The government could clear up the issue of Fox Gould and Werritty if it answered these very simple questions. They are questions to which in any real democracy we would be entitled to expect an answer, concerning officials paid by us. I have put these questions to them. Consider why the government refuses to answer these simple and obvious questions.
But the truly terrifying thing is not just that the government refuses to answer these questions from me, it is that the mainstream media refuses even to ask them:
How many times in total did Gould, Werritty and Fox meet?
How many of these are listed in O’Donnell’s official investigation?
Why the discrepancy?
Did the meeting between Fox, Gould and Werritty while Fox was Shadow Defence Secretary follow official rules concerning briefing of opposition front bench spokesmen by officials?
Where did it take place?
When did Gould first meet Werritty?
How many times did Gould meet Werritty without Fox present?
How many communications of all sorts have there ever been between Gould and Werritty?
Where precisely was the “Pre-posting briefing meeting” for Gould with Werritty and Fox held?
Why was it not held in the Secretary of State’s office?
Why was no MOD official present?
Who paid for the “Private dinner” between Fox, Gould and Werritty and “Senior Israelis” in Tel Aviv in February 2011?
Who was present?
Was any note subsequently made of the discussion?
Who paid for the “social engagement” to which Fox invited Gould and Werritty in summer 2010?
Who was present?
Was the possibility of an attack on Iran discussed in any of the above meetings, events or communications?
These really are very simple questions and I will happily report any answer in full. Every media outlet should be asking these questions. Remember Werritty had no security clearance. It is therefore not possible that the answers to these questions is classified information.
If the explanations are innocent, why should these questions not be answered?
ACTION Please send reasoned communications to mainstream media journalists and editors, asking them if they will put these questions to the government. You may also like to contact your MP or any other politician you find reasonable, to ask them whether they are not interested to know the answers.
The answer to these questions would not be hidden in a democracy.
Please post in comments all responses you get, including from journalists.
I agree, Cook’s comments are very sensible. Again he pinpoints that the lack of investigation of this by the mainstream media is really strange.
Letter composed and going off to my MP George Osborne. Thanks MikeD – I have cut & pasted some of the text of your excellent letter!
Craig, re meetings in Washington while Gould was was Foreign and Security Policy Counsellor there 2005 to March 2007. Looking at the old Atlantic Bridge charity accounts, they only acclaim one Liam Fox visit to Washington in that period, so it is pretty likely then. Though there are no public accounts before Feb 2006, so could be earlier. The 2007 accounts say:
“Dr Liam Fox addressed an audience at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC on 16th February 2006. The topics covered included the factors that make the Special Relationship work and an assessment of future challenges from the NATO operation in Afghanistan to the growing threat of international terrorism.”
Links below about this meeting, including MP3 recording. Hague and Osborne also went on that ‘befriend the Republicans’ 16 February 2006 trip.
A few months later Nile Gardiner, who hosted the Fox Heritage Foundation meeting, wrote about the Iran-Fox-Straw-Blair situation, confirming the Fox “aggressive line”:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/04/forging-a-us-british-coalition-to-end-irans-nuclear-weapons-program
“Straw’s views are not, however, representative of opinion in Downing Street and reflect a divided state of affairs within the British government. In addition, his outright rejection of the use of force as an option has been sharply criticized by the UK’s Shadow Defense Secretary, Liam Fox, and the Conservative Party, which is pushing an aggressive line on the Iranian issue.”
The Atlantic Bridge accounts list two further Fox visits to the U.S. in 2006, but not Washington, so less likely to offer an easy Gould-Fox-Herrity meeting venue:
“Author and political commentator James Hirsen and Dr Liam Fox addressed a gathering of 70 at the Regency Club in Los Angeles, USA. This dinner occurred on the 12th July 2006 with sponsorship from Kirkland & Ellis, LLP (of Chicago, Illinois)
On the 18th October 2006, Dr Liam Fox met with leaders of the Pittsburgh business community at a reception held at The Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr Fox discussed the war on terror, energy security, and the Iraq war.”
Here are the links on Fox’s Heritage Foundation speech:
http://www.heritage.org/multimedia/audio/making-sense-of-the-special-relationship
http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2006/02/Fox_Security_and_Defence__Making_sense_of_the_special_relationship.aspx
You are up on Information Clearing House as one of their main items.
A great coup.
An excellent site.
Hope this isn’t already on.
Mary – so it’s an Old Pauline, not a Zionist conspiracy! Now I know what it feels like to be tentacular.
Say what you like about St. Pauls, bearing in mind the libel laws, but antisemitic tropes are pretty thin on the ground there.
I wrote to my M.P. Steve McCabe again yesterday. I think he’s a bit overworked. The last letter I got from him was for somebody else.
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This is so important. It ought to be making waves all through the world media. The internet is a useful tool. Without it this debate might have been squashed. Eventually somebody in the media has to bring things out in the open.
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My faith lies in one of my favourite novels “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” by Robert Tressell (real name Robert Noonan). This working class author died young (probably from consumption) and his daughter hawked the novel round till it found a publisher. It never appears (or didn’t) on university curricula, or ‘A’ level reading-lists (or didn’t) never gets publicised, except word of mouth by people like me, yet when the BBC did a poll of the top 100 novels a few years back it was in the top 70. Not bad for a book ignored by the mass media. Keep the faith.
@Komodo – I’d hate for there to be too many antisemitic tropes just lying around at St. Pauls. Couldn’t they be a tripping hazard?
Here’s an antisemitic trope. Now HERE IS an antisemitic trope. I wonder the guy’s still alive:
http://rt.com/news/us-muslim-policy-sheuer-895/
does anyone have any contact with AVAAZ? They certainly know how to raise 100k plus signatures. They were the main source of objection to the Murdoch take over of BSKYB and currently have over a million signatures re the Palestinian statehood issue. Potential war with Iran surely would interest them?
Done, I’ve emailed my MP. However my MP never replies to emails from this nobody (at least, it hasn’t happened yet), so I wouldn’t hold your breath. 🙁
I think it’s time we stop using the term mainstream media. And call it what it is, the Robert Maxwell owned media. BEcause near enough everything we see, hear or watch here is owned or at least partially controled by him.
Even the media that isn’t is forced to submit to his will to some extent, because they are always at risk of lossing their Jobs if he ever buys a controlling stake in their companies.
We had an antisemitic trope but it died.
Robert Maxwell is alive?? Bloody hell, the media he owns are hiding that one pretty well! 😉
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@Nuid, I am sorry to hear about the passing of your trope. Do they make good pets?
Guardian won’t even tolerate mentioning the Gould affair on CiF.
I wonder where the pressure is coming from?
Hello.
You have made Antiwar.com.
Not on their main page but click on other viewpoints.
Still in good company.
My first comment on your blog! I want to congratulate you on this story. If more people kept on asking the right questions and showing the lack of proper answers – or sometimes any answers at all – they would expose politicians and senior officials lies and obfuscation and, eventually, utterly destroy their credibility with anybody who does not directly gain or not brainwashed.
Keep up the good work!
Arsalan
Given recent events I think it would be a pretty difficult argument to sustain that the Guardian was controlled by Rupert Murdoch let alone the long dead Robert Maxwell – but I suppose you never know with these dead Zionists until you have put a stake through their hearts? Conspiracy theory of the week surely.
Have emailed my MP Richard bacon with the questions, he was out and out against the war in Iraq, but he’s slow to come up with answering when the issue is sticky.
Welcome here Neill, please do bother your MP with these legitamite questions to the FCO, the more the FCO gets the better.
Stephen, I think we can assume that Arsalan made a typographical error. Which was lucky because it gave us a chance to sample not only your wit but your obstinacy in hewing to right wing talking points.
Good to see that so many commenters have contacted their MPs.
One easy way to e-mail your MP is via WriteToThem:
http://www.writetothem.com/
The WriteToThem facility allows pasting of material, so you can append Craig’s entire article of 14.11.11 to the end of your e-mail, making it much easier for your MP to read it.
Alex Grant,
Avaaz? Are you kidding? They have an anti-Iran anti-Syria agenda. I would like you to try with them to petition against war on Iran and see the results.
By the way, while you are at it, ask them to save the world!
Avaaz know how to con people.
There’s no interest in this story so far from the MSM. Craig Murray is being ignored -it’s everyone’s worst nightmare!
Might that perhaps be because that Murray presents no evidence whatsoever that these meetings had anything to do with ‘a plot to attack Iran’? And when I say ‘no evidence whatsover’ what I actually mean is: ‘NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER’. None.
It reminds me of dear old Harold (some of you may be old enough to remember him) Wilson, and his briefing of the journalists Penrose and Courtier: “Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.”
Wilson had relapsed into some kind of a pre-dementia paranoid state and it was very sad to see a powerful mind collapse. I would suggeat that what is to be seen here is analogous.
There may well be plans to neutralise Iran’s nuclear warfare capacity. I hope there are. Failure to plan for that would represent an abrogation of responsibility to plan for the security of the entire world, not only the middle east. But Murray has uncovered nothing to suggest their existance. Nothing at all, and he is relying on the suggestibility of his usual followers to gain some kind of traction for this particular ‘plot’.
But, as an Old Pauline, I would say that wouldn’t I?
Julian
Quote
‘There may well be plans to neutralise Iran’s nuclear warfare capacity.
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There already is.
It is some 5 – 10,000 nuclear missiles all pointing in the direction of Teheran should they even accidentally let off a giant fire work.
They do not need to plot to destroy a nation and murder millions of its citizens in case it manages to get, what? half a dozen nuclear warheads.
Big deal.
Known as the insurance policy syndrome invented by North Korea and probably being folowed by more fourth world nations than you have fingers and toes.
I imagine LIbya was the final straw.
People like you are suffering from some strange form of political paranoia – either that or the killing of tens of thousands of innocents as we have just witnessed in Libya satifies some primitive blood lust.
Sad but actually evil.
Arsalan, Jon, is it true then that Robert Maxwell is the only person from MGN getting a pension?
Daisy, thsnkd for the attention, but I can’t follow your reasoning. Are you saying that the deaths in Libya satisfy a primitive blood lust in me, and that I’m sad but actually evil? Is that it?
Julian, hello. Your characterisation of the matters concerning Harold Wilson suggests that your views are as dogmatic as those you seek to criticise. The Wilson Affair(s) are by no means as clear-cut as you make out.
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But really, what on earth does Harold Wilson have to do with Craig Murray? Do you draw the comparison to suggest to readers that Craig Murray is in “some kind of a pre-dementia paranoid state”? If so, what precisely is your clinical evidence?
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Craig Murray’s revelations raise more questions that answers – and he has posted those questions on this thread. He – and we – are simply asking for those questions to be asked. If there is nothing to hide, then the questions ought to be easy to answer. Then, once we have the answers, we can decide whether or not there is any evidence of anything.
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Since we seem to be dwelling in the realms of long-term memory, your post reminded me of the famous phrase: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.
going back to the e petition
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http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions
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it would appear that a short summary of the case (questions needing answers) could be made and posted .. maybe just the fact that there is an e petition could bump up media interest .. more so if there was a large enough response.
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really the article should have been published in conjunction with an e petition .. that would have been the efficient way to highlight the allegations
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really craig should have had some process of working that enables his thinking, commentary to have greater impact if not in the corporate media certainly the independent media.
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think in terms of alex jones who is overlooked by corporate media but effectively has his message reported in that very media because he utilises all the alternative resources that are available to him.
Julian, the plot to attack Iran has existed since 2002. Preventing those most likely to be involved at top level – and such people are not going to inform the likes of you or me about it – is a priority. Setting up a spurious charity (Atlantic Bridge) enabled the laundering of money, because that’s what it appears to have been, largely from very rich Israeli businessmen, to circumvent the money laundering laws applied to ordinary businesses, is the first piece in a frightening jigsaw. The money appears to have been used to fund,among other things, Liam Fox’s overseas visits with his friend Adam Werritty, but may also have been used in weapons’ financing. If you don’t believe it is about attacking Iran you need to catch up with the reading.
In my opinion to appoint a Jewish ambassador to Israel is like appointing a member of Hamas as British ambassador to Palestine. It is provocative in the extreme and spells out the agenda of certain members of this government, Hague, Osborne et al.
“Suhayl Saadi”: ‘Your characterisation of the matters concerning Harold Wilson suggests that your views are as dogmatic as those you seek to criticise.’ Don’t follow you.
‘The Wilson Affair(s) are by no means as clear-cut as you make out.’ Wheels within wheels eh? Gosh.
‘He – and we – are simply asking for those questions to be asked. If there is nothing to hide, then the questions ought to be easy to answer.’ No you’re not. Everyone here has already made up their mind. Notice I use the singular. There’s a hive-mind here.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”. Avoid clichés wherever possible is my advice. Unless you’re trying to be rude or something.
“John Goss”: “Julian, the plot to attack Iran has existed since 2002. Preventing those most likely to be involved at top level – and such people are not going to inform the likes of you or me about it – is a priority.” This sentence does not make actual sense. This does not surprise me.
“Setting up a spurious charity (Atlantic Bridge) enabled the laundering of money,…” Two baseless statements in one breath. Wonderful.
“…is the first piece in a frightening jigsaw.” Who is frightened? Not me. You may be, but you’d be frightened if you found a raisin in your muesli.
“The money appears to have been used to fund,among other things, Liam Fox’s overseas visits with his friend Adam Werritty, but may also have been used in weapons’ financing.” Overseas trips, eh? Gotta be something strange there! And weapons financing? May have been used for? What’s wrong with the mini-bar?
“In my opinion to appoint a Jewish ambassador to Israel is like appointing a member of Hamas as British ambassador to Palestine. It is provocative in the extreme and spells out the agenda of certain members of this government, Hague, Osborne et al.” That’s just childish. But if the agenda is to support a democracy against the theocratic supremacists of Hamas et al, then that’s an agenda only lunatics would oppose.