Tag Archives: Craig Murray

Featured, Foreign Policy, Government Accountability, International, Politics, US

Congressman Says Assange Has “Physical Proof” Russia Did Not Hack DNC

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Washington, D.C. — In a recent interview with Breitbart Radio, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who reportedly visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London in August 2017 and met with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, said that Assange has physical evidence to prove that Russia did not provide WikiLeaks with Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

“By now, everybody knows that this idea that Trump was colluding with the Russians in order to get them to do things like steal the DNC emails and then release them through WikiLeaks, the public knows that’s just total baloney,” Rohrabacher said. “I knew the one man who could prove that it was all baloney was Assange. So I went to see him in London, and he confirmed for me that the Russians did not give him the DNC emails. He had physical proof of that, and he was going to let me see that and have that, but only once, I found an agreement so he wouldn’t get arrested when he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy in London.”

Rohrabacher added:

Unfortunately, this was in the middle of having a special prosecutor, [and] any discussion with Trump and myself that mentions Russia will be used as an excuse by that special prosecutor to just quadruple all the areas of investigation into me and into Trump. So it is standing there. I’ve been waiting because I know that we’re not going to give this special prosecutor any more ammunition than he needs to try to destroy this president.

Rohrabacher claimed that Assange had evidence and was willing to provide it in exchange for US/UK authorities agreeing not to arrest him upon leaving the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks co-founder has been “arbitrarily detained” under threat of arrest since 2012.

[Read more: UK Judge Refuses to Revoke Assange Arrest Warrant]

Assange first sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy after the UK sought to arrest him on a Swedish warrant that has since been lifted. British authorities, thought to operating covertly at the behest of the US— due to a purported secret federal grand jury indictment in the US for Assange— insist they will arrest him if he attempts to leave the embassy for violating the terms of his bail. It is believed that once arrested for the bail violation in the UK, Assange would likely be extradited to the US under the sealed indictment.

Following his meeting with Assange, Rohrabacher was denied access to President Trump by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly due to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion during the 2016 US presidential election. In February, Rohrabacher “said he was told by Kelly that meeting with Trump could put the president in unnecessary legal jeopardy,” according to a report from The Intercept. Rohrabacher also claimed that Assange “did not want to release the evidence publicly” because he wanted to avoid exposing “his sources and methods.”

The DNC and Hillary Clinton have continually accused WikiLeaks as acting as a “Russian cutout” during the 2016 election, after the transparency organization published private emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta as well as internal DNC emails. Assange says WikiLeaks never releases sources, but has emphatically denied that the organization was supplied the emails by Russia.

Craig Murray— former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and “close associate” of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange— publicly stated in a December 2016 interview with The Daily Mail that the Democratic National Committee’s emails were obtained by WikiLeaks from a “disgusted” DNC operative who had legal access to them, not Russia.

“Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,” Murray said. “The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.”

Murray said the leakers were motivated by “disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.”

The Daily Mail reported that Murray said he “retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary.”

An investigation into the alleged hack performed last year by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) claimed that the “data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers.” VIPS findings were presented to CIA Director Mike Pompeo last November, reportedly at the direction of President Trump.

Assange has been unable to publicly comment on Rohrabacher’s statements, as the Ecuadorian government has barred him from receiving visitor and suspended his internet access for the past month.

Foreign Policy, Government Accountability, International, US

Ex-British Ambassador: Novichok Claims Are UK Attempt to ‘Step Up the Cold War’

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London, UK— Former British ambassador Craig Murray, in an interview with RT, took direct aim at what he labeled a “desire by NATO members… to step up the cold war and enhance confrontation with Russia,” in relation to the claims that Russia used novichok nerve agent on Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil.

While Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has consistently laid the blame on Russia, scientists from the secretive defense laboratory Porton Down dealt this accusation a blow when it was revealed they could not confirm a Russian origin of the novichok nerve agent used in the Salisbury attack.

Scientists at Porton Down announced earlier in the week that they were unable to substantiate the government’s assertions that the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter had been produced in Russia:

The Guardian reports that Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the government’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), said that while the substance had been identified as a military-grade novichok nerve agent, which could likely only be deployed by a nation-state (a disputed contention), there was no confirmation of Russian origins.

The Porton Down statement was “extremely important” according to Murray, who claimed that “a fortnight ago sources inside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told me they were ‘under pressure’ to say it was made in Russia” but they knew they were unable to do so and ‘refused.’”

“What we have seen today is news management because the Government had to get over the hurdle the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will shortly be telling people there is no evidence this came from Russia,” Murray said. “The Government decided for damage limitation it was best Porton Down came out and said that first. We will see careful news management over the next day or two.”

While Porton Down scientists said “a state” was likely to be behind the attack, due to the complexity of the agent, Murray said this assertion is inaccurate and that there is evidence to the contrary.

“The ‘probably’ in the statement is very important, there are many people including David Colum, professor of organic chemistry at Cornell University, who says it’s just not true it has to be a state and any of his senior students could make it,” Murray stated.

Murray went on to say that he suspected government handlers had made a hasty addition to the end of the Porton Down statement in an attempt to allow for increased suspicion to be focused on Russia after failing to legitimately tie the novichok to Russia.

“If you watch the interview, the sentence where he says it would probably need a state to make it is tacked on to the end. If you look closely, not only has the shot changed, the camera and tripod have actually moved. I strongly suspect government handlers who would have been in that room watching him were unhappy with his interview and wanted something which implicated Russia more, so added a bit onto the end.”

Furthermore, Murray claimed at least a couple of dozen states could make it— including the U.S. and U.K.— and went on to note that there “ought to be an investigation into a serious crime.”

“We are told probably this and likely that, well that is not the way criminal verdicts are found,” Murray said.

“This quite simply feeds into a desire by NATO members in particular to step up the cold war and enhance confrontation with Russia. This has to be seen in a wider geopolitical context. Within that context the last thing the politicians care about is the truth about what happened in Salisbury.”

International

UK Experts Admit They Cannot Prove Russian Origins of Novichok Agent

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Salisbury, UK – Top scientists at British defense laboratory Porton Down announced on Tuesday that they were unable to confirm the government’s assertions that novichok, the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter, was made in Russia.

The Guardian reports that Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the government’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), said that while the substance had been identified as a military-grade novichok nerve agent, which could likely only be deployed by a nation-state, there was no confirmation of Russian origins.

Aitkenhead, in an interview with Sky News, said it was not possible for scientists alone to say precisely where the novichok had been created.

“It’s a military-grade nerve agent, which requires extremely sophisticated methods in order to create – something that’s probably only within the capabilities of a state actor,” Aitkenhead said.

When asked if the nerve agent could have come from Porton Down, which is only 8 miles from Salisbury, Aitkenhead said “there’s no way that anything like that would ever have come from us or leave the four walls of our facilities.”

“We were able to identify it as novichok, to identify it was a military-grade nerve agent. We have not verified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific information to the government, who have then used a number of other sources to piece together the conclusions that they have come to,” Aitkenhead said.

After the announcement, the UK government attempted to assert that prime minister Theresa May had always been aware that the assessment from Porton Down was “only one part of the intelligence picture.”

A British government spokesman sought to downplay the significance of Aitkenhead’s remarks, stating: “We have been clear from the very beginning that our world-leading experts at Porton Down identified the substance used in Salisbury as a novichok.”

“It is our assessment that Russia was responsible for this brazen and reckless act and, as the international community agrees, there is no other plausible explanation,” the spokesman said.

Just two weeks ago, when UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was asked how the UK was able to swiftly determine the novichok originated from Russia, he replied:

“When I look at the evidence, the people from Porton Down, the laboratory, they were absolutely categorical. I asked the guy myself, I said: ‘Are you sure?’ And he said: ‘There’s no doubt.’ So we have very little alternative but to take the action that we have taken.”

The comments from Porton Down came hours before a meeting of the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), called by Russia.

The Russian embassy in London has called the accusations by the UK a “bluff” and added: “This has been confirmed by the head of the secret lab. This only proves that all political declarations on the Russian origin of the crime are nothing but assumptions not stemming from objective facts or the course of the investigation.”

[RELATED: Russia Warns of Chemical Weapons Guise in Syria to Justify US Escalation]

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray pointed out that in each of the declarations made by the UK attempting to connect novichok to Russia, the British government uses the wording “of a type developed by” rather than specifying they had determined it was actually produced or manufactured in Russia— a significant distinction.

Murray wrote on March 16:

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly researching, in the “Novichok” programme a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors such as insecticides and fertilisers. This substance is a “novichok” in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China.

To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days. The government has never said the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was used by Theresa May in parliament, used by the UK at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most tellingly of all, “of a type developed by Russia” is the precise phrase used in the joint communique issued by the UK, USA, France and Germany yesterday: ‘This use of a military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War.’

Murray told RT that “what we have seen today is news management because the Government had to get over the hurdle the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will shortly be telling people there is no evidence this came from Russia.”

“The Government decided for damage limitation it was best Porton Down came out and said that first. We will see careful news management over the next day or two,” he said.

The Guardian reports that Russian ambassador to Ireland, Yury Filatov, said Moscow wanted Britain to “provide every possible element of evidence” it had, adding: “We certainly reject any notion or claim of Russian involvement in the Salisbury incident. We will not tolerate this kind of irresponsible and basically indecent behavior on the part of the British government. They will have to answer for that.”

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, said the attack was a “provocation arranged by Britain” to justify high military spending because “they need a major enemy.”