There is a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran.
Yesterday at 22.15pm I submitted by email a Freedom of Information request for:
All communications in either direction ever made between Matthew Gould and Adam Werritty, specifically including communications made outside government systems.
At 23.31pm I was astonished to get a reply from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The request was refused as it was
“likely to exceed the cost limit”.
Now it is plainly nonsense that to gather correspondence between two named individuals would be too expensive. They could just ask Gould.
And a reply at nearly midnight? The Freedom of Information team in the FCO is not a 24 hour unit. Plainly not only are they hiding the Gould/Werritty correspondence, they are primed and on alert for this cover-up operation.
Even more blatant was the obstruction of MP Paul Flynn, when he attempted to question Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell on the Gould-Werritty connection at the House of Commons Public Administration Committee. These are the minutes: anybody who believes in democracy should feel their blood boil as you read them:
Publc Admininstration Committee 24/11/2011
Q<369> Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.
In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—
Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?
Paul Flynn:> Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.
Chair:> I have to take a point of order.
Robert Halfon:> Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order.
Paul Flynn:> I quote the Daily Mail: “Mr Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran and has made several visits. He has also met senior Israeli officials, leading to accusations”—not from me, from the Daily Mail—“that he was close to the country’s secret service, Mossad.” There may be nothing in that, but that appeared in a national newspaper.
Chair:> I am going to rule on a point of order. Mr Flynn has made it clear that there may be nothing in these allegations, but it is important to have put it on the record. Be careful how you phrase questions.
Paul Flynn:> Indeed. The two worst decisions taken by Parliament in my 25 years were the invasion of Iraq—joining Bush’s war in Iraq—and the invasion of Helmand province. We know now that there were things going on in the background while that built up to these mistakes. The charge in this case is that Werritty was the servant of neo-con people in America, who take an aggressive view on Iran. They want to foment a war in Iran in the same way as in the early years, there was another—
Chair:> Order. I must ask you to move to a question that is relevant to the inquiry.
Q<370> Paul Flynn:> Okay. The question is, are you satisfied that you missed out on the extra four meetings that took place, and does this not mean that those meetings should have been investigated because of the nature of Mr Werritty’s interests?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> I think if you look at some of those meetings, some people are referring to meetings that took place before the election.
Q<371> Paul Flynn:> Indeed, which is even more worrying.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> I am afraid they were not the subject—what members of the Opposition do is not something that the Cabinet Secretary should look into. It is not relevant.
But these meetings were held— Chair:> Mr Flynn, would you let him answer please?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> I really do not think that was within my context, because they were not Ministers of the Government and what they were up to was not something I should get into at all.
Chair:> Final question, Mr Flynn.
Q<372> Paul Flynn:> No, it is not a final question. I am not going to be silenced by you, Chairman; I have important things to raise. I have stayed silent throughout this meeting so far.
You state in the report—on the meeting held between Gould, Fox and Werritty, on 6 February, in Tel Aviv—that there was a general discussion of international affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK ambassador was present. Are you following the line taken by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who says that he can eat with lobbyists or people applying to his Department because, on occasions, he eats privately, and on other occasions he eats ministerially? Are you accepting the idea? It is possibly a source of great national interest—the eating habits of their Secretary of State. It appears that he might well have a number of stomachs, it has been suggested, if he can divide his time this way. It does seem to be a way of getting round the ministerial code, if people can announce that what they are doing is private rather than ministerial.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job. It is totally natural, and I do not think that you should infer anything from that about the individual’s biases. That is what ambassadors do. Our ambassador in Pakistan will have exactly the same set of wide contacts.
Q<373> Paul Flynn:> I have good reason, as I said, from constituency matters, to be unhappy about the ambassador. Other criticisms have been made about the ambassador; he is unique in some ways in the role he is performing. There have been suggestions that he is too close to a foreign power.
Robert Halfon:> On a point of order, Chair, this is not about the ambassador to Israel. This is supposed to be about the Werritty affair.
Paul Flynn:> It is absolutely crucial to this report. If neo-cons such as yourself, Robert, are plotting a war in Iran, we should know about it.
Chair:> Order. I think the line of questioning is very involved. I have given you quite a lot of time, Mr Flynn. If you have further inquiries to make of this, they could be pursued in correspondence. May I ask you to ask one final question before we move on?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> One thing I would stress: we are talking about the ambassador and I think he has a right of reply. Mr Chairman, I know there is an interesting question of words regarding Head of the Civil Service versus Head of the Home Civil Service, but this is the Diplomatic Service, not the Civil Service.
Q<374> Chair:> So he is not in your jurisdiction at all.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> No.
Q<375> Paul Flynn:> But you are happy that your report is final; it does not need to go the manager it would have gone to originally, and that is the end of the affair. Is that your view?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> As I said, some issues arose where I wanted to be sure that what the Secretary of State was doing had been discussed with the Foreign Secretary. I felt reassured by what the Foreign Secretary told me.
Q<376> Chair:> I think what Mr Flynn is asking is that your report and the affair raise other issues, but you are saying that that does not fall within the remit of your report and that, indeed, the conduct of an ambassador does not fall within your remit at all.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> That is absolutely correct.
Paul Flynn:> The charge laid by Lord Turnbull in his evidence with regard to Dr Fox and the ministerial code was his failure to observe collective responsibility, in that case about Sri Lanka. Isn’t the same charge there about our policies to Iran and Israel?
Chair:> We have dealt with that, Mr Flynn.
Paul Flynn:> We haven’t dealt with it as far as it applies—
Chair:> Mr Flynn, we are moving on.
Paul Flynn:> You may well move on, but I remain very unhappy about the fact that you will not allow me to finish the questioning I wanted to give on a matter of great importance.
It is shocking but true that Robert Halfon MP, who disrupted Flynn with repeated points of order, receives funding from precisely the same Israeli sources as Werritty, and in particular from Mr Poju Zabludowicz. He also formerly had a full time paid job as Political Director of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
But despite the evasiveness of O’Donnell and the obstruction of paid zionist puppet Halfon, O’Donnell confirms vital parts of my investigation. In particular he agrees that the Fox-Werritty-Gould “private dinner” in Tel Aviv was with Mossad, and that Gould met Werritty many times more than the twice that O’Donnell listed in his “investigation” into this affair.
Of the six meetings of Fox-Gould-Werritty together which I discovered, five were while Fox was Secretary of State for Defence. Only one was while Fox was in opposition. But O’Donnell has now let the cat much further out of the bag, with the astonishing admission to Paul Flynn’s above questioning that Gould, Fox and Werritty held “meetings that took place before the election.” He also refers to “some of those meetings” as being before the election. Both are plainly in the plural.
It is now evident that not only did Fox, Gould and Werritty have at least five meetings while Fox was in power – with never another British official present – they had several meetings while Fox was shadow Foreign Secretary. O’Donnell is right that what Fox and Werritty were up to in opposition is not his concern. But what Gould was doing with them – a senior official – most definitely is.
A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid zionist lobbyist. What on earth was happening?
The absolutely astonishing cover-up and lack of honesty from the government about the Fox-Gould-Werritty relationship is being maintained with cast-iron resolve. Not only is Gould a self-declared fervent zionist, he was born in the same year as Chancellor George Osborne and attended the same private school – St Paul’s. At least some of the time he was meeting Fox and Werrity while they were in opposition, Gould was Private Secretary to New Labour Foreign Secretary David Milliband. That opens up the question of whether David Milliband, another fervent zionist, was part of the discussions with Mossad and US neo-cons on how to engineer war with Iran, for which Werritty was the conduit.
That would help explain the completeness of the cover-up. The government appears able with total impunity to refuse to answer MPs’ questions on Gould/Fox/Werritty, and they will not respond to Freedom of Information requests. It is now proven without doubt that O’Donnell lied blatantly about the number of Gould-Fox-Werritty meetings, and that Mossad was involved. And yet every single British mainstream media outlet still refuses to mention it.
I know from a mole that the plot involves a plan to attack Iran. For the cover-up to be so blatant and yet so comprehensively maintained, the secret at the heart of this conspiracy must be great, and those complicit must include a very large swathe of the British political and media establishment.
UPDATE: access to this blog is now blocked from FCO and Cabinet Office terminals. Very wise – truth can be contagious.
I’m not saying he’s genuinely interested in Palestinian human rights or whatever. I am simply suggesting that the inference we can draw from that most recent info. you kindly provided is that he was acting in that instance (re. NGOs) in the UK state’s perceived interests (which may well be imperialist in nature, eg. controlling/directing/monitoring Palestinian activity, etc.). This doesn’t have anything directly to do with his alleged work wrt Iran.
A nos moutons, nessieurs, mesdames:
Matthew Gould wasn’t just Robin Cook’s speechwriter:
“He charged the young buck Matthew Gould with setting up a reform group of young officials to modernise the Foreign Office – help it meet the challenges ahead with “the best of the British”. If you think this is boring, imagine how bored I feel typing the damned stuff. And so, this reform group set about innovating a series of technical changes which would begin to blast the hierarchy to Hades. The Foresight Report, published in 2000, crystallised these aspirations. Under-performers would be swept out, the Office would learn from its mistakes, equal opportunities would exist for every race and all three genders. Result? Well, it remains the case that the vast majority of place-fillers in the Foreign Office establishment are white men supplied by Oxbridge.”
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http://leninology.blogspot.com/2004/09/ministry-and-mandarin.html
Just goes to show that one man – in this case, Robin Cook – with or without “young bucks”, cannot change a system of centuries of entrenched privilege. The British class system will be reflected in most of its instutions and in civil society more generally as well. Oui.
And this system projects outwards as well as inwards, with subaltern elites – eg. the fasmous dictum about SOAS graduates tending to speak with ‘His Master’s Voice’ (apologies to SOAS grauates; this is of course a dreadful generalisation!). And so with elites in ‘Third World’ countries and a god swathe of ethnic minority gatekeepers in the UK itself. It’s an internalisation of the dominant conceptual framework.
‘good’, not ‘god’ (!)
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Sorry, moving off at a tangent now. Yet the variegated mechanics of imperialism are relevant in discourses of war; this is the frame in which people like Gould work.
“It’s an internalisation of the dominant conceptual framework.”
In clear, Suhayl, efendim, jobs for the boys. 🙂
Though it’s interesting to see that Gould chose to go with the privileged flow rather than seriously trying to do what his actual boss, Cook, wanted. More details on that period would be fascinating.
Quite a few companies are registered in that desirable terraced house in Spondon, including one with the fascinating name of FOX ASSOCIATE LLP. Connections back to Golders Green.
‘Jobs for the boys’ gives it a casual, sort of OK feeling of that’s how it is. But the corrupted power that drives the whole thing is sinister and evil. It uses human frailty and greed and seeps into any vestige it can find to preserve itself and extend its power.
harrowing sexual assaults carried out by crowds or police as they tried to cover demonstrations Classic rubbishing of the enemy of the moment, namely the Egyptians, whom have the audacity of rejecting the foisted “new democratic leader” sock puppet, and intent on setting up their own government; of the repressive Islamic kind of, so rejecting the free beer tomorrow notions of “ocracy”, hailed as the only way to live by so many on this board and elsewhere.
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Similar to Hamas that is not democratic, because Israel thinks it is not! Although the Palestinians in Gaza did vote for it. The Kabuki of “democracy”, and its spread thereof through carpet bombings, somehow does not take into account the swishes of the indigenous populations, whom are so clearly deemed to be wrong about their choices of modes of governance.
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The fact is warmongers may choose to bite off more than they can chew if these carry on their current waves of aggression. Given the degree of chaos; Competitive shopping; Woman pepper sprayed fellow shoppers This of course, as we all know, is in the best secular traditions!
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The vilification of the Egyptians with a view to stifle their right to self determination, is to ensure the rule of sock-puppets in charge for the duration of the American New Century (however long that may be?). Is akin to turning a blind eye on the numbers killed in Yemen, in addtion to those killed in Bahrain, and of late more killings as the unrest spreads to Saudi itself; Deadly clash hits Saudi province .
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Arab spring may well have been hijacked, but the Arabs, are bent on going for; “let’s roll”!
Interesting, Felix. I suspect the firm is a cutout to avoid disclosing who exactly is paying him, and for what. Where have I seen that before?
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I don’t remember if anyone mentioned that Gould had been a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee. This looks as if it would have been during his two years in Washington:
http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/news/2006/2006-09-28-britdiplomat.htm
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Pepperdine is a Christian university, and the words “religious Right” spring unbidden to mind.
Ruth,
I wouldn’t know about any of that. I’m coldblooded.
Jonathan Cook quoting Craig in the Palestine Chronicle
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=17271
It is widely reported (Indy, Telegraph, Guardian) that Werritty was debriefed by British intelligence. This last decade debrief was of course part of the precursor planning meeting to construct the Iranian election violent protest conspiracy that team Mossad’s subversion unit fabricated. This failed for a number of reasons not relevant here (those interested contact me) but was adaptable in a plot to overthrow Assad and destabilise Hezbollah.
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British intelligence know (we can guess) that Iran’s intelligence is active in Syria. My source has revealed that MI6/CIA have been exhaustively working to gather proof from ‘ghosts’ they call ‘trainers’ dressed in Syrian security forces uniform and murdering and killing ordinary Syrian protesters.
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To the extent the Iranian government is trying to impose a 2009-style reaction on Syria’s crackdown, it has clearly failed and now an explicitly organized militant faction of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), are being given organizational assistance by British Security.
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I believe Werritty et al. working with Israel were/are contriving to start a war on Iran by shining a bright light on the FSA fighting with “Iranian Revolutionary guards” – ghosts made up from so called ‘green movement’ activists or ‘anti-regime’ defectors and traitors – Werritty’s ‘opposition groups’ armed to the teeth with Iranian/Russian automatic weapons.
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I want to know where the wonga came from that paid for these weapons. I also charge Werritty with some organisation responsibility (he speaks Farsi) and I also want to know how and why this merry band of fighters are stationed in Turkey?
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You have been busted and now the British public demands the truth.
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Thank-you Craig
Craig,
You could resubmit your request but ask that the extent of the search be limited to what GOD has already had made available to him. The cost should be negligible since the search has already been done.
Here is the link to Cook’s article on Murray’s findings in Al-Akhbar English. It appeared on wednesday.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/matthew-gould-missing-link-%E2%80%9Crogue%E2%80%9D-uk-foreign-policy
Komodo
What makes you think Robin Cook actually wanted to reform the FCO? He made a big song and dance about having an ‘ethical’ foreign policy, and that was just for show. Probably having ‘all three genders’ and so on is likewise.
Is it absurd to think that the media will not touch your investigation because it is subject to a DA-notice?
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And if, as seems evident, both the last and the present government were and are, respectively, keen to promote war against Iran, then are not all meetings between Zionists, spies, ambassadors, Israeli ministers, UK ministers, shadow or otherwise, and Iranian traitors which promote that objective entirely consistent with government policy and, therefore, entirely commendable from the Government’s point of view.
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Which is not to say that those who oppose a war on Iran should not oppose and attempt to expose those who plot it, but merely to suggest that the odds on getting a government that is already worthy of commitment to the Hague for its war on Libya to admit anything in response to your inquiry seems essentially nil. If that is the case, bothering about FOI requests may be a waste of time, except insofar as the need for evasion may cause the government slight embarrassment. But war criminals seem not to embarrass easily.
It’s a standard reply. You are paranoid.
The company registered to that same address as Halfon’s Eucalyptus Leaves Ltd.
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Fox Associate LLP / Albert Marcus Fox
http://companycheck.co.uk/company/OC309435
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All these others use the same address.
{http://company-director-check.co.uk/director/902108955}
“Talking about democracy – why were my comments deleted twice? Am I banned??”
What on earth does democracy have to do with it? Do you know what “democracy” means?
I suspect that you went to the kind of comprehensive “school” that Craig’s mates and former paymasters installed in this country.
Wanker.
Enoch,
And do you contend it is standardly given at 11.31pm? As I said in a comment above, I have made a number of FOI requests – nostly involving a lot more work than this one – and I have never had that reply before. Of course it is a standard form of words sometimes used – but its use in this case is baffling.
@ Craig Chinless
While I despise your cheeky, pointless name and the general tone of your comment, I do agree that comments are being deleted without recourse. Nor are they recorded as being posted and deleted: they simply vanish. This is a great weakness of this blog which – in essence – has become a “me too’ club without any real debate. Pity.
Liam Fox’s Facebook Page is worth a visit for the comments readers have left, like inviting him to come out of the closet.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Liam-Fox/13948119719
Emma, we probably all had comments deleted yesterday. I know I did. But it was explained that for the moment the focus should be strictly on the blog. So in a way I’m surprised that your last one and that of Craig Chinless are still up.
There can be no doubt that you have touched a very sensitive spot and that the timely reply and the nature of the reasons given are , to put it mildly suspicious and with little doubt-spurious.
The issue then comes to a point of asking whether making a false statement under the FOI act is actionable in any way. I am not familiar with the legislation.
Is there any way tp ask for a justification of the rejection on cost grounds? Surely they have to make some statement qualifying their position.
It must be very weak legislation (and more or less worthless) if some official can simply make a peremptory rejection of the request which touches on sensitive material on cost grounds, without having to justify his or her position.
The problem here is that they have not used the justification for rejection of national security or some other critical matter that would preclude providing the information. So we must assume that to have done so is either dangerous or more easily unravelled under pressure or less defensible by a minister than the cost reason. Now that in itself is rather interesting as it suggests there is something improper here.
My main experience of large public organisations is that they are incredibly bone headed. Under the least pressure they start to come apart and make the most feeble errors and simply resort to petty territoriality and authoritarian pronouncements even when these make little sense . This is always a surprise because such organisations
appear so powerful and we make assumptions about power being smart. The head of the organisation is primarily sustained by the narcissism induced by the deference of subordinates and eventually has only this facade left, even when the person has shown considerable ability in achieving the position. O’Donell is certainly in a great self loving embrace as revealed by his use of the expression GOD as his mark. No doubt amusing once, after repetition such affectations simply become sinister. It is like the comedian howling with laughter at their own jokes or the lackeys who have no other option but to titter approvingly for the three hundredth time.
Emma, whilst not having anything against anybody’s pointless names here, your or mine included, or the general tone of your reply, was it something you said to the issue?
Enoch: Because Robin Cook was a (relatively) honest man.
Mark:
“To the extent the Iranian government is trying to impose a 2009-style reaction on Syria’s crackdown, it has clearly failed and now an explicitly organized militant faction of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), are being given organizational assistance by British Security.
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I believe Werritty et al. working with Israel were/are contriving to start a war on Iran by shining a bright light on the FSA fighting with “Iranian Revolutionary guards” – ghosts made up from so called ‘green movement’ activists or ‘anti-regime’ defectors and traitors – Werritty’s ‘opposition groups’ armed to the teeth with Iranian/Russian automatic weapons.
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I want to know where the wonga came from that paid for these weapons. I also charge Werritty with some organisation responsibility (he speaks Farsi) and I also want to know how and why this merry band of fighters are stationed in Turkey?”
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These are extremely relevant questions, and I hope the matter will be given more attention, not least by Craig. To drift off topic for a second, you will see that some of the principals in this (notably Halfon) have developed an interest in the Kurds, who live in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, Formerly a tribal area, since Roman times wholly lawless, the area is held by the Kurds to be Kurdistan, and they want it. For years, Israel and probably the US have been “advising” the Kurdish MEK, who are fighting Iran from E. Iraq. They are, paradoxically, listed as a terror group by the US, not least because they are rather difficult to distinguish from the PKK, which has a history of planting bombs in Turkish tourist resorts; they share the same training bases, or used to. But the US is hoping to de-list them:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14533756
No doubt that when the US/Israeli aim is accomplished, the formerly splendid chaps of the MEK will overnight be transformed into evil jihadists whose only aim is to destroy Western civilisation and who eat babies. So it goes.
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For “Enoch”, above, read “Antelope Grazer”.
Komodo, good point about the the courtship of the Kurds. Wasn’t Hazel Blears running a similar courtship for Blair? I thought it was komodo dragons that ate babies! LOL.
More illumination here, with a map of “Kurdistan” – which has never been a state,or anything like one – and some fairly biased reporting by (I’m guessing) Mark Regev’s pet researcher…
http://israelkurd.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=164:israel-kurd&catid=42:report
The names Crouch and Buckingham have been mentioned in connection with Fox-Werrity; Buckingham has oil interests in the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, and donates to the Conservatives.