mr Scarlett, first, because loyalty to a good servant makes him anxious that Scarlett's career should not suffer for his involvement in the Government's dirty work: he owes Mr Scarlett one."
John Scarlett has failed the intelligence test
Daily Telegraph, 9 May 2004

Dissent Even Within The Intelligence Services

"Tony Blair was under fire from all sides last night after appointing John Scarlett, who approved the 'dodgy dossier on Iraq, as the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Senior Labour backbench MPs joined Liberal Democrats and Tory leaders in accusing the Prime Minister of appointing Mr Scarlett as 'the pay-off' for his support for the Government over the allegations that No 10 had 'sexed up' the September 2002 dossier on weapons of mass destruction. Mr Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who takes over as 'C' from Sir Richard Dearlove, was a vital witness for the Government in the Hutton inquiry, which cleared Mr Blair, senior ministers and officials of exaggerating the threat from Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's former director of communications, who was also cleared by the Hutton inquiry, called Mr Scarlett a 'mate'. There have been persistent reports of disquiet within MI6 at the prospect of Mr Scarlett taking over from the outgoing chief, Sir Richard. It had been widely assumed that the deputy head of the service, Nigel Inkster, would be the successor."
Blair accused of appointing Scarlett to head MI6 as 'pay-off for dodgy dossier'
Independent, 7 May 2004

"Whitehall officials admit that the dossier fiasco has damaged the morale of MI6 officers. They say MI6 was divided over the quality and accuracy of the original intelligence and how it was subsequently 'sexed up' in the dossier."
Another top MI6 officer quits
Guardian, 6 December 2004

"MI5 is facing an internal revolt by officers alarmed about intelligence failures.... They believe ministers have withheld information from the public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and the abortive attacks of July 21. The documents include an admission by John Scarlett, head of SIS, the secret intelligence service (also known as MI6), that one of the July 21 suspects was tracked on a trip to Pakistan just months before the attempted bombings.... The Scarlett memo — marked top secret — was leaked by the dissident officers who want a public inquiry similar to that undertaken in America after the 9/11 attacks."
MI5 rebels expose Tube bomb cover-up
Sunday Times, 26 February 2006

The Relationship Between
Downing St, BP, And MI6

Did Scarlett Fool Blair On Iraq
Or Was Blair A Willing Participant?

"'Blair started talking about getting rid of Saddam Hussein way before September 11 ... in 1998. So I think that on Iraq he was more ready than Bush, who only really came into this conversation after 9/11."
Lady Catherine Meyer, wife of former British US Ambassador, Christopher Meyer
Independent, 20 March 2007

"As far back as 1999, he had Iraq on his mind. In a speech in Chicago at the height of the Kosovo crisis, Blair explicitly linked Milosevic with Saddam Hussein: 'two dangerous and ruthless men.'"
Why You'll Miss Tony Blair
TIME, 3 May 2007

"Fuel is our economic lifeblood. The price of oil can be the difference between recession and recovery. The western world is import dependent. ....So: who develops oil and gas, what the new potential sources of supply are, is a vital strategic question...The Middle East, we focus on naturally."
Prime Minister's speech at the George Bush Senior Presidential Library, Texas
10 Downing St, 7 April 2002

".... our energy system faces new challenges.... Our energy supplies will increasingly depend on imported gas and oil..... we need access to a wide range of energy sources."
British Prime Minister
Foreword to DTI Energy White Paper, February 2003

"The super-giant fields of southeastern Iraq are the largest concentration of super-giants to be found anywhere in the world....unlike neighbor Saudi Arabia, Iraq has been unable to deploy the latest technology, such as 3-D seismic, to find its reserves. Present reserve estimates of Iraq's oil are based on 2-D seismic technology from the 1980s. Still, the estimated success rate in Iraq ranges from one in two in the Mesopotamian Basin to one in four in the western and northwestern stable platform, with the overall success rate exceeding 72 percent - perhaps the highest success rate achievable anywhere in the world. Oil exploration costs are among the cheapest globally, with the current cost estimated at around 50 cents per barrel....To date, petroleum geologists have delineated and mapped over 526 prospects - drilling 131 prospects to discover 73 major fields. They have identified some 239 as having a high degree of certainty, but those prospects remain undrilled. Thirty fields have been partially developed and only 12 fields are actually onstream. Undrilled structures and undeveloped fields could represent the largest untapped hydrocarbon resource anywhere in the world.....Clearly, large parts of Iraq are still virgin - its large hydrocarbon reserves are still waiting to be developed to their full potential, while most other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves. The main challenges facing the new Iraqi authority are to establish law and order as well as security. Once these issues are resolved, Iraq will perhaps be the most exciting place on Earth with regard to oil development and exploration....International oil companies are looking forward with great anticipation to the opening of Iraq, as they have been waiting for the past 40 years. Hopefully, Iraq will soon be able to offer them acreage, thereby allowing proper development of its huge potential. Open and fair competition will enable oil companies to apply the latest technologies in the search for, and development of, the country's hydrocarbon resources - thus helping Iraq realize its full hydrocarbon potential."
Assessing Iraq’s Oil Potential
Geotimes, October 2003

Downing St And BP

"Lord Browne took over at BP, nicknamed 'Blair Petroleum' on account of its intense new Labour contacts, in 1995, one year after Mr Blair became the opposition leader. [Lord Browne] was knighted in 1998 and made a life peer by Mr Blair in 2001. The friendship and cooperation has been close."
BP was nicknamed ‘Blair Petroleum’
London Times, 2 May 2007

"The woman seen as Prime Minister Tony Blair's closest and most trusted aide is to leave the government for a job at oil giant BP.... [Anji Hunter] has been a permanent fixture at the prime minister's side since he first became Labour leader in 1994 ...[and] is widely seen as the prime minister's door keeper..."
Blair's closest aide resigns
BBC Online, 8 November 2001

"Anji Hunter will be among New Labour friends when she starts her new job as director of communications at BP - nicknamed Blair Petroleum for its close links with the government. The chief executive John Browne is close to the prime minister and a grateful Mr Blair added a peerage to the oilman's knighthood after he helped end the fuel protests of summer last year. Ms Hunter knows Lord Browne well from his frequent trips to No 10 and she is on first name terms with Nick Butler, an unofficial Blairite adviser who is the oil giant's policy chief....Barely a month after Peter Mandelson was forced to quit as trade and industry secretary over his secret £373,000 cheap home loan from Geoffrey Robinson, BP paid his hotel and travel expenses to a conference in Paris, according to the register of members' interests...BP and Labour point out the company also has close ties with some leading Tories; both the former chancellor Lord Howe and the ex-foreign office minister Lord Garel-Jones bank cheques as advisers. Nevertheless, BP appears to have been embraced by the New Labour establishment and is thought to be the government's favourite oil giant."
Among friends at 'Blair Petroleum'
Guardian, 9 November 2001

"Tony Blair yesterday appointed Sir David Simon, one of the country's most pro-European industrialists, as a minister responsible for promoting British business in Brussels. Sir David, the chairman of British Petroleum and a strong advocate of the single currency, was made Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe. The new post is attached to the Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury. The Queen will give Sir David a peerage to allow him to carry out his role. He resigned from BP yesterday to dedicate himself to Government, but he will not draw the £31,125 salary. The Prime Minister said the appointment of a top industrialist to a key Government post showed his determination to build 'a modern and dynamic economy in partnership with business.'"
BP chairman to be EU Minister
Daily Telegraph, 8 May 1997

"At the time it all seemed too much - too plainly far-fetched - for Jeff Chevalier to take in. But here he was, a 25-year-old once-penniless Canadian male prostitute, sitting down to dinner with the Prime Minister of Great Britain. And the two men were liberally helping themselves from a £3,000 bottle of claret. The wine was the personal choice of Lord Browne of Madingley - the boss of British Petroleum, Britain's most senior businessman and host of the dinner party in question. 'Mr Blair didn't know what it was but he absolutely loved it,' Mr Chevalier recalls. 'It was a 1983 French claret.'... The cosy dinner for Tony Blair in the summer of 2005 came amid a seemingly endless merry-go-round of dinners, lunches, soirees and parties that Mr Chevalier was summoned to by his tycoon lover, 34 years his senior..... Today, in an exclusive interview in The Mail on Sunday, Jeff Chevalier gives a stunning account of the extravagance of life at the top of BP. His testimony will raise important questions about Lord Browne's taste for the high life - together with his eagerness to lavish company largesse on his young lover, and the access that Mr Chevalier was thereby granted to privileged information.... The Mail on Sunday is prohibited by court order from disclosing the details of Lord Browne's dinner-table conversation with the Prime Minister. This is a shame, since the encounter casts revealing light on the two men - and on the overlap that exists between their business and their personal relationships. Both pre-eminent in their fields, they made use of each other for the benefit of their respective organisations - and then, perhaps, for the benefit of themselves. We can say, however, that Mr Blair was in reflective mood, and mused on life after Downing Street. Lord Browne listened sympathetically and offered suggestions. The dinner took place just a few days before Mr Blair and his wife Cherie flew off to Singapore for some last-minute championing for London to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Cherie did not attend the meal. But Anji Hunter, who had been Tony Blair's 'gatekeeper' before leaving to work for Lord Browne at BP, was invited..... [On another occasion] A dinner and lunch guest was Peter Mandelson, a former Cabinet member and now a European Union Trade Commissioner. He arrived for dinner with his own long-time partner, Brazilian Reinaldo da Silva. Mr Chevalier recalls: 'There were only the four of us and I remember thinking the moment I met them what an odd couple they were. Peter was very smooth and charming, appearing to hang on John's every word.' The non-stop socialising was part of the corporate culture instilled at BP by Lord Browne. It seemed, too, that the peer was not above using the prestige of BP to get privileged treatment for himself.... According to Mr Chevalier, Lord Browne also saw his friendships in terms of people he could derive mutual business benefit from."
The True story about Lord Browne - by ex-rent boy lover
Mail On Sunday, 6 May 2007

"Tony Blair held a private dinner with Lord Browne one month after he was reelected in 2005, in which he discussed life after Downing Street, it emerged yesterday. Despite pledging at the general election to serve for a full third term, the Prime Minister was already talking to his closest City confidants about life after politics. Earlier this year rumours surfaced in the City that Mr Blair may join BP after leaving Downing Street or start a venture capital company with Lord Browne. Neither side has commented on these suggestions. Whether or not such plans were discussed, the meeting underscores the connections between the Prime Minister and Lord Browne. Indeed it was organised by Anji Hunter, Mr Blair’s closest aide, who left Downing Street to work for BP in late 2003..... Lord Browne took over at BP, nicknamed 'Blair Petroleum' on account of its intense new Labour contacts, in 1995, one year after Mr Blair became the opposition leader. He was knighted in 1998 and made a life peer by Mr Blair in 2001. The friendship and cooperation has been close. In 1997 the Prime Minister loaned Number 10 to Lord Browne for a deal-signing ceremony between BP and Sidanco, a Russian oil company."
BP was nicknamed ‘Blair Petroleum’
London Times, 2 May 2007

"....the BP executive team has such close links with the UK government that it was once dubbed Blair Petroleum."
BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
Guardian, 30 October 2002

"While the days of ownership have long past, BP's ties with the British government are still so close that rivals call it 'Blair Petroleum'...One Whitehall insider says there is a 'meeting of minds' between Tony Blair and Browne, who is a regular visitor to Downing Street. Both men admire the other's leadership... This rapport is reinforced by the presence on Browne's staff of former New Labour officials still close to Number 10. Anji Hunter, Blair's childhood friend and former special assistant, is Browne's director of communications. Nick Butler, strategic policy adviser, is a former Labour candidate and friend of Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff... Browne has encouraged BP managers to make use of secondment programmes to ministries, mostly the Department of Trade and Industry, but also the Foreign Office and Treasury. There are four BP employees at the DTI. "
Oiling the political engine
Financial Times, 2 August 2002

"The prime minister, Tony Blair and Russian president Vladimir Putin were closely involved in the signing of this week's groundbreaking deal between BP and TNK. The successful conclusion of the merger helped to heal memories of a dispute which opened up when Mr Blair personally intervened in a wrangle BP was having in Russia. All of this underlines the close links between Big Oil and politics, while confirming more particularly the way Mr Blair and BP have a working arrangement that has led to the company being dubbed 'Blair Petroleum'. A Downing Street spokesman confirmed that Mr Blair had discussed the $6.75bn (£4.2bn) merger move by BP - the biggest foreign investment in Russia's history. 'Since the first meeting between the two men in St Petersburg in 2000 they have both been committed to forging closer and more successful business links between Britain and Russia so it is not surprising that this deal was discussed,' he said. More surprising to many observers was that Mr Blair wrote a personal letter just over three years ago to Russian president Vladimir Putin arguing the case of BP when it was mired in a legal battle over Sidanco with the same Alfa Group it now calls a partner. Mr Blair, in the letter to Mr Putin, describes BP's assets as 'an important British interest in Russia' and claims BP has a 'global reputation for integrity'. He points out he is taking a 'close personal interest' in the dispute and ends the letter, dated September 7 1999, warning: 'The case is being closely followed by other major foreign investors in Russia and will be critical to future in-flows of foreign direct investment, so vital to Russian economic revival.' BP declined to say whether it had asked Mr Blair to intervene. 'You will have to ask Number 10 why they sent it,' said a company spokesman."
Prime minister argues case for 'Blair Petroleum'
Guardian, 13 February 2003

"In the summer of 2003 Vladimir Putin made the first state visit to Britain by a Russian leader since Tsar Alexander II came to see Queen Victoria in 1874. Putin’s trip was as much about business as diplomacy. One of the highlights was the signing – in the gilded splendour of Lancaster House, a 19th-century mansion in St James’s, London – of an $8 billion (£4 billion) investment by BP in the Russian oil and gas industry. The deal had been brokered by Lord Browne, then BP’s chief executive, with extensive help from Tony Blair. Four years on, Browne has gone, Blair is about to leave power and TNK-BP, the Anglo-Russian group the pair laboured to create, is under attack from the Kremlin. TNK-BP’s licence to exploit one of Russia’s largest gas fields is expected to be revoked – possibly as soon as this week. The move may, the gloomiest analysts and Russophiles suggest, be the precursor to the Russian state taking a major and perhaps, in effect, controlling stake in the group. For western oil companies, BP’s Russian travails are a case of déjà vu. The campaign against TNK-BP has uncanny parallels with what happened earlier this year to Royal Dutch Shell, BP’s rival. A few months before Putin, Blair and Brown shook hands on TNK-BP, Shell had signed a similar deal to develop Sakhalin 2, a huge gas field in Siberia. But earlier this year, after a prolonged campaign involving threats of censure from environmental watchdogs and tax authorities, Shell and its fellow foreign investors decided to sell a stake in the project to Gazprom, the giant gas group controlled by the Russian government. The Sakhalin deal, and the pressure now being exerted on TNK-BP, are viewed as part of a deliberate plan to bring back under state control key “strategic” oil and gas assets that had been sold to private individuals and western groups during the hurly-burly privatisations of the postYeltsin years.... TNK-BP is the only big oil and gas group in Russia that has no state involvement. It was created after long negotiations between BP, the Russian and British governments and a group of three Russian oligarchs: Mikhail Fridman, the boss of Alfa Group, Viktor Vekselberg, reputedly the ninth-rich-est man in Russia, who hit the headlines three years ago when he spent $75m buying the Forbes family collection of Fabergé eggs for the Russian nation, and Leonard Blavat-nik, who together with Vekselberg controlled the Sual aluminium empire. As The Sunday Times revealed in 2003 (see link on far right), TNK-BP was the end-result of BP’s frustration with an earlier Russian investment that was going wrong. In the 1990s it had taken a 10% stake in Sidanco, a Russian oil group, but had then fallen foul of the manoeuvrings of local businessmen, with assets appearing to be snatched from Sidanco under BP’s nose. Rather than trying to intervene directly with Fridman – whom BP then accused of being the arch asset-stripper through his company TNK – Browne instead began a covert operation to put pressure on the Russian authorities through George Soros, Al Gore, then American vice-president, the CIA and Blair. This campaign eventually led toa peace deal between Fridman, his fellow oligarchs, and BP, and the formation of TNK-BP. The company is now the third-biggest player in Russian oil and gas.... The suspicion is that the three oligarchs will eventually be pressed into selling their stake to a government-controlled company."
Russia tries to burn BP
Sunday Times, 27 May 2007

Downing St And Scarlett

“He’s impressed by wealth, he’s impressed by uniforms and he’s pretty impressed by intelligence officers..."
Lord Neil Kinnock, former Leader of the Labour Party on Tony Blair
Portrait of a posh Prime Minister
London Times, 20 February 2007

"In evidence to Hutton, they protested too much that, in a well-rehearsed phrase, 'ownership' of the Iraqi dossier was in Scarlett's hands. They distinguished between the 'content' of the dossier and its 'presentation'. Yet the two concepts became one as the the sole purpose of the unprecedented exercise was to back up Blair's case against Saddam Hussein. So Campbell could describe Scarlett as a 'mate', and Scarlett allowed him to chair a meeting of intelligence officials. Campbell was so impressed with the relationship that he recorded in his diary that Scarlett had described him as the 'brutal political hatchet man' and himself as the 'dry intelligence officer'. Scarlett 'owned' the dossier, sharing its contents with his number two, Julian Miller, and with Campbell and his colleagues in Downing Street - but not with the rest of the joint intelligence committee, including the heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and senior Foreign Office officials...."
There is a dark cabal around Blair
Guardian, 11 September 2003

"... During its years in office, the Government has gone to the most tortuous lengths to evade responsibility for all sorts of faults. The appointment of a tame judge ensured the inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly shifted the blame for that tragedy on to the BBC rather than on to Labour's bullying spin machine, where it properly belonged.... It is worrying that the relationship between the Government and the intelligence services has become so close and, on the part of the latter, so politicised, with Tony Blair's good and faithful servant John Scarlett now running the JIC: there must be concerns about transparency and accountability when all is quite so cosy. In principle, this newspaper is against public inquiries. They tend to waste money, seldom get to the truth and are a trouble disproportionate to the good they do. However, this administration's evasion of accountability and sheer untrustworthiness make the case for an independent inquiry into the London bombings unanswerable. Its victims, dead and living, deserve no less."
The victims of July 7 deserve better than this
Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2006

BP And MI6

"It would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, but one of Ireland’s most republican counties is celebrating the life of the founder of Britain’s intelligence agencies. William Melville was born in the Kerry village of Sneem to a publican’s family and fled his roots to forge a stellar career in London as a detective fighting terrorism. When he 'retired' in 1903 from the Metropolitan Police at the height of his fame, he went on to establish the forerunner of MI5, providing the inspiration for James Bond’s boss in Ian Fleming’s books.... In 1903 Melville announced that he was retiring to spend more time with his family and garden. Instead he moved into offices in Victoria Street, adjacent to Scotland Yard, and under the nameplate William Morgan, General Agent, created a cover story that allowed him to gather intelligence for the War Office. He reported under the alias 'M'. In that year the War Office set up a Directorate of Military Operations and Melville was head-hunted for the role of field operative to act as a controller for agents abroad as well as to undertake missions himself. One of his first was to help to secure British access to Persian oil. In this he succeeded by derailing French negotiations and allowing a British syndicate to seal the deal. The company that emerged from the machinations became BP. In 1909 the Secret Service Bureau was set up to coordinate intelligence work under two sections, home and foreign, which became, respectively, MI5 and MI6."
M: Britain's first spymaster was an Irishman who played patriot game
London Times, 2 July 2007

"A second senior MI6 officer is resigning in a shake-up of the top ranks of Britain's secret intelligence service, the Guardian has learned. MI6's director of operations, who cannot be named for reasons of personal security, is to take up a job in the City. He follows Mark Allen, the director responsible for anti-terrorism, who left in the summer to join BP."
Another top MI6 officer quits
Guardian, 6 December 2004

"A retired MI6 officer has been appointed to a top post at BP-Amoco, the British-based oil company..... John Gerson was director of security and public affairs at the agency and was embroiled in attempts to suppress disclosures by the former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. Mr Gerson took early retirement from what was effectively the post of deputy head of MI6 at the end of last year. Last month he became one of BP's vice-presidents for government and public affairs. His appointment was approved by the cabinet secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. MI6 has close links with oil companies, the 'revolving door' syndrome, in the same way as armed forces officers have close links with defence companies. Rolls-Royce has employed former MI6 officers to help win contracts in the Middle East, and merchant banks have taken some on. During the first reading of the intelligence services bill, Lord Mackay, the conservative lord chancellor, told peers in 1994 that MI6 protected the 'economic wellbeing' of the country by keeping 'a particular eye on Britain's access to key commodities, like oil...'"
Former MI6 officer gets top post at BP
Guardian, 8 May 2000

"A private intelligence firm with close links to MI6 spied on environmental campaign groups to collect information for oil companies, including Shell and BP. MPs are to demand an inquiry by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, into whether the secret intelligence service used the firm as a front to spy on green activists. The firm's agent, who posed as a left-wing sympathizer and film maker, was asked to betray plans of Greenpeace's activities against oil giants. He also tried to dupe Anita Roddick's Body Shop group to pass on information about its opposition to Shell drilling for oil in a Nigerian tribal land. The Sunday Times has seen documents which show that the spy, German-born Manfred Schlickenrieder, was hired by Hakluyt, an agency that operates from offices in London's West End. Schlickenrieder was hired by Mike Reynolds, a director of Hakluyt and MI6's former head of station in Germany. His cover was blown by a female colleague who had worked with him. Last night he refused to comment. Reynolds and other MI6 executives left the intelligence service after the cold war ended to form Hakluyt in 1995. It was set up with the blessing of Sir David Spedding, the then chief of MI6, who died last week. Christopher James, the managing director, had been head of the MI6 section that liaised with British firms. The firm, which takes its name from Richard Hakluyt, the Elizabethan geographer, assembled a foundation board of directors from the Establishment to oversee its activities, including Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Ian Fleming's model for James Bond. Baroness Smith, the widow of John Smith, the late Labour leader, was a director until the end of last year. The company has close links to the oil industry through Sir Peter Cazalet, the former deputy chairman of BP, who helped to establish Hakluyt before he retired, last year, and Sir Peter Holmes, former chairman of Shell, who is president of its foundation. MPs believe the affair poses serious questions about the blurring of the divisions between the secret service, a private intelligence company and the interests of big companies. Hakluyt refutes claims by some in the intelligence community that it was started by MI6 officers to carry out 'deniable' operations.... Hakluyt was reluctant to discuss its activities. Michael Maclay, one of the agency's directors and a former special adviser to Douglas Hurd when he was Conservative foreign minister, said: 'We don't ever talk about anything we do. We never go into any details of what we may or what we may not be doing.'"
MI6 'Firm' Spied on Green Groups
Sunday Times, 17 June 2001

"With the end of the Cold War, MI6's role has fundamentally changed and it now has many more potential targets. Terrorist groups, and so-called 'rogue' states, are now high profile targets. Networks of new agents will be required as intelligence 'needs' constantly shift. Industrial espionage, furthering British trade interests has moved into the area of national interest. Gathering intelligence on friendly governments, obtaining advanced knowledge of their negotiating positions or changes in alliances, are also now ever more important targets for MI6. The Intelligence Services Act 1994 formerly acknowledged its existence.... R6 Industrial, Commercial & Financial. Worked closely with both the Treasury and the Bank of England, as well as Merchant Bankers such as Hill Samuel; Hambro's; Kleinwort Benson; Morgan Grenfell; Brandts; Cootes and the Midland. Solicitors firms such as Slaughter & May were also part of the network of important contacts, along with Thomas Cook; ICI; BP; Shell; Lonrho and RTZ."
The Mechanisms of an Oppressive State - UK Intelligence And Security Report
AFI Research, August 2003

MI6 And Target Iraq

"Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability.....According to two of those present at the briefing.... this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, .....On the same day, in London, Tony Blair’s government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret—that Iraq had sought to buy 'significant quantities of uranium' from an unnamed African country... President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought 'significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'....Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes.... Some I.A.E.A. investigators.... speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy.... Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections....A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to, among other things, spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program—part of its Information Operations, or I/Ops—was known to a few senior officials in Washington.... dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips—data known as inactionable intelligence—[were] to be funnelled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere. 'It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn’t move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world,' the former officer said. There was a series of clandestine meetings with MI6, at which documents were provided, as well as quiet meetings, usually at safe houses in the Washington area..... None of the past and present officials I spoke with were able to categorically state that the fake Niger documents were created or instigated by the same propaganda office in MI6 that had been part of the anti-Iraq propaganda wars in the late nineteen-nineties (An MI6 intelligence source declined to comment.)....[However] What is generally agreed upon, a congressional intelligence-committee staff member told me, is that the Niger documents were initially circulated by the British—President Bush said as much in his State of the Union speech—and that 'the Brits placed more stock in them than we did.' It is also clear, as the former high-level intelligence official told me, that 'something as bizarre as Niger raises suspicions everywhere.'... "
WHO LIED TO WHOM?
New Yorker, 24 March 2003

"The Secret Intelligence Service has run an operation to gain public support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq. The government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert. A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation. 'There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons that the public needed to know, said the official. The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material. 'The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was,' Ritter said last week. He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. 'Stories ran in the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes (to produce weapons of mass destruction),' said Ritter. 'They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were garbage.' .....Blair justified his backing for sanctions and for the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that intelligence reports showed Saddam was working to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The use of MI6 as a 'back channel' for promoting the government's policies on Iraq was never discovered during the Hutton inquiry and is likely to cause considerable disquiet among MPs. A key figure in Operation Mass Appeal was Sir Derek Plumbly, then director of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office and now Britain's ambassador to Egypt. Plumbly worked closely with MI6 to help to promote Britain's Middle East policy. The campaign was judged to be having a successful effect on public opinion. MI6 passed on intelligence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction and rebuilding its arsenal. Poland, India and South Africa were initially chosen as targets for the campaign because they were non-aligned UN countries not supporting the British and US position on sanctions. At the time, in 1997, Poland was also a member of the UN security council. Ritter was a willing accomplice to the alleged propaganda effort when first approached by MI6's station chief in New York. He obtained approval to co-operate from Richard Butler, then executive chairman of the UN Special Commission on Iraq Disarmament. Ritter met MI6 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal at a lunch in London in June 1998 at which two men and a woman from MI6 were present. The Sunday Times is prevented by the Official Secrets Act from publishing their names. Ritter had previously met the MI6 officer at Vauxhall Cross, the service's London headquarters. He asked Ritter for information on Iraq that could be planted in newspapers in India, Poland and South Africa from where it would 'feed back' to Britain and America. Ritter opposed the Iraq war but this is the first time that he has named members of British intelligence as being involved in a propaganda campaign. He said he had decided to 'name names' because he was frustrated at 'an official cover-up' and the 'misuse of intelligence'. 'What MI6 was determined to do by the selective use of intelligence was to give the impression that Saddam still had WMDs or was making them and thereby legitimise sanctions and military action against Iraq,' he said."
Revealed: how MI6 sold the Iraq war
Sunday Times, 28 December 2003

"Britain ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq. Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down. The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added....Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq. Sources in both the British and US intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war....Many in British intelligence believe the planned parliamentary inquiry by MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee will pass the blame for the use of selective intelligence to the JIC, which includes senior intelligence figures. Intelligence sources say this would be unfair as they claim the JIC was following political instructions."
Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair
Sunday Herald, 8 June 2003

"David Kelly, giving evidence to the prime minister's intelligence and security committee in closed session on July 16 - the day before his suicide - made a comment the significance of which has so far been missed. He said: 'Within the defence intelligence services I liaise with the Rockingham cell.' Unfortunately nobody on the committee followed up this lead, which is a pity because the Rockingham reference may turn out to be very important indeed.  What is the role of the Rockingham cell? The evidence comes from a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who had been a US military intelligence officer for eight years and served on the staff of General Schwarzkopf, the US commander of allied forces in the first Gulf war. He has described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for Bush, but he distinguished himself in insisting before the Iraq war, and was almost alone in doing so, that almost all of Iraq's WMD had been destroyed as a result of inspections, and the rest either used or destroyed in the first Gulf war. In terms, therefore, of proven accuracy of judgment and weight of experience of the workings of western military intelligence, he is a highly reliable source.  In an interview in the Scottish Sunday Herald in June, Ritter said: 'Operation Rockingham [a unit set up by defence intelligence staff within the MoD in 1991] cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD [when] Unscom was showing the opposite.' Rockingham was, in fact, a clearing house for intelligence, but one with a predetermined political purpose.... Only one other official reference to Operation Rockingham is on record, in an aside by Brigadier Richard Holmes when giving evidence to the defence select committee in 1998. He linked it to Unscom inspections, but it was clear that the Rockingham staff included military officers and intelligence services representatives together with civilian MoD personnel. Within, therefore, the UK intelligence establishment - MI6, MI5, GCHQ and defence intelligence - Rockingham clearly had a central, though covert, role in seeking to prove an active Iraqi WMD programme.... A parallel exercise was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US, named the Office of Special Plans. The purpose of this intelligence agency was the provision of selective intelligence which met the demands of its political masters. Similarly, in the case of the UK, Ritter insists that Rockingham officers were acting on political orders 'from the very highest levels'.    Both Ritter and British intelligence sources have said that the selective intelligence gathered by Operation Rockingham would have been passed to the joint intelligence committee (JIC), which was behind the dossiers published by the UK government claiming Iraq had WMDs. ... The other highly contentious item in the dossier was that Saddam tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Africa. How did material that the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded on February 4 was a blatant forgery come to be included in President Bush's January 28 State of the Union address? And, since the British were named as the source, why did MI6 not spot this outlandish forgery? In fact, they alleged that the Niger claim came from another independent source, which has never been identified. Could this be because this disinformation served the Rockingham purpose only too well? It is not only the massaging of intelligence that seems to have gone on, but also the suppression of the most reliable assessment of the facts. David Kelly, we now know, had been advising privately prior to the war about the likelihood of Iraqi WMD. He told the foreign affairs select committee: 'I have no idea whether there were weapons or not at that time [of the September 2002 dossier]'. And to the intelligence and security committee the next day he added: 'The 30% probability is what I have been saying all the way through ... I said that to many people ... it was a statement I would have probably made for the last six months.' Yet this view from the leading expert within government never saw the light of day. Why not?"
The very secret service
Guardian, 21 November 2003

"The choice of Iyad Allawi, closely linked to the CIA and formerly to MI6, as the Prime Minister of Iraq from 30 June will make it difficult for the US and Britain to persuade the rest of the world that he is capable of leading an independent government. He is the person through whom the controversial claim was channeled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes.... After the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraq National Accord (INA) party, which he helped to found, became one of the building blocks for the Iraqi opposition in exile. The organization attracted former Iraqi army officers and Baath party officials, particularly Sunni Arabs, fleeing Iraq. In the mid-1990s the INA claimed to have extensive contacts in the Iraqi officer corps. Dr Allawi began to move from the orbit of MI6 to the CIA. He persuaded his new masters that he was in a position to organize a military coup in Baghdad."
Exiled Allawi was Responsible for 45-Minute WMD Claim
Independent, 29 May 2004

"As the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was once again forced to defend the justification for going to war, the Iraqi exile group in London which claims to have supplied MI6 with the intelligence about Saddam's 45-minute capability admitted that the information might have been completely untrue. Nick Theros, the Washington representative of Iyad Allawi, who headed the Iraqi National Accord in exile, said it was raw intelligence from a single source, part of a large amount of information passed on by the INA to MI6. He told the Guardian: 'We were passing it on in good faith. It was for the intelligence services to verify it.'... The claim that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes was highlighted by Tony Blair's preface to the dossier issued by the government in September 2002 in the run-up to the war..... But Mr Theros said the information now seemed to be a 'crock of sh**'. 'Clearly we have not found WMD,' he said. Mr Theros works with his father, a former US ambassador, to promote the political affairs of Mr Allawi, who is now a member of the Iraqi governing council in Baghdad. He said the Iraqi officer who claims to have been the original source of the intelligence had in fact never seen inside the purported chemical weapons crates upon which his 45-minute claim was based. The former INA spy, who calls himself Lieutenant Colonel al-Dabbagh, although this is not his full name, is now said to be 'in hiding'. At the time, he says, he commanded a frontline unit. He told the Sunday Telegraph and NBC television that before the September 2002 dossier was published he smuggled out sketchy intelligence about WMD to MI6 via a general in Baghdad working for the INA...... Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, did not deny in evidence to the Hutton inquiry that the intelligence for the 45-minute WMD claim came second-hand from a single source who was a senior Iraqi army officer."
Iraqi who gave MI6 45-minute claim says it was untrue
Guardian, 27 January 2004

BP And Target Iraq

"[BP's] Lord Browne's said that most exploration for new supplies had halted [in Iraq] when the Iraqis nationalised their industry.... he believed there was a plenty of oil and gas waiting to be discovered in Iraq and that BP should be in prime position to capitalise [after a war with Iraq] because it had found most of the country's oil before being thrown out in the 1970s...."
BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
Guardian, 30 October 2002

"Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war. The comments from the most senior European oil executive.... will ... serve to underline concern that the US is primarily concerned with seizing control of Saddam Hussein's oil and handing it over to companies such as ExxonMobil rather than destroying his weapons of mass destruction..... Lord Browne's views will be listened to carefully in Downing Street because the BP executive team has such close links with the UK government that it was once dubbed Blair Petroleum. A number of former BP executives, such as Lord Simon, have been seconded into Whitehall while one of Mr Blair's personal assistants, Anji Hunter, joined Lord Browne's team. "
BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
Guardian, 30 October 2002

"British oil company BP PLC has put a team to work on a strategy for its future in oil-rich Iraq, people familiar with the situation said Tuesday. The news follows a meeting in London at the weekend where Iraqi exiles and U.S. state department officials agreed that international oil firms should take a leading postwar role in reviving Iraq's oil industry. Oil companies and the U.S. and British governments have been unwilling to talk openly about the future of the oil industry in Iraq. They fear fueling accusations that the invasion of the country by U.S. and British troops was motivated by a desire to get western hands on the world's second largest reserves of crude. But concerns are already growing among European companies that a U.S.-dominated postwar administration will give first bite of the Iraq oil cherry to its own companies. In February this year, as war clouds gathered, BP Chief Executive John Browne voiced those concerns, saying: 'The most important thing for us is that there remains a level playing field when it comes to consideration for activity in Iraq.' And BP, the world's third largest oil company whose links to Iraq oil date back to the 1920s, does not plan to be caught off guard if oil contracts and concessions are to be handed out.  'There has been a team working on Iraq for some time now in BP,' said one source. Another said the team's activities were largely limited to 'exchanges of information and keeping a watching brief on developments.'"
BP maps out Iraq strategy
Reuters, 9 April 2003

"BP's chief executive delivered a serious setback to hopes of rebuilding Iraq when he said that the oil company has no future there. John Browne, one of Tony Blair's favourite industrialists, indicated he had given up on Iraq because the political and security situation in the country had deteriorated so much. Yet only 18 months ago he was extremely enthusiastic about prospects, lobbying in Washington and London to ensure American rivals did not cut him out of the action.... The pessimistic view about the future in Iraq was expressed hours after Lord Browne had met the prime minister at the launch of a new climate change organisation.The downbeat message contrasts with the optimism expressed in the autumn of 2002 when the BP chief was desperately worried that American firms would monopolise Iraq once Saddam Hussein was overthrown. 'We have let it be known that the thing we would like to make sure, if Iraq changes regime, is that there should be a level playing field,' Lord Browne had said. Western oil firms originally hoped there would be a bonanza as the country with the second biggest oil reserves in the world expanded its production dramatically. But these aspirations have evaporated as the hopes of peace following invasion by American and British forces have given way to ferocious guerrilla attacks."
BP ready to quit in blow to rebuilding hopes
Guardian, 29 April 2004

"Activists from the Hands Off Iraqi Oil campaign today delivered a warning to oil company BP that it will face massive public outrage if it continues in its attempts to 'rip off' Iraqi oil. They were demonstrating at the company's Annual General Meeting in London's Docklands against the role BP has played in lobbying for a controversial new oil law in Iraq. The law would transfer control over the majority of the country's huge oil reserves from the public sector to multinational companies, for the first time in 35 years. BP has been at the forefront of efforts to gain access to Iraq's oil since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. - In 2003 and 2004, successive BP executives left to work as oil advisers to the occupation authorities in Iraq, paid for by the UK government. - One of these advisers wrote a 'Code of Practice' for the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which called for multinational companies to play the major role in developing Iraq's oil, and for the Ministry's policies to be compatible with those of BP. - Since 2003, BP has also been one of six major oil companies working through a lobbying organisation called the International Tax and Investment Centre (ITIC) to push for the handover of control of Iraq's oil to transnational oil companies. - Together with the other major oil companies, and the British government, they have pushed the Iraqi government to agree to allow companies to take control of Iraqi oil production through controversial long-term contracts known as 'production sharing agreements'."
BP warned against Iraq oil 'rip-off' at AGM
Platform, 12 April 2006

"Energy giant BP is interested in working on a range of oil and gas projects in Iraq, but is waiting for the country's parliament to pass an oil law and for security to improve before increasing its role, a senior BP executive said on Monday. International companies have been jostling for position as they look for a potentially lucrative stake in Iraq's oil future. The country holds the world's third largest oil reserves and needs billions of dollars of investment to boost output and overhaul ageing infrastructure. 'Eventually where we get involved will be up to Iraq,' Steve Peacock, president of BP's Middle East and South Asia Exploration and Production unit, told reporters at an energy conference in Dubai. 'But I think we can help in all areas: enhanced oil recovery from existing fields, in discovered and not developed fields, or in exploration.' A draft oil law that Iraq's cabinet endorsed in February is awaiting parliament's ratification. Peacock said it would take some time after the law is passed for contracts to be negotiated and for BP to send people to work in Iraq because of the security situation in the country. 'Physical security on the ground... may be the thing that takes the longest,' he said. BP would also wait for assurance that any contracts would survive changes in government, he said. BP has been providing assistance to Iraq's oil company in the south around the Rumaila field, he said. The North and South Rumaila fields are already partially developed and have combined potential output capacity of 500,000 barrels per day. BP would not look at involvement in Iraq's Kurdish region in the north until the oil law had been passed, even though security in the region is better than elsewhere in the country, he said."
BP Eyes Role in Iraq, Awaits Oil Law, Security
Reuters, 16 April 2007

"A representative for Hands Off Iraqi Oil (HOIO) said that an Iraqi oil law could mean that international companies may receive full control of Iraqi oil fields for more than two decades, Iraq Directory reported. It was also mentioned that Shell Company has been working hand in hand with the United States and Britain to arrange an international policy to permit multinational companies to receive solitary control of Iraq's oil fields. A lobby has been set up who is represented by major energy companies such as BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Total and ENI, and has been advised by the British government on approaches for persuading the Iraqi regime."
International oil companies could receive sole control of Iraq's oil
Middle East North Africa Financial Network, 21 May 2007

"Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi, the head of the Iraqi oil workers' union, was in London last week campaigning against a new law which, he says, will give the oil giants unprecedented rights to his country's vast reserves.... Baghdad has reacted angrily to the union's campaign, issuing arrest warrants for al Assadi and his fellow leaders, and refusing to recognise the 26,000-strong confederation of workers. But a mass protest is planned in Basra tomorrow. Al Assadi said that Washington and London had put heavy pressure on the Iraqi government to persuade it to pass the new law. 'It's not logical for the US to come out empty-handed: they want their hands to be full of Iraqi oil,' he said. 'One of our criticisms is the way the law was proposed - under a veil of secrecy.'...In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf producers, foreign investors are brought in under 'service contracts', while the ownership of the reserves remains in state hands. Under the new Iraqi law, however, contracts for up to 30 years would be signed, giving foreign investors a share of the profits in new fields....Al Assadi warned any multinationals planning to invest in the country that they could face fierce opposition from the Iraqi people. 'I have warned the oil companies before, there will be some consequences,' he said."
Fight for control: Iraq oil under pressure
Guardian, 15 July 2007

"An agreement on how to divide oil profits among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish areas is one of 18 key benchmarks of progress to be reviewed by the U.S. in September. More than 90 percent of Iraq's revenue comes from the export of oil. But the report, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the issues the three sides are too far apart to agree on are the 'role of foreign companies in the oil sector;' and the division of the oil profits. The report also includes a grim assessment of the possibility of an increase of oil output in Iraq despite its huge reserves. It concludes that security in Iraq is so unstable 'it is unlikely that any major foreign oil company will be able to invest in Iraq during 2008 (unless they are heavily underwritten by the U.S. government).' The report says the Kurds favor foreign oil companies playing a larger role, but that is opposed by many Shi'a in the south 'because of a fear they will lose control of their assets to outsiders.'"
Secret Report: No Iraq Oil Deal by September
ABC News, 20 July 2007

BP And Peak Oil

"BP employs a focused exploration strategy in areas with the potential for large oil and natural gas fields as new profit centres..... We also manage the decline of our existing profit centres in Alaska, Egypt, Latin America, Middle East, North America gas and the North Sea."
Exploration and Production
BP Annual Review 2006

"A senior executive at BP PLC (BP) thinks world oil production will peak in the next decade, earlier than most other forecasts, the Business reported Sunday. BP exploration consultant Francis Harper estimated the amount of total usable oil reserves in the world are 2.4 trillion barrels, and production would peak between 2010 and 2020, the report said. Harper said production would drop off outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries first, concentrating power in the producer group. That forecast would mean demand outstripping supply much earlier than other forecasts by ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM) or Royal Dutch/Shell Group (RD SC), the report said."
World Oil Output To Peak Next Decade - BP Exec
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES, November 7, 2004

"BP exploration consultant Francis Harper said he estimated the world's total original usable oil resources - the amount of oil before drilling began - at about 2.4 trillion barrels of oil. This is considerably less than the 3 trillion assumed by bullish commentators such as the US government's Geological Survey. This points to oil production peaking between 2010 and 2020.... His comments are a rare entry by a global oil company into the debate on the life of global oil supplies.... He added that oil companies' public positions on the issue masked debate within them. 'There are people in BP who happen to be economists and so happen to think there's no problem, and there are people in BP who are geologists who are saying it's getting hard to find.'... Seth Kleinman at PFC Energy said oil companies had held back from such statements. 'There's a certain degree of hesitancy for oil companies to go on the record and say, 'we are doing well with oil prices where they are now, but 10 years down the road things actually look pretty dire'."
Oil supply to peak sooner than we think, says BP scientist
The Business, 7 November 2004

'No Lie Too Big' If There's Enough Oil At Stake
How MI6 And The CIA Framed Libya For The Lockerbie Pan Am Bombing

"It is more than 18 years since the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 killed 270 people in Lockerbie. Yet serious questions remain over who was behind the worst mass murder in British history..... Last week a Scottish judicial body ruled that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was sentenced to 27 years in a Scottish prison for his role in the attack, might have been wrongly convicted....In November 1991 the Americans and British jointly accused the pair of the Lockerbie bombing ....last week, after a three-year investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission announced that it was referring his case to the Scottish Court of Appeal. It dismissed claims by lawyers for Megrahi that vital evidence, including the circuit board from the Mebo timer, had been planted among the debris by police..... But, crucially, the commission did say it had identified six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice 'may have occurred'. While the commission has inexplicably refrained from publishing details of each of these grounds, it is clear that doubts about Gauci’s testimony form the core of its concerns."
Unpicking the Lockerbie truth
London Times, 1 July 2007

"It's a long way from Rothesay Academy to the art deco HQ of MI6 on the banks of the Thames at Vauxhall Cross. But Andrew Fulton did it. In fact, this gentlemanly, erudite son of a Scottish reverend rose so rapidly through the ranks of the Secret Intelligence Service that he became the sixth most powerful spy in the United Kingdom.  Today, Fulton faces losing his job as co-ordinator of Glasgow University's Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit following investigations into his MI6 career. Revelations that he was one of the most glittering talents in MI6 have destroyed claims by the briefing unit that its self- appointed task of briefing the world's press over Lockerbie was carried out with the highest standards of impartiality and fairness. Fulton was recruited into '6' while still an undergraduate at Glasgow University by a member of the academic staff. He was posted to Siagon in 1969 where he worked as a junior but operational MI6 officer. In 1992, he took one of the most senior jobs in the Secret Intelligence Service - the Security Officer responsible for eastern European operations - codenamed SBO/T. He was one of the MI6 chiefs handed the plans to kill Serb president Slobodan Milosevic. Fulton's last posting, which he held from 1995-99, saw him installed as head of station for MI6 in Washington - codenamed H/WAS. This is the sixth most powerful position within MI6. Only four MI6 directors and the service's chief, Sir David Spedding, were above him. Fulton officially retired from the Foreign Office in 1999. When questioned by the Sunday Herald, Fulton denied that he had any 'substantial' knowledge of Lockerbie prior to joining the university's briefing unit. One MI6 source described this claim as 'rubbish', saying: 'At one time, Lockerbie would have been right at the top of his agenda. He would have been up to his neck in discussions with the CIA about the bombing, and would have massive inside knowledge about the case.  MI6 chiefs don't retire. They just step down, but they are in constant contact with their former colleagues, passing them information. MI6 has a vested interest in the outcome of this case. We act for Britain and Britain has taken this prosecution. Everything British intelli-gence knew about Lockerbie is contained in Fulton's head.'... Fulton volunteered his services to the unit when he was asked by the university to join as a visiting professor to the School of Law. The work of the unit is funded by the university, although the US Justice Department's Office for the Victims of Crime and the Law Society of Scotland sponsored the production of a trial hand-book co-written by Fulton. The unit has given hundreds of briefings to journalists and coached a variety of news organisations, including the entire Washington press corps, on aspects of the trial. So far its website has received 1.7 million hits. .... Fulton, who has never practised law, is not listed as a certified lawyer in Scotland."
MI6 link to Lockerbie briefings
Sunday Herald, 21 May 2000

It Was British Concern Over Saudi Oil Stupid

"[Following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait] President Bush - the first that is - called a dawn meeting of the National Security Council at which the likely commander of any military action, one General Schwarzkopf, expressed the general feeling that the United States might fight for Saudi Arabia but hardly for Kuwait. President Bush told the press there was no thought of American intervention. The United Nations anyway had voted to impose a total embargo on Iraq. Two days after the invasion President Bush took a half day out to keep a promise to the British prime minister who was addressing a conference in Aspen, Colorado, a resort town in the Rockies. He found Mrs Thatcher in finer fighting fettle than all but one of his own advisers. She stressed that fighting for Kuwait now might be a necessary step to saving Saudi Arabia from invasion later on. ..... What so swiftly transformed the views and policy of the United States and the onlooking allies-to-be was the recognition, first pressed on President Bush by Mrs Thatcher and then rather late in the day realised by the King of Saudi Arabia, that once he held Kuwait there was nothing to stop Saddam from seizing the Saudi oil fields."
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America
BBC Online, 24 June 2002

'The Rapprochement'
It's Even More Oil Stupid - BP, MI6, And Libya

"Like his good friend Tony Blair, there was mounting speculation over what one of the most successful chief executives of his generation would do when he retired in 2008. But on January 5, the day before Lord Browne was due to fly home, the intensely private 59-year-old’s worst nightmare had come true. On taking a call from the BP press office, he discovered that his former partner of four years, Jeff Chevalier, had contacted a tabloid newspaper offering to sell the story of their relationship. He was Lord Browne’s first real boyfriend and he was ready to lift the lid on Lord Browne’s innermost thoughts about BP, his colleagues, trips to see Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and his relationship with No 10. BP had been dubbed 'Blair Petroleum' after hiring Anji Hunter, the Prime Minister’s former gatekeeper, as its director of communications. Lord Browne had previously offered to help Mr Chevalier with his 'transition' back to a normal life after a relationship spent sharing multimillion pound homes, five-star hotels, private jets and visiting cocktail parties hosted by London’s political and cultural elite. But finding himself out of work and on the dole, Mr Chevalier’s patience ran out and he decided to spill the beans. Within just 16 weeks, one of the most successful and powerful businessman of his generation was reduced yesterday to carrying his private possessions out of BP’s St James’s Square headquarters....Lord Browne sought an injunction to ban the reporting of details of a number of key claims made by Mr Chevalier, including.... that Lord Browne visted Colonel Gadaffi in Libya accompanied by a serving or former secret service agent."
A little white lie that meant one of Britain’s top businessmen had to be shown the door
London Times, 2 May 2007

"Libya has said it is willing in principle to pay compensation for the Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people in 1988. Speaking after talks between Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and UK Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien, Libya's foreign minister said the government also wanted to formalise relations with the United States.....After three hours of talks at Sirte, a coastal town about 320km (200 miles) east of Tripoli, Mr O'Brien was cautiously optimistic.... Libya is keen to re-enter the world economy and the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts."
Libya hints at Lockerbie pay-out
BBC Online, 8 August 2002

"In a wood-paneled private room at the exclusive Travelers Club on Pall Mall, four British officials and three Libyan counterparts met Tuesday to put in writing Libya's commitment to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and end the North African country's isolation from the international community.It took six hours to close the deal, British officials recalled Saturday. The British team -- two senior Foreign Office diplomats and two officials from the MI6 intelligence agency -- was looking for a clear statement that, contrary to its previous claims, Libya had indeed been pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and was now prepared to go through a verifiable process in destroying those it had. The Libyans, led by intelligence chief Musa Kusa, sought to ensure that the statement would be clear and accurate but not humiliating."
'A Long Slog' Led to Libya's Decision
Washington Post, 21 December 2003

"When his reputation as the 'Sun King' who could do no wrong was still intact, BP's chief executive, Lord Browne, signed a landmark deal to create TNK-BP, a joint venture with Russian businessmen to extract their country's oil and natural gas. Four years on, Lord Browne's reign at BP has come to a dramatic end - and one of the prize assets of TNK-BP is on the brink of being snatched away. Russian authorities are expected to revoke TNK-BP's licence to operate the huge Kovykta field, with an estimated 2 trillion cubic metres of gas reserves, although a final decision was delayed on Friday for two weeks. A bigger headache still for Lord Browne's successor, Tony Hayward, is the impending sale by BP's Russian partners of their 50 per cent stake in the joint venture, which is responsible for about a quarter of the group's reserves and total production. Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled gas giant, is the likely buyer and could try to take over other BP assets. With continuing uncertainty over TNK-BP, it must have been doubly galling for Mr Hayward, who became chief executive on 1 May, to hear Tony Blair announce his company's $900m (£450m) gas deal with Libya last week before it had been signed. BP has not been dubbed 'Blair Petroleum' for nothing. The deal gives BP the right to drill 17 wells in and off the coast of the north African state, a project in which it could invest up to $2bn over the next decade. BP returns to the country more than three decades after being thrown out - along with other foreign oil firms - when Libya's leader Colonel Gaddafi nationalised the industry."
Gazprom v BP: Russian roulette - and next stop, Libya
Independent On Sunday, 3 June 2007

"In the long run, we're not safer because we're still operating on the assumption that we're hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world. There's our military presence in Islamic countries, the perception that we control the Muslim world’s oil production, our support for Israel and for countries that oppress Muslims such as China, Russia, and India, and our own support for Arab tyrannies. The deal we made with Qadaffi in Libya looks like hypocrisy: we'll make peace with a brutal dictator if it gets us oil. President Bush is right when he says all people aspire to freedom but he doesn't recognize that people have different definitions of democracy. Publicly promoting democracy while supporting tyranny may be the most damaging thing we do. From the standpoint of democracy, Saudi Arabia looks much worse than Iran. We use the term 'Islamofascism'—but we're supporting it in Saudi Arabia, with Mubarak in Egypt, and even Jordan is a police state. We don't have a strategy because we don't have a clue about what motivates our enemies.... We need to acknowledge that we are at war, not because of who we are, but because of what we do. We are confronting a jihad that is inspired by the tangible and visible impact of our policies. People are willing to die for that, and we're not going to win by killing them off one by one. We have a dozen years of reliable polling in the Middle East, and it shows overwhelming hostility to our policies—and at the same time it shows majorities that admire the way we live, our ability to feed and clothe our children and find work. We need to tell the truth to set the stage for a discussion of our foreign policy. At the core of the debate is oil. As long as we and our allies are dependent on Gulf oil, we can't do anything about the perception that we support Arab tyranny—the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and other regimes in the region. Without the problem of oil, who cares who rules Saudi Arabia? If we solved the oil problem, we could back away from the contradiction of being democracy promoters and tyranny protectors. We should have started on this back in 1973, at the time of the first Arab oil embargo, but we've never moved away from our dependence. As it stands, we are going to have to fight wars if anything endangers the oil supply in the Middle East. What you want with foreign policy is options. Right now we don't have options because our economy and our allies' economies are dependent on Middle East oil."
Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's Bin Laden unit
Six Questions for Michael Scheuer on National Security
Harper's Magazine, 23 August 2006

But Rapprochement Only Follows Failure Of The MI6 Assassination Option....

"Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has called for British intelligence agents to be put on trial for plotting to kill him. The UK Foreign Office quickly responded, dismissing the accusation as an 'old claim' with 'no truth in it whatsoever'. In an interview with Libyan television, Colonel Gaddafi said it was hypocritical of Britain to demand the trial of the two men accused of the Lockerbie bombing while sheltering agents whom, he alleges, conspired to kill him.... His statement comes after renegade MI5 officer David Shayler threatened to publish details of an alleged plot funded by MI6 to kill Gaddafi in a bomb attack. Mr Shayler claimed he had been briefed on the plot by his opposite number at MI6, the secret intelligence service. He was arrested in Paris earlier this month hours after threatening to publish the allegations on the Internet. The former MI5 man also said MI6 funded a bomb attack on Gaddafi's motorcade in which several people were killed. The Libyan leader himself escaped unharmed. In his TV interview, Colonel Gaddafi threatened to raise the issue of alleged assassination plots with the UN Security Council. 'The British intelligence was involved in a plot to kill Gaddafi,' he said. 'This has been confirmed and they cooperated with the American intelligence.' He claimed Libya had proof of an assassination plot, and said Britain 'protects people who are terrorists and murderers who admit to killing'. Earlier the Foreign Office said there would be no negotiation over the Anglo-American proposal to bring the two Libyan suspects for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to trial in The Hague under Scottish law."
Gaddafi calls for MI6 trial
BBC Online, 29 August 1998

"....the real criminals in this affair are the British Government and the intelligence services. The Government has a duty to uphold the law. It cannot simply be ignored because crimes are carried out by friends of the Government. In November 1999, I sent the Home Secretary Jack Straw detailed evidence of involvement by MI6 officers in a plot to murder Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. Although the assassination failed when attempted in 1996, innocent Libyan civilians were killed. In a dossier I presented to Mr Straw, I included the names of those who had also been briefed about the plot within MI5. .....When presented with this compelling evidence these very senior Ministers should, of course, have called in the police immediately. We would never countenance two police officers conspiring to murder a criminal. Why should we accept that two MI6 officers could do the same to Colonel Gaddafi? This week, I will be writing to both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service asking them to investigate the role of the Government in this case.... I am left wondering why Sir Stephen did not perform his clear public duty and call in Special Branch to investigate the Gadaffi plot as soon as he realised that MI6 did not have Ministerial authorisation to plot to assassinate a foreign head of state. In August 1998, I also pointed out publicly that MI5 had evidence of the plot on its file SF754-0168. .... The Government's failure to ensure that two MI6 officers are brought to justice for their part in planning a murder is what I would expect of despots and dictators.... It is corruption. It is sleaze. And sleaze was where New Labour came in as a supposed breath of fresh air after the Conservatives had grown corrupt. ..... This tragic episode is fast becoming British Watergate..... If people want to live in a country where the intelligence services work in absolute secrecy with no respect for the rule of law or basic human rights, they should go and live in Libya, Iraq or Iran..... As the head of Britain's intelligence services, Tony Blair now has a simple - and honourable - choice. To expose the truth."
David Shayler - Don't shoot the messenger
Observer, 27 August 2000

The Shaylergate MI6 Scandal - Click Here

... And The Framing Of Libya By MI6 And The CIA

"It's a long way from Rothesay Academy to the art deco HQ of MI6 on the banks of the Thames at Vauxhall Cross. But Andrew Fulton did it. In fact, this gentlemanly, erudite son of a Scottish reverend rose so rapidly through the ranks of the Secret Intelligence Service that he became the sixth most powerful spy in the United Kingdom.  Today, Fulton faces losing his job as co-ordinator of Glasgow University's Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit following investigations into his MI6 career. Revelations that he was one of the most glittering talents in MI6 have destroyed claims by the briefing unit that its self- appointed task of briefing the world's press over Lockerbie was carried out with the highest standards of impartiality and fairness. Fulton was recruited into '6' while still an undergraduate at Glasgow University by a member of the academic staff. He was posted to Siagon in 1969 where he worked as a junior but operational MI6 officer. In 1992, he took one of the most senior jobs in the Secret Intelligence Service - the Security Officer responsible for eastern European operations - codenamed SBO/T. He was one of the MI6 chiefs handed the plans to kill Serb president Slobodan Milosevic. Fulton's last posting, which he held from 1995-99, saw him installed as head of station for MI6 in Washington - codenamed H/WAS. This is the sixth most powerful position within MI6. Only four MI6 directors and the service's chief, Sir David Spedding, were above him. Fulton officially retired from the Foreign Office in 1999. When questioned by the Sunday Herald, Fulton denied that he had any 'substantial' knowledge of Lockerbie prior to joining the university's briefing unit. One MI6 source described this claim as 'rubbish', saying: 'At one time, Lockerbie would have been right at the top of his agenda. He would have been up to his neck in discussions with the CIA about the bombing, and would have massive inside knowledge about the case.  MI6 chiefs don't retire. They just step down, but they are in constant contact with their former colleagues, passing them information. MI6 has a vested interest in the outcome of this case. We act for Britain and Britain has taken this prosecution. Everything British intelli-gence knew about Lockerbie is contained in Fulton's head.'... Fulton volunteered his services to the unit when he was asked by the university to join as a visiting professor to the School of Law. The work of the unit is funded by the university, although the US Justice Department's Office for the Victims of Crime and the Law Society of Scotland sponsored the production of a trial hand-book co-written by Fulton. The unit has given hundreds of briefings to journalists and coached a variety of news organisations, including the entire Washington press corps, on aspects of the trial. So far its website has received 1.7 million hits. .... Fulton, who has never practised law, is not listed as a certified lawyer in Scotland."
MI6 link to Lockerbie briefings
Sunday Herald, 21 May 2000

"A former Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated. The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.... The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses 'wrote the script' to incriminate Libya.... A source close to Megrahi's defence said: 'Britain and the US were telling the world it was Libya, but in their private communications they acknowledged that they knew it was the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command]'. 'The case is starting to unravel largely because when they wrote the script, they never expected to have to act it out. Nobody expected agreement for a trial to be reached, but it was, and in preparing a manufactured case, mistakes were made.'"
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
Scotsman, 28 August 2005

"Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the former lord advocate who issued the arrest warrant for the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, has cast doubt on the reliability of the main witness in the trial..... His intervention is the most significant yet in a series of developments that have cast doubt on the safety of the conviction against Megrahi..... Lawyers acting for the former intelligence officer and head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines have since claimed to have uncovered anomalies suggesting that vital evidence presented at the trial came from tests conducted months after the terror attack. The new evidence is due to be presented in an appeal to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission next year. Earlier this month it was reported that officials from Britain, America and Libya had met to discuss moving Megrahi back to Libya on the condition that the appeal is dropped. A key plank in the case against Megrahi was provided by Gauci who claimed that he sold Megrahi clothes that were believed to have been wrapped around the bomb. Fraser said that he believes Gauci was a 'weak point' in the case and has expressed concern that he was a 'simple' man who might have been 'easily led'.... Jim Swire, spokesman for the families of victims and who lost his daughter Flora in the atrocity, said: “Lord Fraser had detailed knowledge of events and I think we have to take seriously anything he says now that is relevant to those who gave evidence at Zeist. It is significant that a man who has been as close as he has to the investigation should be making comments like this.” "
Fraser: my Lockerbie trial doubts
Sunday Times, 23 October 2005

"New doubts have been cast over the testimony of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, whose testimony was a key factor in the conviction of Lockerbie bomb suspect Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi. In comments to the Sunday Times of London, the former Lord Advocate who issued the arrest warrant for the Libyan, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, described Gauci as 'not quite the full shilling' and 'an apple short of a picnic'. ... the admissions have clearly attracted grave reactions from other parties, especially following a former Scottish police chief’s claims that key evidence in the bombing trial had been fabricated by the CIA. In a signed statement to Megrahi’s lawyers, the retired officer said the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting the Libyan. The evidence will be crucial for Megrahi who is attempting to get a retrial ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC)."
Lockerbie returns to haunt 'tricky' Malta witness
Malta Today, 23 October 2005

"A senior Scottish police officer, now retired, claims that American intelligence agents planted one of the fragments of the cassette-player in order to implicate the Libyans. Doubts have been cast on the reliability of an expert forensic scientist who gave evidence about the detonating of the bomb — three other convictions in which he gave testimony have been quashed. And it now seems that tests on the suitcase may have been misrepresented to the court. All this might easily be dismissed as the conspiracy fog that tends to gather around cases of this kind. Except that last weekend Lord Fraser himself, who was in charge of the Crown evidence, suggested that he too had begun to have doubts. In an interview with The Sunday Times he said that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, whose identification of the two Libyans was central to the prosecution case, might not have been a reliable witness.... Gauci’s evidence was critical in linking al-Megrahi to the attack. Without it, al-Megrahi would certainly have walked free. Lord Fraser’s remarks have been described as 'an extraordinary development' by Tam Dalyell, who was a key figure throughout the investigation. Senior legal experts in Scotland have expressed amazement at his comments. And William Taylor QC, al-Megrahi’s defence advocate, has called for a review of the case....Does any of this matter now, so many years after the event? After all, there have been no noticeable protests from the Libyan Government. So long as al-Megrahi is allowed to serve the rest of his sentence in Libya, rather than in Scotland, it is unlikely to want to resurrect a case that could undermine its newly established relationship with the West."
It's time to look again at Lockerbie
London Times, 26 October 2005

"Andrew Fulton, a former top M16 spy, has joined Armor Group, the security personnel business that provides bodyguards in Iraq, in a role to bring in new business. Mr Fulton, 62, is reckoned to have risen through the ranks of the Secret Intelligence Services to become Britain's sixth most powerful spy. He was head of station in Washington in his last posting, from 1995 to 1999. Mr Fulton was catapulted involuntarily into the limelight in 2000 when, as a Glasgow university law professor, he was forced to step down as legal adviser to the Lockerbie Commission into the 1998 bombing of an airliner, when his MI6 career was revealed....In 1999, he was among 116 MI6 agents and officers named on the internet by Mr Tomlinson.Mr Fulton was appointed chairman of a leading firm of corporate investigators, GPW, earlier this year.....Mr Fulton was appointed chairman of a leading firm of corporate investigators, GPW, earlier this year. In his role at Armor Group, which is chaired by Tory grandee Malcolm Rifkind, Mr Fulton will have 'a mandate to focus on developing new business opportunities in the security consulting market'. In a press release, he is described by Armor simply as a 'former senior diplomat'. In an unrelated spy connection, Armor's chief operating officer stepped down earlier this year in order to return to the CIA to become its deputy director-general. Steven Kappes had joined Armor just six months earlier from the CIA, where he had been director of operations....Armor Group is based in London and employs over 9,000 personnel in 45 countries, with operations across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa."
Former MI6 spy joins Armor Group to hunt down new business
Belfast Telegraph, 21 August 2006

"The UK Government has published details of a deal struck with Libya on prisoner exchange, which it insists does not cover the Lockerbie bomber's case. Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond had voiced concern at Holyrood that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi could be transferred back to a jail in Libya. A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said no deal had been signed over the future of al-Megrahi. The Libyan is serving life for killing 270 people in the 1988 Pan Am bombing.  He was convicted in 2001 of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. He was tried under Scottish law at a specially convened court at Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, and is currently held in Gateside Prison in Greenock, near Glasgow.... Former Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who has believed throughout in al-Megrahi's innocence, said: 'The prime minister may think he can draw a line under all this. Surprisingly I am sympathetic to Mr Salmond. The only way that Megrahi can prove his innocence is through the Scottish legal system.'"
'No deal' over Lockerbie bomber
BBC Online, 7 June 2007

"Evidence used against Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, was subject to deliberate destruction and manipulation for political reasons, according to leaked documents from his defence team. The allegations suggest authorities on both sides of the Atlantic attempted to mislead the original inquiry into the 1988 disaster to divert attention away from the original Iranian-backed suspects to Libya, with evidence apparently tampered with, destroyed and overlooked. In a decision that could send shockwaves through the Scottish legal system, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is expected to conclude this week that the conviction of Megrahi - jailed in 2001 for his part in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 which killed 270 people - is unsafe. Amid claims from his defence team of a 'co-ordinated effort to mislead the court', tantamount to a perversion of the course of justice, the SCCRC is studying hundreds of documents and photographs that suggest evidence was deliberately fabricated, manipulated or ignored by police and CIA operatives. Should Megrahi's case be referred back to the appeal court, his legal team intends to lodge an application for him to be freed while the court decides whether to quash his conviction or order a retrial. Megrahi's team believes the evidence was manipulated to avoid antagonising Iran at the time of the first Gulf War. Tam Dalyell, a long-term Lockerbie campaigner, last night said the SCCRC report should be made public, followed by a public inquiry."
Lockerbie evidence 'was tampered with, destroyed and overlooked'
Scotsman, 25 June 2007

"Scotland's High Court must hear a new appeal by Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi against his conviction for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, an independent review board said on Thursday. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said it had 'identified six grounds where it believes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and that it is in the interests of justice to refer the matter to the court of appeal.' Megrahi was found guilty in 2001 of the bombing of a Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which killed 270 people. He is serving a life sentence in a prison near Glasgow and was told of Thursday's decision three hours before the announcement. Nearly two-thirds of recent cases referred to the High Court by the commission have ended with appeals being granted, suggesting Megrahi has a reasonable chance of success. That would throw the case wide open after nearly two decades and raise questions about how Libya would respond, after paying more than $2 billion to victims' families on the basis that Megrahi was guilty.... Libya, seeking international rehabilitation after Washington had long branded it a rogue state, paid compensation to victims' relatives after telling the United Nations in a 2003 letter it 'accepts responsibility for the actions of its officials.' Lawyers and analysts say that careful wording could enable Libya to deny any role if Megrahi's conviction were quashed. Some believe it may even demand compensation from the United States and Britain."
Libyan to get High Court appeal on Lockerbie
Reuters, 28 June 2007

"Crucial evidence that could have cleared the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was not presented at his trial, the Sunday Herald can reveal. A senior airport baggage handler is believed to have made statements which might have cast doubt on the prosecution's claim that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 55, arranged for an unaccompanied case containing the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103 to travel on an Air Malta flight from the island's Luqa airport. The witness, understood to have been the airport's head baggage loader at that time, is believed to have told the Maltese police investigating the disaster that there were no unaccompanied items among the luggage that he counted on to flight KM180 to Frankfurt. Prosecutors claimed the brown Samsonite case containing the bomb went through the German hub's computerised baggage systems on to a feeder flight, Pan Am 103A to Heathrow. There, the bomb inside a Toshiba BomBeat cassette player went on flight 103 to New York. It blew up over Scotland with the loss of 270 lives on December 21, 1988. It is understood this evidence was not heard at the original trial and the baggage loader was not called to give evidence. The Sunday Herald knows the identity of the baggage handler but has agreed not to reveal it. It is understood his evidence was not presented at al-Megrahi's nine-month trial at Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, which ended in 2001. His detailed statements, running into thousands of words, could cast renewed doubt over the Crown's case after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) last Thursday referred al-Megrahi's conviction to the high court for a second appeal."
Revealed: testimony that casts doubt on Lockerbie verdict
Sunday Herald, 30th June 2007

'Don't Mention The Circuit Board'
Confining The Miscarriage Of Justice Row To Gauci

"Among the 400 pages of documents submitted by lawyers for Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission were claims of evidence tampering, withholding of vital documents and a distortion of the truth to try to 'reverse-engineer' the case against the Libyan – in short, to make the evidence fit the proseuction case. However, in a statement, the commission said yesterday that it had found 'no basis for concluding that evidence in the case was fabricated by the police, the Crown, forensic scientists, or any other representatives of official bodies or government agencies'.  Its findings are that the eight-month trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands was potentially flawed, not because of a giant conspiracy or cover-up, but because a single human witness was at fault. Key to the prosecution’s case was the testimony of Tony Gauci, owner of a small shop in Sliema, Malta. It was here, according to the Crown, that clothes were bought that were placed inside the Samsonite suitcase that carried the bomb. Mr Gauci’s evidence linked the bomb timer directly to Megrahi via an apparently random selection of clothes bought from his shop on a date – December 7, 1988 – when the Libyan was in Malta....In a 14-page summary of its 800-page report, which will not be made public, the SCCRC said it had found six grounds where it believed that 'a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and that it is in the interests of justice to refer the matter to the Court of Appeal'. Although it revealed just three of the six grounds, it said that there was no 'reasonable basis' for the court’s conclusion that the clothes were bought from Mr Gauci’s shop on December 7, 1988. It said that new evidence suggested that the clothes were bought some time before December 6. The SCCRC’s four investigators also raised questions about Mr Gauci’s reliability after discovering that he was found with a photograph of Megrahi four days before an identification parade in April 1999. It added that 'other evidence' in its possession may further undermine Mr Gauci’s testimony, but did not elaborate. However, it is believed that at least some of this evidence may be classified material from intelligence sources..... Mr Gauci’s testimony was crucial in securing Megrahi’s conviction, but the Libyan was also linked to the bomb through a tiny fragment of circuit board, said to have come from the detonator, which was traced to a Swiss electronics manufacturer with whom Megrahi had a known association. The precise circumstances surrounding the discovery of the fragment – who found it and when – have long been shrouded in mystery. But the SCCRC insisted that the circuit board had not been tampered with or fabricated, as some have suggested. It added that there was no evidence to suggest there had been 'unofficial CIA involvement' at the crash site or that items found at the scene had been 'spirited away'."
Flawed evidence casts doubt on bomb conviction
London Times, 29 June 2007

".... a CIA 'supergrass' inside Libya named Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah, another Libyan, as the two agents involved in the attacks. The supergrass – codenamed 'Puzzlepiece' – claimed he had discussed the bomb plot with Megrahi and saw both men with explosives and the suitcase used for the bomb. In November 1991 the Americans and British jointly accused the pair of the Lockerbie bombing. At their 2001 trial before three Scottish judges in the Neth-erlands, Fhimah was acquitted. But Megrahi was found guilty of the murder of 270 people. Gauci’s identification evidence was the linchpin of their verdict. However last week, after a three-year investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission announced that it was referring his case to the Scottish Court of Appeal. It dismissed claims by lawyers for Megrahi that vital evidence, including the circuit board from the Mebo timer, had been planted among the debris by police. Some of the more excitable conspiracy theorists suggested that was part of a plot by the security services to implicate Libya and exonerate Iran and Syria at a time when their neutrality was required in the run-up to the first Iraq war. But, crucially, the commission did say it had identified six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice 'may have occurred'. While the commission has inexplicably refrained from publishing details of each of these grounds, it is clear that doubts about Gauci’s testimony form the core of its concerns."
Unpicking the Lockerbie truth
Sunday Times, 1 July 2007

Murky Waters
If Not Libya Then Whom And Why?

The Libya Files - Click Here

Criminal Activity Beyond The Law
What Do MI6 And Their 'Friends' Really Do?
'It's The Money Stupid'

"The problem is that because everything is so secret you don't know what's going on. Spies like my husband are asked to do things but they might not be told why, and so very often they can't see the bigger picture. This means that sometimes they don't know whether their actions are noble and resulting in good things ... or whether they are creating hostilities. There's often a lot of tension for them then, and I never knew how Harry would be when he returned from a job. My husband had to go off and do his job and I never knew how he was going to be when he came back."
'Nicky', Wife Of An MI6 Agent - Interview
The spy who loved me
Guardian, 24 January 2007

The Bigger Picture?
The City Of London And British Foreign Policy

"The Russian government has been playing fast and loose with foreign businesses on its soil. The oil producer BP has been bludgeoned into accepting a less profitable new contract for its operations in Russia's far east.... [Previously] The 'oligarchs' exerted a powerful influence upon [Russian] government policy and none was more boastful about his political authority than Berezovsky. When Putin, Yeltsin's successor, threw off Berezovsky's embrace in 2000 he won popular plaudits. Berezovsky decamped to London... Meanwhile, Russia's authorities are also annoyed by the UK's criticism of their treatment of BP - and again they have their people on their side. BP is depicted in Moscow as a rapacious international corporation which deserved a lesson in respect for Russian national interests. Tony Blair reportedly felt let down by Putin's refusal to honour the 1990s' contract to drill in Eastern Siberia. Gentlemen's agreements ought to be sacrosanct and the behaviour of the Russian leader was just not cricket. Blair also expressed horror at the use of energy supplies as a weapon in geopolitics. Russians see things differently. What has been done to BP is no different in principle from the action of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in compelling foreign oil companies to sign the new contracts prescribed by his government. Chavez has escaped censure in Europe. Why, Russians ask, are the Venezuelans treated so warmly while they are demonised?....The British government has collaborated with the City of London in offering a haven for businessmen from Russia who need to expatriate their money. More circumspect, New York and Stuttgart have failed to compete in pursuit of Russian capital. Britain asks few questions about the provenance of new Russian wealth. Hence the hit men who keep on arriving on our shores to settle accounts by violent means."
Robert Service, professor of Russian history at St Antony's College, Oxford
Putin, oil and oligarchs don't add up to a new Cold War

"Mikhail Gorbachev has called on Russian oligarchs to return their 'plundered' wealth to their homeland....'Some think $1 trillion has been hidden away by Russian businessmen. If they don't return that, our courts are likely to decide they acquired it illegally. Then they couldn't use that money anywhere. One day it will be used for the benefit of Russia.' Mr Gorbachev was giving his backing to a plan by President Vladimir Putin to offer Russia's oligarchs an amnesty in return for the 'repatriation' of their wealth. He accepted the plan was 'risky' but said the businessmen should be reassured that they would not be heavily taxed in Russia. Last week Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos Oil, was jailed for nine years for theft and tax evasion in what has been seen as a politically-motivated case. 'With his talent for tax-dodging he would have been behind bars in America long ago,' said Mr Gorbachev."
Gorbachev warns Chelsea boss
Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2005

"Khodorkovsky snared Yukos, Russia's second-biggest oil company. Berezovsky got Sibneft, another large oil company. Separately, over the next two years, the moguls also gained control over most of Russia's mass media. In the run-up to the 1996 election, the tycoons contributed millions of dollars to Yeltsin's reelection campaign, spurred on by Berezovsky, who later boasted that the seven members of the club controlled half of Russia's economy.... "
Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia
Washington Post, 28 August 1998

The Khodorkovsky Model At Work In Britain

"If we rank all the fields of man's activity by profitability, politics will be the most lucrative business. When we see a critical situation in the government, we draw lots in order to pick out a person from our milieu for work in power."
Michael Kordukovsky, Owner Of The Yukos Oil Company
On The Influence Of Oligarchs In Russia In The 1990s
Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia
Washington Post, 28 August 1998

"Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder, Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone, and Tony Hayward, John Browne’s replacement at BP, are among a string of high profile City executives who have been recruited to advise Gordon Brown and his new cabinet on business.The list of FTSE 100 chief executives who will serve on the newly formed Business Council for Britain also includes and Jean-Paul Garnier, GlaxoSmithKline chief, Stephen Green of HSBC and Tesco’s Sir Terry Leahy. The impressive list of business leaders is central to the prime minister’s efforts to improve relations between the City and the government."
Brown leans on City for business advice
Financial Times, 29 June 2007

"A good source tells me that the British government is well aware that its target for cutting carbon emissions - 60% by 2050 - is too little too late, but that it will go no further for one reason: it fears losing the support of the Confederation of British Industry. Why this body is allowed to keep holding a gun to our heads has never been explained, but Gordon Brown has just appointed Digby Jones, its former director-general, as a minister in the department responsible for energy policy. I don't remember voting for him. There could be no clearer signal that the public interest is being drowned by corporate power."
George Monbiot - Stop doing the CBI's bidding, and we could be fossil fuel free in 20 years
Guardian, 3 July 2007

"A lavish contributor to Labour's coffers, Sir Ronnie [Cohen] has quietly secured a coveted place at [Gordon] Brown's side, and appears to be lined up for something far surpassing the fundraiser-cum-fixer's job once done by Lord Levy....The latest Sunday Times Rich List estimates his fortune at £260 million, making him the sixth wealthiest man in the City.... after a decade on the fringes of the Blairite court, he understands the size of the role Brown has in mind for him. Just as the outgoing Prime Minister surrounded himself with advisers whose stature and influence was equal to, if not greater than, members of the cabinet, so Sir Ronald and a few other key Brownites are about to find themselves in similarly elevated positions. While his first task will be to rebuild Labour's depleted finances before the next election, his real job is likely to be as a globetrotting uber-envoy, bypassing the Foreign Office and reporting directly to the prime minister, and with a particular focus on the Middle East."
Mr Brown's smoothy
Sunday Telegraph, 17 June 2007

"Tony Blair's controversial Middle East envoy Lord Levy is leaving too and attention is turning to Ronnie Cohen, a man some believe may play an equivalent role for Gordon Brown for the new Labour leader. He is rich, secretive, and controversial - an important donor to the Labour party and man with a key role in British diplomacy as it relates to the Middle East.  Sir Ronald is an Egyptian-born Jew and fluent in Arabic. He fled persecution to Britain as a child. His career background is in finance, not politics. At 26 he set up Apax Partners, a Private Equity firm that is regarded as the grand-daddy of an industry Cohen made hundreds of millions of pounds [from] until he started looking for a change two years ago. It was his role at the Portland Trust that caught Gordon Brown's attention. More4 News has learnt Sir Ronald will not have any official role under Brown in the way that Levy was a formal 'envoy' to Blair, but that does not mean that he will not be a hugely powerful figure. A source close to Cohen told us Sir Ronald believes his power will be in inverse proportion to his profile, so he could stay out of the public eye, while acting as a key policy adviser or maker behind the scenes."
Gordon Brown's rich friend
Channel 4 News, 19 Jun 2007

"The financier Sir Ronald Cohen, who has been one of the Chancellor's most trusted informal advisers for the past decade, recently made the surprising decision to retire from active business life. This was an extremely significant move: he will shortly emerge from the shadows of the City to become one of the most senior   members of the inner circle of the next Prime Minister.... Initially, Sir Ronald will be entrusted with the task of restoring Labour Party finances. The party is bankrupt at the moment - a direct consequence of the cash for peerages affair. Sir Ronald will be asked to help find the money to fight the next General Election, without leaving Labour cripplingly dependent on union donations. He will also be brought into the heart of government in other ways. Gordon Brown already employs Sir Ronald as a foreign policy adviser, just as Tony Blair used Lord Levy.... His stature will be far greater than that of mere Cabinet ministers. The truth is that Sir Ronald, Treasury Minister Ed Balls and just one or two other key Brownites will run the country. Anyone who wishes to understand what Britain under Gordon Brown will be like has no choice but to understand Sir Ronald Cohen, who he is and what he does... Sir Ronald is the founder of the private equity business, which makes massive profits out of buying, restructuring and then selling on great chunks of British business and which controls about a quarter of the country's private industry. This makes him a businessman of enormous importance.....he is a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies - a very wellconnected think tank specialising in political and military conflict.... Sir Ronald (who has personally given some £1.5 million to Labour since 2001 alone) is one of a group of private equity moguls who have made very substantial donations to the Labour Party.... the large donations to the Labour Party [are] mainly from people who, like Sir Ronald, showed no interest in Labour until it was on the verge of power..."
Worrying questions over Brown's private banker
Daily Mail, 3 March 2007

Paid For By The Oblivious British Taxpayer
MI6 Is The Servant Of The City Of London

"Duplicity and chicanery are their stock-in-trade, so is it any surprise that spies sometimes break their own rules? More surprising is the mess that [MI6] the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) has made of dealing with Richard Tomlinson, a renegade spook whom it fired in 1995. Running a secret intelligence organisation is a difficult business, now that the moral discipline of the cold war has crumbled: when spying for your country is about making its big businesses richer, rather than subverting totalitarianism, patriotism may not be enough to keep a disgruntled ex-employee quiet."
Breach birth
The Economist, 25 January 2001

"[British arms manufacturer] BAE Systems plc's corporate migration to America may be entering troubled waters. The UK-based arms giant's latest plan is a £2.1bn acquisition of Armor Group, an American firm which makes Humvees and other vehicles for the US forces. This would be a good buy for BAE.... The money to buy Armor Group is there: BAE made a tidy sum last year by selling off its stake in Airbus (and with it the last of the serious British civil-aircraft manufacturing industry, whose long-term survival must now be in doubt). The Airbus stake didn't fetch as much as BAE was hoping, but a recent £750m issue of shares was sold without difficulty to make up the difference. There may have been a feeling in the City that BAE was a good buy now that it has managed to give the Serious Fraud Office the slip; the long-running investigation into alleged BAE backhanders paid to Saudi royals was deep-sixed with the approval of the outgoing Blair administration last year. The decision was given a sprinkling of magic national-security pixie dust, but this has failed to really make it fly away. Many observers have speculated that the dropping of the probe had more to do with securing a Saudi order for 72 Eurofighters than with the desert princes' help in tackling jihadi terrorism. Others have noted that BAE - in common with other large UK firms like BP - is believed to have a dedicated liaison channel with the Secret Intelligence Service* (SIS, the body often known as MI6). It has been suggested that an ordinary company without such access might have a bit more difficulty in getting fraud cases dropped on 'national security' grounds."
BAE tries to polish corporate image ahead of Armor deal
The Register, 14 May 2007

"MI6's director of operations, who cannot be named for reasons of personal security, is to take up a job in the City. He follows Mark Allen, the director responsible for anti-terrorism, who left in the summer to join BP."
Another top MI6 officer quits
Guardian, 6 December 2004

"A retired MI6 officer has been appointed to a top post at BP-Amoco, the British-based oil company..... John Gerson was director of security and public affairs at the agency and was embroiled in attempts to suppress disclosures by the former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. Mr Gerson took early retirement from what was effectively the post of deputy head of MI6 at the end of last year. Last month he became one of BP's vice-presidents for government and public affairs. His appointment was approved by the cabinet secretary, Sir Richard Wilson. MI6 has close links with oil companies, the 'revolving door' syndrome, in the same way as armed forces officers have close links with defence companies. Rolls-Royce has employed former MI6 officers to help win contracts in the Middle East, and merchant banks have taken some on. During the first reading of the intelligence services bill, Lord Mackay, the conservative lord chancellor, told peers in 1994 that MI6 protected the 'economic wellbeing' of the country by keeping 'a particular eye on Britain's access to key commodities, like oil...'"
Former MI6 officer gets top post at BP
Guardian, 8 May 2000

"There is certainly action and there is a lot of adventure. It is also quite glamorous - you might find yourself on one day in the middle of a tent talking to a whole load of tribal leaders in the middle of nowhere and 24 hours later be in a different country talking to a high-powered financier."
Anonymous MI6 Agent
MI6 agents give first interviews
BBC Online, 15 November 2006

"The Intelligence Services Act 1994, states that the role of the MI6 is 'to obtain and provide information relating to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands,' and to act in the interests of security, defence, foreign and economic policies within the framework set out by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and approved by ministers."
MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service
BBC Online, 12 February 2003

"Britain's Secret Intelligence Service - popularly known as MI6 - has launched its first public recruitment campaign. A half-page advert in the Times careers supplement offers jobs for 'operational officers', technology experts and 'thoroughly efficient administrators'.... MI6 has been shrouded in secrecy for most of its 97-year history. The organisation was not even officially acknowledged to exist until just over a decade ago.... The advert is also due to run in the Economist magazine. It says the agency operates around the world to make Britain 'safer and more prosperous'."
MI6 ad for 'operational officers'
BBC Online, 27 April 2006

"[Tomlinson] says that MI6 had a spy, code-named Orcadia, in the German Bundesbank as part of an operation, called Jetstream, responsible for economic espionage."
What's in that book
Guardian, 24 January 2001

"The Secret Intelligence Service, sometimes known as MI6, originated in 1909 as the Foreign Section of the Secret Service Bureau, under RNR Commander, later Captain, Sir Mansfield Cumming, which was responsible for gathering intelligence overseas. By 1922 Cumming's section had become a separate Service with the title SIS. Cumming signed himself 'C'; his successors have done so ever since. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was established in 1940, partly from the then Section D of SIS. After the War it was disbanded and some of its members were reabsorbed into SIS. With the passing of the Intelligence Services Act [1994], SIS was placed on a statutory footing under the Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary to whom it is responsible for all aspects of its work. The Act defines the functions of the Service and the responsibilities of its Chief, as well as establishing control and oversight arrangements. The Service's principal role is the production of secret intelligence in support of Her Majesty's Government's security, defence, foreign and economic policies within the framework of requirements laid upon it by the JIC and approved by Ministers. It meets these JIC requirements for intelligence gathering and other tasks through a variety of sources, human and technical, and by liaison with a wide range of foreign intelligence and security services. Specific operations are subject to longstanding procedures for official and ministerial clearance. As the CIA is known as 'The Company,' SIS is known internally as 'The Firm' and to other agencies as 'The Friends.' SIS is based at 85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall Cross in London (known to those who work there as 'Legoland'). MI6 also paid for a number of telephones located in a busy street in south London (Borough High Street in Southwark, opposite the Police Station) which has been identified as the spy training centre. The main training centre is Fort Monckton, a Napoleonic fort on the south coast at Gosport in Hampshire. What is thought to have been MI6's former City of London office is located in an office block in the Square Mile."
Secret Intelligence Service MI6
Federation Of American Scientists, 7 December 2005

"[The Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) principle role is] '(a) to obtain and provide information relating to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands; and (b) to perform other tasks relating to the actions or intentions of such persons...[in relation to] the interests of national security, with particular reference to defence and foreign policies...the interests of the economic well-being of the UK...or in support of the prevention or detection of serious crime."
The Intelligence Service Act 1994 (SW9311)

"For the first time since its creation nearly 100 years ago, the Secret Intelligence Service is openly advertising for staff in the British press today. Dubbing MI6, as the agency is more commonly known, as 'The World's Intelligence', it says it is seeking administrators, officers, analysts, linguists, and those with experience of information technology. Under photographs of people in the shadows with an aircraft and palm trees providing a hint of the exotic, the ad says the service operates 'around the world to make this country safer and more prosperous'".
MI6 comes in out of the cold with adverts for modern Bonds
Guardian, 27 April 2006

"When the Cold War ended, MI6 turned its considerable skills to collecting commercial intelligence, often from NATO allies. MI6 was discreet, although some operations were revealed. Such information is turned over to British corporations, or the government, depending on who can do the most with it....."
Military Intelligence
Strategy Page, 17 December 2001

"The 1994 Intelligence Services Act finally ended the myth that Britain did not indulge in such unsavoury pastimes as spying abroad. The job of MI6, it says, is to 'obtain... information relating to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British islands', particularly 'in the interests of the economic well-being of the UK'. Similarly, the task of GCHQ - the government's electronic eavesdropping centre - is to 'interfere' with what it quaintly calls 'emissions' in the interests of the 'economic well-being of the UK'. MI5 too, is tasked by the 1989 Security Service Act to 'safeguard the economic well-being of the UK against threats posed by the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands'.....As the intelligence services act sailed through parliament, Lord Mackay, the then lord chancellor, revealed that MI6 protected the country's 'economic well-being' by keeping 'a particular eye on Britain's access to key commodities, like oil or metals [and] the profits of Britain's myriad of international business interests'.... We have also learnt, from the former MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, that Britain went so far as to have a spy, code-named Orcada, in Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank. He was apparently recruited after Black Wednesday in 1992 when the Conservative government was forced to quit the European exchange-rate mechanism.... In a new book - MI6, Fifty Years of Special Operations - Stephen Dorril says the agency set up a special unit for economic espionage, code-named operation Jetstream, against Britain's Euro-partners. And Tomlinson says that in 1993, MI6 helped British Aerospace win a £500m deal to sell Hawk jets to Indonesia by supplying them with details of a competing bid from the French aircraft manufacturer, Dassault. Similar information was allegedly passed to help BAe win Hawk sales to Malaysia. Such covert gathering of economic and commercial information is nothing new. GCHQ and MI6 have being doing it for years. Sir Maurice Oldfield, the legendary former C, or Chief, of MI6, was seen getting into the lift of the European commission headquarters in Brussels shortly after Britain's entry into the European Economic Community, as it was then called, in 1973."
Useless spies
Guardian, 23 March 2000

"A private intelligence firm with close links to MI6 spied on environmental campaign groups to collect information for oil companies, including Shell and BP. MPs are to demand an inquiry by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, into whether the secret intelligence service used the firm as a front to spy on green activists. The firm's agent, who posed as a left-wing sympathizer and film maker, was asked to betray plans of Greenpeace's activities against oil giants. He also tried to dupe Anita Roddick's Body Shop group to pass on information about its opposition to Shell drilling for oil in a Nigerian tribal land. The Sunday Times has seen documents which show that the spy, German-born Manfred Schlickenrieder, was hired by Hakluyt, an agency that operates from offices in London's West End. Schlickenrieder was hired by Mike Reynolds, a director of Hakluyt and MI6's former head of station in Germany. His cover was blown by a female colleague who had worked with him. Last night he refused to comment. Reynolds and other MI6 executives left the intelligence service after the cold war ended to form Hakluyt in 1995. It was set up with the blessing of Sir David Spedding, the then chief of MI6, who died last week. Christopher James, the managing director, had been head of the MI6 section that liaised with British firms. The firm, which takes its name from Richard Hakluyt, the Elizabethan geographer, assembled a foundation board of directors from the Establishment to oversee its activities, including Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Ian Fleming's model for James Bond. Baroness Smith, the widow of John Smith, the late Labour leader, was a director until the end of last year. The company has close links to the oil industry through Sir Peter Cazalet, the former deputy chairman of BP, who helped to establish Hakluyt before he retired, last year, and Sir Peter Holmes, former chairman of Shell, who is president of its foundation. MPs believe the affair poses serious questions about the blurring of the divisions between the secret service, a private intelligence company and the interests of big companies. Hakluyt refutes claims by some in the intelligence community that it was started by MI6 officers to carry out 'deniable' operations.... Hakluyt was reluctant to discuss its activities. Michael Maclay, one of the agency's directors and a former special adviser to Douglas Hurd when he was Conservative foreign minister, said: 'We don't ever talk about anything we do. We never go into any details of what we may or what we may not be doing.'"
MI6 'Firm' Spied on Green Groups
Sunday Times, 17 June 2001

"It has all the ingredients of cold war spy thriller - with a cast of characters including former Cabinet ministers, diplomats, spies, a Scottish oil company, the widow of Labour leader John Smith, and sensational allegations of murder and corruption in the Czech Republic. At its centre lies a British-based private intelligence firm, with close links to MI6 - and a distaste for any sort of publicity. But now Hakluyt is facing the spotlight as MPs called for its activities, and its connection to MI6, to be investigated following the company’s role in the collapse of a High Court libel trial.  'This is an extraordinary tale which appears to have mushroomed because of the involvement of a secret company, Hakluyt,' said Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes.  'This is not the first time their fingerprints have been on strange matters. It would be helpful if a spotlight could be shone on them to show who they are, what their role was, what connection they have to MI6 and why they won’t answer questions about these particular events.' Set up by former MI6 executives after the end of the Cold War, Hakluyt has provided intelligence for 26 FTSE 100 companies and a number of US and European clients. ‘Not first time they have been tied up to strange matters’. Its latest Companies House returns reveal a high calibre of directors, including Mike Reynolds, MI6’s former head of station in Germany, and Michael MacLay, a former journalist, diplomat and special adviser to former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd.... Little about the company finds its way into the public domain, but in a rare interview given to the Financial Times two years ago, managing director Christopher James, also ex-MI6, described his firm’s main commodity as 'the truth'. 'We give focused, timely intelligence,' he said. But following an extraordinary libel trial last month, in which former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind gave evidence, there were question marks over the quality of the intelligence Hakluyt provides. In fact, a report produced by Hakluyt on Czech oil tycoon Karel Komarek and his father, which contained allegations of corruption and murder, led to Scottish oil company Ramco being sued for libel. Ramco employed Hakluyt in good faith on the recommendation of one of its consultants, Mr Rifkind and Baroness Smith. During the libel trial, brought against Ramco by Mr Komarek, the chairman of MND, a Moravian oil mining company, it emerged that the company was responsible for allegations of 'the gravest kind'. In a report produced by Hakluyt for Ramco, which cost £40,000, the company even claimed the involvement of a Ukranian hit-man to murder a European businessman.... Last year MPs called on Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to investigate the company following newspaper revelations that Hakluyt spied on green pressure groups in order to pass information about them to oil production companies Shell and BP. It emerged that Hakluyt had employed a German spy, who posed as a left-wing sympathiser and film-maker, in order to betray plans by Greenpeace against oil companies. The affair left MPs questioning whether secret intelligence services used the firm as a front to spy on green groups. Hakluyt has denied claims by some in the intelligence community that it was started by MI6 officers to carry out 'deniable' operations."
Intelligence firm with an air of mystery
The Scotsman, 20 January 2003

"Following the end of the war the re-structuring of the intelligence community saw the Admiralty and War Office code-breaking sections combined as the Government Code & Cipher School in 1919 still under Admiralty control. However in 1922, GC & CS become a department of the Foreign Office and placed under the overall control of the Chief of the SIS in 1923. SIS, a de facto part of the Foreign Office, had gained control of the espionage services of both the Admiralty and the War Office in 1919 along with a new Military cover-name of MI-6. In 1920 the Foreign Office also ceded its monopoly on political intelligence to SIS which then formed its new Political Section in 1921. When the RAF finally became a service branch in its own right an Air Intelligence Section was almost immediately formed within SIS in 1929. An Economic and Commercial Intelligence Section was formed in 1937 to work with the Special Liaison Section of the IIC/MEW Intelligence Branch.... In 1973 under the new CSS or 'C' Sir Maurice Oldfield operations were to strictly controlled and scrupulous in their adherence to the wishes of the Government. Oldfield's unique style brought a refreshing blast of fresh air through the corridors of Century House, the SIS multi-story glass and concrete headquarters in south London. SIS objectives were also widened to take account of the increasing demand for commercial intelligence, on the USA, Britain's European partners, Japan and the Middle East oil states in particular. A new Government organization, the Overseas Economic Intelligence Committee (OEIC) became a major customer for both SIS and its SIGINT partner GCHQ.... [MI6 front companies include] Hakluyt & Company/Hakluyt Foundation. Established 1995 by Sir Fitzroy Maclean to channel MI6 commercial intelligence to major companies and to receive information from corporate sources. Set up by Christopher James (ex SIS) and Mike Reynolds (ex SIS), directors included Sir Brian Cubbon (ex Home Office); Lord Laing (Conservative Party Treasurer); Earl Jellicoe; Sir Peter Cazalet (P & O and BP) and Sir Peter Holmes (Shell Oil).... Facilities regularly used by SIS include; Special Forces Club. 8 Herbert Street, Knightsbridge."
The Mechanisms of an Oppressive State - UK Intelligence And Security Report
AFI Research, August 2003

"The Joint Intelligence Committee agrees on the broad intelligence requirements and tasking (National Intelligence Requirements) for SIS and GCHQ and oversees the activities of the Security Service's. It prepares summary assessments for selected Ministers and circulates the weekly 'Red Books' to the Cabinet's Defence and Overseas Committee, chaired by the PM.   Traditionally it meets every Wednesday morning and includes representatives from UKUSA and the COS secretariat. This is the 'key' committee involved in the Intelligence Community.  Originally formed as the Inter-Service Intelligence Committee (ISIC) under the Chiefs of Staff in January 1936, renamed the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in July 1936. Moved to foreign Office control in July 1939. In 1957 control moved to Cabinet Office and in 1968 the post of Intelligence Co-Coordinator was created within the Cabinet Office to oversee its functions. In 1982 following the Falklands War the Foreign Office ceased to have any control and the JIC became a Cabinet Office organization with direct access to the Prime Minister. The JIC is reported to have a staff of 20 with a further 30 in the 'JIO' or ISG. Closely involved with the major City institutions particularly Banking, the Economic Sub-Committee of JIC also includes representatives of both the Treasury and the Bank of England (which also an SLO to receive intelligence reports directly from the JIC)."
The Mechanisms of an Oppressive State - UK Intelligence And Security Report
AFI Research, August 2003

"With the end of the Cold War, MI6's role has fundamentally changed and it now has many more potential targets. Terrorist groups, and so-called 'rogue' states, are now high profile targets. Networks of new agents will be required as intelligence 'needs' constantly shift. Industrial espionage, furthering British trade interests has moved into the area of national interest. Gathering intelligence on friendly governments, obtaining advanced knowledge of their negotiating positions or changes in alliances, are also now ever more important targets for MI6. The Intelligence Services Act 1994 formerly acknowledged its existence.... R6 Industrial, Commercial & Financial. Worked closely with both the Treasury and the Bank of England, as well as Merchant Bankers such as Hill Samuel; Hambro's; Kleinwort Benson; Morgan Grenfell; Brandts; Cootes and the Midland. Solicitors firms such as Slaughter & May were also part of the network of important contacts, along with Thomas Cook; ICI; BP; Shell; Lonrho and RTZ."
The Mechanisms of an Oppressive State - UK Intelligence And Security Report
AFI Research, August 2003

Who Are AFI Research? - Click Here

Rogue State Britain

"Britain came under unprecedented pressure from its European partners yesterday to reveal the extent of its involvement in a US-led spying network said to be used for industrial espionage. Portugal, the current holder of the European Union presidency, announced it would raise the issue at a forthcoming meeting of interior ministers, despite formal insistence from London that nothing illegal was taking place. Britain and the US both wrote to the EU's enterprise commissioner, Erkki Liikanen of Finland, to say that they were doing no wrong, but a heated European parliament debate on the Echelon electronic surveillance system left open the possibility that MEPs would demand a formal investigation into the allegations. And Britain's letter, written by its EU ambassador Sir Stephen Wall, fuelled speculation by referring to 'safeguarding the nation's economic well-being' as one of the reasons for which telecommunications could be legally intercepted. But he denied that British facilities were used by other states to gain commercial advantage. Echelon, established during the cold war and operated by the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is reportedly capable of intercepting millions of telephone, fax and email messages. James Woolsey, who headed the CIA from 1993-95, has already admitted what to many had long seemed obvious - that the US secretly collects information on European firms.... Until yesterday, Echelon was a minor issue rumbling along almost unnoticed in the European parliament. But Portugal's surprise decision to raise it in the council of ministers puts it into a different league. It will alarm British ministers concerned about the image of an either-or-choice between the US or Europe. It will also boost interest in the intelligence services at a time when allegations about Libyan dirty tricks and the loss of laptops by secret agents is attracting unwelcome attention.... Duncan Campbell, the British investigative journalist, has claimed that the US used Echelon to beat the European consortium Airbus to a major plane deal with Saudi Arabia in 1994... Robert Evans, a Labour MEP, said British MEPs would block calls for an investigation."
Britain accused of aiding industrial espionage by US
Guardian, 31 March 2000

John Scarlett Is Merely The Current 'Boys Own' Standard Bearer
For The City Of London

"A few years after leaving MI6 I bumped into a young woman who had worked with me on a particular mission. We had only a few moments of snatched conversation on a crowded platform, but when I asked her how the job was going she told me that she had left the service. I looked surprised because she had been very good at the job, but she simply shrugged and said: 'Well, it’s just a game for big boys, really, isn’t it?' This is part of the problem for the Intelligence Services in attracting female applicants today. There is a sense of Boys’ Own adventure which first interests many men (including myself) in the idea of working as a spy."
Harry Ferguson, ex-MI6 - Deadlier than the male
London Times, 15 May 2007

"The BBC has broadcast an interview with the former MI5 officier David Shayler in which he spoke about an alleged plot by the UK's Secret Intelligence Service [MI6] to kill Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. The interview with Panorama was recorded before his arrest in France at the request of the UK Government. In it, he told how a £100,000 payment to an agent 'Tunworth' funded a militant plot to murder Gaddafi. The film was not broadcast until Friday because the government has an injunction designed, it says, to protect national security. The BBC decided to go ahead with the transmission after parts of the script were submitted to government solicitors, who gave authority to proceed. 'We are talking about tens of thousand pounds of tax-payers' money being used to attempt to assassinate a foreign head of state,' Mr Shayler said. He said he was told that authorisation for the plot by the SIS, the UK's overseas spying service, had come from the very top of the Foreign Office. The revelations, after investigations by BBC journalist Mark Urban, are among the most damaging against the security services for decades and will put further pressure on the government to examine allegations that it has dismissed as 'inconceivable'.... In February 1996 a bomb was planted under Gaddafi's motorcade, but it exploded under the wrong car. Several bodyguards were killed and in the ensuing gunbattle three extremists were reportedly killed. Mr Shayler spoke of his surprise when told of the alleged plot. He said: 'I was absolutely astounded when I heard this was the case. My thinking up to then on the SIS was that they were involved in a sort of Boys' Own comic, and suddenly this was very real.' Mr Shayler joined MI5 in 1994, as part of the G9 section dealing with Libya. At a joint meeting on Libya with the SIS he heard of an agent known as Tunworth. Also at the meeting was PT16B, who controlled Tunworth and detailed Tunworth's collaboration with an extremist group in Libya trying to kill Colonel Gaddafi. However the CX Report, circulated to officals, GCHQ and the Foreign Office, did not say that Tunworth was actively involved in the plot. Mr Shayler later learned that as the assassination plot gathered pace, about £100,000 was given to Tunworth. Mr Urban obtained evidence that meetings did take place with PT16B, that Britian had advance knowledge of the attempt on Gaddafi's life and that Tunworth was a go-between with Islamic militant groups in Libya. However, Foreign Office ministers at the time of the affair said they had not given any authorisation for a murder attempt. Mr Urban concluded that one answer was that security services had acted without any political authority. He said that the BBC had obtained other evidence of SIS activities, but these were withheld for security reasons...."
BBC screens Shayler interview
BBC Online, 8 August 2007

How MI6 funded al Qaeda cell in Libya - Click Here

Fighting Amongst 'Special Relationship' Thieves Breaks Out
As BAE Systems Tries To Muscle In On New US Arms Markets
US Department Of Justice Works To Rake Up Old 'Oil-For-Arms' British Skeletons

"Mrs Thatcher was delighted with the deal when it was finally signed in 1985, having fought off competition from the French. But another influential Washington lobby, the one that represents America's defence industry, was less than pleased that it had been denied a lucrative commercial opportunity, and the rancour has continued to this day. Officials at the Justice Department insist that their decision this week to launch a corruption investigation into claims that BAE paid millions of pounds' worth of bribes to Saudi officials was not motivated by political pressure or lobbying from the American defence industry. Under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Justice officials have the right to investigate any company with interests in America that is suspected of wrongdoing. BAE Systems has been gradually developing its commercial activity in the States, and only last week completed the £2 billion purchase of Armor Holdings, which makes protective armour for the Humvee. But British and Saudi officials are convinced the American action has been motivated by jealousy over the vast profits that BAE and the Government have derived from the initial deal.... Just how dredging up details of a 20-year-old arms deal benefits the long-term interests of the United States remains to be seen."
BAE is none of Washington's business
Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2007

"The US Department of Justice wants to interview people involved in signing the original al-Yamamah oil-for-arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia as part of its investigation into BAE Systems, The Times has learnt. The DoJ has contacted individuals linked to the early stages of al-Yamamah in an indication that the Americans plan to rake through the entire 25-year history of Britain’s largest export deal. The DoJ’s attempts to uncover corruption in the deal could lead to requests to interview senior figures involved, such as Baroness Thatcher and Lord Heseltine. Al-Yamamah, which has been worth more than £43 billion to BAE, was agreed between Britain and Saudi Arabia in 1985. A key architect of the contract, which was initially to supply 48 British Aerospace-built Tornado fighter jets, was Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the son of the Saudi Defence Minister. Prince Bandar has recently been accused of receiving payments from BAE of more than £1 billion as part of al-Yamamah, which means 'dove of peace'. Prince Bandar and BAE deny wrongdoing but the allegations, as well as pressure from US politicians such as former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, are thought to have triggered the DoJ investigation.... Defence analysts had expected the DoJ investigation, which was announced two weeks ago, to focus on these payments. However, it appears that the DoJ plans a much wider-reaching inquiry and it is starting with the early negotiations, beginning in about 1983. Key figures involved in the deal at that time include the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who personally lobbied the Saudi royal family to buy British jets. Michael Heseltine was the Defence Secretary and the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO), which markets British weapons abroad, was run by Lord [James] Blythe and Sir Colin Chandler, who is now chairman of easyJet. The DoJ is understood to be planning to send investigators to the UK to conduct interviews with those involved in al-Yamamah. It may find it difficult to gather facts as the details are classified secret by the UK Government. Officials involved in the early negotiations and subsequent extensions to the deal have also all signed the Official Secrets Act."
BAE probe will target role of Thatcher Government
London Times, 10 July 2007

"It emerged Wednesday that Democratic Senator John Kerry, a member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had weighed into the matter.Kerry sent a letter to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, dated June 21, outlining his concern at reports that BAE may have 'violated US anti-bribery laws in relation to its international arms deals.' 'Full disclosure of the facts is essential,' Kerry wrote in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP Wednesday. The senator asked Gonzales if the Justice Department had been in contact with a regulatory panel that has reviewed BAE's takeover bid for Armor Holdings, among other questions.... The British group's takeover of Armor Holdings, which supplies armored vehicles to the US military in Iraq among other equipment, was cleared last week by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. The Justice Department, however, is still reviewing the proposed deal to see if it contravenes US antitrust protections. That review is now occuring alongside a probe into BAE's business dealings. BAE is one of Europe's biggest arms manufacturers and it has been vying to boost its US business in the world's largest defense market, particularly with the Pentagon. It has recruited well-connected individuals to its American board of directors, such as Lee Hamilton, a former chairman of the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee; retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni; ex-CIA deputy director Richard Kerr; and other former Pentagon officials."
US probe, senator's concern put BAE under spotlight
Agence France Presse, 27 June 2007

"At the heart of the Department of Justice investigation into BAE Systems will be a secret account held by the Bank of England on behalf of the Saudi Arabian Government. This escrow account is the conduit through which £43 billion has been passed to BAE over the past 22 years to pay for Tornado fighter jets and other military equipment. It was set up as part of the 1985 al-Yamamah oil-for-arms agreement between Britain and Saudi Arabia. Over the years the account has fallen into deficit but more recently has held a significant surplus. It is this surplus that has sparked the recent allegations of corruption in BAE’s dealings with the Saudis. Payments totalling more than £1 billion made to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi Ambassador to the US, are believed to have come from this surplus at the request of the Saudi Government. The money was signed off by the Ministry of Defence, as agreed under the al-Yamamah contract, and transferred through BAE to the projects identified by the Saudis. In the case of Prince Bandar, the money is alleged to have been transferred to an account held by Riggs Bank in the US. The MoD claims that it is unaware of the existence of the account but government officials have confirmed its use. The account was set up because, in the1980s, Saudi Arabia paid for its arms with oil. It transferred oil production to BP and Shell and they paid cash into the Bank of England account. The money was then forwarded to BAE to pay for arms. When the price of oil slumped in the early 1990s the account fell into deficit, embarrassing the Saudis who were forced to make cash top-ups. Since then the account has been kept in surplus. In distributing the surplus, the Saudis have maintained the payment method agreed under al-Yamamah and that is why BAE has become embroiled. The DoJ investigation into BAE will therefore lead directly back to the MoD and a Bank of England account that the Government claims does not exist."
Secret account under spotlight
London Times, 27 June 2007

".....Tomlinson says that in 1993, MI6 helped British Aerospace win a £500m deal to sell Hawk jets to Indonesia by supplying them with details of a competing bid from the French aircraft manufacturer, Dassault. Similar information was allegedly passed to help BAe win Hawk sales to Malaysia. Such covert gathering of economic and commercial information is nothing new. GCHQ and MI6 have being doing it for years. Sir Maurice Oldfield, the legendary former C, or Chief, of MI6, was seen getting into the lift of the European commission headquarters in Brussels shortly after Britain's entry into the European Economic Community, as it was then called, in 1973."
Useless spies
Guardian, 23 March 2000

"BAE, under Dick Evans'schairmanship, moved its whole worldwide system of agent payments to Switzerland. What it did was not illegal, but the firm constructed what might well be called a global money-laundering machine. For a supposedly reputable public company, the methods used were surprising. Britain's Serious Fraud Office later concluded: 'The whole system is maintained in such conditions of secrecy that there is a legitimate suspicion concerning the real purpose of the payments.' The system was run from a secure block, Warwick House, at BAE's Farnborough premises. 'HQ Marketing Services' was headed by Hugh Dickinson, who was also responsible for company liaison with MI6.....just before Britain signed up to the OECD [anti-bribery] convention in 1997, the filing cabinets and safes containing the agent details were loaded into a van and driven by trusted staff from Farnborough to Geneva.... The purpose of these tortuous arrangements seems to have been to ensure that nothing questionable involving the hiring of agents took place within UK legal jurisdiction. But a further secret payment system was also needed for BAE to transfer large sums in cash to those agents.... We have traced secret payments going to agents in South America, Tanzania, Romania, South Africa, Qatar, Chile and the Czech Republic.... BAE set up a second front company, purely to handle the Saudi commission payments for al-Yamamah. 'Poseidon Trading Investments Ltd' was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands on June 25 1999. Those close to it say more than £1bn has passed through its accounts to Saudi agents, in transfers made by Lloyds TSB."
BAE's Secret Money Machine
Guardian, 'The BAE Files' Web Archive

"The Ministry of Defence is understood to be seeking legal advice before deciding whether to provide unfettered help to the DoJ. A government official said the MoD would need to 'advise and consult' on what would be released. The Foreign Office could also be reluctant to see confidential information released."
BAE faces threat of fines in US probe
Financial Times, 27 June 2007

The Usual Process - 'Beyond The Reach Of The Law'
Conducting Crimes Under Cover Of 'National Security'

"A Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAE’s dealings with Saudi Arabia was halted by the Government last year amid concerns that it would harm national security."
BAE probe will target role of Thatcher Government
London Times, 10 July 2007

"At the heart of the Department of Justice investigation into BAE Systems will be a secret account held by the Bank of England on behalf of the Saudi Arabian Government. This escrow account is the conduit through which £43 billion has been passed to BAE over the past 22 years to pay for Tornado fighter jets and other military equipment. It was set up as part of the 1985 al-Yamamah oil-for-arms agreement between Britain and Saudi Arabia. Over the years the account has fallen into deficit but more recently has held a significant surplus. It is this surplus that has sparked the recent allegations of corruption in BAE’s dealings with the Saudis. Payments totalling more than £1 billion made to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi Ambassador to the US, are believed to have come from this surplus at the request of the Saudi Government. The money was signed off by the Ministry of Defence, as agreed under the al-Yamamah contract, and transferred through BAE to the projects identified by the Saudis. In the case of Prince Bandar, the money is alleged to have been transferred to an account held by Riggs Bank in the US. The MoD claims that it is unaware of the existence of the account but government officials have confirmed its use. The account was set up because, in the1980s, Saudi Arabia paid for its arms with oil. It transferred oil production to BP and Shell and they paid cash into the Bank of England account. The money was then forwarded to BAE to pay for arms. When the price of oil slumped in the early 1990s the account fell into deficit, embarrassing the Saudis who were forced to make cash top-ups. Since then the account has been kept in surplus. In distributing the surplus, the Saudis have maintained the payment method agreed under al-Yamamah and that is why BAE has become embroiled. The DoJ investigation into BAE will therefore lead directly back to the MoD and a Bank of England account that the Government claims does not exist."
Secret account under spotlight
London Times, 27 June 2007

"The Ministry of Defence is understood to be seeking legal advice before deciding whether to provide unfettered help to the DoJ. A government official said the MoD would need to 'advise and consult' on what would be released. The Foreign Office could also be reluctant to see confidential information released."
BAE faces threat of fines in US probe
Financial Times, 27 June 2007

The British Sewer Runs Deep, Very Deep

'Arms To Iraq' - British Intelligence And The Astra Scandal - Click Here

'Beyond Accountability'
It's Time To Put An End To All This Criminality

John Scarlett As British Manipulator In Chief

"When John Scarlett begins his new job this morning as head of MI6 his first task will be to defend himself against yet another damaging allegation about falsifying intelligence to help Tony Blair. This latest controversy has prompted many in the intelligence community to question whether Mr Scarlett is too much of a liability to run the Secret Intelligence Service. The growing view in Whitehall is that he is 'damaged goods', dogged by scandal, who for the sake of the agency should stand down to allow MI6 the chance to restore its credibility. Mr Scarlett faces claims that in March he clumsily tried to distort a crucial report by the Iraq Survey Group, (ISG), the international body set up to hunt for Saddam Hussein’s supposed arsenal of banned armaments. Just before the 1,400-strong team of inspectors were due to report on how they had failed to turn up any trace of weapons of mass destruction they were reportedly contacted by Mr Scarlett. He was still head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and suggested that the ISG report should be cut from 200 pages of detailed analysis to 20, and left sufficently vague to protect Mr Blair’s stand on Iraq’s weapons menace. He wanted the report to keep alive the prospect that deadly weapons could still be found. In a confidential e-mail sent to the ISG team in Baghdad, Mr Scarlett is alleged to have asked them to add ten 'golden nuggets' to their report which prolonged the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction. One of these alleged 'nuggets' was that Iraq was developing smallpox weapons. He also wanted mention that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories and sophisticated equipment for use in nuclear weapons research..... His growing army of critics inside Whitehall argue it will be impossible to restore MI6’s credibility while he remains in charge. One security expert decribed his reported intervention with the Iraq Survey Group as 'staggering'..... His appointment was met by claims in some quarters of Whitehall that it was a reward from Mr Blair as many had expected MI6’s deputy head, Nigel Inkster, to succeed Sir Richard Dearlove as 'C'.... This damaging view was reinforced when Downing Street took the unusual step of going on the record robustly to support Mr Scarlett’s suitability for the job."
New MI6 chief walks into storm over 'ties to Downing Street'
London Times, 2 August 2004

Those Who Have Promoted Scarlett After The Biggest British Intelligence 'Failure' Since Suez
Have A Lot Of Explaining To Do
Clearly They Didn't See It As A 'Failure' - They Saw It As Merit Worthy

"Tony Blair provoked an unprecedented political storm last night by surprisingly appointing the man who helped to clear him in the Hutton inquiry as Britain’s top spymaster. Risking charges of cronyism, the Prime Minister made John Scarlett, whose high-profile evidence countered charges that Downing Street had 'sexed up' the dossier on Iraqi weapons, the head of MI6. It was a break with tradition because deputies of MI6 usually succeed to the top job and the current holder of that post, Nigel Inkster, had been groomed to take over. Last night Mr Inkster’s future was in doubt.... The Times has confirmed that Mr Blair approved without question the recommendation of Mr Scarlett that came from a selection panel chaired by Sir David Omand, the intelligence and security coordinator. The panel found that Mr Scarlett was 'on merit' the top candidate. The only other candidate on the shortlist was Mr Inkster, the current deputy to Sir Richard Dearlove. Sir Richard had appointed him to the No 2 slot with the understanding that he was the chosen insider to take over. Previous assistant chiefs had all moved up to become the head of MI6. This was the case with Sir Richard himself."
Cronyism row over new MI6 spymaster
London Times, 7 May 2004

"A Knighthood for the MI6 chief behind the sexed-up 'dodgy dossier' that helped take Britain into the Iraq war was branded an abuse of the honours system last night.... No reason for the award is given except for his 'diplomatic service'.... At the time of the dodgy dossier Scarlett was chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.... Scarlett has spent more than 30 years working for MI6 ..."
SIR SEX-UP
Daily Mirror, 30 December 2006

"Lord Hutton's journey into the heart of Britain's secret government is about to resume....  This is the most damaging episode for MI6 since the Falklands. But then it was about complacency. Now its integrity is in question. As long as Scarlett remains in his post, that damage will not be repaired."
There is a dark cabal around Blair
Guardian, 11 September 2003

"After the Commons staged its first full debate on the Iraq war since 2004, the government defeated an opposition motion calling for such an inquiry by 298 votes to 273 – a majority of 25. However, the prime minister’s victory came on a night of confusion for the government when a cabinet minister appeared to break with the Downing Street line by confirming a new inquiry into the Iraq war would definitely be held at some stage. Throughout the day, Downing Street had sought to keep all discussion about a possible future inquiry somewhat vague, saying that when British troops finally left, 'people will want to look back'. However, in a BBC TV interview, Des Browne, the defence secretary, went a good deal further, firming up the government’s commitment by saying: 'When the time is right, of course there will be such a inquiry.' Mr Browne’s comment means the UK will almost certainly hold an inquiry into the war, probably after Mr Blair leaves office next year. But a government insider later said Mr Browne’s comments had been 'a slip of the tongue' and that he fully supported the government’s Iraq policy."
Blair survives parliamentary rebellion over Iraq
Financial Times, 31 October 2006

"Tony Blair faced fresh accusations of a 'cover up' today over his discredited claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal. Brian Jones, a former nuclear and biological arms specialist at the Ministry of Defence, reignited the row over the Government's 'dodgy' dossier on Iraq with new claims that Parliament was misled. Dr Jones, the official at the Defence Intelligence Staff who was a key witness at the Hutton Inquiry, revealed that senior intelligence experts had rejected one of the most striking claims in the dossier. While most attention has focused on the claim that Saddam could fire a WMD within '45 minutes', another key claim about the Iraqi regime speeding up production of biological and chemical agents was also deeply flawed, he said. A highly secret MI6 report on the agents was included in the government report in September 2002 even though analysts considered it was 'crap' and it had been rejected by them 'within hours of seeing it', Dr Jones revealed in today's New Statesman. The key piece of intelligence, dubbed 'Report X', was officially rejected as coming from an unreliable source by July 2003, when MI6 formally withdrew it. Mr Blair insists he did not know about the error until after the event, but Mr Jones points out that 'any one of a number of officials in various government departments will have known and should have been alert to the danger of Parliament-being misled'. Dr Jones emerged as the 'star' witness of the Hutton inquiry when it emerged he was the only official to formally object to intelligence caveats being left out of the dossier in the rush to its publication in the run-up to war. He alleges that MI6 chief John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time of the dossier's drafting, knew that defence intelligence experts had not approved 'Report X'. 'I am more convinced than ever that Report X was welcomed in September 2002, not as a particularly valuable piece of new intelligence but as a way to finesse a 'sexed-up' dossier past the experts on WMD. The normal intelligence process of sceptical scrutiny was subverted,' he said."
New cover-up claims in WMD dodgy dossier
Evening Standard, 8 December 2006

"Cover-ups sometimes succeed. Despite the recent death of the 130th British soldier in Iraq and the £5 billion cost of the war, the public’s appetite to expose the full truth about the Government’s distortions of intelligence to justify the invasion has evaporated. Tony Blair can congratulate himself that his fierce resistance to a truly independent investigation about the road to war has been successful. But gradually, the barriers to the truth are crumbling. Drip by drip, witnesses in America are dishing the dirt about the corruption of intelligence by George Bush to justify the war. Information has emerged about conversations and briefings among intelligence chiefs and politicians about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Some of these snippets incriminate Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of MI6, and Sir John Scarlett, the fomer chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Until now, both men have escaped serious criticism. To protect himself, Mr Blair allowed Sir Richard Dearlove to retire without censure and promoted Sir John to become Sir Richard’s successor..... Among the recent crop of books is On the Brink by Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the CIA’s clandestine operations in Europe. Drumheller’s description of an agent codenamed Curveball contributes to the exposure of Britain’s intelligence fiasco. Curveball was an Iraqi informer for the BND, the German foreign intelligence service. According to Curveball, Iraq was indisputably developing mobile biological weapons laboratories. After the attack on the World Trade Centre, the CIA repeatedly asked the BND for access to him. The Germans refused. The reason, Drumheller heard from the BND, was that Curveball was an alcoholic and a fabricator. Independent checks on his supposedly witness evidence of Iraqi WMDs proved that he was lying....... Sir Richard knew that Mr Blair could only make the case for war by insisting that Iraq possessed WMDs that could be 'deployed within 45 minutes'. The charge against Sir Richard, which he denies, is that by September 2003 when the Government’s first intelligence dossier was published, he was party to distorting intelligence to suit Mr Blair’s ambitions. Drumheller’s description of the BND’s assessment of Curveball undermines Sir Richard’s denials. Curveball’s information had been submitted in 2000 by Sir Richard to the JIC. Its validity was reasserted by Sir Richard in 2002 with a significant addition. The production time of the weapon was reduced by MI6 from 'weeks to days'. Yet according to BND sources, MI6 was given the same assessment of Curveball’s unreliability as the CIA. The BND’s doubts had been confirmed after the war by the failure to find WMD. Yet in 2004 Sir Richard told the Butler inquiry into the intelligence on WMD that MI6 'judged that it is premature to conclude (that Curveball’s intelligence) must be discounted'. That equivocation should be noted alongside his failure to tell Lord Hutton’s investigation into the death of David Kelly that an important SIS source of intelligence had been withdrawn as unreliable before the invasion. That withdrawal had seriously undermined the credibility of the Government’s first dossier and justified the allegation that the intelligence had been 'sexed up'. Yet Lord Butler did not blame Sir Richard personally. Before Lord Butler reported in July 2004, Mr Blair wobbled and, fearing severe censure, contemplated early retirement. Lord Butler’s blame-free report relieved him of that pressure. Relying on Lord Hutton’s and Lord Butler’s cosy reports, Mr Blair cocooned himself from any informed cross-examination about the mechanics of disinformation. The fog of official obfuscation had become impenetrable. Now, thanks to America’s hunt for the truth, the foundations of Mr Blair’s fortress is being eroded. The cover-up is disintegrating. The question is whether an irresistible appetite for the truth will arise in Britain and compel Gordon Brown to commission a genuine investigation."
Blair's defence over Iraq is crumbling
London Times, 3 February 2007

"....since taking over as Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee after the Democrats took control of Capitol Hill in November, [Californian Congressman Henry Waxman] he has begun living up to his billing as the 'scariest guy in town'.... And the scope of his investigations could cast a shadow over the integrity of Britain’s intelligence services. In an interview with The Times, he says .... '.... We’re also looking at an issue that is very important to me. I voted to authorise Bush to go to war in Iraq, based on claims that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. We found out that, before the war began, the CIA knew that claim to be based on forgeries.' The claim was repeated by Mr Bush in his State of the Union Address in 2003 when he used a notably odd form of words: 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' Mr Waxman is aware that in raking over the still-smouldering case for war in Iraq, this particular hot coal — a claim that 'convinced me and most Americans' to support the war — has a British flag painted on it. He says: 'I don’t know whether we will find out what Britain itself said at this point — but I want to know why it was said in that way.' By the time of Mr Bush’s speech, the CIA was warning the Administration that it believed the Niger uranium claims were based on forged Italian documents. 'For Bush to say that British intelligence provided the information was almost a way of being technically accurate — but attempting to deceive,' says Mr Waxman. MI6 has always insisted it had different evidence for the Niger uranium link and, although it has subsequently withdrawn the claim, Tony Blair’s Government has been cleared by successive inquiries of deliberately falsifying intelligence.... Although anxious to avoid direct criticism of other countries, he cannot help point out that the British parliamentary system does not offer much opportunity for 'oversight' on Iraq or any other issue."
'Scariest guy in town' stalks Bush over Iraq
London Times, 14 May 2007

"Britain has a complicated and rather bureaucratic political control over its intelligence and security community and one that tends to apply itself to long-term targets and strategic intelligence programs, but has little real influence on the behaviour and operations of SIS or MI5. Not so much ‘oversight’ as 'blindsight'. Despite the cosmetic changes of recent years and their formal establishment as legal Government organizations, there is still little true accountability for their actions or a valid test of their overall efficiency."
The Mechanisms of an Oppressive State - UK Intelligence And Security Report
AFI Research, August 2003