Lockerbie questions 'still unanswered'

[This is the headline over an article published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads as follows:]

Twelve years after the Lockerbie bombing and with the trial of the two Libyans accused of the atrocity continuing, the father of one of the victims writes exclusively for BBC News Online.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the blast which destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 and devastated the town of Lockerbie, expresses pride that the efforts to secure a trial have proved successful.

However, he says the trial cannot answer all of the questions surrounding the atrocity.

Following the arrival of the two Libyan accused in Holland in April 1999, and their immediate handover for trial at the tiny island of Scots territory at Camp Zeist, everything has seemed different.

I experienced a real feeling of euphoria that day when they landed, I thought Flora would be proud of what we had helped to do.

Ever since, we have become engrossed spectators, for the process of analysing that part of the truth which touches the two accused is now in the hands of a court and judges, open to us, of which all Scots should feel proud.

Alas, it is not within the power of the court to give a single one of our loved ones back to us, nor can it look at why the outrage was not prevented, nor whether appropriate lessons have been learned and acted upon to prevent a recurrence.

But at least, whoever was ultimately responsible for this barbarity cannot fail to see that a majestic process is in motion, which will not be allowed to cease until every possible avenue open to it has been explored.

After the trial is over will come the time to answer many other outstanding puzzles connected with this monstrous act

It was in November 1991 that the indictments against the two Libyans were first issued, and in December 1991 I went, in great apprehension, to meet Colonel Gadaffi to ask that his citizens be permitted to appear for trial under Scots law.

I feared that he might have me taken hostage or worse, and left sealed letters with a solicitor in case of non return.

I knew that the colonel had lost an adopted daughter, Hannah, killed by the blast of an American bomb during the Unites States Air Force raid on Tripoli in 1986, and my father was a colonel. These coincidences made initial introductions easier.

The visit was suggested and facilitated by an Egyptian journalist, Nabil Najemeldin, now working in the Middle East.

I shall always be grateful to him, for it was the right move at the right time, if we wanted to make a significant input to achieving truth and justice on behalf of those who died.

At the end of the meeting, I approached the colonel to pin a badge on his lapel which read 'PanAm 103, The TRUTH must be known'.

As I did so I could hear the clicks as the safety catches on the automatic weapons of his bodyguards were released.

It was bitterly cold in the desert, and under the light in the tent the blue badge shone clearly against his green flowing robe. Not even my Egyptian friend was with me.

A possible solution to the trial issue did not emerge until January 1994, when Professor Robert Black proposed a neutral country trial under Scots law, with judges instead of a jury and the Libyans accepted.

It was to take until 1998, much international lobbying, by Nelson Mandela, the League of Arab States, the Organisation of African Unity, the Secretary General of the UN and others, coupled with a fresh government in Britain, before the West would accept such a solution.

I believe that our efforts together with those of Professor Black helped to convince Libya that trial under Scots law would be fair.

However, I can understand their reluctance to accept a Scottish locus for the trial venue, or a jury.

It has been a strain financially and for our families to maintain a constant presence at Zeist, and each day seems exhausting.

But with the help of Dutch friends we have established a flat as a base, near the court, which other relatives of victims can also use.

At least one British relative has been present every day that the court has sat. I have found that cycling to and from court helps to relieve the stress.

Release of Lockerbie and other government papers delayed

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in today’s edition of the Financial Times:]

The annual release of government papers is considerably lighter than usual after the Cabinet Office delayed the release of thousands of documents detailing Margaret Thatcher’s most controversial period in Number 10.

The decision to change the process by which historical Cabinet papers are released has raised questions, as two senior ministers — Oliver Letwin and John Whittingdale — were both advisers to Thatcher’s government during the period in question. The government has denied that either was involved in the decision to withhold some papers.

Until recently the justice ministry was responsible for deciding which papers would be released and for overseeing the operation of the National Archives, which stores the documents. In September, control over the National Archives was shifted to the culture department, led by Mr Whittingdale, and the Cabinet Office, led by Mr Letwin.

Just 58 files covering the 1986-88 period are being published this week, and they do not cover a number of the most important events of the time.

These include the 1987 general election, the decision to press ahead with the introduction of the poll tax, the Black Monday stock market crash, a ban on the publication of the intelligence exposé Spycatcher, the SAS shooting of suspected IRA terrorists in Gibraltar, and the Lockerbie bombing.

These files will instead be released in batches over the course of 2016, according to the Cabinet Office. Neither the National Archives nor the Cabinet Office have set out exactly when the files will be made available to the public.

Lockerbie trial-related documents classified by US government

[What follows is the text of a report published by USA Today on this date in 1999. It no longer appears on the magazine’s website but can still be found here on The Pan Am 103 Crash Website:]

The Clinton administration has classified two documents related to an upcoming trial in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, intensifying concern among some victims' relatives about how thorough the prosecution will be. ''These are documents that need to be released,'' says Rosemary Wolfe of Alexandria, Va. Her stepdaughter, Miriam, 20, was one of 189 Americans killed when the Boeing 747 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, Dec 21, 1988.

The documents are a letter and the annex to the letter by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Sent to Gadhafi in February to persuade him to turn over two suspects for prosecution, they assured the Libyan leader that the trial was not intended to ''undermine'' the Libyan regime, according to US officials who have seen the text. The annex also promised that if convicted, the two Libyan intelligence agents -- Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah -- would not be questioned about other acts of the Libyan government.

State Department and White House officials say the assurances were necessary to persuade Gadhafi to cooperate and that no secret deals were struck. The trial, which begins in May in the Netherlands, will be held before Scottish judges who are not legally bound by the Annan letter or any other private assurances to Gadhafi. ''We've always said the evidence has to lead where it will lead,'' says Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman.

Other US officials, however, say Gadhafi would never have turned over the two men if he believed that they would implicate him or Libyans close to him. Relatives of the suspects are being held in Libya, essentially as hostages, the officials say, inhibiting the defendants from testifying fully. A half-dozen alleged co-conspirators also have ''passed away under various circumstances,'' according to a US official who asked not to be named. Wolfe and other relatives of victims have been read only portions of the documents by State Department and UN officials.

On Oct 12, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival, a conservative, anti-UN group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents. It was denied on Dec 15 by Margaret Grafeld, director of the State Department's Office of Information Resources Management Programs and Services. Grafeld's letter, a copy of which was made available to USA Today, said the documents were classified ''in the interest of national defense or foreign relations.'' Kincaid says he will appeal.

The decision to classify the documents has intensified anger among some relatives of the victims. ''If these documents were classified all along, why were we read portions?'' Wolfe asks. She plans a separate Freedom of Information Act request. Sens Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, and Robert Torricelli, D-NJ, and Rep Benjamin Gilman, R-NY, also have written Secretary of State Madeleine Albright seeking release of the documents. They have been turned down.

State Department officials say they cannot release the items because they are UN documents. Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman, says they are private correspondence ''on a highly sensitive subject. How can you do diplomacy if you go making such things public?'' Some of the assurances to Gadhafi were negotiated by South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela and Saudi envoy to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Many US officials regard the complicated diplomacy leading to the trial -- including seven-year UN sanctions that were suspended when the suspects were turned over in April -- as a victory that has gotten Libya out of the terrorism business. Since turning over the two suspects, Gadhafi has expelled the Abu Nidal terrorist group and transferred support from other radical Palestinians to the mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization. Recognizing the change in Libyan behavior, Britain has sent an ambassador back to the Libyan capital. US oil company executives have been allowed to tour old property in Libya. A State Department provision barring the use of a US passport to travel to Libya is under ''active review,'' Reeker says.

US officials also are considering taking Libya off a State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring states. That would ease the way for US trade sanctions against Libya to be lifted if the trial proceeds smoothly and Gadhafi compensates families of the Pan Am victims. ''I think we can expect that Libya's reintegration into the international community will continue, whether we like it or not, so long as Libya avoids new terrorism or blatant challenges to the international order,'' Ronald Neumann, deputy assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, told the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.

US officials note that leaders of countries and groups responsible for heinous acts are rarely subjected to personal punishment. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is now regarded as a peacemaker and the same diplomatic rehabilitation is likely for Syrian President Hafez Assad.

Those spending another difficult holiday season without their relatives might never accept Gadhafi's return to the fold, however, especially if they continue to believe that important information has been denied to them. ''We totally caved in,'' Wolfe says.

Was Libya a test case for future regime change?

[What follows is excerpted from an article headlined Doublespeak: Unpleasant Reckoning Looming for America’s Syrian Strategy by William R Stanley, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the University of South Carolina, published today on the CounterPunch website:]

Social-political transformation emerged from the discontent of the masses, initially in Tunisia but soon spread throughout the region causing great excitement in the Arab-speaking world and elsewhere. (...)

From the outset, Syria seemed to be a special problem. Scores of disaffected citizenry rallied to the spirit of the Arab Spring; poorly thought out heavy handed responses by Damascus served only to inflame an increasingly combustible situation. (...)

Civil war in Libya let at least one genie out of the bottle. Tripolitania and Cyrenaica had long been competing centers of geopolitical power, coexisting and held together in a unitary state only with a strong ruler. The question needs to be asked. What had Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi done to bring the Gods of Western-led and militarily fueled retribution to his land? He voluntarily gave up his nuclear ambitions, he paid the families of those killed in the Lockerbie Pan Am explosion (the question of responsibility for this air explosion has not been definitely resolved. Was al-Qaddafi falsely judged?) and, in part to ingratiate his regime with influential critics, had invited western technology back to Libya to reinvigorate the country’s oil infrastructure. Was Libya a test case for future regime change? Numerous Western leaders demanded political change when government forces sought to silence the Benghazi rebels in revolt. The American Central Intelligence Agency set up shop in Benghazi to coordinate distribution of weaponry furnished by Qatar and shipped by sea to Cyrenaica. This same CIA station later took lead responsibility in providing much of this weaponry to cadres of the Free Syrian Army by way of Turkey and Jordan. Libya also was a model of what can happen when journalists are given uninhibited access to a war zone. A French general admitted than many of them were intelligence operatives using I-phones and other portable devices to provide assessments of Government military formations and arms depots for coalition bombings. Damascus took note of this once Syria was embroiled in conflict. Unfortunately, denying the international press access to events on the ground gave the opposition free reign in getting their message out to the world while preventing the government perspective access to the same audience. Pictures sometimes are worth a thousand words.

Lockerbie trial is an historic miscarriage of justice

[This is the headline over an article by Hugh Miles published on this date in 2008 on The Cutting Edge website. It reads in part:]

December 2008 has had more than its share of stories about miscarriages of justice. But little has been said the victim of what many see as the biggest miscarriage of justice in Scottish legal history: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the man convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 en route from London to New York on December 21, 1988.

For many years, it looked as if there would be no trial over Lockerbie. British and US governments believed Colonel Gaddafi would never hand over the two Libyan intelligence officers accused of the bombings, which some regarded as fortunate, as they believed the evidence against Libya would not stand up in a court of law.

But thanks largely to the persistence of Nelson Mandela, 12 years after the bombing a trial did take place. In exchange for the lifting of sanctions, Gaddafi handed over the two accused men and the Scottish court swallowed almost the whole improbable story. On January 31, 2001, Megrahi was convicted of the mass murder of 259 passengers and crew, as well as 11 people on the ground in the village of Lockerbie. He is now serving a life sentence in a Scottish jail. His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.

Megrahi's conviction was a shocker. No material evidence was presented linking him to the bombing, let alone any evidence that he put the bomb on the plane or that he handled any explosives. Even the prosecution subsequently questioned the credibility of its star witness.

Nevertheless, keen to move on, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing although it never accepted guilt. Gaddafi paid $2.7 billion (£1.8 billion) in compensation to the victims' families  $10 million for every victim. The final payment was made in 2008. US lawyers took approximately a third of the final amount. But the economic and humanitarian price for Libya was far higher: UN sanctions over an 11-year period inflicted billions of dollars' worth of economic damage on Libya and prevented thousands of Libyan citizens from traveling abroad.

The central pillar of the prosecution's case was that Megrahi wrapped the bomb in clothes before checking it onto a plane in Malta without boarding it himself. The bomb, the prosecution alleged, was subsequently transferred at Frankfurt onto the flight to London, and then loaded onto the flight to New York. Two years after the bombing, Granada TV in Britain ran a program about the bombing featuring a dramatic reconstruction, in which a bag containing a bomb was loaded onto an Air Malta flight by a sinister-looking Arab, who then sloped off without boarding. Upset by the damage to its reputation, Air Malta sued Granada TV. The airline's solicitors compiled a dossier of evidence demonstrating that all the bags checked onto that flight were accompanied by passengers and none traveled on to London. The evidence was so convincing that Granada TV settled out of court.

Since the British Crown never had much of a case against Megrahi, it was no surprise when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) found prima facie evidence in June 2007 that Megrahi had suffered a miscarriage of justice and recommended that he be granted a second appeal.

For 11 years, while legal proceedings were pending and throughout the trial, the British Government argued that a public inquiry into Lockerbie was not appropriate as it would prejudice legal proceedings. After the conviction, it switched tack, arguing instead that no public inquiry was necessary. But if the conviction were overturned, there would no longer be a reason to hold back. For Megrahi, this cannot come soon enough. In September, he was diagnosed with advanced terminal prostate cancer.

The British Government is preparing for Megrahi to be transferred to Libya for the rest of his sentence. This would eliminate the risk of an acquittal and lessen the chance of a subsequent inquiry. Applications for a transfer cannot be submitted while an appeal is pending, which for the Government raises the convenient prospect that Megrahi will abandon his appeal so he can die at home. But letting Megrahi die a condemned man reduces the chance of Scottish prosecutors, the police, various British intelligence services plus many American and other foreign bodies being asked a lot of difficult questions. In November 2008, a general agreement on the exchange of prisoners was signed between Libya and Britain paving the way for such a transfer. The agreement will be ratified in January 2009.

"The Crown and the prosecution are using every delaying tactic in the book to close off every route available to Megrahi except prisoner transfer, as this means he has to abandon his appeal," commented Professor Robert Black QC, the Scottish lawyer who was the architect of the original trial who feels partly responsible for the miscarriage that occurred. "It is an absolute disgrace. It was June 27, 2007 when the SCCRC released its report and sent its case back to the criminal appeal court, and here we are 18 months later and the Crown has still not handed over all of the material that the law requires it to hand over and it is still making every objection conceivable."

There are, however, two obstacles to the British plan. Firstly, the decision to transfer Megrahi lies with the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. Upset that the Government reached an agreement over Megrahi without consulting him first, Salmond has ruled out any transfer.

Secondly, whether Megrahi dies in jail in Scotland or Libya, under Scottish law his appeal can still go ahead without him. "Any interested person can continue the case. In this case one of Megrahi's children could continue with the appeal to clear their father's name," says Professor Black.

If Megrahi didn't do it, who did?

Pan Am 103 destroyed by "detonation of high explosive"

[On this date in 1988 Mick Charles, the AAIB inspector in charge of the Pan Am 103 investigation, announced that the aircraft had been destroyed by the detonation of high explosive. What follows is excerpted from a statement made in the House of Commons on 10 January 1989 by the Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon:]

On 28 December, the inspector in charge of the accident investigation at Lockerbie announced that the aircraft had been destroyed by the detonation of high explosive. A team from my air accident investigation branch, assisted by people from the local emergency services and armed forces, has been working to find out where in the aircraft the bomb was placed. The chief inspector of air accidents is today issuing a bulletin that narrows the area to that of the No. 1 cargo and baggage hold just forward of the wing. It is too early to say yet where the article containing the explosive orginated.

It may help the House if I explain how the investigation is organised. Because the incident happened in his area, the chief constable of Dumfries and Galloway is in charge of the police investigation under the supervision of the procurator fiscal. The chief investigating officer is a chief superintendent of the Strathclyde police, and he is being given extensive assistance by other police forces in this country, including the metropolitan police, and by the FBI both in Lockerbie and in the United States. The investigators here have close links with the German police who are investigating the incident in Frankfurt, and other authorities in Europe and elsewhere who may be able to help to trace the movements of the passengers and their contacts immediately beforehand. (...)

It is essential that we discover who put the bomb on the aircraft and how it got there. We must await the progress of the investigation. The signs of the use of a high performance plastic explosive—which was very probably, but not certainly, Semtex—point to a well-organised and well-supplied terrorist group. If that proves to be the case, I am sure that the House will join the Government and the Governments of most nations to condemn not only the despicable murderers themselves but any country which has supplied them, trained them, housed them or encouraged them.

There has been much speculation about the origin of the article in which the explosive was placed on the aircraft. I hope that the extensive, painstaking and detailed work on the wreckage, which is still being recovered, will eventually establish which consignment contained the bomb. It cannot help those seeking to discover the facts to speculate, and I am not prepared to do so. 697The fact that a bomb was on board an aircraft flying from Heathrow obviously raises questions about aviation security in this country. Security at our airports is acknowledged to be among the best in the world. Yet an aircraft with all its passengers and crew has been lost, and there have been grievous casualties on the ground. Immediate steps, in consultation with the Federal Aviation Authority and with the United States airlines, have been taken to increase security for those airlines' scheduled operations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Prestwick.

Those measures were promulgated as soon as the accident investigator's announcement that the aircraft was destroyed by an explosive device was made on 28 December; the came into effect the next day. They require additional hold and cabin baggage checks, including checks of all baggage transferred from other aircraft, and more stringent requirements for protecting aircraft while they are on the ground. I am grateful for the co-operation we have had from the United States authorities and airlines and the airports.

[RB: In 1997 the AAIB’s Chief Inspector of Air Accidents, K P R Smart CBE, published an informative article on the Lockerbie investigation. It can be read here. The 1990 AAIB report into the destruction of Pan Am 103 can be read here.]

A slow-motion version of pass the parcel

[What follows is excerpted from an item posted on this blog on this date in 2011:]

We must have Lockerbie inquiry, no matter the cost

[This is the headline over an editorial in today's edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

As Pamela Dix, whose brother died in the Lockerbie bombing, says: "It is unfinished business." Now one more step has been taken towards unravelling the uncertainty that has hung over this case ever since that awful December night 23 years ago.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has revealed that he has the go-ahead under the Data Protection Act from Kenneth Clarke, his opposite number in the UK Government, to publish the 800-page Statement of Reasons from the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC). This document explains the grounds for appealing the conviction of the Libyan Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the only person convicted of the atrocity. It was never published because the appeal itself was dropped when he was released on compassionate grounds in August 2009.

It emerged earlier this year that legislation going through Holyrood could not guarantee publication because the material would continue to be subject to UK data protection legislation. Now that potential hurdle appears to have been removed.

If, as the Scottish Government maintains, it supports the maximum possible transparency in this case, it is apposite to ask why it took some time to make an official approach to the Westminster Justice Department regarding this matter. For years the UK and Scottish governments have played a slow-motion version of pass the parcel with this case, with neither seemingly prepared to increase the snail's pace progress and the prospect of political advantage (or damage) playing its part.

The imminent publication of John Ashton's biography of Megrahi may force the pace as, once the material is public, SCCRC will be free to publish it themselves. It is not clear how much further it will take us. The document dates from 2007. Fresh material and new forensic techniques have appeared in the interim. Also, in the interests of national security, some items and passages will be redacted.

Regardless of whether or not the man convicted of this crime is guilty as charged, others must have been involved. There are still many unanswered questions. Only a full and wide-ranging independent public inquiry can tackle these issues. This case may show the quality of Scottish justice in a poor light but ultimately getting at the truth is more important. It is also what the relatives of those who died desire and deserve.

[This editorial follows on from an article by chief reporter Lucy Adams which contains the following:]

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has revealed he has received assurances from the UK Government to help smooth the path to publication of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's (SCCRC) long-awaited report.

Mr MacAskill wrote to the UK Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke earlier this month to ask the Coalition Government to remove obstacles presented by the Data Protection Act 1998, which is reserved to the UK Parliament, to enable a Scottish Government Bill to be put forward.

Mr Clarke has replied to say he is happy for his officials to discuss the matter directly with the SCCRC to find out more information about the barriers to publication of its Statement of Reasons in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.

The Scottish Government has responded by providing contact details for the SCCRC to facilitate discussions. (...)

The chief executive of the SCCRC said that, regardless of the legislation going through the Scottish Parliament, the commission still had to "comply with the requirement of the Data Protection Act 1998 which is, of course, UK-wide legislation".

Robert Black, QC, one of the architects of the original trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, said the Scottish legislation was a "waste" of time. (...)

It is thought Megrahi's official biography, expected early next year, will contain much of the detail from the report. If it does, that could free the commission to publish the full report because it will already be in the public domain.

Claim of Libyan responsibility “may well be codswallop”

[What follows is the text of a report published in The Herald on this date in 1995:]

Pressure was growing on the Lord Advocate last night to step into the row over the planned release from prison of a key suspect in the Lockerbie bombing who is to be freed under a secret deal between the Iranian and German governments.

Dr Jim Swire, spokesman for the 270 victims of the disaster, said he firmly believed the man at the centre of the diplomatic row, Palestinian terrorist Hafez Dalkamoni and his gang, were the prime movers behind the bombing.

Dr Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the Lockerbie disaster, said Dalkamoni should not be released from his German prison cell until a full investigation into his involvement in Lockerbie was carried out and a full team of Scottish police officers were allowed to interview him.

In light of the new developments Labour MP Tam Dalyell has written to the Lord Advocate, Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, making it clear that freeing Dalkamoni will seriously undermine efforts to find out who was responsible for the disaster.

Mr Dalyell's letter asks five questions of the Lord Advocate including whether he would talk to the German authorities before the release of Dalkamoni, whether the Germans had contacted Scottish police about his release, and whether the Government would now be in touch with the German government on the matter.

Dalkamoni and his accomplice, Abdel Ghadanfar, led a 14-strong Palestinian cell arrested in Frankfurt weeks before the disaster on December 21, 1988.

Dr Swire, who had made extensive inquiries into the case, said a tape recorder made into a bomb was found in the boot of Dalkamoni's car. The timing mechanism was set in motion by a drop in atmospheric pressure, conditions only to be found in an aircraft as it attains altitude.

Dalkamoni and Ghadanfar were held in custody but the other members of the cell were released and Dr Swire said he believed they were involved in planting a suitcase laden with explosives on the jet at Frankfurt airport.

Dalkamoni was finally jailed in 1991 for 15 years for trying to blow up an American military train but as part of the secret deal with Iran will be released soon after serving less than a third of his sentence.

His accomplice in the plot to blow up the train, Abdel Ghadanfar, who was also arrested at Frankfurt airport, was jailed for 12 years and released in secret last year.

The controversial German deal with Iran follows a visit by their intelligience chief, Ali Fallahian, to meet his German counterpart, Bernd Schmidbauer, in late 1993.

Last night Dr Swire and Mr Dalyell called for immediate action by the Lord Advocate to try and halt the release of Dalkamoni. Both said it was vital that he was interviewed by Scottish police.

Dr Swire said the Government claim that two Libyans were behind the bombing “may well be codswallop”.

Despite the Government insistence of the case against the Libyan pair, he said he firmly believed that Dalkamoni and his gang were heavily involved in the bombing.

A Scottish Office spokesman said last night that once they had seen the contents of Mr Dalyell's letter they would respond to it.

Intelligence agencies and disinformation

[I wish a happy Christmas to all readers of this blog.

What follows is an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer published by OhmyNews on Christmas Day 2007:]

British journalists -- and British journals -- are being manipulated by the secret intelligence agencies, and I think we ought to try and put a stop to it.  --David Leigh[1]

Intelligence agencies can manipulate journalists and their newspapers in various ways. Firstly, spies may recruit journalists or even impersonate them. It goes without saying that these long and broadly practiced activities are unhealthy as they put the life of every single journalist in danger, and particularly those who work as foreign correspondents.

Secondly, intelligence agencies can plant disinformation in mainstream media under false identity. In the months preceding the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, intelligence agencies used this technique abundantly and without any difficulty, according to a copy of the CIA's secret history of the coup, which surfaced in 2000. "The Iran desk of the [US] State Department was able to place a CIA study in Newsweek, using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist. The article was one of several planted press reports that, when reprinted in Tehran, fed the war of nerves against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh," the document said. The third way for the spook to gain access to the media is rather subtle and particularly insidious. It consists of exploiting the vanity of journalists to impress on them to hide or lie about the real identity of their sources. Spies are said to have used this technique -- known as "I/Ops" for Information Operation -- heavily in the British press. Yet, it can rarely be documented. But once in a while, an I/Op gets out of control, giving the public a rare opportunity to take a peek inside the world of disinformation. In November 1995, The Sunday Telegraph published a sensational story about one of our then favorite villains: Libya. 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." The article had been written by then-senior correspondent Con Coughlin. Coughlin's source was described as a "British banking official." When The Sunday Telegraph was served with a libel writ by Qaddafi's son, the paper was unable to back up its allegation. The paper lodged three defenses. First, the lawyers argued that the newspaper had not injured Gaddafi's reputation. Second, they argued that the article about him was true. Finally, claiming the defense 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. 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 UK 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 UK soil. "Is it in truth a classic muddle? A story of security service incompetence, a story of black propaganda, a story The Sunday Telegraph did not take that much care with because it never thought the matter would come to court?" asked James Price, QC, for Saif al-Islam. During the trial in April 2002, bits of the true story began to emerge. On Oct 19, 1995, the Conservative foreign secretary Malcom Rifkind had arranged a lunch that Coughlin attended. During that meeting, Coughlin was told by Rifkind that Iran was trying to get hold of hard currency to fund its WMD program in spite of UN sanctions. Rifkind encouraged Coughlin to follow this story. The dispute was settled in less than two days of trial.[2] "There was no truth in the allegation that Gaddafi participated in any currency sting," said Geoffrey Robertson, QC, representing Telegraph Group Ltd. "The Sunday Telegraph has accepted not only that there is no truth in these allegations, but that there is no evidence to suggest that there is any truth in them, and they have agreed to apologize to the claimant [Saif al-Islam] in this court and in the newspaper," Price told journalists. One had to wait for the publication of David Hooper's book Reputations Under Fire to learn that the source of the article was not a "British banking official." Actually, they were intelligence officers working for MI6. It is now understood what really occurred. On Oct 25 and 31, 1995, Coughlin was briefed by a MI6 man (source A) who appeared to be his regular contact with the agency. Source A gave Coughlin an overview of the plan. Through an Austrian Company, Iran was selling oil on the black market to fund its secret military nuclear program. Moreover, on Nov 21, 1995, source A introduced Coughlin to a second MI6 person (source B) who described the involvement of Saif al-Islam in the counterfeiting scam.[3] Source B requested strict confidentiality. The next day, the two MI6 officers described the money laundering deal in great detail during a four-hour meeting. Eight billion dollars would be transferred out of banks in Egypt and replaced by Libyans dinars, minus a substantial commission. The Libyans would hide their involvement through a Swiss branch of an international finance company. Meanwhile, an Iranian middleman would provide a large amount of fake currency. On Nov 23, Coughlin met once more the two intelligence officers who showed him copies of the banking records. There is just one problem with the story. The intelligence officers made it up. It was pure fabrication and Coughlin bought it while hiding the true identity of his source. "I believe he [Coughlin] made a serious mistake in falsely attributing his story to a British banking official. His readers ought to know where his material is coming from. When The Sunday Telegraphgot into trouble with the libel case, it seems, after all, to have suddenly found it possible to become a lot more specific about its sources," wrote David Leigh. "Our first task as practitioners is to document what goes on in this very furtive field. Our second task ought to be to hold an open debate on what the proper relations between the intelligence agencies and the media ought to be. And our final task must then be to find ways of actually behaving more sensibly." Has Coughlin learned anything from the affair? It seems that the answer to this question is definitely no. He went on writing about the false link between Saddam and al-Qaida and the false allegations concerning the Iraqi WMDs. He wrote that the Iraqis could access their WMDs within 45 minutes. Coughlin has written numerous articles about the alleged Iranian military program such as "Meanwhile, Iran Gets On With Its Bomb," "Israeli Crisis Is a Smoke Screen for Iran's Nuclear Ambitions," "Iran Accused of Hiding Secret Nuclear Weapons Site," "Iran Has Missiles to Carry Nuclear Warheads," "UN Officials Find Evidence of Secret Uranium Enrichment Plant," "Iran Plant Has Restarted Its Nuclear Bomb-Making Equipment," and "Iran Could Go Nuclear Within Three Years." Not a single one of these articles quotes a named source. 1. "Britain's Security Services and Journalists: The Secret Story," British Journalism Review, Vol 11, No 2, 2000, pages 21-26. David Leigh is assistant editor of The Guardian. He is former editor of The Guardian's comment page and former assistant editor at The Observer. He is a distinguished investigative reporter and formerly a producer for Granada Television's World in Action program. In 2007, he was awarded the Paul Foot prize, with his colleague Rob Evans, for the BAE bribery exposures. 2. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C., and a nephew of King Fahd, is understood to have brokered the settlement at the request of The Sunday Telegraph. 3. The reader should keep in mind that in late November 1995, MI6 was approached by Libyan dissidents concerning their plan to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi in February 1996. MI6 met with one member of the group, code name Tunworth, in late November 1995.