Category Archives: United States

Britain, Intelligence, National Security, United States

US bankrolling of GCHQ in return for influence…

INTELLIGENCE GATHERING

It has been claimed that Washington gave Britain’s spying and intelligence gathering centre at GCHQ more than £100 million over the last three years, raising questions over how much the U.S. has been influencing the work of British intelligence.

According to documents released into the public domain by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the British eavesdropping agency was expected to ‘pull its weight’.

One document states that weaker regulation for British spies than American agents is one of the intelligence services’ ‘selling points’ for the U.S.

Such leaks will raise yet more questions for GCHQ and government ministers who oversee it operationally, particularly in relation to the extent to which the United States makes pressing demands of Britain in its intelligence-gathering activities.

In a document from 2010, GCHQ said the US National Security Agency had ‘raised a number of issues with regards to meeting (its) minimum expectations’, and GCHQ ‘remains short of the full NSA ask’.

A classified cache leaked to The Guardian reveals the UK’s biggest fear is that… ‘US perceptions of the […] partnership diminish, leading to loss of access, and/or reduction in investment to the UK’.

A copy of a temporary document to allow US fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden to cross the border into Russia.

A copy of a temporary document to allow US fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden to cross the border into Russia.

These latest revelations leaked by Mr Snowden, a former NSA contractor, and who has been charged with espionage in the U.S., left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport yesterday were he has been since June after exposing PRISM, a U.S. intelligence gathering project that snoops on private individuals accounts, emails and telephone calls. Snowden has now been granted refugee status in Russia amid Western concerns he is now in the embrace of Moscow’s secret services. The granting of refugee status pending his application for temporary political asylum is certain to spark fury in Washington which had urged President Putin to deport him to the US to face espionage charges.

Previously, GCHQ was criticised after Mr Snowden claimed British intelligence agents used the PRISM system to bypass UK laws.

Last week Parliament’s spy watchdog called for an investigation into the laws on intelligence eavesdropping, saying they ‘may not be fit for purpose’.

The latest documents reveal the NSA gave GCHQ £22.9million in 2009, £39.9million in 2010, and at least another £34.7m in 2011-12.

The 2010 payment included £4million to support GCHQ’s work for NATO forces in Afghanistan, and £17.2million to fund the agency’s Mastering the Internet project, which gathers and stores vast amounts of ‘raw’ information ready for analysis.

Also funded by the NSA was redevelopment of GCHQ’s sister site in Bude, Cornwall, to the tune of £15.5million. The site intercepts transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic.

In return, the documents suggest GCHQ has to take the American view into account when deciding what to prioritise.

The money has been an important source of income for the British agency as it has been forced to cut costs and has shed more than 300 of its 6,000 staff.

Documents show GCHQ is heavily investing in harvesting personal information from mobile phones and apps, and wants to be able to ‘exploit any phone, anywhere, anytime’.

Some GCHQ staff have expressed concern about ‘the morality and ethics of their operational work, particularly given the level of deception involved’.

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander MP said…

… The vital work of the intelligence agencies requires effective and thorough oversight by the Intelligence and Security Committee on behalf of Parliament, and by ministers, and in the case of GCHQ, by the Foreign Secretary.

… The latest reports in the Guardian only underline the importance of the Foreign Secretary and the Intelligence and Security Committee being able to assure the public that the legal framework within which our intelligence agencies operate is both being adhered to and is fit for purpose.

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Government, Intelligence, Military, National Security, United States

Bradley Manning and the US court-martial verdict…

BRADLEY MANNING

The US military court ruling on finding the WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning guilty of espionage (but not of aiding the enemy) shows a proportionate sense of perspective after one of the most turbulent episodes in recent US judicial history.

In a highly emotive summing up by the prosecutor, Major Ashden Fein, claimed that Manning was ‘a determined soldier with the ability, knowledge and desire to harm the United States.’ He was not a whistleblower, but a traitor… and Manning had, said Major Fein, ‘general evil intent.’

Nobody ever suggested that this young and disillusioned soldier had deliberately sent military secrets to Al-Qaeda, but the court-martial ruling has proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that his voluntary actions to disclose more than 700,000 documents would ‘lead to them being in the hands of the enemy.’

Manning was responsible for the largest leaking of classified information in US history. His actions sent shockwaves through America’s military and political establishments, but undoubtedly their response to his actions was part of the US mindset that materialised after 9/11 in policies such as extraordinary rendition, waterboarding and events that have transpired since at Guantanamo Bay.

The presiding judge over Bradley Manning’s court-martial, Judge Colonel Denise Lind, struck a very different note saying that the policies of the George W Bush presidency which were responsible have been reversed. Whilst that does hold some credence, the malign consequences linger on, including the compulsion in the United States to silence those, like Manning, who discovered that the exercise of American power on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan was significantly different from the way it was advertised back home.

In many ways a dichotomy has been exposed. American claims of fostering a culture of free information have often been inflated, and its media have certainly failed to take full advantage of those freedoms they did possess. But the high collision of President Bush’s ‘war on terror’ with the explosion of information released by the internet – which WikiLeaks came to symbolise – created in America a national mood of paranoia reminiscent of Stalinism. President Obama’s attempts to cool that feverish atmosphere is slowly being achieved with the winding down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington’s refusal so far to countenance any large-scale involvement in Syria or Iran.

While both Bradley Manning and the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were guilty of recklessly flooding media outlets with secret and classified information with little concern for what has subsequently happened to the people who had been named, their underhand dealings enabled many to learn about atrocities committed by the US military which otherwise would have been covered up for ever.

Governments and their military establishments are known in wanting to keep their dirty secrets to themselves, but we should also know they must not be allowed to. Freedom of information is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and whistleblowers just happen to be a vital component to the functioning of societies that aspire to be free. Reconciling that to the authority of their rulers will always throw up issues perfectly witnessed in the court-martial of Bradley Manning.

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Britain, Government, Libya, Scotland, United States

Megrahi’s release linked to £400m arms deal. Revelations continue to emerge…

THE LOCKERBIE BOMBER: ABDELBASET AL MEGRAHI

The release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, was linked to a £400 million arms deal with Libya, according to secret documents.

Following disclosures, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, the documents show ‘reprehensible’ connections between the Labour government that aimed to boost business and freeing the man convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.

In an email communication between the then UK ambassador in Tripoli to the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, further details have emerged of how a prisoner transfer agreement was aimed to be signed once Libya had fulfilled its promises to buy an air defence system.

At the time of Megrahi’s release in 2009, Labour’s government under Gordon Brown insisted there was no link to ‘blood money’ trade deals with Colonel Gaddafi.

Megrahi, a Libyan, was convicted under Scots Law of killing 270 people by blowing up a US airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988. He was sent home early from Greenock prison on compassionate grounds because he had terminal prostate cancer. He died last year. Ministers have always insisted that his release from prison was a decision taken solely by the Scottish Government.

The email was sent by Sir Vincent Fean, then the UK’s most senior diplomat in Libya, to Mr Blair, ahead of his visit to Gaddafi in June 2008. Mr Blair, who quit Downing Street a year earlier, was being updated on the UK’s ongoing relations with the Libyan dictator.

Prior to this, Mr Blair met Gaddafi and his Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi in his infamous visit to Sirte in a desert tent. The meeting thrashed out a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on prisoner transfers just before BP announced the firm was investing £545 million to search for oil reserves in Libya believed to be worth £13 billion.

But according to the email, Mr Blair and Baghdadi agreed Libya would buy a missile defence system from MBDA, part-owned by BAE Systems. When he returned in June 2008 the Government appeared to see a chance for him to push for the arms deal to be sealed.

Sir Vincent Fean wrote:

… There is one bilateral issue which I hope TB (Tony Blair) can raise, as a legacy issue. On 29 May 07 in Sirte, he and Libya’s PM agreed that Libya would buy an air defence system (Jernas) from the UK (MBDA).

… One year on, MBDA are now back in Tripoli aiming to agree and sign the contract now – worth £400 million, and up to 2,000 jobs in the UK. We think we have Col Q’s (Gaddafi’s) goodwill for this contract. This issue can also be raised with Libya’s PM. It was PM Baghdadi who told the media on 29 May 07 that Libya would buy British.

… Linked (by Libya) is the issue of the 4 bilateral justice agreements about which TB signed an MoU with Baghdadi on 29 May. The MoU says they will be negotiated within the year: they have been. They are all ready for signature in London as soon as Libya fulfils its promise on Jernas.

The prisoner transfer agreement was signed in November 2008.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary in Labour’s Government at the time of Megrahi’s release, said then it was ‘offensive’ to suggest it was linked to improving commercial relations with Libya.

On Sunday, Mandleson said:

… I was not aware of the correspondence covered in the FOI request.

A statement from Mr Blair’s side said the email did not show the UK government was trying to link the defence deal and Megrahi. A spokesperson for Mr Blair, said:

… Actually it shows the opposite – that any linkage was from the Libyan side. As far as we’re aware there was no linkage on the UK side. What the email in fact shows is that, consistent with what we have always said, it was made clear to the then Libyan leader that the release of Megrahi was a matter for Scotland. Of course the Libyans, as they always did, raised Megrahi.

MBDA says the Libyans never signed the arms deal.

But what is startling is the continuing emergence of revelations about the squalid relationship between the Blair government and Colonel Gaddafi.

First we learned of the willingness of the former British prime minister to fawn over an international terrorist as part of a charm offensive to win lucrative oil contracts.

With disclosures released under Freedom of Information, we now discover the grubby deal which allowed the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing to be freed early from a Scottish prison was linked to Libya agreeing to buy £400 million of British arms.

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