An important rule of good blogging is not to comment on matters which you do not understand. An important rule of my own life is not to try to understand everything, as no one man can. I have never tried to master the intricacies of Syrian internal politics, (or Lebanese for that matter). Assad senior perpetrated atrocities on a grand scale without ever getting much attention from the West. Hopes that Assad junior would make things much better seemed to come to nothing. If the revolutionary tide swept away the Assad crew, I should be pleased.

I do not know in depth why Homs is a hotbed of opposition, and what the tribal divisions are. I do know that Saudi Arabia – the apostle state of repression – is funding and arming the Free Syrian Army, which is anything but a good sign. I am very interested that the BBC reports bombings in Damascus as false flag bombings by the Assad regime, when I found that to note false flag bombings by UK/US ally Karimov in Tashkent was treated as crazed conspiracy theory.

But what I understand most is the diplomacy. On Libya, NATO took a UN Security Council Resolution authorising a no fly zone, and twisted it as cover to wage all out aerial warfare on one side in a civil war. Long after pro-Gadaffi sources lost any serious offensive capability, NATO were carpet-bombing Sirte, killing many times more people than Assad has killed in Homs to date.

If given an inch you take 500 miles, you should not be surprised when in future nobody will give you half an inch. That is the context of Russian and Chinese veto of any UNSCR authorising action against Syria. The total disregard for the spirit and precise wording of the resolutions on Libya to which Russia and China agreed, has stymied the chances of future united security council action, perhaps for many years. I actually predicted this, blogging on 5 October 2011

“Having absolutely abused UNSCR 1973, plainly NATO was seriously damaging the ability of the Security Council to work together in future, and making quite certain that China and Russia would not for many years agree to any SC Resolutions which might be open to similar abuse.”

All the sham indignation about a consequence the US, UK and France so directly brought upon themselves, and which was so obviously predictable, is pathetic.

It is fascinating the way this has been presented in the media, with graphics on all the major news channels showing the national flags of the thirteen countries who voted for the resolution, compared to the two against. There is some interest here – Azerbaijan is certainly a surprise and will be causing real heartache in the Kremlin. But the language from Clinton on the irresponsible use of the veto and on need for action outwith the United Nations, is completely out of order.

The United States has stymied UN action against Israeli aggression on numerous occasions, very often vetoing alone. I do not recall the BBC ever showing a graphic of all the national flags on one side versus just the stars and stripes on the other. Funny that. The threat of a veto is usually enough to stop a motion being tabled, but I am fairly confident in saying that the USA has exercised its veto to protect Israel on over thirty occasions. That US prevention of international action includes over Operation Cast Lead, not so long ago, where again the Israelis were killing far more civilians than are dying in the current – still deplorable – assault on Homs.

The drive for another war in the Middle East, from the same old suspects who profit from such wars, is relentless and pretty well any war of opportunity will do. What is happening in Syria is sad in its violence, and also hopeful insofar as some of it is motivated by a genuine spark of freedom. Those who purport to believe that internal conflict anywhere is best resolved by us bombing the hell out of a country and/or invading it, are a combination of cranks and cynical profiteers.

What worries me most is not the turmoil in Syria; it is the vultures circling over it.

It is now four days and three postal deliveries since the FCO emailed me saying that they were sending me the Gould/Werritty diary entries by post, together with a covering letter – and something else of which the very existence is explosive news. But still, this has not actually arrived.

I know that there has been a massive argument going on in the FCO about what I am legally entitled to receive under the Freedom of Information Act, and just how much they are revealing by adding the additional bits of information. I cannot believe that they are going, even now, to resile from the commitment they made to me to send the documents, and I can only imagine there is continuing haggling over what can be redacted.

I have not succeeded yet, but I must say I am happily surprised that there is still enough of the rule of law left in this country for those within the FCO to prevail who were arguing that the FCO had to comply with its legal obligation and release the material. There were those who wanted the material simply to be quietly destroyed. I know names, and those will also follow later. I suspect this new, after the last minute, extra delay means there will be extra redaction in the material.

No wonder the arch-liar Gus O’Donnel as he left his job was arguing for the castration of the Freedom of Information Act. He has a great deal to hide.

For saying a black man did it and ran away. In other news Frank Lampard tipped to be new Energy Secretary.

After yesterday’s blog post I was contacted by the FCO and I now know the reason the FCO was trying to conceal the diary entries for the Gould-Werritty meetings. The answer is absolutely stunning, but I have to wait for documents the FCO is sending me by post before I reveal it.

Evidence continues to mount that, rather than simply pursuing commercial interests with then Defence Secretary Liam Fox, Adam Werritty was involved centrally in working with the British and Israeli intelligence services to try to engineer war against Iran. His official contact in all this was Matthew Gould, now British Ambassador to Israel.

Gould met with Werritty on 8 September 2009. At the time, Gould was Principal Private Secretary to then Secretary of State David Miliband. It is very unusual indeed for the Private Secretary to hold policy or lobbying meetings with outsiders in this way. Still more extraordinarily, nine months later, on 16 June 2010, Gould met with Werritty again, now as Private Secretary to current Secretary of State William Hague.

A Private Secretary only acts directly for his minister – the Private Secretary has no other role. For a Private Secretary to meet a lobbyist on behalf of two different Secretaries of State from opposing political parties is so very strange as to be almost inexplicable.

The government is extremely set on hiding what was happening. The existence of these meetings was revealed in the 22 December 2011 FCO reply to my Freedom of Information request.

The strange thing about this, is that normally in response to a Freedom of Information request you are given documents, not just told about them. In fact, that is a specific entitlement under the Freedom of Information Act.

I therefore replied on 23 December:

I received no reply, so I wrote again on 23 January,

Neil,

Thank you. You refer to diary entries. Kindly send copies of those diary entries, which I believe the FOIA entitles me to see rather than simply be told of. This is not a new request, merely seeking a full response to FOI 1243-11.

Very many thanks,

Craig

On 27 January – after five whole weeks – I received this reply:

Dear Mr Murray

Anna

It is a very simple request indeed – copies of two diary entries. But the FCO is extremely anxious not to give them out. FCO Legal Advisers were consulted and said that, under the FOI Act, the FCO was legally obliged to release them. The FCO has now gone to the Justice Department and Treasury Solicitors looking for a different answer. I have this from a sympathetic source in FCO Legal Advisers (which is a large department, and miffed to be overruled in this way).

My source has not told me what the diary entries say, but has said it appears that these meetings between Werritty and Gould were taking place without the knowledge of other FCO officials. That opens up one particularly interesting possibility. The Secretary of State at the FCO is the head not just of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but also of MI6. His Principal Private Secretary is his right hand man for both roles. Was Gould therefore meeting Werritty on behalf of first Miliband and then Hague, with the MI6 hat on rather than the FCO hat on? The diary entries may give that away, particularly if they list the other participants in the meetings – or if they were held in Vauxhall Cross.

It is also worth reflecting whether other ministers or others in the Labour Party generally knew what Miliband was up to with Werritty. This is a particularly apt question given David Miliband’s New Statesman article today arguing that New Labour needs to move further to the right and be more big business-friendly.

There is still a very great deal which the FCO is holding back. In particular, we do not know if the eight Gould/Werritty meetings of which we now know, constitute the whole number, or if there are more. See for example this answer to a Parliamentary Question from Caroline Lucas MP:

Hansard 10 January 2012 Column 73W

Caroline Lucas: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Islington North of 31
October 2011, Official Report, column 374W, on Adam Werritty, how many
meetings in his official capacity Mr Matthew Gould has attended at which Mr
Adam Werritty was present since the commencement of Mr Gould’s employment at
his Department in 1993. [87577]

Mr Lidington: The Department does not hold information listing all meetings
held by officials. However, based on diary records in this case, we are
aware of Mr Matthew Gould attending four meetings in his official capacity
(8 September 2009, 16 June 2010, 1 September 2010, and 27 September 2010) at
which Mr Adam Werritty was present. In addition to this, though they were
not meetings, Mr Gould also attended the Herzliya conference in February
2011 and, as listed in the Cabinet Office report on the allegations against
my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset
(Dr Fox) of 18 September 2011, attended a dinner on 6 February 2011. Mr
Werritty was present at these events.

Consider this bit of the response:

The Department does not hold information listing all meetings
held by officials. However, based on diary records in this case, we are
aware of Mr Matthew Gould attending four meetings in his official capacity

Then compare to this bit of the reply to my FOI request:

I can confirm that the FCO does hold some information relevant to your request.

There are entries in diaries indicating …

The FCO holds no information relating to written communication (either electronic or mail) between Matthew Gould and Adam Werritty at any point

The extraordinary thing is that Matthew Gould remains an employee of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but it is plain from these replies that the FCO have not taken the simple step of asking him how often he met Werritty and what communication there was between them. The FCO has instead limited itself to releasing either to me or indeed to parliament only that information which they were legally obliged to release because it was written down in an official FCO document.

It is a simply astonishing fact that, of the eight meetings between Gould and Werritty we do know of, not one was minuted or recorded or resulted in any correspondence. For anybody who knows the FCO’s insistence on recording all non internal meetings, it is simply not believable that eight meetings can be held and not a single word recorded. The only possible explanation is a deliberate and active policy of concealing what was happening.

Remember, if Gould had not made the mistake of noting some of these appointments in his official diary, we would never have been told that these meetings happened at all. How many other meetings with Werritty did Gould not put a reminder for in his official diary? We just do not know.

All this is a part of what seems to be a major policy of keeping from democratic scrutiny the activities of officials in dealing with the political classes’ most shady financiers. See for example the refusal to answer this question from yet another parliamentarian, Kevan Jones:

Mr Kevan Jones: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether (a) he, (b) any Ministers and (c) officials of his Department have met (i) Mr Michael Hintze, (ii) Mr Tony Buckingham, (iii) Mr Michael Davis, (iv) Mr Poju Zabludowicz, (v) Jon Moulton and (vi) Stephen Crouch; and where any such meetings took place. [78653]

Miss Chloe Smith: Treasury Ministers and officials have meetings with a wide variety of organisations and individuals in the public and private sectors as part of the process of policy development and delivery. As was the case with previous Administrations, it is not the Government’s practice to provide details of all such meetings.
A list of ministerial meetings with external organisations is published quarterly on the HM Treasury website.

Jones has listed a choice set of complete villains: we are not allowed to know of officials’ dealings with them. I have long argued that there is little point in a parliament dominated by three neo-con parties. But where even MPs are not allowed information about what taxpayer-funded officials are doing, I really wonder how MPs can put up with this charade and maintain any sense of decency and self-respect. The expenses help, no doubt.

Tension over Iran continues to be stoked for the next neo-con war. Werritty’s role as a go-between with MI6, Mossad and Iranian pro-Shah groups came briefly into view as a result of what the press thought was a ministerial gay scandal, but government and a complicit media and opposition have sought to bury it as quickly as possible, before the real truth is revealed. I am not going to let that happen.

The investigation continues. Do not get your news from TV or newspapers – only on little blogs like this is there any chance of catching a glimpse beneath the propaganda story.

“Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over GIRoA [the Afghan government], usually as a result of government corruption, ethnic bias and lack of connection with local religious and tribal leaders”.

That is a direct quote from a NATO report. This blog has been telling you for six years that the Afghan government rigged its elections, is enormously corrupt, full of warlords and deeply implicated in the heroin trade. That the “Afghan army” is a tribal construct based on the Northern Alliance, and channels weapons to warlords. That no development is really happening. That the government of Afghanistan is comprised of individuals who make money from war and have no interest in peace.

All this has been at odds with the mainstream media narrative, which consists of embedded journalists and visiting ministers telling us that British troops are bringing civilisation to Afghanistan, roads are being built, markets opened and little girls going to school. The leaking of a candid NATO report on the genuine situation has brought us one day of reporting which jars with the general narrative flow.

Watch the propaganda machine go into top gear and more of the same old lies pouring forth in the next few days.

Personally I don’t care if he is called His Holy Magnificence Viceroy Goodwin of the Water of Leith. The Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Battenberg familiy three times offered to honour me (LVO, OBE and CVO) and three times I politely refused. I did not think my worth as an individual would be enhanced by being covered in bling by Greco-German midgets.

Come to think of it, German Liz has been subsidising Greek Phil for sixty years. See how modern the Royal Family is – they even provided the model for the Euro.

Goodwin is a distraction from the fact that the resources of socirty are being channelled to the super-rich and unproductive as never before. Thousands of “bankers” in London are getting millions each in bonuses. These people are so regardless of the views of society and of the plight of others as to be truly sociopathic.

Let them keep their baubles, and wear them on their prison uniforms.

The law is not blind in this country – “joint enterprise” is used almost exclusively against young black men. But I can see no reason why the principle of joint enterpirse should not apply equally to those who set the policy under which people were rendered to be tortured in Libya, rather than merely to the security service functionaries who carried out the policy. In my reading of joint enterprise, if Ministers can show they were not involved in signing off individual rendition permissions, they should still be guilty for having participated in the behaviour that made such results likely, indeed inevitable.

I have given evidence to parliament that I was told, officially, as a British Ambassador, that Jack Straw had initiated a policy of using intelligence obtained by torture. I also testified before parliament that this was an unacknowledged policy which I was told, officially, should not be discussed in writing. The government has at no stage attempted to deny the truth of my account. The government did not submit evidence to the Parliamentary committee to claim that my account was untrue. The government has nowhere stated that my evidence is untrue; they prefer to rely on private media briefings to claim, untruly, that I am mad and alcoholic.

I shall tell the police that those involved in rendering persons to be Libya to be tortured were doing so in keeping with a War on Terror torture intelligence programme authorised by Jack Straw. It is no secret what I will say; here I am saying it.

Of course, I realise that the Crown Prosecution Service and the Met will,three years hence, claim there were no grounds to prosecute anybody. I am not that naive. But the fact of a formal police investigation will force some attention on whether or not my account is true. Ignoring the facts and just being rude about me is less easy in a criminal investigation.

The Iraqi governmnet executed 34 people in a single day last week, and judicial killings are running at over 600 people a year. Extra-judicial killings by state sponsored actors are much higher, and still higher are killings by various violent factions.

Meantime there are less than a third as many operational hospital beds as before the invasion, and less than 20% of the doctors. There are three million maimed people in Iraq. Available electricity in MW/h is about 30% of pre-invasion levels.

I am waiting for a neo-con acolyte to tell us now how the “liberal intervention” has greatly improved the lot of the people of Iraq.

The security services are delighted at the cancellation of the Gibson Inquiry into torture. Gibson had been showing worrying signs of independence. To use my own humble case as an example, he instructed the FCO, to their fury, that I must be allowed to see unredacted any document which I had already seen whilst Ambassador, and that I must be provided with paid legal assistance for my evidence on the same basis as other former public servants.

It is true that the terms which the government had set for the inquiry were ludicrous. Security service evidence would all be heard in secret, victims would not be allowed to question witnesses, the Cabinet Secretary, not Gibson, would decide what could and could not be published, and the CIA would have a veto on the publication of anything that related to their activities – including my own evidence.

But it was nonetheless true that a bad inquiry would be better than no inquiry, particularly given Gibson’s signs of fairness. Nothing short of assassination would prevent me from publishing my own evidence online, for example, and I would encourage detainees and others to take the same attitude.

The huge amount of time and energy devoted by the security services to persuade ministers firstly to constrain and then to cancel Gibson, is sufficient evidence in itself that the Gibson Inquiry would have been worth having. John Sawers has devoted more of his time to fighting the inquiry internally than to any single other subject, and become a hero to the torturers of Vauxhall Cross in the process.

It is ludicrous that Kenneth Clarke has announced that the Gibson Inquiry cannot go ahead because of the Metropolitan Police inquiry into rendition and torture anent Libya, when the Leveson Inquiry continues despite the long-running and delberately ineffective police investigations into News International.

The Gibson Inquiry contacted me in a friendly and helpful way, inviting me to submit a short evidence narrative for consideration in the interim report they will publish, to explain and put in context the official documents which I had supplied.

It dawned on me that my evidence of ministerial endorsement of a secret policy of collusion in torture, is extremely important to the Metropolitan Police investigation into rendition and torture, in favour of which Gibson has been cancelled.

This morning I therefore contacted Scotland Yard. I gave details of who I was and what I wanted to give evidence about. I was told a senior inspector would need to be consulted. Eventually, I was phoned back.

Scotland Yard stated that there is no investigation into complicity with rendition and torture in Libya.

UPDATE: Through the Gibson Inquiry secretariat I have now been put in contact with a senior policeman who will see me next week. Insofar as it is wise to comment on a criminal investigation (I certainly don’t want to jeopardise any prosecution) I will keep you posted on how “real” the police investigation seems to be.

I am sorry there have been so few posts lately. I am terrifically busy. Yesterday I was up before dawn and back after midnight, having spent the day in Wales. Regular readers will realise that I am working on something I shan’t be able to blog about until it has come to fruition. I was most amused recently by a commenter who called me an “armchair critic.” I shall be in Germany, Brazil, Afghanistan and Ghana in the next two months.

Also I continue to dig into the extraordinary case of Adam Werritty and just why he was holding all those meetings with Matthew Gould, while Gould was Private Secretary to Miliband and then while he was Private Secretary to Hague, and then while he was UK Ambassador to Israel. I have new information, but as I am working on it with someone else quasi-mainstream I shan’t break it before they do. It is a story that really ought to be a television documentary, but given the mainstream media blackout, I was considering whether a podcast format might be a good way to get it further out there. But I need someone who can film it in a reasonably professional way, cutting in pictures, document extracts and interviews in a manner that looks good.

Any ideas or volunteers out there?

I guess we are in for a full three years of anti-Scottish lies from the mainstream media. One of the most common unionist lies is that Spain would veto Scottish independence, as claimed in today’s Independent. This canard has been about for years and is assiduously spread by unioinists. I have discussed it in the past with senior Spanish diplomats, and they have been unanimous that it is impossible that Spain would seek to veto Scottish membership.

Firstly, nobody in the EU has ever left the EU voluntarily, let alone been expelled, and the idea that 5 million EU citizens in a stongly pro-EU country would be thrown out against their will is not in the realm of practical politics. The whole dynamic of the EU is expansive, with countries continually accepted into membership who technically should not be. Everybody knows, for example, that Romania and Bulgaria were not remotely close to compliance with the acquis communitaire when they were admitted. There is no appetite anywhere in the EU to argue that an EU member successor state would have to re-apply.

Secondly, Scots are much liked internationally. There is a strong popular understanding throughout Europe of Scottish desire for independence – bagpipes, Braveheart and a separate football team are an intrinsic part of this strong Scottish popular recognition. There are no votes in Europe in being beastly to the Scots, and that includes Spain. The Spanish government are not stupid. It would be very unpopular in Spain to act against the Scots, and would infuriate the Catalans and actually boost the independence movement there. Tactically, there are times when it is best to pretrend to be relaxed about self-determination, as Cameron is doing.

Thirdly, there is a real difference here with the Kossovans. Spain does not oppose Slovenia, Croatia or other parts of the former Yugoslavia from EU membership. It did not oppose the Czech Republic or Slovakia. Spain does not automatically argue against EU membership for splitting states – that is a lie spread by English unionists. Unlike Kossovo, the Scottish state is not inextricably linkes with organised crime, and is not outside the EU.

Finally, as an example of Unionist lies and tricks, read the Independent article very carefully. You will see that the anaonymous “source” of the claim that Spain will veto Scottish EU membership is not anything to do with the Spanish government, but a Whitehall official.

The actual headline of the article should be:

“Whitehall Official Lies that Spain Would Veto Scottish EU Membership”.

Following a recent post mentioning that recently my financial affairs have not been good, a number of readers were kind enough to place orders for The Catholic Orangemen of Togo using the button on the right. I know this because several emailed me about signatures and dedication messages.

Unfortunately I can see no sign of any of these orders in my Paypal account and no money has been received. This is very strange as plainly my correspondents were under the impression they have successfully placed orders and paid. I am worried lest the account has been hijacked in some way I don’t understand.

I recently updated the email address on the account, and that may be the cause of the problems. But I can still enter the account and the details of historic attractions are all still there.

Can anyone who thinks they have ordered check their paypal accounts to see if the funds have indeed gone out, and if it gives any more info on the account to which they went?

The French government has suspended training for Afghan forces after four of their troops were killed by an Afghan soldier under training. Extraordinarily, that makes eight NATO troops killed by their trainees in 2012 already. It is the most extreme example of the complete failure of the occupation to achieve any of its ostensible aims. It is not even achieving any of its hidden aims, other than the channelling of huge amounts of our money to the arms industry.

But do not worry: NATO have come up with a brilliant and effective policy response to this problem. They are suppressing statistics on NATO personnel killed or wounded by Afghan army and police personnel. So that’s alright, then.

Meryl Streep took best actress award at the Golden Globes for The Iron Lady. There has been much media speculation about the motivation for Alex Salmond choosing Autumn 2014 for the independence referendum, largely centring around Bannockburn. Personally I can see the referendum coinciding brilliantly with Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral in London. That really would clinch it.

Pardon a rather navel-gazing morning, but I have been thinking about blogging. I am not sure how the Leverson Inquiry got into discussion of blogging, but apparently the editor of the Daily Mirror has described bloggers as “cowboys”.

If you read this blog you would, even in the last few months find definite and documented evidence that Jack Straw is lying about his complicity in torture, that Gus O’Donnell lied spectacularly about Adam Werritty’s number of meetings with the FCO, that there was a secret diplomatic deal between the US and Saudi Arabia that provided for the NATO attack on Libya and the Saudi invasion of Bahrain. You would not know any of those things from reading the Daily Mirror, or any other mainstream paper, with an honorable partial exception for the Independent.

Yet to my knowledge the only blogger to appear at Leverson has been the ultra right pin-up boy Paul Staines.

I have entered this blog for the Orwell Prize this year. I have never done so before. I had not realised, until I received an email last week, that the Prize accepts entries purely on the basis of self-nomination. That presumably rules out most decent people from the start. But I did have to select eight blog entries from 2011 for the nomination, and I found a dozen or so of which I am quite proud. This gave me impetus to move forward with an idea I have had for some time. I wish to bring out a book of collected writings.

My working title is “Zionism is Bullshit – Craig Murray and the Need for Dissent 2005-2011“. I want to bring together not just the best entries of this blog, but published articles, and transcriptions of speeches and talks, as well as highlights of evidence to parliament etc. I probably won’t be able to incorporate comments from the blog, as copyright and permission issues look a bit nightmarish.

A book called “Zionism is Bullshit” is going to have to be self published and sold via the internet. That worked fairly well for The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. There are now 74 left of the original 1200 hardbacks printed. Please buy a copy or two, using the buttons on the right. My hubris has been punished, and in the two months since I announced I will be donating 10% of my income to Scottish Independence, my income has been nil (except £64 profit on Catholic Orangemen sales). Like “The Catholic Orangemen“, “Zionism is Bullshit” will be available for free download.

For those of us who grew up thinking of American culture as related closely to our own, it is quite hard to come to terms with the fact that there is a very substantial strand to US popular culture that makes it a danger to the entire world, and requires a dedicated worldwide effort at containment and reorientation.

If you have any doubt of that, just read the comments here in the LA Times. We know Perry is an arse, but look at what LA Times readers “think”. And remember the LA Times is at the liberal end of the spectrum, insofar as the US has one.

There are more Americans locked up in jails than citizens of any other developed country. Unfortunately, largely the wrong ones.

Americans pissing on murdered Afghans – a description of every Republican candidates’ debate and every Clinton and Obama speech.

So nobody in the security services was guilty of complicity in torture. Those rendered to torture were in fact whisked off by flying pigs. Or maybe a big boy did it and ran away.

I should say I never had the tiniest bit of doubt that the institutionally corrupt Metropolitan Police would let off the security services. Nobody ever is guilty in these things. It was nobody’s fault that an unarmed and unresisting electrician was shot six times in the head as he sat on a tube train. It was nobody’s fault the police subsequently lied about him. It is nobody’s fault that MI5 and MI6 officers were interviewing detainees with freshly mutilated genitals. It was nobody’s fault that, when I blew the whistle on active UK complicity in torture, I was immediately suspended from duty and charged with eighteen allegations of gross misconduct, every one of which was subsequently adjudged to be false. It was nobody’s fault that David Kelly died a horrible, lonely and mysterious death after letting slip the truth – that there were no Iraqi WMD. It was nobody’s fault that hundreds of thousands died and trillions were squandered due to the lies officially published – by nobody’s fault – about WMD.

I have views on this lying exoneration today which are more complex than you might expect. The MI5 and MI6 officers were following policy set out by Tony Blair and Jack Straw, that we should obtain intelligence from torture. It would have been a hollow justice for some junior spooks to be scapegoated while Straw and Blair are walking around as respected international statesman, coining in the money.

Yhe Met investigation was so remarkably “thorough” it did not approach me at any stage, even though I had given obviously relevant evidence in person to the Council of Europe, European Parliament and UK Parliament.

Do watch my evidence to the UK parliament if you have not already done so. Then judge who you believe.

Meanwhile, there is no sign at all that the so-called Gibson Inquiry into UK Complicity in Torture is ever going even to take the lid off the whitewash bucket and get started.

There is a superficial attraction to resorting to assassination to prevent the development of a nuclear weapon. To take the heat of Israel/Iran out of the subject, it is tempting to think it would have been good if North Korea’s nuclear programme had been disrupted by such means.

But once you abandon the framework of legality, you have no grounds to complain if your opponent reacts in the same manner. The notion of “good terrorism” and “bad terrorism” is foolish. It reminds me that the media are very anxious actively to spread the idea that bombs in Syria are false flag operations by President Assad, but were scoffing when my on the spot investigation of the actual evidence immediately on the scene revealed that the so called Islamic Jihad Union bombings in Uzbekistan were almost certainly a false flag operation of President Karimov – very probably with the connivance of the CIA.

To start a competition in assassinating scientists seems to me an extraordinarily foolish thing for Israel, with its large and widespread scientific community. There are reasons to worry about Iran’s nuclear intentions, though nuclear armed and militarily aggressive Israel has no moral standing to be the country asking the questions. But street assassinations are not going to do anything but make the problems worse.

Of course, if war is the intention, these murders are entirely rational.