Britain pays off WWII debt
Thursday, 28 December 2006, 13:17
Amazing factoid of the day: Britain is this week due to make the final £45m repayment to the United States Treasury for the World War II-era Lend-Lease loans. That is all.
USA Today: Tony Blair is more popular in the United States than in Britain. Oh, and 66 per cent of Americans, including Bill Clinton, would like to see Blair running the United Nations. Comments Jan 29, '06
Channel 4 reports that tomorrow’s New Statesman will report a leaked Foreign Office letter that indicates that the UK government was informed about the use of British airspace for so-called “extraordinary rendition” flights by the CIA.
Update: The story is now online. Comments Jan 18, '06
Washington Post: EU vulnerable to 9/11-style terrorism. Comments Jan 18, '06
SNP foreign affairs spokesman Angus Robertson MP has released a dossier of CIA flights that landed at airports in Scotland. Comments Jan 18, '06
Al-Jazeera won’t get its memo
Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 23:20
Al-Jazeera has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Cabinet Office, asking for a transcript of the 2004 meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair during which Bush allegedly suggested bombing the station’s headquarters in Qatar.
When somebody beat them to this approach by nearly a month, the response was predictable — although the Cabinet Office admitted holding the requested information, they refused disclosure based on the section 27 (detrimental to international relations) exemption to FOIA.
But Newsnight tonight reported that a Downing Street spokesman responded to questions about al-Jazeera’s request by denying that the document contained any reference to bombing al-Jazeera.
I suspect that when it comes 19 working days from now, the formal FOIA response will look a lot like the one Steve Wood received last month (PDF).
“Statewatch has been denied access to an EU document because the views expressed in a high-level committee uses ‘frank and “non-diplomatic” language’”. Comments Jan 13, '06
Lawyer seeks disclosure of al-Jazeera memo
Wednesday, 11 January 2006, 16:21
The lawyer of one of the men accused of violating the Official Secrets Act over the leak of a document allegedly showing that George W. Bush had proposed to bomb the headquarters of al-Jazeera will seek disclosure of the document during the trial.
Former parliamentary researcher Leo O’Connor and former government communications official David Keogh are facing charges over the leak. The trial date was set yesterday with little fanfare. The New York Times today reports:
Neil Clark, a lawyer for Mr. O’Connor, said he was shown the memo for the first time on Tuesday on condition that he discuss it only with his client. But, Mr. Clark said, he would seek the disclosure of the document in court. “I didn’t think there was anything in there that could embarrass the British government,” he said.
Hundreds of bloggers have vowed to defy reporting restrictions by publishing the document if it comes into their possession. So far has not been seen publically. Even the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire, who broke the story, based his account entirely on the recollections of individuals who had seen the document.
Yesterday, we learned that Labour MPs Tony Clarke and Peter Kilfoyle had in October 2004 revealed the contents of the document to a British expatriate in California, John Latham. Although they admit this violation of the Official Secrets Act, they are not facing charges.
More evidence of CIA flights at UK airports
Wednesday, 7 December 2005, 13:22
The Scotsman reports on Danish government documents that provide new evidence of that CIA planes stopped over at airports in Scotland:
At least 176 flights into or out of Scotland have already been logged by aircraft owned or run by the CIA. The airfields involved include Glasgow, Prestwick, Edinburgh, Leuchars, Wick and Inverness. The new documents also show CIA flights which passed through Danish airspace en route between Scotland and Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
…
The new flight documents seen by The Scotsman were produced in response to a request from a Danish MP, Frank Aaen, who wrote to the foreign minister Per Stig Moeller in August requesting the flight plans for all suspected CIA flights passing through Danish airspace. The foreign minister’s reply revealed 12 of the 14 flights made by CIA plane N379P through Danish airspace originated in, or were bound for, Scotland.
The plane, a Gulfstream V turbojet, travelled on 12 separate occasions to destinations including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, countries with notorious human rights records and where CIA agents are suspected to have taken terror suspects for questioning outside the controls of international law. The Danish government has since banned CIA flights from the country’s airspace.
The flight plans record the arrival of a flight in Glasgow from Uzbekistan on 14 December, 2001.
Four days later, the same plane landed in Sweden, where, in a case that was extensively documented by Swedish media, two Egyptian terror suspects, Muhammed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza, were arrested and deported to Egypt for questioning, where both claim to have been tortured.
According to the Danish documents, another suspected CIA plane left Prestwick on 7 February, 2005, passing through Danish airspace en route for Baghdad.
European governments’s knowledge — and possible acquiescence — in the rendition programme is rightly high on the agenda with Condoleezza Rice in Europe facing questions about the flights.
With the ACLU suing CIA on behalf of the wrongly abducted German citizen Khaled al-Masri, A Fistful of Europe asks exactly the right question about the German government: “What did Schily know, and when did he know it?”
The Washington Post certainly suggests the former German interior minister he knew quite a lot about al-Masri’s case as early as May 2004.
CIA scandal hurts transatlantic cooperation
Sunday, 4 December 2005, 16:04
Time magazine opines that the (related) “extraordinary rendition” and “black sites” scandals are hurting transatlantic intelligence cooperation, and has some interesting examples of how European cooperation with American intelligence agencies:
…A greater potential downside of the Bush team’s walk on the “dark side” is the fraying of the international coalition of intelligence services — including those in Europe — that have been cooperating in unprecedented ways. This solidarity is one of the unsung successes of the last four years and a key reason why there has been no second terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. Countries that may publicly poke a finger in Uncle Sam’s eye can still work with him hand-in-glove behind the scenes. France, whose opposition to Washington’s Iraq policy requires no précis, hosts a secret joint operations center with the CIA in Paris called Alliance Base, and has a relationship with the Agency that would astonish the “freedom fries” crowd.
European intelligence services will want to preserve this cooperation, but the issue will not be theirs alone to decide. As public revulsion with U.S. practices grows, European political leaders may yet be forced to restrict intelligence cooperation — perhaps not immediately, but soon. In that case, the Bush Administration’s lack of self-restraint will exact a cost in greater insecurity we will all have to pay.
Black sites investigator hopes for Senate leak
Monday, 28 November 2005, 08:40
UPDATED
Swiss Senator Dick Marty hasasked US Senator John Kerry to be informed of any future report on alleged secret CIA detention facilities in Europe, according to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel:
The Council of Europe’s investigator already submitted a discreet request to the office of Democratic Senator John Kerry, who proposed the amendment, asking for information on the outcome of the report. Meanwhile, however, Marty can at least look forward to receiving informal help. In light of the heated debate over torture in Washington, the prospects of keeping the highly confidential report under wraps are slim.
The Washington Post reported that a network of secret CIA detention centres included facilities in Eastern Europe. Marty is investigating the claims for the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, while Kerry led the American Senate’s call for the Bush administration to issue a report on the “black sites”.
A leak may be necessary, because Marty is pessimistic about cooperation from the Bush administration, according to Reuters:
“It doesn’t seem like the U.S. government is helping us in this case,” said Marty …
“They can’t confirm or deny. They say they are at war, so it will be difficult to obtain information from their side,” he told reporters on Friday.
“It’s a pity , because a certain transparency would be to the advantage of everybody, including the U.S.”
Marty has so far found no evidence of “black sites” in Europe, but is investigating 31 alleged “extraordinary rendition” flights that landed in Europe. He has asked Eurosat for satellite imagry of sites in Poland and Romania and wants the air-traffic control body Eurocontrol to hand over records of the 31 planes’ movements.
The Handelsblatt reported that CIA sources had confirmed the existance of two secret prisons in Poland and Romania. There were additional sites in other European countries, the sources told the German business daily. Former Romanian president Ion Iliescu denied any involvement of his government in dentention facilities at Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, which were used by the US military during the Afghanistand and Iraq campaigns.
In addition, the former president said the CIA secret prisons issue is nothing more than a “diversion”. “It is an American dispute and Romania is one of the collateral victims. The U.S. and Romania authorities have never talked about this issue,” said Iliescu.
He also said that if the prisons exist, it means they were build without the authorities’ knowledge. “However, this possibility should not theoretically exist,” added Iliescu.
Handelsblatt also reported that CIA is still using European airports for stop-overs for its “extraordinary rendition” flights. CIA flights landed in the airbase at Ramstein and at Frankfurt airport, the paper reported, citing a high-ranking CIA official. Over the weekend, the Berliner Zeitung reported that at CIA flights have landed in Europe at least 15 times since the beginning of 2005.
The issue is also not going away in other European countries.
(more…)
British and European MPs want answers on CIA renditions
Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 01:51
A new cross-party committee of backbench MPs will investigate the UK’s role in the CIA’s &;dquo;extraordinary renditons” flights, the Guardian reports today.
Andrew Tyrie (Conservative), Sir Menzies Campbell (Lib Dem) and Foreign Office minister Chris Mullin (Labour) are leading the effort.
While the UK government is strangely silent on CIA flights stopping over on its own soil, other European countries are more concerned about the practice, leading to rather strange situation reported by the Associated Press:
Britain has agreed to write to the United States on behalf of the European Union requesting clarification of reports of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, a diplomat said Tuesday.
Britain, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, was asked by several nations including Finland and the Netherlands to write the letter during a EU foreign ministers meeting Monday, the European diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (which, contrary to some headlines, is not an EU body despite confusingly using the same flag) is also looking into CIA rendition flights and their connection to the alleged CIA “black site” prisons in Eastern Europe.
Swiss liberal senator Dick Marty, who is leading the COE parliamentarians’ investigation, says that he has no proof of the existance of the “black sites”, but is investigating 31 flights that landed in Europe and seeking satellite images of sites in Romania and Poland.
Another Downing Street memo?
Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 01:26
Ho hum. Nothing to see here:
… Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, informed newspapers editors including that of The Times that “publication of a document that has been unlawfully disclosed by a Crown servant could be in breach of Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act.”
…
Under a front-page headline “Bush plot to bomb his ally” in the Daily Mirror yesterday, a secret minute of the conversation in April 2004 records the President allegedly suggesting that he would like to bomb the channel’s studios in Doha, capital of Qatar. …
According to the Mirror, the transcript turned up in the office of former Labour MP Tony Clarke, who lost his Northampton South seat in May.
And guess what, two people have already been charged under the Official Secrets Act for leaking the document:
Last week, Leo O’Connor, a former researcher for Mr Clarke, was charged with receiving a document under section 5 of the act. David Keogh, a former Foreign Office official seconded to the Cabinet Office, was charged last week with making a “damaging disclosure of a document relating to international relations”. Mr Keogh, 49, is accused of sending the document to Mr O’Connor, 42, between April 16 and May 28 2004.
And CNN has the official denial:
“We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response,” a White House official told CNN. A Pentagon official called the Daily Mirror report “absolutely absurd.”
Al-Jazeera said it wanted to be “absolutely sure” the memo cited in the report is genuine and urged 10 Downing Street to confirm the information if true.
If the memo is accurate, the network’s statement said, “it would be incumbent on them to explain their positions on statements regarding the deliberate targeting of journalists and news organizations.”
Downing Street spokesman Ian Gleeson said Blair’s office would have no comment since the memo the Daily Mirror cited is the subject of court action.
It seems the contents of the document are “outlandish” enough to warrnet a very public prosecution a civil servant and a Parliamentary aide for leaking it.
Italy requests CIA agents’ extradition
Friday, 11 November 2005, 08:56
Italian prosecutors have requested the extradition of 22 CIA agents they suspect of involvement of kidnapping a radical Islamic preacher three years ago.
Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, an Egyptian native known as Abu Omar was a member of the radical Muslim group Jamaat al-Islamiya, but had been granted political asylum in Italy.
Abu Omar was under surviellance by Italian police, but suddenly disappeared on 17 February 2003, apparently due to an “extraordinary rendition” operation in which the CIA transported him back to Egypt, where he remains in prison and claims to have been tortured.
