The Secret Foreign Policy 109


Adam Werritty has given an interview to the Spectator. I cannot find the original online, but there is a BBC report of it here.

It appears an exercise in misdirection. Sri Lanka is mentioned but never Israel. He denies having ever claimed to have any expertise in defence, despite the fact that “a certain expertise” was precisely Gus O’Donnell’s justification for his presence at the Ministry of Defence briefing meeting for Matthew Gould, British Ambassador to Israel.

Werritty asks “What had this ‘villainous’ Adam Werritty actually done?”, while being interviewed by a friendly neo-con rag. It is of course the journalist that should be asking that question, and Werritty has shunned everyone who might seriously ask about it. Meanwhile the parliamentary Table Office refuses to accept MPs’ questions about Werritty’s meetings with Gould, and the FCO refuses Freedom of Information requests for the correspondence between them.

I have not seen anybody deny that Gus O’Donnell’s report omitted a minimum of five Fox-Gould-Werritty meetings. The government refuses to answer questions and refuse to release the correspondence. But they have at no stage denied the allegations published here, around the web, and in the Independent on Sunday.

At the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, extreme zionist Conservative MP Robert Halfon attempted to defend Gus O’Donnell from accusations that he covered up a secret government policy with Israel over Iran, in which Werritty was involved. Halfon is the former paid Political Director of the Conservative Friends of Israel. His defence of O’Donnell – and Fox-Werritty – is extremely revealing.

Q381 Robert Halfon: Is it not for the Prime Minister to decide whether a Minister has broken collective responsibility, rather than yourself?
Sir Gus O’Donnell: Yes, absolutely. On this whole issue of violations of the code, I was just providing advice for the Prime Minister. It is the Prime Minister who decides.
Q382 Robert Halfon: So whether or not there was a separate policy is nothing to do with you; it is to do with the Prime Minister making a decision on whether or not a Minister broke the ministerial code.
Sir Gus O’Donnell: Yes.

I have no doubt that there is a “separate policy” on Israel and Iran, different to that acknowledged in public. I have no doubt that the Fox/Gould/Werritty meetings – and the blanket cover-up of them from scrutiny in parliament, documents or the media – afford a key way into it.


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109 thoughts on “The Secret Foreign Policy

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  • Fedup

    Then there are the degenerate cheerleaders for rara austerity rara; Dominique Jackson writes :

    Eleven per cent? Is that all? I am pretty sure that working as an escort, ostensibly all above board, for apparently easy money, has crossed plenty more bright young female minds. Escort work would seem to be the most palatable end of a spectrum which presumably includes pole or lap dancing, stripping and goes through to full-blown intercourse in exchange for money.
    ,
    All the while the pricks selected to be in charge are busy plotting to start another war, these fuckwits can pay for the war, because the next generation professionals are selling their arse to service the debts of war for the duration of their life time.

  • Fedup

    John Goss,
    Cheneys batteries are running low again, or have been spiked, he is talking out of his butt.
    ,
    Glenn,
    Have you heard about the predator drones getting used by the US police to apprehend the civilians in US?

  • angrysoba

    Fed Up: You are aware that Fukushima was in the process of manufacturing the Japanese nukes, after the years of Bu$h administration’s push for Japan to become the member of the nuke club.

    .
    That is just such rubbish.

  • Jives

    Werrity>” Ohhh Sir’s in a bit of a bait and we don’t know why!He’s in such a woost with me,Liam and Gouldie!Gosh Sir! but we never Sir!! We never did anything Sir!Honest! We weren’t to know walking across the wicket on the eve of a 1st XI match was a crime,did we Sir?”
    .
    Frankly this is the equivalent idiot schoolboy tone of Werrity in this nauseating article and it just won’t wash,not for a second.He can play the naif all he wants but it’s so obvious The Spectator article is a pathetic attempt by the formerly off-the-radar Werrity to dip his toe in the water and test for re-integration into the Establishment fold.Really nauseating.Does he expect us to believe that,as he orbited spookland,the MOD,MOSSAd et al,that he was just whirling around the social calendar because of his pal Foxy? The odious little shit should be ashamed at his blatant little act but,then again,his type are brazen to the last.Werrity,i’d argue,knew exactly what the game was and this awful article is as truly pathetic as i’ve seen for a long long time.
    .
    “Delivering the occassional political leaflet”? Well that covers a multitude of sins and no mistake.Deductively there’s 2 options for Werrity based on this piece.Either A> he was genuinely naive and unaware of the game-in which case he,the MOD and Govt have a lot more to answer for by letting him wander at leisure through Whitehall or B>He’s up to his neck in the game and got found out big time.
    .
    Either way he loses and looks like a complete fool.
    .
    Maybe he’s being advised by Bell-Pottinger?

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq

    Nuid,
    .
    Blackwater is a name synonymous with death, tantamount to violence, parallel to the rape of children and at best conjures drunken, disgusting and outrageous behavior that makes one sick in the stomach. That trademark cannot be erased, corrected or changed by losing the name and insignia, like faeces it sticks.
    .
    Prove of their gung-ho depravity, proof of their iniquitous debauchery is found in WikiLeaks secret dispatches, archives, images and accounts of witnesses. I too have statements of amateurish, overpaid and, often, trigger-happy behaviour aimed at unarmed Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces, American troops and even other contractors such as a worker from DynCorp International and KBR.
    .
    Few incidents have been made public and those known originate from US Army incident reports.
    May 14, 2005, an American unit “OBSERVED A BLACKWATER PSD SHOOT UP A CIV VEHICLE,” killing a father and wounding his wife and daughter.
    2005 An unprovoked killing by machine gun fire of 17 Iraqis at Nisour Square in Baghdad including a baby and several teenage girls in a school blown up with a thrown grenade.
    July 2009, local contractors with the 77th Security Company drove into a neighborhood in the northern city of Erbil and began shooting at random, setting off a firefight with an off-duty police officer and wounding three women.
    .
    ACADEMI board is blessed with ‘war of terror’ high priest JOHN ASHCROFT, the beast who backed up Rove’s lies in the outing of Valerie Plame having of course been paid $three-quarter million. The main man is President for North American Government and Defense – useful for getting a repeat of the required licensed contract in Iraq after the genuine fighters have returned home to families who pine for them.

  • glenn

    A bit O/T, but look at Obama in this picture:
    .
    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/14/obama-ratings-down-but-gingrich-worse-poll/
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    If he knew he’d age that much in three years since the Nov.2008 election:
    http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/35/3595/JVT2F00Z/art-print/barack-obama-during-election-night-in-grant-park-on-november-4-2008-in-chicago-illinois.jpg
    .
    Do you think he’d have taken the job? Would anyone, with any principles at all? Looking at him now, I have sympathy. He knows he’s in an impossible situation, the likes of Dubbya just didn’t care.

  • Guinessbar Perkins

    Werritty: I actually know very little about defence policy and have never pretended otherwise. Why should I be paid by the taxpayer for an expertise I didn’t possess?
    .
    Didn’t he run some sort of defence consultancy? Did he make the same confession to his clients? Did it say on his ‘adviser to Dr Fox’ business cards that he didn’t know much about defence?
    .
    Werritty: I was funded by a number of donors and my job was to research and network. To meet various experts, attend forums and conferences and get a solid understanding of various foreign affairs issues.
    .
    Yes, but to what end? Why did the ‘donors’ want Werritty to ‘get a solid understanding of various foreign affairs issues’? What was he to do for them with that understanding? He makes it sound as though he was being trained for some future purpose. I find it unlikely that he wasn’t already doing something active – especially as he says that he ‘contributed to the decision by the government to remove longstanding emergency regulations’ (presumably the Sri Lankan government).
    .
    A silly attempt to whitewash himself – I imagine he hopes this will tidy the matter up and he can get back into some form of lobbying.

  • anno

    Suhayl
    What I meant, and expressed so unclearly, was that an old school, honourable politician like David Steel rejected any involvement in the project as soon as he realised that its participants were unreal ex-SAS old-Etonian up-to-no-good mercenaries.
    On the other hand the new breed of neo-con civil servants like go’d and and politicians like Halfon are happy as pigs in shit in this world of unreality and skullduggery. There is of course no difference between these two branches of politics except to confuse outsiders and make them think that the diplomatic service is disconnected from the dirty business of politics.

  • anno

    Abe Rene
    The elite in politics are not mysterious bogeymen who(m!) nobody knows. They are people like Nick Clegg who cut their political teeth before school age by listening to political conversation in their homes. In my opinion Clegg tells Cameron what to do in international politics, because the Tory party never expected to win again for another 50 years and anyone with a whiff of intelligence had already abandoned them long before now.
    Clegg postures opposition to Tory euroskepticism in order to keep his job in the Liberal party. I think it was Passerby who put his finger on it when he suggested that the Zionist/ Tory motive for Cameron’s walk-out of Europe was to wriggle out of the Court of Justice jurisdiction.
    What I was trying to say in my first comment is that there is a coalition between the political elite, the masterclass of lying, and the financial elite. There is absolutely no difference between the old money made from the proceeds of black slavery and the new money made on the proceeds of the War on Terror after Mrs Thatcher opened the door for neo-colonialism.
    The political elite, if the truth be told, have also not changed their spots. Plus ca change plus it’s always the same pack of lies. Amen.

  • John Goss

    Komodo, thanks for that information. He’s almost certainly a friend of Israel! And why not?

  • anno

    It is a political fact that no foreign country can invade another sovereign country without assistance from its citizens who know how to influence their own country and who accept money and power for selling it to foreigners.
    I visit Iraq frequently, but Maliki’s invitation for US enterprise to come to Iraq must have made most people squirm. The sickly sweet stupidity of that statement reminds me of one Christmas Eve when my godfather plied me with whiskey to the point when I realised I was totally intoxicated, but before I dropped into unconsciousness for the whole of the following day. I hate christmas, so that oblivion was welcome, long before I became a Muslim. Praise be to God, I am now free from the whole charade and it’s Maliki-like poison.
    As the Arab spring unfolds, thousands of Libyan Muslims are being massacred on the pretext of their connections to Gaddafi by Muslim extremists seeking revenge for the repression and torture of his regime. Who pays them and arms them to commit these atrocities? We do, specifically NATO and William Hague.
    I swear to God, that any Muslim who takes money and arms from the enemies of Islam. to commit outrages against Muslims, for the benefit of the enemies of Islam in pursuit of colonialism, is themselves a disbeliever.
    They think of themselves as Amir Al’Mu’mineen, the righteous leaders of the believers, but by taking the Queen’s shilling (in both meanings of the word) and persecuting the innocent, I now name them ‘ Smear from the Queen ‘. The only purpose of the vile William Hague in arming the torture-maddened victims of Gaddafi/NATO rendition, is to smear Islam’s good name.

  • anno

    Taliking of secret foreign policy, Richard Perle just this second concluded his justification of USUS policy in the Iraq War on the Today programme in an interview with the excellent Jon Humphries.
    We were scared of being hit again after 9/11 by weapons of mass destruction. Why were they not scared of Jahannam / hell for dismantling Iraq completely, when they knew all along 9/11 was a false flag operation?

  • Tim

    I know the “straw man” is persona non grata here. But check out the HoC debate on Iran nuclear proliferation . Minister conspicuously fails to answer Straw’s question about why the UK got out so far in front so fast on financial sanctions, thus concentrating Iranian reaction.

  • Mary

    Anno – the end of eight and half bloody years is discussed on Medialens including Perle’s contribution. Except it is not the end, the American contractors and other operatives are still there.
    .
    http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1323936882.html

    PS You should have heard Paxman and his two American guests last night including some crazed looking woman who was an adviser to Bush. It was just a little trifle that has ended. Can and could America do the same elsewhere and if so, where next time were the questions. Unbelievable. The true death toll in Iraq will never be given by the corporate media.

  • Komodo

    @ Mary:
    lol @ Clegg boson.
    But worrying to think that there is a Clegg field permeating the universe and that this elusive gauge particle can pop up anywhere…

  • John Goss

    Mary, that’s funny. But the whole of the Higgs-Boson business is ridiculous – even more ridiculous than Clegg if that’s possible. They wasted all of many nations’ finances building the Hadron collider, a massive underground construction, that gave scientists who believed the theory ‘a nice little earner’. They are going to keep bombarding on their merry-go-round for as long as the money keeps coming in and as long as they can keep convincing the world that there is a need for this flawed experiment. Bigging it up with “almost found” is a nonsense that no scientist would put their name to, and releasing information about not having found something is anti-science meant to mislead the masses into believing there is a need for this ‘white elephant’. Over to you Clark.
    .
    Anno, I agree that the western world (not just Hague, but Blair, and Bush and all the nasties that came before this new bunch of nasties) has deliberately tried to besmirch the good name of Islam by setting Moslem against Moslem, brother against brother, sister against sister, friend against friend. It is a deliberate ploy so that Tony Buckingham’s Heritage Oil, and other companies that have their own armies protecting their greed, their interests and the resources they have stolen can thrive while Moslems are busy concentrating on killing one another. Until Islamic followers unite against the real enemy nobody is safe, and Islam’s good name will continue to be blackened. How that can be done under the NTC is not possible to gauge. Infiltration into the NTC will only lead to more bloodshed. I hope, pray even, that some good will come out of this for your faith.
    .
    Having written that, I don’t believe everything in Islamic countries is the blame of the west. I signed a petition yesterday to stop Saudi Arabia from beheading people for practising sorcery, a trumped up crime that I believe is not on the statute book – if they have one in Saudi Arabia – but used to ‘vanish’ people who the repressive monarchic government finds a threat or objectionable. And women have no rights. I heard of a non-Islamic couple who are not married going this week to Saudi Arabia. They are allowed to sit together on the plane but from the airport they have to go to their hotel in separate cars. And these are the West’s friends!
    .
    http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-beheading-of-people-for-sorcery/

  • John Goss

    Mary, I saw Jeremy Paxman last night. That crazed-looking woman’s voice – I guess she can’t help it – was out of this world, siren-like, ethereal. She was scary.

  • Chris Kanefsky

    BBC, Guardian, Spectator, Economist. What a sorry bunch. Once they were worth watching and reading on Israel and the Middle East. Now they all tow the neo-con line.

    This is an overstatement with regard to the BBC. Don’t know if the story made the radio or even TV news broadcasts but online the ongoing brutality of the IDF is covered, sometimes.

    See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-middle-east-16136471

    Coverage about the death of a young stone thrower shot at close range in the face, from the rear of an armoured car, with a tear gas canister.

    Wonder how leniently the culprit will be treated?

  • Komodo

    “Bigging it up with “almost found” is a nonsense that no scientist would put their name to, and releasing information about not having found something is anti-science meant to mislead the masses into believing there is a need for this ‘white elephant’.”
    .
    Most of the bigging up is coming from the media. And scientists have belatedly realised that the media aren’t interested if you mumble something about hypotheses and t-tests into your beard while looking everywhere but the camera. No misleading statements have been made by the researchers, that I can see. The data is showing some interesting events somewhere near the predicted energy range, and there is a 250:1 chance on the present showing that this is not random. Not statistically significant, or only just…and they say this.
    .
    Whether you think it’s useful or not is another matter. Personally I’d be glad if quantum physics had never happened – no irritating flashing LED’s over every available surface and feature at Christmas, for one thing. But physics has a good record for throwing up spinoff technology which is of enormous use. And if we don’t do it, the Yanks, Russians and Chinese will.

  • Mary

    @Chris Kanefsky
    As soon as I looked at that link, I saw that ZBC were at it again.
    .
    Israeli army says it is investigating the death of a Palestinian protester who died after being struck in the face by a tear-gas canister at the weekend.

    Pictures of the incident APPEAR to show Mustafa Tamimi, 28, being shot at from close range by an Israeli soldier.
    .
    Witnesses said he had been among a small group of Palestinians throwing stones at army vehicles in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Friday.
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    Human rights activists have accused the army of using disproportionate force.
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    Tamimi is BELIEVED to be the 20th person to have been killed over the past eight years at similar demonstrations against the seizure by Jewish settlers of land belonging to Palestinian villages in the area/
    /…
    A more truthful and factual account is on Information Clearing House. His face was blown off his head. The IOF were even firing these tear has canisters at the mourners.
    .
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29984.htm

  • John Goss

    Komodo, while most of it is coming from the media, somebody has released some information to the media, and scientists, including one from my university, are getting their faces on television without actually telling us anything of significance. They might as well have a politician before the camera because it amounts to the same thing. If they are looking for a particle of God perhaps they should go to church, or the mosque, or the temple. Unless, or until, they discover a Higgs Bosun particle, or anti-particle, or whatever it is supposed to be, my theory that the Hadron collider is a waste of money, is even more valid than their scientific theory, a theory not all scientists believe in. But I would be glad too if quantum physic had never existed, not just because I don’t understand it, but because of the bad uses to which knowledge is generally put. Unfortunately, we cannot uninvent nuclear weapon technology. As to ‘spin-offs’ from the Hadron collider (is that some kind of pun?) we’ll have to wait and see. Yes, we got satellite navigation systems but not before this technology had been used to strategically guide missiles to their destinations. Yes, we got power-steering but not before it had been used in tanks to wreak death and destruction on some poor sods, somewhere. What we need is a new political philosophy – one that works in practice.

  • Mary

    My blood boils when I think of those bastards in the Friends of Israel groupings, busily collecting funds and propagandizing for the Zionist state, when I read this. The deliberate shooting has taken place of yet another child in Gaza collecting scrap for a living.
    .
    NO CHILD SHOULD BE HARMED.
    .
    Are you listening Livni and Major Liebovich and the others over there in Tel Aviv?
    .
    http://www.dci-palestine.org/documents/voices-occupation-nedal-h-injuries
    .
    Voices from the Occupation: Nedal H. – Injuries

    Posted on: 14 Dec 2011 | Filed under:Case Studies Fatalities and Injuries
    .
    Name: Nedal H.
    Date of incident: 13 December 2011
    Age: 13
    Location: Erez industrial zone, Gaza
    Nature of incident: Shot while collectinig scrap metal
    .
    On 13 December 2011, a 13-year-old boy from Gaza is shot in the shoulder whilst collecting scrap metal, about 400 metres from the border with Israel.
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    Thirteen-year-old Nedal describes his family’s financial situation as “very harsh”. “I was very weak at school,” says Nedal, “and had to drop out last year after only finishing the fifth grade because I failed three times. I dropped out and tried to learn a trade to help me support my family and myself, but I failed.”
    .
    “Ahmad is my cousin and my best friend. He is like me, a drop-out. Everyday he collects scrap metal from Erez and earns 30 to 40 shekels, depending on how much he collects,” says Nedal. “I saw Ahmad yesterday evening, 12 December, and told him I would like to join him in collecting scrap metal from the industrial zone, and share the 15 shekel rent for the donkey cart. He told me to be ready the following morning at 7:30 am.”
    .
    The next morning the two boys set off to collect scrap metal from the industrial zone as agreed. “We approached Erez Crossing and got off the cart and started walking and looking for scrap metal, about 400 metres from the border fence,” recalls Nedal. “We were not alone. There were around 30 collectors my age. I also saw two Israeli observation towers on the border, but I did not see any soldiers inside.”
    .
    “We stopped the cart on the paved road and walked to the industrial zone to the west. Suddenly, shooting erupted from one of the observation towers. I was about 40 to 50 metres west of the paved road, and about 400 metres away from the border fence. The collectors started running because of it. I myself got scared. I turned around and started running away from the border, and headed back to the cart that was parked to the southeast. I kept running fast because the shooting was intensive,” says Nedal. “I ran about 10 metres when I felt something hitting me on the back of my left shoulder, and I felt my left arm had been paralyzed. I looked at it and saw my shoulder bleeding, and realised I had been injured by bullets from the observation towers.”
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    Another scrap metal collector carried Nedal to a nearby horse cart and he was transferred to Balsam Hospital, and then to Kamal Odwan Hospital. Doctors at the hospital operated to remove the bullet and told Nedal that he would be hospitalised for two to three days. “I will never go back to the industrial zone. I went there to collect scrap metal to help my family, and I got shot on the first day. It is a very dangerous thing to do, and I do not recommend it,” says Nedal. “As for Ahmad, I was told he went back to the industrial zone to get the donkey cart.”
    .
    PS A shekel is worth around 16p

  • Pee

    @Mary
    I was about to post that infoclearinghouse link. Appalling, shocking – in fact no words can really express how I feel about it.

  • Mary

    Proud to be British when I read this about the author of the piece Pee.
    .
    About

    .
    I am a British volunteer working on the Right to Education campaign at Birzeit University, and I am also an activist and writer with the International Solidarity Movement.
    .
    I have been given the opportunity to visit a country that has preoccupied all my thinking since being taken on a demonstration to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba as an ill-informed Fresher almost four years ago. As a slightly more politically concious 22 year old, I think that my experience here will most likely leave me with more questions than I have answers. Nevertheless, I intend to update this blog as regularly as possible – for my family and friends – but also for anyone who is interested in the occupation and would like to read about what life is really like in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
    .
    Contact me at: holly_rigby AT hotmail.co.uk

    https://carbonatingchange.wordpress.com/about/

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