An interesting and insufficiently explored aspect of the Werritty scandal is the role of Matthew Gould, UK Ambassador to Israel. Gould met with Werritty and Fox at least twice, at a pre-posting briefing meeting in the MOD and at an anti-Iranian conference in Israel. It is quite probable he had many more contacts with Werritty than that. As Werritty’s financiers specifically sought to promote the interests of Israel though Werritty, and it is thought by some within the MOD and Cabinet Office that they may have been acting on behalf of Mossad, these links with Matthew Gould are crucial.
Matthew is a good man, of whom Robin Cook thought highly. I have this morning sent him this email:
My dear Matthew,
Belated congratulations on your Ambassadorship and I do hope that you and your family are enjoying life in Tel Aviv.
I wish to ask you some questions on your role in the Adam Werritty affair. This email and the response will be published on my blog. I appreciate you will probably pass this on to News Department but it seemed impolite to address questions about you to somebody else, and you will need to provide them with the answers anyway. As I am sure you are aware, I can get a number of MPs very easily to ask these questions for me, but I hope you will be so good as to ensure that full and true answers are provided to me.
Anyway, here are the questions. I should like a brief but fully true answer to each individual question:
You are widely reported in the media to have met Mr Werritty with Liam Fox at a meeting in the MOD before your posting to Tel Aviv.
1) Was this part of your official series of pre-posting briefing meetings?
2) Who organised the meeting? Was it organised by another official, eg in Heads of Mission Section (if it still exists) or the geographical department?
3) At what stage did you know that Werritty would be in the meeting?
4) How was Werritty introduced to you?
5) Who did you think that Werritty was? In what capacity did you believe or presume or were you told that Werritty was at the meeting?
6) Was there any aspect of the discussion which you would normally view as classified? If so at what classification?
7) Was any note made or minute or letter written as a result of what transpired at that meeting? Did any other action arise?
8 ) What was the classification of any note, document, minute or letter arising from the discussion at that meeting?
9) Had you ever met Werritty before?
10) You and Werritty reportedly both attended an anti-Iranian conference in Israel, as did Fox. What contact did you have with Werritty at that conference or in its margins? What did you discuss?
11) Please list the total number of occasions on which you have met, corresponded with (including email), or spoken by telephone with Werritty.I apologise for the long list of questions but you will understand the level of precision I am attempting to obtain and thus most of them require only very short answers.
I would point out that Werritty is in precisely the same position as me; merely a private individual and taxpayer. In asking these questions I am quite as entitled to your attention and time, and to be given information, as Werritty. I trust I will be given the answers; knowing you I am sure you will wish to be open, honest and helpful.
Craig
These are of course exactly the questions which the opposition and mainstream media ought to be asking, but I rather fear they are not. The Cabiner Office “Inquiry” is deliberately not asking.
Matthew is a good man, of whom Robin Cook thought highly.
Not this Robin Cook, surely?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/4259671/Why-it-is-in-the-interest-of-the-Iraqi-people-to-bomb-Saddam.html
If I recall correctly Robin Cook was one of the fourteen war criminals convicted in absentia:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/936032.stm
Not the sort of referee I’d be looking for.
I do not think you will receive a comprehensive answer.
.
Somewhat tainted by his association with Bliar and NuLabour?
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/37963/interview-matthew-gould-ambassador-israel
.
btw I like your number ‘8’ which has been turned into an emoticon.
🙂
8) =
8 ) OK
Quelcrime, at the time of the Telegraph article Cook had not seen through the Blair lies and deceit. The trouble is when world leaders are convicted of war crimes in order to have the convictions upheld they need to have lost the war (or be held in captivity). Robin Cook eventually saw the light (too late sadly). So he did have principles.
If Matthew Gould answers Craig’s questions it could shed some light on the activities of someone – Werritty – about whom many of us would like more information. He seems to have had some intermediary role, not sanctioned by Whitehall or the Ministry of Defence, in defence issues, and not paid for by the British taxpayer.
UK – US ALLY? – Ho, Ho, HO !!!
.
Previously –
.
> “The US is an ally. Israel is not, as a simple matter of fact.” – C. Murray
.
You say ‘ally’ like it’s a good thing …
.
The UK elite / government / paid satraps of the US empire may choose to say that they are an ‘ally’ of the U.S. But do they believe it? Let’s hope that they are not that stupid! (*)
.
The rest of the world’s view – ‘We normally get chocolates and flowers before we let someone do that to us.” And, in the UK’s case, a very large wodge of cash!
.
The prostitute may love her pimp, but does the pimp love the prostitute ???
.
According to the revered father of peace studies, Johan Galtung, we are presently witnessing the de-legitimizing of warfare. And the end of the US empire. –
.
USUK EMPIRE FASCISM
.
Is it then wise for the UK to act as Mussolini to the US Empire’s Nazi, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Thailand – on and on – and apparently in sixty-plus other countries? Most recently in Libya, Syria, Bahrain and possibly Iran?
.
Interestingly, Galtung also says that Obama will be a one-term loser – “You can’t betray your base.” Let’s hope so. SO Roll on President Palin. ER, Perhaps not! And, says Galtung, the Zionists have been acting like the, er, Nazis. Enantiodrama. They _did_ become what they hated. Isn’t psychology wonderful?
.
– Transcend Media – decent news source. Along with Press TV who every day have interesting stories the USUK MSM will never carry. –
.
– http://www.transcend.org/tms/
.
27,000 ‘DISAPPEARED’ MUSLIMS
.
Robert Fisk – “There is just one little problem, though, and that’s the “missing” prisoners. Not the victims who have been (still are being?) tortured in Guantanamo, but the thousands who have simply disappeared into US custody abroad or – with American help – into the prisons of US allies. Some reports speak of 20,000 missing men, most of them Arabs, all of them Muslims. Where are they? Can they be freed now? Or are they dead? If Obama finds that he is inheriting mass graves from George W Bush, there will be a lot of apologising to do.”
.
‘Mass graves’ apparently, judging by the deathly silence.
.
Robert Fisk, the same incensed honourable man who fearlessly reported the Sabra and Shatila genocide of Ariel Sharon who, after the Israeli inquiry, was fired as Israeli Defense minister and forever more branded a war criminal. Would that there be such an inquiry in the U.S. –
.
After which silence. With stories of the USS Auschwitz’s off Diego Garcia – ships where torture was _far_ more severe than at Guantanamo, Bagram, or at the ‘Black Prison’ there. With estimates that 80,000 passed through those camps. How many died? How were they disposed of? Ovens? –
.
– http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-obama-has-to-pay-for-eight-years-of-bushs-delusions-1001092.html
.
Fisk’s figure of 20,000 was corrected by Clive Stafford Smith to 27,000 –
.
– 27,000 muslims ‘disappeared’ by US – Clive Stafford Smith, Democracy Now – Select Real Video stream option. (Main video corrupted. What a surprise. Not!) –
.
– http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/19/clive_stafford_smith
.
USUK EMPIRE DEATHCAMPS
.
Craig Murray not only reported on the US and UK rendition of prisoners for torture to Uzbekistan, but very recently he added the comment that _none_ of those rendered prisoners have ever been seen again. So they were either tortured to death. Or executed afterwards. Likewise in several other countries. “Egypt is where you send people you don’t want to see again.” – Robert Baer.
.
Lovely! So not only were the US and UK rendering prisoners to be tortured. They were also rendering them for termination. A fact that has apparently gathered exactly zero notice in the MSM, or anywhere else.
.
Hopefully there is now no in doubt about the reality of the fascism of the USUK Empire. And their use of the methods of the Nazis. Said of Cheney and those working for him by no less than Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, US Secretary of State who would, he says, be happy to give the needed evidence against him in court. Ha!
.
UK – US EMPIRE SLAVE RACE ! – WHO KNEW ?
.
Robin Ramsay of UK Lobster points out that as the UK is now utterly subservient to the US, it has become absolutely taboo to mention this reality. But there is _no_ independent British government, there are _no_ independent government ministers and there will be no independent British government, or independent British ministers. The UK is as absolutely and completely occupied by the US Empire. Whether the Neo-Con Nazis of Obama or the Neo-Con Nazis of Cheney. Just as France was in WW2 – with almost no troops required! “Tell them we’re ‘Allies’ and they, apparently, just roll over!”
.
See Lobster # 58 ‘The meaning of subservience to America’ –
.
– http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue58.php
.
(*) Hence the end-of-the-world-coming venality and corruption of UK – and US – Empire politicians, bankers and elites? Do they know that the writing is on the wall and are in a furious rush to clean out all remaining valuables before the sky falls in on their USUK Empire criminal enterprise.
It seems Matthew is on a fortuitously timed local leave:
I am out of the office but in Israel until Tuesday 18 October. Mel McNulty (mel.mcnulty [guess] fco gov uk) is in charge in my absence. E-mails requiring urgent action should be re-sent to him. I will be checking my e-mails during this time, when I can.
Matthew
.
[Mod – address edited to prevent spam harvesting]
What Gould does not say will be more illuminating than what he does say, I imagine. And Werrity’s meetings with him are more likely to have been arranged to make Werrity feel important than for any specific purpose.
Werrity’s a pawn.
This may be significant:
One of Werrity’s donors is G3 Good Governance. Its (maildrop or very crowded) corporate address is 40 George Street, London W1U 7DW.
It shares this with the Sri Lankan Development Trust. Its address, according to Liam Fox’s register of interests (see – http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/100106/memi10.htm )
is also 40 George Street, London W1U 7DW.
I am beginning not to like this.
Ex Pat,
So UKIP are looking in the wrong direction?
I suspect that Matthew’s leave was organised to give them to send your questions to London for a sanitised answer.
Ex Pat,
I wonder if I can devise a reading skills test before people are allowed to look at this blog. You argue:
“The US is an ally. Israel is not, as a simple matter of fact.” – C. Murray
.
You say ‘ally’ like it’s a good thing …”
You are talking absolute nonsense. I say it explicitly “as a simple matter of fact” – which means with no value judgement implied, in the normal understanding of English .
As a simple matter of fact, the UK and US are both members of NATO and thus allies in the accepted sense of the word. That is true as a matter of fact. To state it as a matter of fact is not to apply approval or dispproval. As it happens, I do not approve. But the point of my comment was simply to correct a factual error by a commentator, not to start a long digression.
I see the Guardian is ahead of me on this one, and also reports that the SLDT office is now in Edinburgh, having moved (when?)
Questions are also being asked of Thatch’s old chum, in Sri Lanka. Bell, not Fox…
http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=3665
‘ALLIES’ MALARKEY
.
By its nature writing cannot be understood without being frequently misconstrued, emoticons notwithstanding.
.
I was using your line to attack a personal bete-noir. The remaining Evil Empire, of “One down and one to go” fame.
.
I take your point that one ought not to take the meaning ‘like it’s a good thing,’ out of thin air.
.
But I really don’t think that there is a normal understanding. A normal mis-understanding certainly. One that is encouraged, and widely put about as true, but that is, in fact, entirely false.
.
“The US is an ally.” “I say it explicitly “as a simple matter of fact”.”
.
Who in the US is an ally? The US people? The US elite? The US Neo-Cons? US bankers? The US government? Or the US Empire?
.
An ally of whom? The British people? The British elite? The British government? The British MSM? My granny?
.
But that is in danger of turning into one of those frightful French debates on structuralism, or somesuch, about which I know less than nothing.
.
Anyway … I think I bludgeoned all the conotations of being in any way ‘allies’ of the remaining Evil Empire satisfactorily, if at far too great a length.
.
.
Some (more) guff I prepared earlier –
MEMO – US / UK ‘ALLIES’ ?
.
That WW2 USUK ‘Allies’ malarkey was a very long time ago, and as wikileaks has proven, and many others have told us, the MSM has been lying very completely, for a very long time. To the point that most of what we think of as ‘history’ is now, provably, complete bunk – a really-ginormous fairy story!
.
It’s an Empire, not a sewing circle! The US is not the UK’s ally. The US’s satrap perhaps. Or less polite terms.
.
THE END
.
How did that Nazi empire henchman gig end last time? ER, for the henchman, not so good, though the rest of the world was quite pleased. – Il Duce – final scene – Oops! Don’t try this at home, kids –
.
– http://www.sabinabecker.com/2006/04/oh_the_berluscoglioni.html
Just a little more background on Atlantic Bridge here;
http://bensix.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/a-stroll-across-the-atlantic-bridge/
Entertainingly written.
It’s not as cut and dried as you mimply, Craig. You wrote:
“You say ‘ally’ like it’s a good thing …”
“You are talking absolute nonsense. I say it explicitly “as a simple matter of fact””
Words like “ally” have connotations as well as denotations. In the case of “ally”, some of the connotations are “friendly”, “well intentioned”, “supportive”, “forgiving”, “altruistic”, etc.
Arguably, the USA does not demonstrate any of those characteristics in its relationship with Britain. Thus, the very word “ally” is deeply misleading and deceptive.
Komodo, thanks for the Guardian link.
.
Emma Reynolds, a Labour MP, said it was “odd” that the Sri Lanka Development Trust “doesn’t seem to be doing any development in Sri Lanka”:
“Dr Fox needs to explain exactly what this trust is, who is behind it, where its money comes from and where the money goes.”
.
Note, the great Russian poet Georgy Ivanov wrote: “How many awe-inspiring questions were asked in the world’s history? And what answers were given to them?” Raspad Atoma (1938)
Craig,
You haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of receiving answers to your questions regarding Werrity, regardless of whether Gould is a good man, or not.
This isn’t meant as a criticism, but you do often seem to put a lot of importance on the personal qualities of individuals, even though it’s perfectly possible for ‘nice’ people, or ‘good’ people, to engage in ghastly and utterly reprehensible acts and facilitate horrors which only have nothing to do with how they react on a social level.
@Mary, thanks. Point 8 is now fixed – hard to take it seriously when it contains big beaming smilies!
Craig, what alternative would you prefer to the US alliance as the basis for British security? Swiss-style self-reliance, with or without nukes? Or military integration with the EU — under German leadership, presumably?
“Robin Cook saw the light”
*
The only light Robin Cook saw was surely the chance to depose Bliar with his oxymoronic “ethical” foreign policy line.
*
The people running Blair wouldn’t have liked that. The rest, it seems, became history.
Hi @Tom:
.
> Words like “ally” have connotations as well as denotations. In the case of “ally”,
> some of the connotations are “friendly”, “well intentioned”, “supportive”,
> “forgiving”, “altruistic”, etc.
>
> Arguably, the USA does not demonstrate any of those characteristics in its
> relationship with Britain. Thus, the very word “ally” is deeply misleading and
> deceptive.
.
I suppose the first point is that it is well understood that the two countries are allies, in mainstream terms. But it depends what you believe the purpose of the alliance is. If it is to “promote peace and justice” that the qualities of friendship you would seek within it would be worthy aims for the ruling class.
.
But if it is to promote the wealth of the ruling classes, or to project geopolitical power over more oil producing countries, or to generate more business for the defence and security industries while encouraging a parasitic layer of lobbyists and bag-men, then the alliance is working very well indeed.
.
I suppose the propaganda trick is to persuade the general public that the alliance has positive aims and is worth all the realpolitik, torture and collateral damage.
@writeon, yes – Craig’s email is very worthy but is likely to be openly scoffed at, perhaps somewhat in the manner of Prince Andrew. “Accountability? What a &^*&ing quaint ideology!” etc.
We are both members of Nato. Attack one member you attack all. Therefore we, like it or lump it, are allies with the US.
We have no such agreement with Israel therefore we are not allies.
Simple, Simon?
Surely these are questions for the politicians to answer rather than a career civil servant since don’t they have the responsibility for the Ambassador’s actions. Did you answer such questions directly from the public when you were our man in Uzbekistan? Shouldn’t they be in Hague’s and Hammonds in tray?
Gould will not answer Craig’s questions; it would be more than his diplomatic career is worth. Stephen, these questions should be in all their in-trays. We demand answers from the lot of them and no amount of bureaucratic wriggling can obscure that fact.