British Media Exploited by Intel Agencies

Dr Ludwig De Braeckeleer has a fascinating article with this title on the OhMyNews website. See

http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=381319&rel_no=1&back_url=

He tells the story of The Sunday Telegraph in 1995 running a story planted by known intelligence agents (but reported by the newspaper to emanate from a "British banking official") about Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. One paragraph reads: "The paper accused Col. Muammar Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, of running a major money laundering operation in Europe intended to fund weapons of mass destruction: Saif al-Islam is a 'thoroughly dishonest, unscrupulous and untrustworthy maverick against whom the international banking community has been warned to be on its guard.'"

Saif sued for libel. At the trial in 2002 the newspaper eventually admitted that the allegations had been untrue and that there had been no evidence to support them. However, at one stage the newspaper had pleaded the defence of qualified privilege; the lawyers argued that it was in the public interest to publish the articles even if they turned out to be untrue. Dr De Braeckeleer comments on this:

"For those who follow the Lockerbie farce -- the Megrahi second appeal over the Lockerbie judgment -- it is hard not to notice the irony of the last argument. Indeed, it seems that in the U.K., it is good for the public to be told lies while at the same time it is good for the same public not to be shown secret documents believed to be vital to unearthing the truth about the largest crime ever committed on U.K. soil."