Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, is engaged in an outrageous attempt to rewrite history, by claiming we were unaware that the CIA was getting intelligence from torture.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/exmi5-head-us-hid-torture-tactics-from-uk-1918945.html

The government knew the CIA was sending us intelligence from torture from at least November 2002, when I sent a diplomatic telegram to Jack Straw and others – including MI5 – informing them so. I repeated it in February 2003, and was called back to a meeting on March 7 2003 where I was told that, as a matter of policy in the War on Terror, we were using intelligence from torture. Sir Michael Wood said at the meeting that in his opinion this policy was not contrary to international law.

I have made available indisputable documentary evidence of this, and that the policy of using intelligence from torture was sanctioned by Jack Straw:

Download file“>Download file

Download file“>Download file

Download file“>Download file

The redactions were made by the government.

I am astounded that, having obtained the first two documents under the Freedom of Information Act last November, no mainstream media outlet will mention them and refer to them, despite acres of reporting on whether Ministers had an intelligence from torture policy.

Plainly these documents disprove entirely the Eliza Mannigham Buller claims that we did not know. But don’t expect to see them referred to in the media.

Even the coincidence of the broadcast of Murder in Samarkand with renewed national debate on our collusion with torture, did not break through the UK media’s blacklisting of me and my eye witness and documentary evidence that the policy of intelligence from torture had direct ministerial direction from Jack Straw.

Here is Russia Today showing what the UK media will not allow you to see:

http://rt.com/Politics/2010-03-03/uk-torture-citixens-guantanamo.html

Saloon bar bigot Bruce Anderson came out with a fierce defence of the government’s use of torture. It could have been written by Torquemada, Walsingham or Franco. To get that vital information about the ticking bomb, it would be morally imperative to torture the terrorist’s wife and children, he concluded.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-we-not-only-have-a-right-to-use-torture-we-have-a-duty-1899555.html

Interesting is it not that to opine that Palestinian suicide bombers are justified is illegal, but to advocate torture of innocent women and children is patriotic?

I took grave exception because I saw the effects of women and children being tortured in front of suspects in Uzbekistan, where it happens pretty often. I wonder if Anderson would like to wield the electrodes on children himself. The man should be shunned from all civilised society.

What he is too thick to understand is that the “ticking bomb” scenario has never happened and almost certainly never will. His idea of the intelligence world is gleaned from Hollywood. I was delighted today to have the oportunity to publish the true situation in the Evening Standard. They gave me 950 words and I think it was the best turned piece I ever penned.

This is the truth of it:

The key point ?” and one I cannot stress too much ?” is that the vast majority of this material was absolute rubbish. The Uzbek government was eager to convince the US it was fighting a massive Islamic militant threat, so that the US government would continue to give large subsidies to this appalling dictatorship, and particularly to its security services.

The Uzbek government therefore rounded up en masse dissidents, the religious and those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and tortured them into admitting membership of al Qaeda or other allied terror organisations, and into denouncing long lists of other “terrorists”.

The tortured were given the lists to sign up to, exactly as done by Stalin’s secret police, the direct institutional ancestor of the Uzbek security service.

The mundane truth is that torture in the “War on Terror” does not bring Hollywood-style information about ticking bombs in shopping malls.

It brings piles of rubbish that clog up our intelligence analysis. Torture gives not the truth but what the torturer wants to hear to make the torture stop. And given the destinations on the extraordinary rendition circuit ?” like Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, Syria and Uzbekistan ?” the relationship between the torturers and the truth was often very distant indeed.

I can swear to you that none of the intelligence I saw from detainees in Uzbekistan was useful. Much of it was palpably untrue, such as referring to terror training camps in places where we knew they physically did not exist.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23807775-why-britain-turns-a-blind-eye-to-torture.do

Please do read the full piece. Not sure if they are going to open comments on this one.

Since the judgement in the Binyam Mohammed case, there has been a resurgence in the awareness of our government’s policy of collusion in torture. Kim Howells and David Miliband have been telling outright lies in denying it, while Bruce Anderson is leading the “Torture the Muslim bastards” wing.

With the government issuing blatantly lying denials, I decided to contact the Guardian to ask why they never published my indisputable documentary proof of a policy of using torture, sanctioned by Jack Straw.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/11/jack_straw_lied.html

Thankfully the excellent David Leigh is back from sabbatical, Idly browsing while waiting for him to phone me back, I came across this from MerkinonParis:

A simple Graun story with a simple standfirst ‘The advice of worldly, well-educated Foreign Office diplomats is simply being ignored’

The article said :

‘Yet

Having been roundly defeated in the Court of Appeal, and with it now established beyond doubt that the UK knew that Binyam Mohammed was being tortured by the USA, Miliband has the massive effrontery to welcome the decision.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/feb/10/david-miliband-binyam-mohamed-statement

The truth about the government’s complicity in torture is becoming established beyond doubt. I am still shocked about the virtual media blackout on my own evidence to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

But am comforted that the forthcoming dramatisation of Murder in Samarkand with David Tennant will do more for popular understanding than dry evidence ever could.

We will never see justice, but I would strongly support the calls for a public inquiry into UK complicity with torture. Preferably of an inquisitorial kind; but even the cosy conversations of the Chilcot committee have thrown up some truth.

Obviously I feel a great deal of sympathy with Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin. Those of us who reveal connivance by our own governments in gross human rights abuse, find little protection from fleeting media support and interest.

One thing I would underline which Colvin said, as it mirrors precisely my own experience in Uzbekistan:

He said the vast majority of the prisoners were ordinary Afghans, many with no connection to the insurgency

.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5geW1uXt-wU7Ky8e7rW3U57whblQwD9C4VKVG0

That is the truth about the “War on Terror” torture industry which its proponents refuse to face. The overhwelming majority of those tortured have been innocent. Of course, after torture, they have all confessed their guilt….

The “ticking bomb” scenario is supposed to pose the classical justification of torture. It denies that any action is per se wrong, and posits that inflicting terrible pain on one person is justified if it prevents terrible pain to more numerous others. That is precisely the argument which was being put to me when I was officially informed of the new British government policy of using torture for intelligence:

There were difficult ethical and moral issues involved and at times difficult judgements had to be made weighing one clutch of “moral issues” against another. It was not always easy for people in post (embassies) to see and appreciate the broader picture, eg piecing together intelligence material from different sources in the global fight against terrorism

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/11/jack_straw_lied.html#comments

But the argument relies on a whole number of premisses. They include:

1. That the right person is being tortured and he does indeed have the knowledge to prevent harm.

In fact in the vast, vast majority of the War on Terror torture cases that is not true, as Colvin and I have both testified from actual experience – and as people like Baba Musa testify from beyond the grave – most torture is of the innocent.

2. That the torturer is a benevolent being who genuinely wants to learn the truth in order to prevent harm to others

In fact, in the vast majority of War on Terror torture cases, the torturer is seeking evidence to support a false narrative. In my case, the Uzbek dictatorship was seeking to win increased Western military and financial support by providing a vastly exagerrated narrative of the strength and penetration of Al-Qaida in Central Asia.

3. That there is an imminent threat of which intelligence can be got only from the tortured person

The 139 waterboardings of Mohammed Sheikh Khalid were not in fact aimed at preventing any future imminent threats, but rather at inducing him to confess to masterminding an unbelievably lengthy series of past terrorist atrocities as part of an extraordinary judicial process.

4. That the torturer is in a position to know 3.

In fact, 99% of War on Terror torture is random “Fishing expedition”

5. That the tortured will tell the truth under torture

In fact, as I saw from intelligence reports in Uzbekistan, people will confess to things which are demonstrably false if they think it will make the torture stop. Torture does not get you the truth. It gets you what the torturer wants to hear.

6. That only torture will get them to tell the truth

In fact. the consensus of Western intelligence professionals is that other interrogation methods are much more efficacious.

7. That with and only with knowledge from torture, the torturer will be able to avert the catastrophe

If you believe that, you watch too many Hollywood movies

I could go on. Modern moral philosophers usually identify nine premisses on which the ticking bomb argument depends. For me, there are already prior arguments about human civilisation and barbarity which come before even all of these. But an additional argument is the corrosive moral influence of torture on the body politic, as evidenced by the consistent lies told by New Labour about its pro-torture policy.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/11/jack_straw_lied.html#comments

The documents I obtained under the Freedon of Information Act yesterday are irrefutable evidence that Jack Straw lied to the parliamentary inquiry into extraordinary rendition. This is what Straw said:

I set out the British Government’s position on this issue on a number of occasions, including in evidence both here and to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I wrote a pretty detailed letter to a constituent of mine back in June, setting out our position. As I said there, there are no circumstances in which British officials use torture, nor any question of the British Government seeking to justify the use of torture. Again, the British Government, including the terrorist and security agencies, has never used torture for any purpose including for information, nor would we instigate or connive with others in doing so. People have to make their own judgment whether they think I am being accurate or not.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmfaff/573/5102405.htm

Yet all the time he had been personally directing a secret policy of using, justifying and conniving with torture, as these documents prove. I provide here a brief transcript with notes for those having difficulty understanding Civil Service jargon. :Deletions are by government censors.

My notes are in bold.

Download file

TRANSCRIPT

Classification redacted

From: Linda Duffield (Director, Wider Europe, Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

Date: 10 March 2003

Reference: 1

To PUS (Permanent Under Secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Sir Michael Jay now Lord Jay)

cc: (Sir) Michael Wood, Legal Adviser

Matthew Kidd (Position redacted – representing MI6)

SUBJECT: UZBEKISTAN; INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Michael Wood, Matthew Kidd and I had a meeting with Craig Murray (Me, British Ambassador to Tashkent) to discuss his telegram (Tashkent Telno Misc 01). (Detail of telegram deleted. In it I complained that we regularly receive material from the CIA, got from the Uzbek secret services, obtained by torture.) I said you had asked me to discuss this with Craig personally in view of the sensitive nature of the issues involved.

2. Craig said his concerns had been prompted by a presentation to the Uzbek authorities by Professor Korff (OSCE Adviser) on the UN Convention on Torture. Craig said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the Convention to receive or to possess information obtained under torture. He asked for clarification on this. Michael Wood replied that he did not believe that possession of information was in itself an offence, but undertook to re-read the Convention and to ensure that Craig had a reply on this particular point.

3. I gave Craig a copy of your revised draft telegram (attached) and took him through this. I said that he was right to raise with you and Ministers (Jack Straw) his concerns about important legal and moral issues. We took these very seriously and gave a great deal of thought to such issues ourselves. There were difficult ethical and moral issues involved and at times difficult judgements had to be made weighing one clutch of “moral issues” against another. It was not always easy for people in post (embassies) to see and appreciate the broader picture, eg piecing together intelligence material from different sources in the global fight against terrorism. But that did not mean we took their concerns any less lightly.

4. (Whole paragraph deleted – this may have related to my querying of the accuracy of the CIA torture material).

5. After Michael Wood and Matthew Kidd had left, Craig and I had a general discussion about the human rights situation in Uzbekistan and the difficulties of pushing for a Resolution in Geneva, which we both agreed was important. (Section about US administation supporting Karimov in UN deleted)

CONCLUSION

6. In conclusion, Craig said that he was grateful for the decision to discuss these issues with me personally. At the end of the day he accepted, as a public servant, that these were decisions for Ministers to take, whether he agreed with them or not. If it ever reached the stage where he could not accept such a decision, then the right thing to do would be to request a move. But he was certainly not there yet. He had fed in his views. You and Ministers had decided how to handle this question. He accepted that and would now go back to Tashkent and “Get on with the job”.

7. I think it was right to see him. I am not sure this is the end of the issue (or correspondence), but it was a frank and amicable discussion and Craig appears to be making efforts to balance his work on human rights with other FCO objectives. We shall, of course, be reviewing these again once he has produced his post objectives for the upcoming year.

Signed

Linda Duffield

Director Wider Europe

Then Comes the Endorsement from Jack Straw:

Download file

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN

Last night the Foreign Secretary (Jack Straw) read a copy of your minute of 10 March reporting your conversation (in the company of Michael Wood and Matthew Kidd) with Craig Murray.

The Foregin Secretary agrees with the PUS that you handled this very well. He has asked me to thank you.

Signed

Simon McDonald

(Assistant Private Secretary to Jack Straw)

Does anybody wish to now argue that Jack Straw told parliament the truth when he said two years later – when asked specifically about my account that hese events had happened –

It is Mr Murray’s opinion. Mr Murray, as you may know, stood in my constituency. He got fewer votes than the British National Party, and notwithstanding the fact that he assured the widest possible audience within the constituency to his views about use of torture. I set out the British Government’s position on this issue on a number of occasions, including in evidence both here and to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I wrote a pretty detailed letter to a constituent of mine back in June, setting out our position. As I said there, there are no circumstances in which British officials use torture, nor any question of the British Government seeking to justify the use of torture. Again, the British Government, including the terrorist and security agencies, has never used torture for any purpose including for information, nor would we instigate or connive with others in doing so. People have to make their own judgment whether they think I am being accurate or not.

I have highlighted the bits that are plain lies to parliament in view of the above.

Any argument?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmfaff/573/5102405.htm

Finally I have indisputable documentary evidence that the British government had a positive policy of using intelligence from torture in the War on Terror, and that the policy was personally directed by Jack Straw.

Here are the minutes of the meeting at which I was told this:

Download file

All references to the CIA and MI6 have been literally cut out, but the meaning is till perfectly unmistakeable particularly given the heading of the minute.

And here is the absolute smoking gun of Jack Straw’s involvement::

Download file

Straw has been lying about this for five years. He dismissed my evidence on this to the Parliamenary Joint Committee on Human Rights as “Entirely untrue”.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/10/either_craig_mu.html#comments

Straw ruined my career over my opposition to torture intelligence, after I had been appointed Ambassador by his predecessor, Robin Cook, who was rather more well disposed towards human rights. It is wonderful that it is Robin Cook’s Freedom of Information Act which I have used to finally prove beyond any doubt that slippery Straw was up to his neck in approving intelligence from torture.

Minutes available as a JPEG here:

http://www.edavies.nildram.co.uk/2009/11/torture/

Some cheerful news from Italy, where 23 American CIA agents have been convicted of kidnapping over an extraordinary rendition case. There do survive pockets of genuine independent judiciary in Europe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/04/cia-guilty-rendition-abu-omar

In the UK, you cannot present someone before a court who was brought there illegally. I know this because I was trying to organise the kidnap of Asil Nadir for the FCO, but the idea had to be abandoned because a then recent ruling by the Law Lords had released an accused who had been kidnapped abroad to bring him to trial.

Does anybody know what the situation is in Italy? Would it not be fun to kidnap one of the CIA agents and render them to jail in Italy? I might give it a go.

Am at Schiphol again at 5.30am, after an overnight flight from Accra, waiting eight hours for a connecting flight to Washington, and thinking “Why oh why do I put myself through this?” Slightly mitigated by the joy of being able to post again on a working internet connection.

AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, IRAN, IRAQ, VIETNAM: EXPOSING OFFICIAL LIES

Ward Circle Building, Room 2, American University

Wednesday, October 21 at 8:10 pm

Keynote Speaker: Col. Larry Wilkerson (USA, ret.) Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the critical period from August 2002 until January 2005; Served as Army officer for 31 years;

Recipient of 2009 Award from Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence

Daniel Ellsberg, Former Defense and State Department official who released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, for which he was put on trial facing a possible sentence of 115 years; Author, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers; Subject of newly released documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” which he was called at the time by Henry Kissinger

Coleen Rowley, Former Special agent and legal counselor, Minneapolis FBI, who called the FBI director’s attention to serious flaws that might have prevented 9/11; Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2002; Sam Adams Award Recipient, 2002

Craig Murray, Former U.K. Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who exposed the use of torture, declaring, “I would rather die than have someone tortured in attempt to give me more security.” Sam Adams Award recipient, 2005

Ray McGovern, Veteran CIA analyst, whose duties included preparing and briefing the President’s Daily Brief under Nixon, Ford, and Reagan; Co-founder Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Colleague of Sam Adams

Peter Kuznick, Professor of History; Director, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute; Co-writer (with Oliver Stone) “Secret History of the United States” (forthcoming on Showtime)

The late Sam Adams, in calculating the number of Vietnamese Communists under arms, came up with more than twice the number Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of U.S. forces, would allow the Army to acknowledge. The country-wide offensive at Tet in January-February 1968 proved Sam right.

Sponsored by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, American University History Department, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute

To Tell the Truth

Coleen Rowley and Ambassador Craig Murray

Ray McGovern, moderator

Date/Time: THURSDAY, October 22, 7-9 PM

Place: Festival Center/Servant Leadership School

1640 Columbia Road, NW

Washington, DC 20009

202 328 0072Cost: free (but free-will offerings welcome)

We are all taught to tell the truth. But when some folks enter government service, they seem to claim an exemption. Truth telling becomes quaint, obsolete. Misfeasance and malfeasance get covered up, and we never seem to learn from our mistakes.

Worse still, governments start wars on flimsy pretexts; and this leads to what the Nuremberg Tribunal labeled “accumulated” evils?”like torture. Although a chosen few in our Congress are briefed on such evils, we the people never get to know, UNLESS…

… people of conscience have the integrity and courage to speak out. Our presenters will draw on their personal experience in this kind of speaking out; what it’s like; and what happened to them as a result:

Coleen Rowley, as legal counsel/special agent in the FBI’s Minneapolis Bureau, became aware of the repeated?”but unheeded?”warnings her colleagues sent to FBI headquarters before 9/11. In a memorandum to the FBI Director and Congress she exposed many of the shortcomings and became persona non grata when a lawmaker gave the memo to the press. Time Magazine honored her by naming her Person of the Year in 2002.

Craig Murray was Great Britain’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan when he discovered that his hosts were boiling people alive to extract “intelligence” on “terrorists.” He discovered to his dismay that his Foreign Office superiors thought that this was okay, so long as Craig didn’t do it. He left the Foreign Service and is now Rector of the University of Dundee?”one of Britain’s leading universities, described by Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney as “having its head in the clouds and its feet firmly on the ground.”

Rowley and Murray are past recipients of the annual Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. This forum is follow-on to the Oct. 21event at American U. (see: http://tinyurl.com/ygm55pe)

Sponsored by Speaking Truth to Power/Tell the Word

Press release

Union of Uzbek non-governmental organisations

A particularly damning example of New Labour’s Stalinist approach to propaganda. The FCO website carries news of the High Court judgement in the Binyam Mohammed case. If you click on the headline, it gives you an utterly mendacious statement by Milliband attacking the High Court judgement – but nowhere on the website does it give you the High Court judgement, any kind of objective summary of the High Court judgement, or even a link to the High Court judgement.

The FCO, having just lost a court case and been heavily criticised by the High Court, on a taxpayer funded website is hiding the facts while spewing out pure propaganda that we are paying for.

Absolutely fucking disgusting.

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=21042723

It is my birthday today, and I feel rather pleased with the progress being made on exposing the torture crimes of New Labour.

Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card has been that the courts accept the argument that national security overrides all, and the biggest threat to national security is the threat of withdrawal of intelligence cooperation in the “War on Terror”.

It was precisely the threat of withdrawal of Saudi security cooperation that the Law Lords concluded was the potential greater evil, which justified forbidding the prosecution of New Labour’s personal paymasters at BAE for corruption.

And it was precisely the alleged threat of withdrawal of US security cooperation which persuaded the High Court to ban publication of material detailing the torture of Binyam Mohammed.

Only then Obama got in and the Americans said “Milliband is wrong (ie lying), we never threatened to withdraw security cooperation”.

If you read the Guardian report of the High Court judgement, in any other age a Minister caught behaving as appallingly as Milliband has, would have resigned. I would love to be locked in a room with the little twerp for a couple of hours to teach him about the reliability of intelligence from torture. I would have him confessing to menbership of Al-Qaida before I severed his second testicle.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/16/binyam-mohamed-torture-evidence-miliband

Which is of course the major point. Binyam Mohammed is an innocent man whom we gave over to torture for no reason. The thousands tortured in Uzbekistan into confessing to Al-Qaida links were almost all innocent. That is just one problem with the “Torture Works” argument put forward by Britain’s highest paid thug Jonathan Evans

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/16/mi5-chief-torture-al-qaida

Can anybody construe the government’s line as anything other than “We were not complicit in torture. We were complicit in torture, but it was necessary.”?

In a Kafkaesque twist, Sky News are today running the banner headline

“Release of Intelligence Papers Could Damage UK/US Intelligence Sharing Agreement”

They are reporting from “US sources” that the Americans have now been persuaded to help Milliband by threatening to reduce cooperation if the evidence of Binyam Mohammed’s torture is released.

Is there a single person out there who genuinely does not now believe that Mohammed was tortured, and further that MI5 and MI6 were not complicit in torture worldwide? The documentary evidence I have already published is damning:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf

More so are the minutes of the FCO meeting at which I was formally instructed to stop complaining internally about collusion with torture as it had been set as an undeclared government policy. The High Court ruling gives still further weight to my Freedom of Information Act request to have those minutes released.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/10/either_craig_mu.html#comments

Friday was the twentieth working day by which the FCO was supposed under the Freedom of Information Act to respond to my request. Hardly surprisingly, it has not done so (other than to acknowledge receipt). I shall now appeal to the Information Commissioner. The government’s attempts to prevent the truth being known about their complicity in torture, are simply desperate. There appears to be a weird fiction that everybody does not realise the truth already.

It really is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

This brief documentary is wel worth watching. Sadly there is nothing equivalent on UK complicity that I am aware of, and we are still struggling to get the comparable documents. It feels like I am one of only a handful of campaigners who really seems to care. Obama’s collusion in the US cover-up is just one reason why it was a farce to give him the Nobel peace prize.

http://www.afj.org/films-and-programs/tortured-law/

Tom Harris MP being the fool in question. He thinks that the people who concocted the lies about Iraqi WMD, thus launching a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, are the best choice to be in parliament:

I would have thought it in our country’s interest to have an MP ?” of whatever political persuasion ?” with a background in covert intelligence work.

http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2009/09/30/the-view-from-the-residence/

Tom’s article is based on a huge number of preconceptions. The truth is, that the wonderful James Bond opus has fundamentally affected the perception of MI6 in the British people, including the politicians. But James Bond is fiction. It bears no resemblance at all to the real MI6.

In particular Tom Harris has swallowed the idea that MI6 officers put themselves in particular danger in the course of their work, That is simply untrue. Watson’s attempted contrast in “The View From The Residence” between comfortable diplomats and brave MI6 officers is offensive. He may be interested to know that consistently since World War II more FCO than MI6 staff have been killed or injured on active service.

MI6 officers only work abroad with diplomatic immunity. Their “Cover” is almost always as Embassy staff. The following single true story tells more truth about MI6 than Tom Harris will ever experience. Names have been changed.

I was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw, in charge of the Political and Economic Sections. One day I was having lunch with a well known Polish restaurateur, Wlodek. Wlodek ran Warsaw’s most exclusive restaurant and catered for many government functions. He was also a well known social figure in his own right, and a great purveyor of political gossip.

Over lunch Wlodek told me a story about the then Polish Prime Minister. I was able to tell him that I had been present on the occasion he described and the story was untrue.

There was another First Secretary in the Embassy, we will call him Bill, with a theoretical job description very similar to mine – only he was really an MI6 officer. A couple of days later I was having lunch in another restaurant with another contact (now you know why I am so fat). Ensconced in a corner together were Bill and Wlodek.

A couple of days further on I received a copy of an intelligence report issued by MI6. It described the source as “Regular and reliable, with good access”. It contained the same story Wlodek had told me.

I minuted on it – “Bill – you got this from Wlodek. He told me the same thing. It’s not true. I was there.” and sent it back to him. I got told off for the cardinal sin of writing the name of the source on the report.

A couple more days, and I met Wlodek again.

“Wlodek, why did you tell Bill that story”, I asked, “I told you it wasn’t true”.

“Ah yes,” Wlodek laughed, “But Bill paid me ten thousand dollars for it”.

Which is what MI6 mostly do. They buy information. By definition, of course, people who sell you intelligence are apt to be unreliable. Much of the key “intelligence” on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction was bought from an Iraqi Colonel. If you hand over briefcases of used dollars to Iraqi Colonels in Egyptian hotel rooms, they will give you lots of information on WMD. Absolutely as much as you want. Just keep the dollars flowing.

Forget the entertaining Ian Fleming. Read Graham Greene, who saw much further into the human soul. Our Man in Havana is much closer to truth than James Bond.

There is also the question of the huge sums of taxpayers’ cash doled out. I had to account in detail you would not believe for ever penny of FCO cash spent. Every British Ambassador spends two full working days a month carrying out accounts and receipts and stocks checks.

But I frequently in my career had to sign for large sums in cash (MI6 officers do not sign for it themselves) which I then handed over to my MI6 colleagues. You can’t ask a paid traitor for a receipt, so this money was, literally, unaccountable. The largest cash sum I ever handed over was US$120,000. Did I ever suspect MI6 officers might be stealing some of this untraceable money? Yes, bluntly I did, in one case in particular. There are absolutely no safeguards.

Not all information is paid for. Informers can have other motives. Interestingly one effect of the invasion of Iraq has been that far fewer informants are willing to cooperate with British intelligence because they see the UK as a force for good in the world. But “Human Intelligence”, or HUMINT, always has to be carefully assessed for the motive of the teller and his credible access to the information. Very often, it is wrong.

HUMINT reports arrive around Whitehall with red cardboard covers and SIGINT – communications intercepts from GCHQ – in blue jackets. I recall Tristan Garel-Jones, when a FCO minister, asking his Private Secretary in a meeting about Cyprus “Now remind me again, which colour is reliable and which colour is speculative?” Broadly, he was not wrong. GCHQ information is viewed generally in Whitehall to be better quality than MI6 information, and I certainly found this true in my 20 years of dealing with intelligence.

All this is broad bush. MI6 are sometimes involved in Sigint operations. They sometimes produce good human intelligence. But they failed disastrously their two most important tests – over Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and over the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. Both failures led to war.

The other source of MI6 HUMINT is foreign liaison. This is where MI6 stand accused of accepting large quantities of dubious intelligence and turning a blind eye to the fact that it was obtained by torture.

But the biggest source of UK intelligence is the United States. Most reports issued by MI6 are CIA reports, as most reports issued by GCHQ are NSA reports. An alpha-numeric code is the only thing that shows the difference. It was the CIA’s adoption of torture that caused Jack Straw’s change of policy to accept it.

The fallibility of HUMINT has been very well understood in Whitehall for generations. The reports are fed in by MI6 but then go through a number of sceptical filters, in the FCO, MOD and Cabinet Office and other government departments if relevant, formalised in the Joint Intelligence Committee and its sub-committees. With New Labour enforcing true belief in the War on Terror, the scepticism filters have been opened wide. That was the scandal of the Iraqi WMD dossier. The appalling quality of the bought and torture intelligence being fed in was just par for the course from MI6.

A final observation. I had no MI6 officers with me in Tashkent because MI6 said the operating environment was too dangerous. Meantime I was visiting alone and unarmed all through the Ferghana Valley and Tien Shan.

There, Tom Harris MP. That is the view from the Residence. Evidently it is a damn sight clearer than the view from the New Labour benches of the House of Commons.

Precisely 38 minutes after I posted a blog entry pointing to definite proof of Jack Straw’s complicity in torture, one Helen Wright added this comment, which I thought deserved a wider audience:

I thought you were removed for buying sex from vulnerable young women in foreign countries?

Apparently you enjoy sex with a kilt on and like to smack womens arses while singing Scottish songs.

You are a man of questionable morals and brough shame on our country. Crawl back under your rock, you slimeball

.

I am shocked. You mean there’s another way to have sex?

I repeat it as a poignant reminder of the glory days of the Downing St smear machine, when they concocted enough lies about me to fill a Trident submarine. As New Labour goes down unloved into oblivion, it is interesting to see the legs still kicking in reflex.

The extremely important post from which she was seeking to detract your attention is here. Please, please read it – as experience shows that getting sex in the heading quintuples my traffic, her puerile smear will then have backfired spectacularly.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/10/either_craig_mu.html

Jack Straw took the policy decision that the UK would receive intelligence obtained under torture by the CIA and other liaison intelligence services. He has been denying it ever since, and described my evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee as “entirely untrue”.

In the White House and at the Pentagon, such respect had evaporated completely. As Cofer Black, former head of counter-terrorism at the CIA was later to tell a congressional committee: “All you need to know: there was a before 9/11 and there was an after 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves came off.”

There must have been some realisation of this new fact of life at the highest levels of the British government. Craig Murray, who was later removed from his post as ambassador to Uzbekistan after denouncing the use of intelligence extracted under torture, recently told parliament’s joint committee on human rights (JCHR) he had been informed by a senior Foreign Office official that a decision that such intelligence should not be questioned was taken by Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, following discussions with senior intelligence officials. Straw describes this claim as “entirely untrue”. But when Michael Wood, the FO’s senior legal advisor, was asked his opinion, he is known to have concluded it was not an offence in international law to receive or possess information extracted under torture, although it would not be admissible as evidence in court.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/08/mi5-mi6-acccused-of-torture

Now either Jack Straw or I must be lying to Parliament. There is no other explanaton. One of us is an extrenely devious man who has poisoned public life with falsehoods on the subject of the British government’s attitude to torture and the validity of much of the “war on terror” narrative as a result. Which one is the liar?

There is a document which will establish the truth of this. It is classified Top Secret and stored in the Permanent Under Secretary’s Department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I judge that the time is now right to try and get hold of it through the Freedom of Information Act. I have little doubt that the FCO will refuse the request, but I believe that, with parliamentary and police investgations underway into this policy, I can now demonstrate enough of a public interest case for the Information Commissioner to release the document on appeal.

This is my email to the FCO. I think the reasons given for release of the document are pretty cogent. The request was dated 20 September and addressed to Peter Ricketts, Permanent Under Secretary, FCO:

Peter

,

I wish formally to request from you under the Freedom of Information Act the minutes of the metting of 7 or 8 March 2003 between Linda Duffield, Michael Wood, Matthew Kydd and I on the subject of the receipt of intelligence obtained under torture. In particular I wish to receive the top copy which includes a manuscript note of the views of Jack Straw. I believe you were in the loop on this discussion at the time in your then position of Director International Security.

There is a strong public interest in the release of this minute. This meeting formed the core of the evidence which I gave recently to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. The credibility of my evidence is a key issue in the very important report on UK complicity in torture produced by that committee. The release of this minute will go far in establishing the truth or otherwise of my account, which is a matter of major public interest and on which I have given evidence in person before not just the parliamentary joint committee, but also important committees of the European Parlaiment and the Council of Europe. As you will acknowledge, the UK’s attitude towards the receipt of intelligence from torture abroad is a matter of keen parliamentary, academic, media and public debate of late.

There is an undeniable public interest in the truth of the government’s policy on this major issue being known.

You had a personal role in the establishment and implementation of our policy of obtaining intelligence from torture, first as FCO Director of International Security and secondly as Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Therefore I do not doubt you will immediately be minded to obstruct this FOI request. Let me anticipate your arguments:

This meeting is no longer secret. With the agreement of Treasury Solicitors, I published on my website and in Murder in Samarkand, the letter from Sir Michael Wood of 13 March 2003 which refers to the meeting and sets out his view that to receive intelligence from torture is not a breach of the UN Convention Against Torture. This letter is discussed at length in the recent report and the minutes of evidence of the Parliamentary Joint Committee. The existence of the meeting and the government’s line at the meeting is therefore well established. Publication of the minute will only add the personal involvement of the then Secretary of State. To continue to hide that would be only in the interests of avoiding political embarassment, which is not a legitimate reason under the Freedom of Information Act.

An account of the meeting was published in my book Murder in Samarkand. This account of the meeting was cleared with the FCO and takes into account the input of others at the meeting as given to me by the FCO as part of the clearance process. The table produced by the FCO, giving my account of the meeting alongside the FCO’s comments and request for changes, is an unclassified document and has been published by me on the internet for three years now. So there is no additional damage to relations with the US or Uzbekistan from releasing the minute of a meeting the content of which has already been acknowledged by the FCO in public.

The Obama administration has taken a different line on these issues to its predecessor, has acknowledged that excesses occured in CIA handling of the question of torture and intelligence, and has released key top secret documents on the issue. For the UK to do the same cannot credibly be argued to damage UK/Us relations.

Yours ever,

Craig Murray

If, as Jack Straw says, my story is “Entirely untrue”, then it should be a simple matter to release this document and prove it.

There is a possible downside – I am worried that this request may lead to the destruction of the document, or at least of the top copy with the manuscript note amplifying Jack Straw’s views.

Finally, with its second jury, the State obtained the conviction of three people for attempting to blow up airliners with liquid bombs, as the end result of the greatest of all terrorist plot media hypes. We are left with the continuing War on Shampoo at the airports.

Let us for now accept the convictions as safe, although the whole history of “terrorist” trials in the UK calls for especial scepticism at this point. It does indeed appear that some British born men of Pakistani origin were motivated to attempt a terrorist atrocity. What more does the case tell us?

Well, firstly this is yet more proof of the alienation of British born Muslims from their natural affection for the country of their birth, by Blair and Bush’s policy of securing access to mineral resources by war in Islamic lands. It counters exactly the Gordon Brown claim that occupying Afghanistan somehow keeps us safe here. Every civilian death from NATO action in Afghanistan and Pakistan actually stokes terrorist sympathies here. We are creating, not combating, terrorist sympathies.

Secondly, there is little evidence that the plot was actually viable. There remains great doubt about the ability of the bombers to create liquid explosive of sufficient potency. The airport security idea that liquids are somehow more dangerous than powders or solids is a nonsense.

But the key question, as with the “Islamic Jihad Union” trial in Germany, the “La Guardia” plot in the US and the “Sears Tower” plot in Canada, is who put these useless idiots up to it? How far does surveillance and penetration blend into instigation by agents provocateurs?

Which leads us to the quite extraordinary story of Rashid Rauf, said by the UK and US governments to have been the “mastermind” of this plot Rauf was allegedly the source of the initial information, through the Pakistani ISI. Whether under torture, or whether as a double agent, remains obscure.

The extraordinary thing is that although Rauf was the so-called “mastermind”, and although he was already wanted as a suspect in the UK for the alleged (non-political) murder of an uncle, the British authorities were so keen for him not to appear in a witness box that for over a year they failed to put in any request to Pakistan for his extradition to trial in the UK.

Then, still more amazingly,Rauf mysteriously “escaped” from maximum security detention in Pakistan, in circumstances which have yet to be explained. Finally in November last year the US government announced they had killed Rauf in a targeted drone bombing in Pakistan – a non-judicial execution which (if true) is illegal under Pakistani, US, UK and international law. Rauf was a British citizen, but there was no protest at his murder from the UK authorities.

(His family’s theory is that he was killed in captivity, and the “escape” and subsequent bombing death are simply a twist on the old “Shot while escaping” line.)

We will, therefore, never know the truth of the genesis of the infamous so-called liquid bomb plot. Everything indicates that the British government never had any interest in us knowng the truth, made no attempt to secure Rauf’s appearance at the trial, and appeared unperturbed, to say the least, by his murder.

What conclusions should we draw from that?

Head of MI6 Sir John Scarlett has come out saying the UK is not complicit in torture. I can tell you from direct personal knowledge that the man is a lying.

That is, of course, hardly news. Scarlett was responsible for the dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, which was a tissue of lies from beginning to end. Any sane journalist would treat him with ridicule and opprobrium as one of the most notorious liars in British history. Instead they afford him undue respect.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8188307.stm

Not one of the government’s reponses has addressed the irrefutable evidence I gave to the Parliamentary joint committee. The extraordinary thing is that all the meetings I discussed were minuted and the minutes exist in the FCO. I released official documents referring to those meetings. If I were lying, the government would only have to release the minutes. This they refuse to do.

The parliamentary joint committee on human rights has this morning published its report on UK complicity in torture. The headline is a call for a full public inquiry on the subject.

Download file

The most salient fact in the entire report does not feature prominently. Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Home Secretary Alan Johnson both refused to appear before the committee to answer the damning evidence given by witnesses, myself included.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

Arguably, if we had a proper system of parliamentary accountability, the JCHR inquiry would have itself been the public inquiry they want. For ministers simply to refuse to appear speaks volumes for the government’s evasiveness on torture, and determination that the truth should not come out. The greatest danger of this is that individual MI5 and MI6 officers are under investigation by the Metropolitan Police for collusion with torture. We will end up with the Abu Ghraib result, with minions being jailed, while the politicians who authorised the torture policy get off scot free.

Not that I believe a public inquiry will achieve much – it will be yet another whitewash, like the John Chilcot Iraq “Inquiry” entirely consisting of safe establishment yes-men. But it would be a step on the way to public acknowledgement of the role of Straw and Blair in bringing back torture as an accepted tool of governance in the UK.

The Committee report might have been expected to be scathing about Johnson’s and Miliband’s refusal to give evidence. In fact the report spends far more time attacking me for the vigour of my efforts to give evidence:

Mr Murray was a convincing witness when he appeared before us and his allegations are supported by some documentary evidence. His credibility has not been enhanced by his somewhat bizarre dealings with the Committee, however. When he first approached us about giving oral evidence we asked him for a written memorandum, which is standard practice for select committees. His response was to publish a story on his blog entitled “Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Commission Struck By Cowardice” which alleged that we were consulting party whips about how to deter him from giving oral evidence.40 This

was entirely untrue, as our subsequent decision to ask him to give oral evidence, despite his

comments, demonstrated. In May, Mr Murray published further comments on his blog,

suggesting that our Chair was a “stooge” of the Uzbek regime and had somehow been

implicated in his dismissal as UK ambassador.41 Again, these comments are entirely

without substance and may only serve to damage Mr Murray’s credibility and reputation.

I have to say this smacks of desperation in an effort to discredit evidence which the Committee admits was both “Convincing” and backed by documentation. Whoever drafted this also uses the old tricks of misrepresentation. I never said the Committee was “Consulting party whips”. I said that New Labour whips were leaning on New Labour members of the Committee not to hear my evidence – that I know for certain is true. I tried to give the same evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee in 2005 and was refused. The JHRC took three meetings spread over a month deciding whether to hear me. If we had not brought pressure, I should be quite clear that I do not believe that they would have called me.

As for Committee chair Andrew Dismore, I stand by my posting about Dismore, his links to the Uzbek Embassy and the speeches he has made in Parliament on Uzbekistan promoting the Uzbek government line.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/andrew_dismore.html

I believe it was wrong of Dismore not to mention his links to the Uzbek Embassy in chairing the evidence session I gave. Interestingly the Committee’s carefully worded paragraph does not actually deny Dismore’s links to the Uzbek Embassy.

It amazes me that the Committee spent so little energy in decrying the refusal to testify of Johnson and Miliband, to cover up a policy of torture, and so much energy attacking me for comments about the committee on my blog. What a bunch of self-regarding political pygmies they are.

In fact, despite the de rigeur attack on Craig Murray’s credibility, my testimony forms part of the very weft of the whole report. Remove the sideswipe at me, and it is a very good report. In particular, no amount of rubbishing me could wish away the existence of the Michael Wood letter to me, giving the FCO’s legal endorsement of the use of torture material.

Download file

I leaked this classified document by publication to the internet over four years ago. It was instantly posted and mirrored by thousands of sites around the World, making it impossible to keep it secret. But this report published today is the first official acknowledgement of the existence of this document and first official attempt to come to terms with what it means. It also, of course, shatters the government’s argument that I am making it all up (a line Jack Straw still regularly deploys).

The Committee made excellent use of the Michael Wood letter:

Other key unpublished documents are copies of the relevant legal advice given to the

Government about the relevant human rights standards concerning torture and complicity

in torture. As we mentioned above, there is already in the public domain the

memorandum from the Senior Legal Adviser to the Foreign Office, Michael Wood, dated

13 March 2003, which says:

Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that

his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on

Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe

that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing

is Article 15 which provides [for the inadmissibility in evidence of any statement

which is established to have been made as a result of torture.].

This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement

established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as

evidence.

89. We accept, as Professor Sands pointed out in his evidence to us, that this short memo

responding to a specific query should not be treated as a formal, fully reasoned legal advice.

However, we are concerned that this response from the Foreign Office’s most senior lawyer

makes no mention of the requirement in Article 4(1) UNCAT that States criminalise

“complicity or participation in torture”. As Professor Sands commented: “In a formal and

limited sense Mr Wood’s response is correct, but it seems not to address the issue in the

round. … there may be circumstances in which the receipt or possession of information

that has been obtained by torture may amount to complicity in torture, within the meaning

of Article 4(1).”

90. The memo from the Foreign Office Legal Adviser raises a number of important

questions. As Professor Sands also said in his evidence, it may well be that Sir Michael

Wood, other lawyers or the Law Officers address the meaning and effect of Article 4 of

UNCAT in other more reasoned opinions, but this memo does not address that and

therefore “it does not give a complete answer.”125 We do not know whether other, more

reasoned advices were given to ministers or to the intelligence and security services. It is

important, in our view, to ascertain whether the Government was ever advised as to the

possibility that systematic reliance on information which may have been obtained under

torture risks at some point crossing the line into complicity in torture for which the UK

would be responsible under the relevant legal standards.

While a public Inquiry would be useful, I believe the major part of the truth about our ministerially approved policy on the use of torture could simply be revealed by releasing the minutes of my meeting of 7 or 8 March 2003 with Sir Michael Wood, Linda Duffield and Matthew Kydd at which I was told of the policy. The top copy includes a manuscript note which makes plain that Jack Straw had ordered the meeting and gives his views. I suggested that the Committee call for this minute, but they do not seem to have done so.

A final point worth mentioning is the continued UK media blackout. I have given 17 media interviews on the Committee’s report so far. including to CNN, but they have almost all been foreign. Only LBC radio in the UK has interviewed me. Neither do I exist in any of the press reports except a brief mention in the Herald.

The cumulative evidence of UK complicity in torture is now so overwhelming as to be undeniable. Yet nobody is held to account, and in a curious British way, while it is not exactly denied it is not exactly admitted either. Until New Labour are gone, plainly there will be no real moves to get to the bottom of UK complicity. Simply to release the minute, classified Top Secret, of my meeting on 7 or 8 March 2003 in the FCO with Sir Michael Wood (Legal Adviser), Linda Duffield (Director Wider Europe) and Matthew Kydd, (Head, Permanent Under Secretary’s Department) would reveal a great deal of the policy.

There is more evidence in today’s Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/26/alam-ghafoor-torture-uk-intelligence

While Alam Ghafoor was being held tortured in the UAE, the British consul’s half-hearted attempts to fulfil his duty of visiting him in detention were addressed not to the UAE authorities, but to third party. The third party is blanked out from the released documents, along with much else, but the Guardian surmises it is likely to be an MI5 officer.

I am not so sure. It could be, but the style of the minute is more that used in referring to someone representing a different government. MI5 would almost certainly be regularly calling into the Embassy anyway, if operating in liaison with the UAE authorities (MI5 do not do undercover abroad). It seems to me most likely that, even if Ghafoor was first “Fingered” by MI5, the UAE authorities were taking their instructions from the CIA and that is who was being phoned and reported – though these were very strange conversations to have by telephone anyway.

It is a matter of tone and how the FCO write. The minute just reads fine if the CIA were the interlocutor, and feels a bit strange if MI5 were the interlocutor.