Sergei Skripal: who was behind the Salisbury poisoning?

[Tintin]

Here's a historical placeholder, and it should serve as an aide memoir to help remain focused.

History has a habit of repeating itself and there is every reason to suspect that it may have done here with the Skripal story.

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Operation Beluga: A US-UK Plot to Discredit Putin and Destabilize the Russian Federation
Friday, 30 March 2018

Sourced from here.

EXCLUSIVE: French Spec Ops Captain Paul Barril Reveals How Litvinenko Was Killed

https://www.youtube.com/embed/aLI-gXJ7T5E

A former French official who has had senior roles in internal security and terror fighting has come forward with a remarkable statement: that he has documentary evidence proving that Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy who died from plutonium poisoning, was killed by US and UK special services.

In a lengthy interview which is soon to be published, he goes further, saying that Litvinenko’s murder was a special sevices operation designed to defame Russia and Vladimir Putin, that the notorious Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was involved, and was himself killed by MI6 when he became a liability. He even says he knows the code name of the operation: “Beluga”.

From Oped News, Monday, March 27:

Operation Beluga: A US-UK Plot to Discredit Putin and Destabilize the Russian Federation

Renowned French security expert Paul Barril has let loose a bombshell: the existence of Operation Beluga, a covert Western intelligence scheme intended to undermine Russia and its leaders.

Is that what's behind much of the threatening rhetoric now going back and forth between the US and Russia?

Barril exposed Operation Beluga in a recent interview with Swiss businessman Pascal Najadi on the 2006 Alexander Litvinenko death case. Litvinenko was a reputed former spy who many believe was murdered with radioactive polonium on orders of Vladimir Putin.

Najadi says the interview drew out the converse revelation that Litvinenko was actually killed by "an Italian who administered the deadly polonium 210." What's more, he astonishingly says, the operation was carried out under the auspices of the US and UK.

In my books The Phony Litvinenko Murder and Litvinenko Murder Case Solved I've written about an Italian connection. But I can't confirm that Barril is talking about the same person.

Barril’s allegations should be taken seriously. He is a renowned French intelligence figure who is known in France as “Superflic”, which translates roughly as “Supercop.” In the French public eye he is a kind of combination of Eliot Ness, James Bond, and William Bratton. For many years he was the second in command of the ski-mask wearing GIGN, the legendary elite French special forces unit, who top the “badass” rankings of special forces anywhere, and had other high ranking internal security positions in the French government.

Since leaving government service he has handled security issues as a private contractor for heads of state in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. He has been at the center of several controversies over the years, and is a well-known author. There is no question that he has access to intelligence at the state level which would give him insights into this affair.

[greybeard]

Dr Chris Busby: Police become unwell at chemical weapons expert's Devon home

Coincidence?????


A chemical weapons expert has been arrested after police started feeling ill while visiting his Devon home.
Dr Chris Busby, 73, has been detained under the explosives act after officers at his Bideford home on Wednesday morning felt unwell.
Devon and Cornwall Police said officers at the retired research scientist's home also found "a number of items" which "require expert analysis from specialist officers and an explosive ordnance disposal team".
The British scientist is an expert on the health effects of internal ionising radiation.
He is a contributor on Russia Today, the Kremlin-funded TV channel.


Dr Busby has also worked for Britain's Ministry of Defence on a depleted uranium committee and a committee examining radiation risks of internal emitters.
Devon and Cornwall Police said the officers who were feeling unwell were immediately removed from the scene and a cordon put in place.
A hazardous area response team ambulance was quickly sent to the scene where they treated the officers.
Fire and other ambulance teams were also seen outside the house.
Police then evacuated the property and arrested Dr Busby.
Police said the affected officers were unharmed and have since returned to duty.
In a statement, the Devon and Cornwall force said: "It has not been deemed necessary to evacuate any other properties; there is not believed to be any wider public risk at this time.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dr-chris-b...164400215.html

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by greybeard (here)
Dr Chris Busby, 73, has been detained under the explosives act

What are the odds that someone in British Intelligence was worried that Busby knew too much about something, and might not be trusted to keep quiet?

[norman]

waw, one more arrest cop trick to add to the list.


Expect a lot more of that. A cop could step inside anyone's home and immediately act out a fake "feeling ill" episode.

[avid]

Oh please, not another Dr David Kelly.....?

[Baby Steps]

From Blackstone, he appears to know what he is talking about wrt CCTV camera 'dirt signatures'

gets to it 16 minutes in.

Blackstone Intel Exclusive: Analysis shows that photos of alleged assassins Petrov and Boshirov were doctored by Scotland Yard as part of the falsification of a timeline of events in the Skipal poisoning.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=D2r5lY1sF08

[Did You See Them]

True identity revealed: Salisbury suspect is colonel in Russian military intelligence.



He was identified by British police earlier this month as Ruslan Boshirov but now an investigation by the organisation Bellingcat has revealed his real name is Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga.

https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-...gence-11509532

[Tintin]

In another twist, the mainstream media continues to press on with some source material of pretty dubious provenance.

In all honesty, it continues to smack a little --- or maybe more than --- of desperation on the part of the Establishment in attempting to cover their tracks.

If Paul Barril's testimony has legs, and there is every reason to suppose that it does, then the Operation Beluga footprint is all over this, and the most likely MO in this instance, but, really rather just a warning shot instead of a 'hit': I doubt it was a botched hit, if, somewhat controversially I might add, anything really did actually 'go down' in Salisbury that day with any actual poisoning at all. (Aside: interesting how a Beluga whale did in fact appear in London's River Thames this week, although I expect there will not be an attempt to pin the deed on that).

This week's episode seems to involve supposedly revealing the true identity of one of the visitors to Salisbury.

Who writes this stuff?

Craig Murray has his suspicions and this piece from his blog seems to have pre-empted Bellingcat and Russian Insider as it was written before yesterday's script was wheeled out, and in as much as making the point that they are very far from reliable sources of information. It is very important to bear the surface origin of information (sic) in mind at all times - many are used as a front for intelligence propaganda, and the dissemination of falsehoods.

Remember, always, that the primary purpose of intelligence agencies all over the world is the management of information. This of course would also involve making stuff up.

Over to Craig:

The Incredible Case of Boshirov and Petrov’s Visas
24 Sep, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig |

"What Bellingcat does have is a track record of shilling for the security services. Bellingcat claims its purpose is to clear up fake news, yet has been entirely opaque about the real source of its so-called documents."

"It is not easy for a Russian citizen, particularly an economically active male, to get past the UK Border Agency. The visa application process is very intrusive. They have to produce evidence of family and professional circumstances, including employment and address, evidence of funds, including at least three months of bank statements, and evidence of the purpose of the visit."

"The fact of there being no credible evidence, according to either the Metropolitan Police or the Crown Prosecution Service, to link them to the Amesbury poisoning, has profound implications."

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The Metropolitan Police made one statement in the Skripal case which is plainly untrue; they claimed not to know on what kind of visa Boshirov and Petrov were travelling. As they knew the passports they used, and had footage of them coming through the airport, that is impossible. The Border Force could tell them in 30 seconds flat.



To get a UK visa Boshirov and Petrov would have had to attend the UK Visa Application Centre in Moscow. There not only would their photographs be taken, but their fingerprints would have been taken and, if in the last few years, their irises scanned. The Metropolitan Police would naturally have obtained their fingerprints from the Visa Application.

One thing of which we can be certain is that their fingerprints are not on the perfume bottle or packaging found in Charlie Rowley’s home. We can be certain of that because no charges have been brought against the two in relation to the death of Dawn Sturgess, and we know the police have their fingerprints.

The fact of there being no credible evidence, according to either the Metropolitan Police or the Crown Prosecution Service, to link them to the Amesbury poisoning, has profound implications.

Why the Metropolitan Police were so coy about telling us what kind of visa the pair held, points to a wider mystery. Why were they given the visas in the first place, and what story did they tell to get them? It is not easy for a Russian citizen, particularly an economically active male, to get past the UK Border Agency. The visa application process is very intrusive.

They have to produce evidence of family and professional circumstances, including employment and address, evidence of funds, including at least three months of bank statements, and evidence of the purpose of the visit. These details are then actively checked out by the Visa Department.

If they had told the story to the visa section they told to Russia Today, that they were freelance traders in fitness products wanting to visit Salisbury Cathedral, they would have been refused a visa as being candidates for overstaying. They would have been judged not to have sufficiently stable employment in Russia to ensure they would return.

So what story did Petrov and Boshirov give on their visa application, why were they given a visa, and what kind of visa? And why do the British authorities not want us to know the answer to these questions?

Which brings us to the claims of neo-conservative propaganda website Bellingcat. They claim together with the Russian Insider website to have obtained documentary evidence that Petrov and Boshirov’s passports were of a series issued only to Russian spies, and that their applications listed GRU headquarters as their address.

There are some problems with Bellingcat’s analysis. The first is that they also quote Russian website fontanka.ru as a source, but fontanka.ru actually say the precise opposite of what Bellingcat claim – that the passport number series is indeed a civilian one and civilians do have passports in that series..



Fontanka also state it is not unusual for the two to have close passport numbers – it merely means they applied together. On other points, fontanka.ru do confirm Bellingcat’s account of another suspected GRU officer having serial numbers close to those of Boshirov and Petrov.

But there is a bigger question of the authenticity of the documents themselves. Fontanka.ru is a blind alley – they are not the source of the documents, just commenting on them, and Bellingcat are just attempting the old trick of setting up a circular “confirmation”.

Russian Insider is neither Russian nor an Insider. Its name is a false claim and it consists of a combination of western “experts” writing on Russia, and reprints from the Russian media. It has no track record of inside access to Russian government secrets or documents, and nor does Bellingcat.

What Bellingcat does have is a track record of shilling for the security services. Bellingcat claims its purpose is to clear up fake news, yet has been entirely opaque about the real source of its so-called documents.

MI6 have almost 40 officers in Russia, running hundreds of agents. The CIA has a multiple of that. They pool their information. Both the UK and US have large visa sections whose major function is the analysis of Russian passports, their types and numbers and what they tell about the individual.

We are to believe that Boshirov and Petrov were GRU agents whose identity was plainly obvious from their passports, who had no believable cover identities, but that neither the visa department nor MI6 (which two cooperate closely and all the time) knew they were giving visas to GRU agents. Yet this information was readily available to Bellingcat?

I do not know if the two are agents or just tourists. But the claimed evidence they were agents is, if genuine, so obvious that the two would have been under close surveillance throughout their stay in the UK. If the official story is true, then the failures of the UK visa department and MI6 are abject and shameful. As is the failure to take simple precautions for the Skripals’ security, like the inexplicable absence of CCTV covering the house of Sergei Skripal, an important ex-agent and defector supposedly under British protection.

A further thought. We are informed that Boshirov and Petrov left a trace of novichok in their hotel bedroom. How likely is it, really, that, the day before the professional assassination attempt, which involved handling an agent with which any contact could kill you, Boshirov and Petrov would prepare, not by resting, but by an all night drugs and sex session? Would you really not want the steadiest possible hand the next day? Would you really invite a prostitute into the room with the novichok perfume in it, and behave in a way that led to complaints and could have brought you to official notice?

Is it not astonishing that nobody in the corporate and state media has written that this behaviour is at all unlikely, while scores of “journalists” have written that visiting Salisbury as a tourist, and returning the next day because the visit was ruined by snow, would be highly unlikely?

[norman]

It's not as simple as us and them, Brits and Russians.


I smell a tactical splitting force at work. Someone is trying to shatter the solidarity of the security services around Putin.


Well, I'm guessing, really, but you tell me . . . . .

[Tintin]

Posted by norman (here)
I smell a tactical splitting force at work. Someone is trying to shatter the solidarity of the security services around Putin.

A similar thought had crossed my mind too.

There is definitely a hand at work behind the scenes here that could, indeed, most certainly be rogue and have originated from a Russian agency source, and, actively sponsored by homeland (meaning UK, French, German or US) agencies.

The willing patsy scenario is most certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility, at all. An anti-Putin faction within their security and social infrastructure would have something to gain from trying to pin this on Russian state 'orders' and undermine his (Putin's) authority and credibility.

Knowing the past activities of the British intelligence set-up and US equivalent CIA practices in pulling off successful government takeovers (revisit the shadow state coup d'etat in Ukraine, for example) then, yes, not an unreasonable supposition.

Much like yourself, I too am guessing.....

[Tintin]

Before I share Craig Murray’s latest findings on the photographic anomalies present in the images of Boshirov being disseminated by the mainstream media I did want to share this information contained in the Wikileaks Global Intelligence Files.

Links are provided here for you so you can see for yourself the intelligence doing the rounds back in 2010 when Sergei Skripal and 3 other Russians were traded. The original research for Stratfor appears to have been conducted by an employee named Sean Noonan working as a tactical analyst.

Here’s how Wikileaks (accurately) describes Stratfor in the lead paragraph on that page:



Wikileaks email reference 387114 snapshot, here:



Sean Noonan in his email on or around Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:58:51 to other colleagues (including CEO George Friedman) within Stratfor provides, below, these pieces of background information on Sergei Skripal shortly before forwarding this on through the hierarchy within Stratfor to become a formal insight request. (Insight teams are responsible for delivering intelligence to the rest of the business, that enable their teams to make evidence-based decisions. - my emphasis)

(…)"..Below is a load of open-source information on the four Russians who were
pardoned by Moscow and sent to Austria-UK-US. I would appreciate if you
could ask sources with access to information in US and Russian governments
about these four. I'm happy to reword these questions for particular
sources upon request or answer any other questions you may have:

1. Any more details on the information allegedly passed by Zaporozhsky
(SVR Colonel) to the US? Many reports say he spied for them, but he lived
fairly publicly in the US and returned to Moscow voluntarily.

2. What about Skripal (GRU colonel)? It's said that he exposed GRU
officers or agents in the West, but it seems like he would have more
access to GRU and military information within Russia. Can we find out
anymore about what information was passed?

3. Did Sutyagin knowingly pass information to a foreign intelligence
service? Was he trying to make money on the side, without realizing who
he was working for?

4. Would any of the four have access to information on Russia's nuclear
programs, materials, etc that would have interested the US or UK?
(…)

...and further along into the email, the following:

(...) "Sergei Skripal, former GRU colonel
-charged in 2004
-Worked for GRU in 1990s and retired in 1999, but allegedly continued to
pass information to MI6 from 1995-2004. He served in the army in
mid-1990s, and then presumably moved to a higher position in GRU. The
information that came after 1999 allegedly was acquired through his
former colleagues
-Allegedly paid about $100,000 by MI6 over time that was put in a
Spanish bank account.
-"Skripal had received the secret information that he reported to the
British services from former colleagues after leaving the military," the
FSB said in a release at the time of his trial in 2006. The Russian
daily Izvestia said at that time that Skripal passed the identities of
"dozens of his former colleagues operating in Europe under cover, in
particular, their secret meeting venues, addresses and passwords."
-Jailed in 2006 for 13 years. He admitted his guilt, so given a shorter
sentence than 15 years max.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4775131.stm
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060809/52428496.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...icle604149.ece (...)"

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ADDENDUM | For consistency and chronological purposes here's the Guardian UK story that also ran in 2010 covering the debrief, here - below - followed by the internal Stratfor correspondence/record relating to this:

• British security services debrief two Russians freed in spy swap
Sergei Skripal and Igor Sutyagin questioned by MI5 and MI6 officers at secret location near London
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...sians-spy-swap

Stratfor record

US/RUSSIA/UK/CT- British security services debrief two Russians freed in spy swap

[Tintin]

From Craig Murray on September 27th, identifying the obvious flaws in the imagery disseminated by the British mainstream press:

"...Chepiga has a narrower mouth compared to the distance between the pupils than the two photos of “Boshirov”, and that is measured on the same plane. The difference is 100-80 compared to 100-88. It is a ratio that can be changed by facial expression, but this does not seem to be the case here."

________________________________________

“Boshirov” is probably not “Chepiga”. But he is also not “Boshirov”.

27 Sep, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig

________________________________________

UPDATE: The Kommersant Evidence

Kommersant publishes interviews with people from Chepiga’s home village.

The article makes clear he has not been seen there for many years. It states that opinions differ on whether Chepiga is Boshirov. One woman says she recognised Boshirov as Chepiga when he appeared on TV, especially the dark eyes, though she had not seen him since school. Another woman states it is not Chepiga as when she last saw him ten years ago he was already pretty bald, and he has a more open face, although the eyes are similarly brown.

Naturally mainstream media journalists are tweeting and publishing the man’s evidence and leaving out the woman’s evidence.

But the Kommersant article gives them a bigger challenge. Kommersant is owned by close Putin political ally, Putin’s former student flatmate, Chariman of Gazprominvestholdings and the UK’s richest resident, Alisher Usmanov. That Russia’s most authoritative paper, with ownership very close to Putin, is printing such open and honest reporting rather belies the “Russia is a dictatorship” narrative. And unlike the Guardian and BBC websites, on Kommersant website ordinary Russians can post freely their views on the case, and are.

One thing this does stand up is that Chepiga definitely exists.

The evidence mounts that Russia is not telling the truth about “Boshirov” and “Petrov”. If those were real identities, they would have been substantiated in depth by now. As we know of Yulia Skripal’s boyfriend, cat, cousin and grandmother, real depth on the lives and milieu of “Boshirov” and “Petrov” would be got out. It is plainly in the interests of Russia’s state and its oligarchy to establish that they truly exist, and concern for the privacy of individuals would be outweighed by that. The rights of the individual are not prioritised over the state interest in Russia.

But equally the identification of “Boshirov” with “Colonel Chepiga” is a nonsense.

The problem is with Bellingcat’s methodology. They did not start with any prior intelligence that “Chepiga” is “Boshirov”. They rather allegedly searched databases of GRU operatives of about the right age, then trawled photos in yearbooks of them until they found one that looked a bit like “Boshirov”. And guess what? It looks a bit like “Boshirov”. If you ignore the substantially different skull shape and nose.



Only the picture on the left is Chepiga. The two on the right are from “Boshirov’s” Russian passport application file, and the photo of “Boshirov” issued by Scotland Yard. Like almost the entire internet, I assumed both black and white photos were from Chepiga’s files, and was willing to admit the identification of Chepiga with “Boshirov” as valid.

But once you understand – as Bellingcat confirm if you read it closely – that only the photo on the left is Chepiga, you start to ask questions.

The two guys on the right and the centre are undoubtedly the same person. But is the guy on the left the same, but younger?

Betaface.com, which runs industry standard software, gives the faces an 83% similarity, putting the probability of them being the same person at 2.8%.

By comparison it gives me a 72% identity with Chepiga and a 2.1% chance of being him.





There is a superficial resemblance. But if you take the standard ratios used for facial recognition, you get a very different story. If you draw a line between the centre of the pupils of the two guys centre and right, and then take a perpendicular from that line to the tip of the nose, you get a key ratio. The two on the right both have a ratio of 100:75, which is unsurprising since they are the same person. The one on the left has a ratio of 100:68, which is very different.

To put that more simply, his nose is much shorter, and less certainly his eyes are further apart.

It is possible this could happen in photos but it still be the same person. The head would have to be tilted backward or forward at quite a sharp angle to alter these ratios, which does not seem to be the case. The camera could be positioned substantially above or below the subject, again not apparently the case. And the photo could be resized with height and width ratios changed. That would hard to detect.

But the three white dots across the bottom of the nose are particularly compelling (the middle one largely obscured by a red dot in the Chepiga photo). They illustrate that Chepiga has a snub nose and Boshirov something of a hook. Again, the software is reinforcing what they eye can plainly see.

However, there are also other ratios that are different. Chepiga has a narrower mouth compared to the distance between the pupils than the two photos of “Boshirov”, and that is measured on the same plane. The difference is 100-80 compared to 100-88. It is a ratio that can be changed by facial expression, but this does not seem to be the case here.

Professor Dame Sue Black of the University of Dundee is the world’s leading expert in facial forensic reconstruction. I once spent a fascinating lunch sitting next to her, while I was Rector. I shall contact her for her view on whether the guy on the left is the same person, and if she is kind enough to give me an opinion, I shall pass it on to you unadulterated.

This website is less definitive, but gives a nice clear result, and you can repeat it yourself without having to subscribe (unlike Betaface.com).



________________________________________

Continuing the story on the next post due to vBulletin image submission constraints - Tintin

[Tintin]

Continued....

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...-not-boshirov/

“Boshirov” is probably not “Chepiga”. But he is also not “Boshirov”.

27 Sep, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig

________________________________________


Again for comparison, I tried two photos of myself 12 years apart and got “from nearly the same person”.

It is worth repeating that the only evidence that Chepiga is Boshirov offered by Bellingcat is this photo. The rest of their article simply attempts to establish Chepiga’s career.

This is gross hypocrisy by Bellingcat, who have argued that scores of photos of White Helmets being Jihadi fighters are not valid evidence because you cannot safely recognise faces from photographs.



Yet Higgins now claims his facial identification of Chepiga as Boshirov as “definitive” and “conclusive”, despite the absence of moles, scars and blemishes.

Higgins stands exposed as a quite disgusting hypocrite. Let me go further. I do not believe that Higgins did not take the elementary step of running facial recognition technology over the photos, and I believe he is hiding the results from you. Is it not also astonishing that the mainstream media have not done this simple test?

The bulk of the Bellingcat article is just trying to prove the reality of the existence of Chepiga. This is hard to evaluate, but as the evidence to link him to “Boshirov” is non-existent, is a different argument. Having set out to find a GRU officer of the same age who looks a bit like “Boshirov”, they trumpet repeatedly the fact that Chepiga is about the same age as evidence, in a crass display of circular argument.

This unofficial website does indeed name Chepiga as a Hero of the Russian Federation and recipient of 20 awards, as Bellingcat claims.

But it is impossible to know if it is authentic, and by contrast there is no Chepiga on the official list of Heroes of the Russian Federation, for the stated 2014 or for any other year, which Bellingcat fail to mention. Their other documents and anonymous sources are unverifiable.

The photo of the military school honours arch, with Chepiga added right at the end and not quite in line, looks to me very suspect. My surmise so far would be that most likely Bellingcat’s source of supply is Ukrainian, and trying to tie the Skripal affair into the Ukrainian civil war via Chepiga.

My view of the most likely explanation on presently available evidence is this:

1. Boshirov is not Boshirov, and the Russian Government are lying.
2. Boshirov is not Chepiga, and Bellingcat are lying.
3. The whole Skripal novichok story still does not hang together, and the British government are lying.

I will continue to form my opinions as further evidence becomes available.

UPDATE Incredibly, at 13.15 on 27 September the BBC TV News ran the story showing only the two photos of “Boshirov”, which of course are the same person, and not showing the photo of Chepiga at all!

[Tintin]

Craig Murray continues with some really very interesting background into this shadowy world --- as he acknowledges at the end of this blog entry --- and an admitted advertorial to two of his books, which I have yet to acquire.

"I have this information from an impeccable Whitehall source, who told me there is a concern in the security services that runs like this.

They genuinely believe Boshirov and Petrov are GRU agents and the would-be assassins. (I judge that my source themself believes the security services really do think this). Bellingcat, while they are sometimes fed security service material, did not in fact get fed the Chepiga material by the CIA or MI6, whether or not through a cutout. The security services are worried the Chepiga ID may be a blind alley fed to Bellingcat’s sources by the FSB. If the UK government endorses it, this could be followed by the Russians producing Chepiga and apparently discrediting the entire British narrative..."

________________________________________

Spy Games
30 Sep, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig
________________________________________

Russia has its GRU in addition to its KGB (now FSB and SVR). The UK has its Defence Intelligence in addition to its MI6 and GCHQ. Much less high profile, Defence Intelligence is more analytical than operative – as indeed is GRU, Skripal was an analyst.

Defence Intelligence had its proudest modern moment when it refused to endorse MI6’s pack of lies on Iraqi WMD, and earned the hatred of MI6 and of Blair and Straw as a result. This was confirmed by the Chilcot report which stated that MI6 even actually hid some of the intelligence material from the Defence Intelligence Service to prevent their rubbishing it.

I hope you will forgive me for pointing out that the opposition of the Defence Intelligence to the Blair Dirty Dossier was first revealed in my memoir Murder in Samarkand, a decade before the Chilcot report confirmed it.

It was one of the many reasons Straw attempted to block publication, and one of the many things revealed in my memoir – including of course the UK’s complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition – which the government claimed to be untrue, but in due course has been proved to be 100% accurate. As it should be, as Murder in Samarkand only recounts things I personally witnessed first hand.

As this is the last day of Banned Books Week, I hope you might further forgive me (and I know I am pushing it) if I mention my prequel to Murder in Samarkand, The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. I view it as a much better book, and I was bitterly disappointed when my publisher, who had bravely defied the government lawyers over Murder in Samarkand, backed down and pulled the publication of The Catholic Orangemen due to libel threats from mercenary commander Tim Spicer.

It thus became a Banned Book. I privately printed and sold 1,000 copies, and as technology advanced more recently made it available on print on demand. (I know, Amazon…) But it remains a real regret it has reached so few people. You are welcome to download it entirely free here.

Anyway, after that lengthy advertorial let me get back to the DIS. DIS remain rather more attached to the truth than MI6, so when Defence Minister Gavin Williamson tweeted out a thrilled endorsement of Bellingcat’s work on Colonel Chepiga, DIS urgently advised that he delete it. Which he did.



Which is not to say DIS are sure it is not Chepiga; rather they believe – as would anyone with half a brain – that the Bellingcat photo falls a long way short of proof.

The British security services have been unable to stand up the ID with facial recognition technology. The experts are describing the Boshirov/Chepiga identification as “possible”.

I have this information from an impeccable Whitehall source, who told me there is a concern in the security services that runs like this. They genuinely believe Boshirov and Petrov are GRU agents and the would-be assassins. (I judge that my source themself believes the security services really do think this). Bellingcat, while they are sometimes fed security service material, did not in fact get fed the Chepiga material by the CIA or MI6, whether or not through a cutout. The security services are worried the Chepiga ID may be a blind alley fed to Bellingcat’s sources by the FSB. If the UK government endorses it, this could be followed by the Russians producing Chepiga and apparently discrediting the entire British narrative.

Hence the fact no charge has been laid against Chepiga, and the charges are still in the name of “Boshirov”, plus the fact that no British minister or official has named Chepiga, with only the fool Williamson stepping out of line and being slapped down.

Please note I am not endorsing the views and beliefs of the British intelligence services; I am reporting them.

Russia is fascinating at the moment.

Komsomolskaya Pravda reports Ministry of Interior identification experts unofficially endorsing the Chepiga/Boshirov identity. Now there is no way these experts in the Ministry of the Interior – who would not be hard for the authorities to single out – would have done that for Komsomolskaya Pravda without an official nod. Either the Russians are indeed egging on the British into a false identification, or some inter-agency rivalry is afoot in Russia. This follows on the very open report in Kommersant – which is very close to Putin – that opinion was divided in Chepiga’s home village.

None of which brings us an awful lot closer to the truth of what happened in Salisbury, which I suspect is a great deal more complicated than any official narrative. But it is a fascinating peek into a shadowy world most people never see inside, with which I was once familiar.

[Tintin]

As the Wikileaks Global Intelligence Files become an increasingly fascinating trove I did want to provide a tag here, just for the record, to an earlier post on the thread (Post #23) which cited Pablo Miller, or rather "Paul", also known as Antonio Alvares de Idalgo as a handler to Sergei Skripal.

That Skripal received money placed into a Spanish Bank account would then seem to cement this possibility as very likely to be good intelligence, and an actual fact.

This would also seem to have been known within intelligence circles since at least 2007 and in light of the glare of publicity surrounding this whole peculiar saga, obviously surfacing some 11 years or so later.

Here's the Stratfor information:


[OS] UK/RUSSIA - Alleged Russian agent identifies his British recruiter - FSB
Released on 2013-03-11 00:00 GMT

[OS] UK/RUSSIA - Alleged Russian agent identifies his British recruiter - FSB

[Baby Steps]

with thanks to Paul Craig Roberts:

Everything Is A Hoax

Paul Craig Roberts

An Israeli expert on terrorism and covert assassination procedures explains that the alleged Russian GRU attack on the Skripals with a supposedly deadly nerve agent is a completely obvious hoax to anyone who knows anything at all. https://russia-insider.com/en/skripa...k-case/ri24912 [1]

The official story, says the expert, is “stupidity on stupidity.”

I agree with him.

The question is: Why did the British government think that they could get away with such an obvious hoax? The answer is that the people in Western countries don’t know anything about anything. They live in a world in which their reality is a product of the propaganda fed to them by “news organizations” and Hollywood movies. They only receive controlled explanations. Therefore, they know nothing about how anything really functions. Read the account by the Israeli expert to understand the vast difference between the British government’s hoax and the reality of how an assassination is conducted.

The Israeli expert got me to wondering why the British government thought anyone would fall for such a transparently false story. Having just read David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth’s new book, 9/11 Unmasked, and David Ray Griffin’s 2017 book, Bush and Cheney: How They Runed America and the World, the answer became obvious. The British government had watched the idiot Western populations fall for the official 9/11 conspiracy story in which a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes and without the support of any intelligence agency, caused the entire security apparatus ot the United States to fail utterly, and no one was held responsible for the total failure. The British government concluded that anyone who could possibly believe such an obviously false story would believe anything.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/201...-a-hoax/print/

No sincere security/military expert would entertain this as a Russian state hit.

As has been alluded to in this thread, Skripal had connections to the Steele Dossier.

[Tintin]

BBC Crimewatch Reconstruction of Salisbury Poisonings Shelved After Director Gives up and Considers New Career
_______________________________

August 16, 2018 Rob Slane in The Blogmire
________________________________________

What was important was the meal and the pub. To begin with Hugh and his team originally had the Skripals going to Zizzis first, then to The Mill pub, but this turned out to be the wrong order.

“It’s a bit odd,” says Hugh. “We were going off all the early reports, which all say that the Skripals went for a meal first, and then to the pub. That seems like the obvious order, if you think about it, especially as they probably hadn’t eaten in the morning. Yet when we showed the scene to the police, they got a bit upset and ordered us to reverse it to the pub then the restaurant. When we asked how all the initial reports could have got it wrong, they told us that due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing terror investigation, they were not at liberty to comment.”

________________________________________________________________________________

Of all the very intelligent and informed articles that have dealt with this story, this one could make a claim to being one of the most revealing of all purely on the grounds that if you were to make a case to prove a theory then you'd probably conceive, or realise, a reconstruction of some sort, based upon the information with which you have to go on.

There is no shortage of slightly morbid hilarity to be had reading this article and in its own very simple and honest way demolishes the official story on so many levels as to make this a most unexpected source for a cipher, if you like.

As Rob says:

Warning: This article may contain traces of satire

(Tintin Q)

________________________________________



The BBC’s plans for a one-off episode of Crimewatch, reconstructing events in Salisbury on 4th March, have had to be abandoned after running into a series of problems, according to the programme’s director, Hugh Dunnit. Despite his desire to make the reconstruction as realistic as possible, after weeks of filming Hugh says he has given up, citing a loss of confidence in his professional abilities, after failing to get the details to make any sense.

I talked to him in the care home where he is now residing temporarily, and he told me that the problems began early on with the reconstruction of events on the morning of 4th March. According to police, after making their phones untraceable, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, left home just after 9:00am, and drove to the London Road cemetery, before returning around 1:00pm. But as Hugh told me, this was a cause of major difficulties for the local actors playing the Skripals:

“We only ever intended to show half a minute or so of them at the cemetery in the final reconstruction, but because I’m a great one for making things as realistic as possible, I decided to film them there for the entire four hours, with the intention of editing afterwards. But once the two local actors playing Sergei and Yulia — Doug and Sarah — had put flowers on the grave, we then found that they still had over three hours to kill, and to be honest both of them said they felt a bit stupid just sort of hanging around graves for that length of time. I must admit, it did make us wonder what on earth the Skripals were doing for so long in a cemetery on a Sunday morning.”

Doug Deeply, who plays Sergei, agreed:

“There’s only so much one can do in a graveyard, and to be honest it does feel kind of creepy just hanging around graves. Yet the police seem to think they were there throughout that time, and so being professionals we just had to get on with the job. Still, it does make you wonder why the police don’t just ask them what they were doing there, since they’re both alive and well,” he added with a chuckle.

At the time that the Skripals were on their four hour visit to the graveyard, back at the house in Christie Miller Road, the door handle was of course being targeted. However, shooting this scene proved particularly challenging, since it is not known what the assassins were wearing when they crept up to the house in the unsuspecting suburb. Hugh explains the problems he had in directing this part of the case:

“The biggest problem we had was whether to dress the actors playing the assassins in full chemical protective gear or not. On the one hand, since they are about to smear the most lethal military grade nerve agent known to man on the door handle, you’d naturally think they would need to wear some kind of HazMat gear to do that. But then again, since so far as we are aware, nobody in Christie Miller Road reported seeing anybody dressed in chemical warfare gear that morning, in the end we decided just to give them a pair of Marigolds each and hoped for the best.”

Smearing the gel on the door handle also caused a number of problems, with the crew having to film the scene five or six times, on account of the gel continually dripping off the door handle and leaving a sticky residue. Yet this was by no means the biggest challenge they encountered there. Filming Doug and Sarah arriving back home after the four hours at the cemetery, Hugh immediately saw a problem:

“When they got out of the car and walked over to the house, Doug unlocked the front door and opened it using the handle, with Sarah following and closing the door from the inside. Of course, this meant that she didn’t actually touch the handle, and therefore didn’t get the Novichok on her hand. So when they came back out, we had to get Sarah to remember to shut the door with the outside handle, just to make sure she got her dose of Novichok. But of course the problem with this is that it was one of those outward opening uPVC doors, which means that you don’t actually need to use the door handle on the way out. You can simply slam it shut. Sarah, bless her, kept forgetting this, and so we had to film the scene a number of times before she remembered to shut it using the door handle.”

A clearly embarrassed Sarah declined to comment on the incident itself, but did express surprise at the naivete of the FSB in using such a hit and miss method to target Mr Skripal.

As if these challenges weren’t enough, the number of problems faced by the crew in the City Centre were enormous, even down to some of the most basic things like clothing:

“We asked around, but nobody seems to know what Sergei and Yulia were wearing that day,” says Hugh. “Some reports say he was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, whilst others say he was dressed smartly and had a green coat on. As for Yulia, did she have auburn hair, as seen in footage of her leaving Moscow, or was she blonde, as attested by some witnesses at the bench? I must admit, it did leave us a bit confused.”

Why didn’t he ask to see CCTV footage of the couple in the City Centre that day, I ask.

“Oh I did ask a couple of senior investigators,” he says with a shrug, “but unfortunately one of them seemed to mishear me and started laughing, as if I had just told a joke, and the other looked at me shaking his head in what seemed to me to be a bit of a disapproving way, muttering something about there being an ongoing counter-terror investigation.”

Another challenge was the scene at the Avon Playground in The Maltings, when the Skripals were feeding ducks with some local boys.

“This was really tricky,” said Hugh. “To start with, we had Doug giving some bread to the boys, one of whom ate a piece, since this was what a number of reports stated. But of course we quickly realised that this would have meant the boys becoming contaminated with Novichok from his hands, which of course none of them were. So we tried a few other methods that Colonel Skripal might have used to give bread to the boys. For example, tipping the bread into the floor for them to pick up; putting the bag on the ground and inviting them to come and get the bread themselves; and even taking the bread out with a spoon — anything to avoid it coming directly from his hand. But to be honest, it all looked a bit ridiculous.”

In the end the police came to the rescue.

“Whilst they wouldn’t let us see the footage they have of Mr Skripal passing bread to the boys, so that we could see exactly how he managed to do it without contaminating them, in the end they told us just to leave the scene out of the reconstruction altogether. That’s what they did in the official timeline, they told me. I guess it can’t have been that important, can it?” he said, with a somewhat nervous chuckle.

What was important was the meal and the pub. To begin with Hugh and his team originally had the Skripals going to Zizzis first, then to The Mill pub, but this turned out to be the wrong order.

“It’s a bit odd,” says Hugh. “We were going off all the early reports, which all say that the Skripals went for a meal first, and then to the pub. That seems like the obvious order, if you think about it, especially as they probably hadn’t eaten in the morning. Yet when we showed the scene to the police, they got a bit upset and ordered us to reverse it to the pub then the restaurant. When we asked how all the initial reports could have got it wrong, they told us that due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing terror investigation, they were not at liberty to comment.”

But perhaps the biggest headache that Hugh had in reconstructing the events, was the part played by the couple seen on CCTV in Market Walk, who were thought to be the Skripals, but turned out not to be them.

“They were pretty blurry, which made it difficult to find an actor and an actress to play them, but when we asked the police if they had any clearer images of them from the council camera in the Market Walk, or the one at the end overlooking The Maltings, they looked at us a bit funny like, and said that it would be better if we just forgot about the existence of that couple altogether.”

It was shortly after this that Hugh decided to abandon the project altogether.

When I asked if he might be thinking of having a go at doing a reconstruction of the Amesbury case, based on Charlie Rowley’s testimony, unfortunately the nervous cough that he has developed over the last few weeks started flaring up again.

However, before he took his medication and went for a lie down, he did say that he was probably going to take the next year off to think about starting a new career as a landscape gardener or a beekeeper.

[norman]

Losing confidence in his professional abilities . . waw . . and then sitting out the flack in a care home. OMG.

Panto season is coming up.

[Tintin]

"(...) let us tie that in with the notorious name further down the list; Pablo Miller, the long-term MI6 handler of Sergei Skripal, who lived in Salisbury with Skripal. Miller is the man who was, within 24 hours of the Skripal attack, protected by a D(SMA) notice banning the media from mentioning him. Here Pablo Miller is actively involved, alongside serving FCO and MOD staff, in a government funded organisation whose avowed intention is to spread disinformation about Russia. The story that Miller is in an inactive retirement is immediately and spectacularly exploded."

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Craig Murray, with his vast experience and concrete knowledge, joins up the dots here in what is likely to be some more critical evidence that, I'd wager, proves without many doubts at all UK intelligence meddling via disinformation being fed to the press for dissemination and the role that the Integrity Initiative and Institute for Statecraft most certainly will have played behind the scenes here.

I made mention of the Integrity Initiative over here on the Fake News thread and all the posts from Onawah #225 through to and including Hervé's #227 on that thread would also demand some close attention.

You are also urged to read very carefully the thorough and professional job undertaken by the working group on Syria, media and propaganda cited in this article and it is available either via the link in the article, or here in the library.

So, I ask: Is there anybody out there viewing this still convincing themselves, somewhat delusionally I would offer, that Russia really had anything to do with this in the way the UK press (by proxy or design really just another intelligence agency department) has maintained?

In the nicest possible way, I would gently suggest that if you do believe that mainstream media horse pucky then your very intellect and soul are in the utmost peril.

There is a job vacancy at the Institute with your name on, and Elvis is working the canteen.

Enjoy Craig's article.
(Tintin Q)

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British Government Covert Anti-Russian Propaganda and the Skripal Case

21 Dec, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig

It is worth starting by noting that a high percentage of the Integrity Initiative archive has been authenticated. The scheme has been admitted by the FCO and defended as legitimate government activity. Individual items like the minutes of the meeting with David Leask are authenticated. Not one of the documents has so far been disproven, or even denied.

Which tends to obscure some of the difficulties with the material. There is no metadata showing when each document was created, as opposed to when Anonymous made it into a PDF. Anonymous have released it in tranches and made plain there is more to come. The reason for this methodology is left obscure.

Most frustratingly, Anonymous’ comments on the releases indicate that they have vital information which is not, so far, revealed. The most important document of all appears to be a simple contact list, of a particular group within the hundreds of contacts revealed in the papers overall. This is it in full:



Tantalisingly, Anonymous describe this as a list of people who attended a meeting with the White Helmets. But there is no evidence of that in the document itself, nor does any other document released so far refer to this meeting. There is very little in the documents released so far about the White Helmets at all. But there is a huge amount about the Skripal case. With the greatest of respect to Anonymous and pending any release of further evidence, I want you to consider whether this might be a document related to the Skripal incident.

The list is headed CND gen list 2. CND is Christopher Nigel Donnelly, Director of the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative and a very senior career Military Intelligence Officer.

The first name on the list caught my eye. Duncan Allan was the young FCO Research Analyst who, as detailed in Murder in Samarkand, appears in my Ambassadorial office in Tashkent, telling me of the FCO staff who had been left in tears by the pressure put on them to sign up to Blair’s dodgy dossier on Iraqi WMD. During the process of clearing the manuscript with the FCO, I was told (though not by him) that he denied having ever said it.

It was one of a very few instances where I refused to make the changes requested to the text, because I had no doubt whatsoever of what had been said. [my emphasis - TQ]

If Duncan did lie about having told me, it did his career no harm as he is now Deputy Head of FCO Research Analysts and, most importantly, the FCO’s lead analyst on Russia and the Former Soviet Union.

Now let us tie that in with the notorious name further down the list; Pablo Miller, the long-term MI6 handler of Sergei Skripal, who lived in Salisbury with Skripal. Miller is the man who was, within 24 hours of the Skripal attack, protected by a D(SMA) notice banning the media from mentioning him. Here Pablo Miller is actively involved, alongside serving FCO and MOD staff, in a government funded organisation whose avowed intention is to spread disinformation about Russia. The story that Miller is in an inactive retirement is immediately and spectacularly exploded.

Now look at another name on this list. Howard Body. Assistant Head of Science Support at Porton Down chemical weapon research laboratory, just six miles away from Salisbury and the Skripal attack, a role he took up in December 2017. He combines this role with Assistant Head of Strategic Analysis at MOD London. “Science Support” at Porton Down is a euphemism for political direction to the scientists – Body has no scientific qualifications.

Another element brought into this group is the state broadcaster, through Helen Boaden, the former Head of BBC News and Current Affairs.

In all there are six serving MOD staff on the list, all either in Intelligence or in PR. Intriguingly one of them, Ian Cohen, has email addresses both at the MOD and at the notoriously corrupt HSBC bank. The other FCO name besides Duncan Allan, Adam Rutland, is also on the PR side.

Zachary Harkenrider is the Political Counsellor at the US Embassy in London. There are normally at least two Political Counsellors at an Embassy this size, one of whom will normally be the CIA Head of Station. I do not know if Harkenrider is CIA but it seems highly likely.

So what do we have here? We have a programme, the Integrity Initiative, whose entire purpose is to pump out covert disinformation against Russia, through social media and news stories secretly paid for by the British government. And we have the Skripals’ MI6 handler, the BBC, Porton Down, the FCO, the MOD and the US Embassy, working together in a group under the auspices of the Integrity Initiative. The Skripal Case happened to occur shortly after a massive increase in the Integrity Initiative’s budget and activity, which itself was a small part of a British Government decision to ramp up a major information war against Russia.

I find that very interesting indeed.

With a hat-tip to members of the Working Group on Syria, Media, and the Propaganda, who are preparing a major and important publication which is imminent. UPDATE Their extremely important briefing note on the Integrity Initiative is now online, prepared to the highest standards of academic discipline.

I shall be drawing on and extrapolating from it further next week.

[Hervé]

Cross-posted from (here):

How the Integrity Initiative spun the West's highly improbable Skripal narrative

21st Century Wire
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 11:59 UTC

One of the biggest and most under-reported stories of 2018 was also one of the most dazzling propaganda operations ever conducted in modern history. The narrative went something like this: a retired former Russian spy and UK double agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were having lunch in a sleepy Wiltshire town, before being brutally poisoned by an alleged "military grade chemical weapon" known as Novichok.

What followed was a textbook, state-managed media operation. Incredibly, within only 48 hours, the UK government had already attributed blame to the Russian Federation and its president, Vladimir Putin. The motive: no apparent reason, just Putin being mean. "There's no logic in it; it doesn't make sense, and I don't think it needs to make sense, because essentially what the media is doing is propagandizing the population in favor of the madman theory. That's critical to do when you're trying to start aggression against a country," said Moon of Alabama at the time.

How can the state and the mainstream media coordinate in a way that would make the inconceivable become the accepted 'official' western consensus reality narrative? Enter the British government-funded anti-Russian propaganda effort ironically named, the Integrity Initiative. A bona fide deep sate agency working under the guise of an anodyne 'think tank,' this clandestine government-media complex network not only helped craft the mainstream Skripal Affair narrative, but it also coordinated and organized attacks against any dissenting persons in the alternative press and on social media who dared to challenge their 'official' western propaganda line.

The level of Kafkaesque corruption in this government-funded psy-op is simply breathtaking...

RT International reports...

The Integrity Initiative, a UK-funded group exposed in leaked files as psyop network, played a key role in monitoring and molding media narratives after the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, newly-dumped documents reveal.

Created by the NATO-affiliated, UK-funded Institute for Statecraft in 2015, the Integrity Initiative was unmasked in November after hackers released documents detailing a web of politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics involved in purportedly fighting "Russian disinformation." The secretive, government-bankrolled "network of networks" has found itself under scrutiny for smearing UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a Kremlin stooge - ostensibly as part of its noble crusade against anti-Russian disinformation.

Now, new leaks show that the organization played a central role in shaping media narratives after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were mysteriously poisoned in Salisbury last March. It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair - even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence.

'Operation Iris'
Days after the Skripals were poisoned, the Institute solicited its services to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, offering to "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries. After receiving the government's blessing, the Integrity Initiative (II) launched 'Operation Iris,' enlisting "global investigative solutions" firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity related to Skripal.

However, Harod's confidential report did more than just parse social media reactions to the Skripal affair: It compiled a list of alleged "pro-Russia troll accounts" accused of "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case."

Among those who found themselves listed as nefarious thought-criminals were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a gentleman from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.

Ian56‏ @Ian56789 Jan 4

• #IntegrityInitiative "Top Kremlin Trolls" aka Truth Tellers. Congratulations if you made the list. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/appendix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring/appendix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring.pdf … Neocon Fascist, al-Qaeda Supporting Treasonous Scumbag @Benimmo is having a laugh with £2m of Taxpayers money. Nimmo should be IN JAIL for Fraud & Treason
  
  
  
  
  17 replies 107 retweets 121 likes

Ian56‏ @Ian56789

#IntegrityInitiative examples of Logical, Critical Thinking & Objective Analysis by yours truly Ian56. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/appendix-r---ian56789-example-tweets/appendix-r---ian56789-example-tweets.pdf … They didn't even include my best ones and they didn't show the pic that went with each tweet. I wonder why? #Skripal #Novichok #FalseFlag

10:39 AM - 4 Jan 2019
2 replies 32 retweets 42 likes

https://twitter.com/ValLisitsa/statu...84566239899649

Pushing a narrative
Another document, dated March 11, 2018 - and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" - contains a "narrative" of the Skripal incident, which blames Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally, as well as containing a number of recommended actions. These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK."

Other suggestions included propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" and getting members of parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses."

It's not clear who the document was drawn up for, but it may have been provided to II-affiliated journalists in the UK and other countries. This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning - which the UK and its allies unanimously blamed on Moscow.

Ahead of its time?
One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot.

Coincidentally, more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from 20 Western countries in an apparently show of solidarity with the UK following the Skripal attack. At the time, UK Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed what she said was "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history."

Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents, written long before the Salisbury events, also call for the arrest of RT and Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding: "Makes you think..."

George Galloway‏Verified account @georgegalloway

So: #IntegrityInitiative funded by the British Govt called for the arrest of people like me like @afshinrattansi @JohnWight1 @NeilClark66 et al in the event of an “incident” like the #Skripal affair. Written incidentally before the #Salisbury events. Makes you think...@RT_com

9:53 AM - 4 Jan 2019
56 replies 554 retweets 693 likes

A curious connection
The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself - a connection made all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the alleged nerve-agent attack.

A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute.

Moon of Alabama‏ @MoonofA

Moon of Alabama Retweeted Kit Klarenberg
It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended #IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair.

Moon of Alabama added,
Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg
What role did #IntegrityInitiative play in the #Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow.... https://sputniknews.com/europe/20190...iative-miller/ … #SergeiSkripal #Disinformation #Propaganda #InformationWar

11:38 AM - 4 Jan 2019
7 replies 234 retweets 283 likes

Fvnk‏ @WhatTheFvnk

EXPLOSIVE: @DanKaszeta of @Strongpoint_UK invoiced @InitIntegrity #IntegrityInitiative £2,276.80 in July 2018 during the #Skripal #Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & #PortonDown @RTUKproducer

10:24 AM - 4 Jan 2019
34 replies 165 retweets 170 likes

It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance.


Related:

• Is Deep State Ruled From Britain? How British Intelligence-Linked Integrity Initiative Drafted US For New Cold War

• Labour MP to RT: The media isn't covering the Integrity Initiative scandal because they might be 'involved'

• Shock Files: What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair?

• MI5's temple of covert propaganda: Integrity Initiative and the scandal of the UK's information war