Shaphan

Kafeel Ahmed RIP

Yesterday morning I told a friend of my theory that Kafeel Ahmed had died within 24 hours of the Glasgow attack.  By the evening, his death had been officially announced, an event which neither falsified nor verified my hypothesis, which was and remains founded on several evidence-based suspicions.

1.  Late in the evening of Saturday, 30th June 2007, I was online.  One of the US networks, CNN I believe, reported that Kafeel had died.  ‘Hospital sources tell XYZ that Kafeel Ahmed has died of his injuries’, or words to that effect.  The report quickly disappeared, never to be referred to again.  Suspicion:  That the report was true.

2.  Do you remember this incident that evening?

[Chief Constable] Rae earlier told a news conference in Glasgow that the suspect at the city's Royal Alexandra Hospital was being treated for severe burns and was in a critical condition.

He said a 'suspect device' had been found on the suspect.

"As a consequence of that, the hospital was partly evacuated until the device was removed and put into a safe area," he said.

Experts later found the item was not linked to any explosive and it was declared safe, however the hospital's A&E remains closed.

The implication was, I thought, that some sort of bodybelt, perhaps, had been found on Kafeel.  Yet all reports of the incident suggested that Kafeel had been so badly alight that most his clothes had been burnt from his body (and see picture, right).  If he was practically naked, where was he hiding the suspect device?  Suspicion:  That there was no suspect device and the purpose was to clear the hospital, for unknown operational reasons.

3.  On Sunday, in Scotland it was reported that:

SEVERELY burned Glasgow Airport attack suspect Kafeel Ahmed is being kept alive on the orders of MI5, senior police sources have told Scotland on Sunday.

Ahmed has third degree burns to 90% of his body and virtually no chance of surviving but insiders claim the security services are keeping him alive to avoid a backlash from radical Muslims.

Suspicions:  That the ‘senior police sources’ were preparing the ground for yesterday evening’s announcement.  That the story last week about Kafeel needing shark-skin treatment was of similar intent: a story devised to convey to the public how close to death he was.  That Kafeel probably died on the Saturday evening of the attack, as CNN reported, perhaps around the time of the hospital evacuation.  That, as SoS sort of reported, the Security Service chose to delay announcing his death, in the hope that it would prevent him from being championed as a martyr by other jihadists.

Paget Report: DCI Case 64376

Before Christmas I wrote an initial response to the Operation Paget inquiry report [hereafter "the Report"] on the deaths of Diana, Dodi and Henri (titled "Collision or Collusion").  It was a bit jumbled and muddled but covered my main concerns.  Having re-read it, I decided to write more on the subject, this time breaking it down into separate topics.  This entry focuses on the 'CIA telex', which I link in my mind with the request from the Special Branch officers.  I intend writing later on various other problems I have with the Report.

'b' wrote in the comments:

Very interesting that you were asked or told by Special Branch to watch, presumably including on Usenet, as early as October-November 1997, for material suggesting it was murder by the British secret state. Can you possibly say more about this?

I can only delve into my memories again.  When I first saw the 'CIA document', it seemed real, and when I saved it to my hard-disk I think I felt a frisson of fear.  But, then, the more I looked at it, the less I believed it.  As previously stated, I thought that points seven and eight looked to have been typed by a different machine and I, for some reason, therefore suspected forgery.  And everyone was talking about a Fiat Uno having been involved, whereas this document mentioned a Fiat Turbo.  I also wondered whether Mohamed al-Fayed mightn't himself have had it forged...

So, by the time the SB officers called, I was agnostic about the document.  My memory of their request was that they were serious about wanting me to look for something but that they struggled to specify what - I believe I may even have helped them out by filling in the words for them, delicately.  But I was left in no doubt about the general area of their interest - 'unusual' internet allegations about the death of Diana, especially of British-intelligence involvement. 

I saw no good reason to reveal to them my possession of the document.  If the CIA document, whether authentic or fraudulent, had provoked their enquiry, then in all likelihood MI5 already possessed a copy.  If they didn't, I wasn't going to do their job for them.  If it was a forgery, why get involved?  If it was authentic, I definitely didn't want to say anything.

I think that, by the time the Oswald LeWinter matter became public, I'd already had to re-format the hard-disk and had lost the original copy of the document.  Or it may have been later.  Whatever, I meant to find it again but never got round to it - I'd seen that its text had been copied on to various websites, so I assumed the original file would be easily found again.  Now, I don't remember where I found it nor know whether or not it still exists online.

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Now, when I look at the 'CIA telex' again, I'm struck again by its verisimilitude.  Sure, there are its implausible bits - the quote by Edinburgh, and the unlikeliness of an internal CIA document becoming public, for example.  But other parts still intrigue me.  Here follows some thoughts on the actual content of the document, with quotations from it in this colour.

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The headings look genuine enough.  There is, or rather there was, a 'DOMESTIC COLLECTION DIVISION'.  According to this website, it was once, in JFK's time, called the Domestic Contact Service and is now known as the National Resources Division.  The Domestic Collection Division gets variously mentioned on the web and my impression is that it existed as the DCD in 1997.

SOURCE: CASParis/CASLondon/COSGeneva/CASKingston/UK citizen Ken Etheridge

CAS stands for 'controlled American source', meaning agent or informant (see, e.g., here).  Dunno about COS - it could mean 'consulate' or, and I'm guessing, 'controlled other source', or such like.  (Please, God, let it not be the Church of Scientology!)  Dunno who Mr Etheridge is nor which datum he provided to CIA.

1. Relationship initiated between Diana POW and Dodi aF according to reliable intel sources in November 1996.  Intimacy begins shortly after they meet.  (Report filed)

If the Report is to be believed, Diana and Dodi first met on the 14th July, 1997.  Yet the CIA telex indicates otherwise.  According to the Report:

It was on 14 July 1997 that the Princess of Wales spoke to the press gathered nearby and made her comment quoted in the press as, ‘You’re going to get a big surprise, you’ll see, you’re going to get a big surprise with the next thing I do.’ (Operation Paget Other Document 546)  Subsequent speculation and comment about this remark has suggested that it was a foretelling by the Princess of Wales that she was going to announce her engagement to Dodi Al Fayed.  The comment was made around mid-day, before the Princess of Wales had met Dodi Al Fayed that summer and before he had even arrived in St Tropez.

Mohamed al-Fayed's memory tells a different story.

Diana and Dodi met long before the summer of 1997 and during their romance had more time together than people knew.  When her sons were very young, the Princess went to Turnbull & Asser, the celebrated gentleman’s shirt maker in Jermyn Street, St James’s.  She wished to order pyjamas and a selection of shirts for the Princes William and Harry.  There was a board meeting in progress when she entered T & A, but the Managing Director, Ken Williams, left the meeting to serve the Princess.  “What are you doing upstairs, Ken?” she asked.  “Come and see”, he replied.  Diana joined the meeting.  “Ah”, she said, “so this is how you waste your time”.  The Princess was introduced to the directors, including Dodi.

They got on well and saw each other from time to time at film premieres and fashion shows.  Dodi played polo at Smith’s Lawn, Windsor, and the Princess attended the tournament for the magnificent silver gilt Harrods Trophy.

In this instance, for once, I'm inclined to believe Mr al-Fayed.

3. Request from highest circles to DEA attache UK for 6 on Dodi re: Cocaine.

If MAF had forged the document, it's unlikely he'd have mentioned the cocaine.  Dodi's alleged cocaine use later emerged in the press (see USA Today).  (For UK readers, DEA is the Drug Enforcement Administration.)

4. US liaison to MI6 requested by David Spedding for assistance in providing permanent solution to Dodi problem.  Blessing of Palace secured  (Twiz filed)

The notes 'report filed' and 'copy filed' I understand, but what the hell is a 'twiz'?  Whatever, it reads as a genuine shorthand for something.

5. WHuse (White House -ed) denies Spedding request.  Harrison authorized only to arrange meeting for MI6 representative with K-Team Geneva.  (Twiz on file)

The name of the US liason to MI6 would be a secret, and who knows whether in 1997 he or she was named Harrison, but the casual use of the surname seems to me to have the ring of truth.  Dunno about K-team Geneva, but there's a company in Switzerland called K-Team that deals in 'mobile robotics' (website).

8. COBGeneva reports that on May 28, 1997 heavily weighted Fiat Turbo...  (end of page text)

First, I reckon COBGeneva is a typo (for COSGeneva).  Second, I'm not at all knowledgeable about cars, and when I first read this nine years ago I thought 'the forger' had got the model of car wrong.  But now, with hindsight, I realize that Fiat Unos came in 'Turbo' editions, more powerful than the usual type.

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All in all, I'm not convinced that the 'CIA document' is a fake.  Its appearance in the LeWinter affair, for me, added to its credibility (see previous post).  Its non-appearance in the Paget Report does likewise.   

Collision or Collusion?

[Revised: 2007.01.08]

To stage an accident to murder the occupants of the car would, in my opinion, require careful, meticulous and co-ordinated planning.  The [Operation Paget] team carried out a detailed and thorough investigation of the events leading up to the collusion.

- Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, speaking at the press conference to launch the Operation Paget Report, getting his collisions and collusions mixed up. [BBC video player: 15m 05s]

The John Stevens-Operation Paget report [link] on the allegations surrounding the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul has been published.  I wish I could join the chorus praising its thoroughness but, having read most of it, I cannot.  If its purpose was to portray Diana POW, Mohamed al-Fayed and ex-MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson as unreliable cranks, it's been largely successful.  But there are such gaps in the evidence presented that are unexplained, and other claims that are mentioned but not addressed, that the overall impression I have is of a police inquiry that was either incompetent or worse.  When the crash first happened, on the 31st August, 1997, I, like most people, assumed it was an accident, and it has only been as events have unfolded since that I have reluctantly come to suspect otherwise.  The Paget Report just about seals it for me.

At the time of the incident, I worked for an NGO that had loose links to the Met. Police.  Much of my time away from the office was spent, by choice, online, scouring the internet and Usenet for information that could help me do the day-job better.  Several weeks after the crash (September or early October '97), I came across a document that purported to be sourced to the CIA in Paris, was dated '17 June 1997' and which reported that MI6 was actively planning the demise of Dodi in a car crash, at the behest of the Duke of Edinburgh.  In its original format, of which I've since lost the original, it was an image of a computer-readout that resembled a fax or telex.  [The wording of that document is copied below the fold.]  I remember - and memory is a fallible tool - that points seven and eight appeared to have been written by a different keyboard than points one to six. 

Not long after I'd seen that document and had copied it to my hard-disk, our contacts in Special Branch dropped by to see us/me.  The NGO I worked for was, among other things, a repository of information about its chosen subject, and SB officers occasionally checked with us to see if we had any knowledge or information that could help them.  Normally they were quite friendly and laidback, but this time I sensed that they were under extraordinary pressure from above.  The officers knew that I spent time online and they asked/ordered me to watch out for and report anything unusual written about Diana's death, including any suggestion that British intelligence was responsible.  This was in October or November 1997.  Although it was outside of my own and my work's interests I nevertheless agreed, as one does; however, I did not tell them about the 'CIA telex' I had recently copied to my computer, because if its contents were accurate then I wasn't prepared to help SB help the security service (MI5) cover it up. 

Things took an odd turn in April 1998.  The 'CIA telex' on my hard-disk was among several papers that a former CIA officer Oswald LeWinter was caught trying to pass on to M. Al-Fayed in return for a $20million reward.  He had contacted the House of Fayed in about Feb/March '98, who then reported him to the US authorities.  The FBI, CIA and US Attorney's Office devised a sting, using Fayed's chief of security John McNamara, and LeWinter was arrested in a hotel in Vienna, Austria.  He was tried and sentenced to four years for attempted fraud, and was released after thirty months. LeWinter recalls:

The case about which I can tell you a little was an off-the shelf "company" operation.  At my trial, Al Fayed's security chief testified that my arrest was planned in D.C. by CIA and FBI a month before I was taken into custody in Vienna.  At the time of my arrest, I was shown documents which were found in my hotel room.  I had not seen them until then, since another member of the team in Vienna had given them to me the night before.  (The police found no fingerprints of mine on the papers.)  I had a choice at my arrest to identify the documents as genuine or as fakes.  If I said genuine I would face charges in the U.S. of high treason.  I said they were forgeries and was arrested for fraud, tried and found guilty despite the evidence of entrapment.  The other team members, one a high ranking "suit" in the agency, all escaped. [link] [my emph.]

Thus the 'CIA telex', which I'd had for months prior to LeWinter's arrest, became officially a forgery that the now-convicted swindler LeWinter had tried to sell to Fayed.  LeWinter believes he was set up and I tend to agree with him.  He clearly didn't write it himself or he wouldn't have published it on the web months previously.  He has an interesting enough history to conclude that he didn't simply download it from the web in the hope of conning Fayed out of $20m.  I think he was set up to fail, so that the 'CIA telex' could be written off as a forgery.  But why would CIA do that unless the 'CIA telex' was authentic?

The Paget Report never mentions Oswald LeWinter.  Yet it was the 'CIA telex' in his possession at the time of his arrest that was, as I understand it, the origin of Al-Fayed's belief that Edinburgh had tasked MI6 to solve the Dodi problem.  Stevens mentions Al-Fayed's allegation about Edinburgh, saying it's a very grave one, but he never explains the origin of it.  Diana POW's paranoid suspicions about Edinburgh are aired, but the far stronger evidence of the CIA telex is excluded. 

Apart from the missing 'CIA telex', other things in the Paget Report seemed to me unsatisfactory.  For example:

• Langley message.  In the Summer of 2004 the Daily Mail received "an intriguing note" which it passed on to Scotland Yard.  The nine-line message was written in a blue felt-tip pen on a torn piece of A4.   "If you are brave enough, dig deeper to learn about X and Y," says the note.  "Both MI6.  Both were involved at the highest level in the murder of the Princess."  It is signed off with the words:  "Good Luck."   The address at the top of the piece of paper is simply 'Langley', the headquarters of the CIA, America's intelligence agency, in Virginia, USA.  The Stevens Report makes no mention of it.  (X and Y referred to Messrs. Langman and Spearman.) 
• Adnan Khashoggi.  Not named by Stevens.  But he turns up, I think, in the evidence of Richard Tomlinson [p.827].  In 1992 I was working on an operation to recover high-tech weapons from the former Soviet Union.  This operation was being conducted in collaboration with a very powerful arms dealer whose exact identity I did not know.  When I read the file I discovered that this arms dealer was in very frequent contact with Mr Mohamed Al Fayed.  I saw that the MI6 informant supplying this information had a code beginning with P, followed by several numbers.  As this source was mentioned several times I tried to find out who it was.  It was a Frenchman who was head of security at the Ritz Hotel.  Stevens discounts the part about the P source in the Ritz but doesn't address or dispute the claim about the "very powerful" arms dealer whom Al-Fayed saw 'very frequently'.  Al-Fayed's first wife Samira, the mother of Dodi Fayed, was Adnan Khashoggi's sister.  According to the Paget Report, Dodi had bought a £130k engagement ring for Diana that afternoon and intended proposing imminently.  The Daily Express newspaper [caveat lector] cites an author who alleges that Dodi spoke with his Uncle Adnan (by phone?) on the evening of his death - i.e. they were close.  The possibility that princes William and Harry would be spending their adolescent summers in Adnan Khashoggi's mansion in Monaco would have been motive enough for Edinburgh, Blair and MI6 to act to prevent it, for justifiable reasons of national security.
• Dominic Lawson/Rosa Monckton.  (Background - Husband and wife.  Dominic Lawson has been accused of working for MI6 [Indie].  Rosa Monckton's younger brother, Anthony, is an MI6 officer [Cryptome].  By strange coincidence, the SIS's training HQ is at Fort Monckton, Hants. [FAS])  This duo gets off lightly in Stevens' book, in my book.  Mohamed Al Fayed wrote to Operation Paget and made this claim [p.661]: 3. 'Trevor Rees-Jones' book, 'The Bodyguard's Story' is clear evidence of how he, Kes Wingfield and Ben Murrell were turned against me.  The book, which was not written by him but by the security services, is a tissue of lies and deceit designed to denigrate me and to support the British authorities' account that the deaths of my son and Princess Diana were the result of a simple traffic accident.  4. 'The Bodyguard's Story' was written with the co-operation of such people as Martyn Gregory and Dominic Lawson.  Paget does not explain that Richard Tomlinson has alleged/revealed that Lawson was, and thus is, an MI6 agent.  Later it reports an allegation by MAF that: Dominic Lawson's wife is Rosa Monckton and her brother is a serving senior MI6 agent (a statement which is almost accurate, except that Anthony Monckton is an SIS officer, not an agent) - anyhow, the Paget Report never followed that claim up either, nor considered its ramifications.  Lawson's wife Rosa Monckton met and got close to Diana immediately after the separation from Charles.  She was introduced to her by another friend of Diana, Lucia Flecha de Lima, who would later order Paul Burrell to incinerate Diana's clothes, the ones she had worn the night she died.  MAF believes Monckton was used by MI6 to watch over and try to influence Diana; I do too.  Stevens says there "is no evidence" to support this claim (a phrase that is repeated 87 times in the report.  (BTW, 'no evidence' alone appears 204 times; Khashoggi, never; LeWinter, you kidding?)  After Diana PoW's first visit to the Fayeds' yacht in St. Tropez and before the fateful weekend in Paris, Rosa Monckton took her on a private cruise of the Aegean.  Given her family connections, I presume that Rosa was seeking to prise Diana away from Dodi, apparently without success. 
• Nevertheless, several things seem to have been confirmed or revealed by Operation Paget.  Dodi was about to propose to Diana.  The Mercedes was blocked from taking its normal route and was forced to go by the Alma underpass.  None of its occupants, not even the bodyguard, was wearing a seat-belt.  When Operation Paget inspected the Mercedes, it found that the seat-belt of the right-rear seat, Diana's place, was "jammed in the retracted position" [437] - however, it concluded that it had been damaged by the crash itself.  It doesn't reveal whether the seat-belts were manually or electronically operated - could the Mercedes have been electronically tampered with so as to prevent the seat-belts from being used?  PC Paget doesn't ask that question.

I've written this, my first blog-entry for weeks, because nobody else seems to have critiqued the Paget Report in any detail that I've seen.  If anyone can point me towards such a thing, please do.  Despite what people might have read widely in the press, John Stevens' report, while exhausting to read, is far from exhaustive in its treatment of the evidence, such as there is, that might support the theory that there was an SIS-centred conspiracy to dispose of Dodi Fayed and that, whether deliberately or not, Diana, PoW was killed in its execution.

On Peter Hain

The whole Sean Kelly issue is an invitation to conspiracy theory crackpots, starting with Adams himself and his daft notion that Peter Hain is an MI5 agent.  [Comment on post @ Slugger O'Toole, 2005.06.28]

If it is true that Gerry Adams holds to the daft notion that Peter Hain is an MI5 agent, he's not alone in his daftness.  I came to the same tentative conclusion before finding the above comment on Slugger O'Toole.  According to my crackpot theory, Hain would have become an MI5 stooge around 1975.  Which would entail that the Anti-Nazi League was co-founded and co-led ('77-'82) by an MI5 informant, which, if one thinks about it, makes some sense.  Because of John Prescott's on-going troubles, and with Peter Hain being talked of as a possible replacement, I think it's time to air my suspicions in public. 

When I were still a lad in shorts at prep. school, Peter Hain was Britain's 'public enemy number one' (said the Telegraph).  The Wilson Cabinet considered charging him with 'seditious conspiracy'.  Right-wingnut Gerald Howarth founded the 'Hain Prosecution Fund' to battle him.  All because Hain, who had come to the UK in '66 when his family fled from the South African secret police, was in '69 leading the direct action campaign against South African sports teams touring Britain.  Called the 'Stop The Seventy Tour' (STST), it attracted widespread grassroots support.

"Direct action" took hold as copycat protests followed the Springbok rugby team around the country - Gordon Brown signed on as Hain's Edinburgh organiser - and a secret inner STST group of activists was formed.

The Establishment was shaken by the STST campaign.   It affected relations with South Africa and the Commonwealth, and it threatened law and order at home.  MI5 infiltrated STST, using multiple so-called 'Hairies', and one of them, 'Mike Ferguson', rose to become Peter Hain's number two.  (It would follow from this that MI5 probably opened a file on Gordon Brown around 1970.)

The STST was largely successful, which meant Peter Hain also became South Africa's public enemy number one (PENO).  To be considered PENO in one country, and to have MI5 after you, is quite an achievement; to be considered PENO in two countries, and to have both MI5 and BOSS (SA's fearsome Bureau of State Security) on your case, is to be in deep do-do.

In 1972 someone sent Peter Hain a letter-bomb, which was opened by his sister and which failed to detonate.  Hain believed that it was sent by BOSS.  It may have been BOSS, and it may not, and it may have been intended to scare but not explode, but it may not.  Whatever, when someone like Peter Hain receives a letter-bomb, some plods from Special Branch come calling with advice on security.  It's possible, I think, that thereafter all of Hain's family's mail was first checked for devices by SB, who'd then deliver them to him.  SB officers are the footsoldiers of MI5.  From being PENO in '69, Hain (and his family) may thus have started receiving SB/MI5 protection from '72 onwards.

Then, in 1974/5(?), Peter Hain was falsely accused and charged with bank robbery from a Barclays in Putney. The case went to the Old Bailey, and he was acquitted in 1976.   As with the bomb, Hain believed that BOSS was behind it.  Again, it may have been BOSS, and it may not - if the effect was to push Hain even further towards SB/MI5, then the latter agency may have been involved.  It could even have been an MI5-BOSS co-production.  Whatever - if Hain really believed that BOSS was trying to maim and/or destroy him, his dependence upon the British secrurity services would have grown.  If he was also concerned, say, by the influence of the Trotskyists and Stalinists on the British Left, such as in the anti-apartheid movement in which he was active, it would have been an easy step for him to make, from receiving SB/MI5's on-going protection to passing on information about extremists, quid pro quo.  Hain was also, and still is, a CND member, another group of then interest to MI5.  Considering the likely effect on Hain of receiving the letter-bomb, and then being framed for robbery, and given that the Security Service had had him under surveillance for some time before that, is it entirely too outlandish to raise the possibility that MI5, and not BOSS, was behind both the dud letter-bomb and the Barclays frame-up?   Anyway, I think the bank-robbery experience may have completed his transition from national security threat to potentially valuable asset. 

If that's right, then Hain would have been in MI5's pocket when the Anti-Nazi League was formed in 1977.  To me this is quite plausible.  I think it's even possible that the whole ANL project was started by MI5, for two purposes - it could use surveillance and informants to keep watch of leftist extremists drawn to the ANL, and it could use the ANL and its supporters to quell the growing popularity of the right-wing National Front.  For MI5, the Anti-Nazi League operation could have been counted a great success.

Also in 1977, Hain switched from the Liberals to Labour, and in 1991 he was elected an MP.  By the end of that decade, he was a Foreign Office minister.  Among other posts, he's been Leader of the Commons and Northern Ireland Secretary.   At the FCO, he would have been briefed by MI6 and have read secret reports.  As Commons Leader, he liased closely with the SS on trying to protect parliament from terrorist attacks.  In the occupied six counties, he has political responsibility for the workings of PSNI Special Branch, MI5 and MI6. 

Hain's come a long way, from being a target of MI5, to overseeing that agency, Special Branch and MI6;  from being plotted against by a Labour Cabinet to becoming a Labour Cabinet minister.  Jung called such turnarounds enantiodromias, the going from one extreme to another.   I think Hain's extraordinary transformation from public enemy number one to intelligence insider is best explained by the terrorist campaign conducted against him and his family, by unknown intelligence agencies, between 1972 and '75.

So, that's my 'crackpot conspiracy theory', which Gerry Adams maybe also shares.  Lots of ifs and buts and maybes but no hard and fast evidence.  It's supposition based solely on the events, and the unusual trajectory, of Peter Hain's career.  But, given that he's now going for Labour's deputy leadership, his record of mixing it with various spooks, domestic and foreign, is a valid topic for comment, I believe.   

[See also: Is Tony Blair an MI5 agent?]

Serving the Crown

I'm not obsessed by Tracey Temple, really, but the news today that she is returning to her job does fit with my thesis that she was serving the Crown acting under orders when she turned on John Prescott (pun intended).  According to the Mirror:

TRACEY Temple will keep her job at Westminster after her affair with John Prescott but will move to another department.

Tracey, who was the Deputy Prime Minister's diary secretary, will be back in work next Thursday.  Her PR agent Max Clifford said yesterday:  "She has still got her job.  Obviously not in the same place, but the same job, same level, same position, same pay and they are keen for her to. [sic]

"I think which department is one of the things she is going to be discussing over the next couple of days."(...)

Mr Clifford said Tracey had rejected numerous media offers which would have turned her into a millionaire.

He added:  "She's going to get back to her job, which she loves, and what is done is done."  But she wants nothing to do with ex-fiance Barrie Williams who revealed she talked of Prezza in her sleep.

Am I the only person who had trouble believing the story about her lorry-driver lover, Barrie, hearing her sleep-talking about her rumpy-pumpy with the DPM, then him reading her diaries and text messages?  No truck driver I know (not that I know any) would say things like, "I just can't believe that my darling Tracey has been sleeping with John Prescott behind my back", or "She had access to all of Prescott's offices and even recently visited his country retreat in Dorneywood, Bucks.", or "But you could have knocked me down with a feather when I realised Tracey and Prescott had become lovers".  Barrie didn't realise it in 2003, 2004 or 2005 but, in 2006, just before Blair's last major reshuffle, Tracey lets slip the big secret, and Barrie heads off to the Mirror?  No, I find that even more unbelievable than my original hypothesis that she worked for Security Service.  (And I wouldn't be at all surprised if 'Barrie' wasn't his real name, he's not a lorry driver, and that he's actually in a similar line of work as she.)

The presence of Max Clifford in the story only adds to the intrigue.  Last December I wrote a highly speculative piece, Rebekah Wade, MI5 and the G8 bombings - an hypothesis, about how the travails of Wade and her husband had distracted public attention from the Mirror's main story that day that all four July 7th bombers had been under MI5 surveillance one year before the bombing.  I ended it with:

And I also wonder at the role of Max Clifford, his part in Blunkett's, and others', downfall, and his role on November 3rd, 2005 - might there be more to Max Clifford than meets the eye?

He's now smoothing Temple's return back into the bowels of Whitehall.  I hope, and expect, he's being well paid for his services.

Robin Cook, the Database and Secrets

On the day after the July 7th, 2005 bombings on London transport, former foreign secretary Robin Cook MP wrote what turned out to be his penultimate newspaper column for the Guardian.  In it he revealed something about al-Qaeda that perhaps he shouldn't have.

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies.  Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. 

Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.  Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.

As far as I know, this was the first time publicly, in the anglophone world, that the al-Qaeda name had been explained as referring to a computer database.

In the francophone world, a colourful former French military intelligence officer, Pierre-Henri Bunel, had had a book published in 2004, "Proche-Orient, une guerre mondiale?", extracts of which appeared [in French] on a French conspiracy website.  The extract went into some detail of how al-Qaeda originally referred to a computer database of Islamist fighters.  But, AFAIK, it was not until after Robin Cook had revealed the same in the Guardian, and after his death a month later, that an English translation of Bunel's words appeared on the web.  It's a rough translation, which doesn't read well.  But the basic outline of his account accords with what Cook had revealed.

Here's my suspicion:  that Robin Cook knew nothing about P-H Bunel's book or article, and that his knowledge of the origin of the Qaeda name stemmed solelyfrom his time at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  In other words, that both men had, independently of each other, revealed that, as they understood it, the designation 'al-Qaeda' had originally referred to a computer database.  And, according to Bunel, that that name had been operative at least by the mid-'80s.

But yesterday MI5 the government published its 'narrative' of the July 7th bombings [.pdf].  Annex 3 of the whitewash was a chronology of the development of modern jihadism.  Extract:

c1984   Radical preacher Abdullah Azzam set up an organisation called Maktab al-Khidmat (MAK) "Bureau of Services" to disseminate propaganda about jihad in Afghanistan.  Usama bin Laden (UbL) joins.

1989   Withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.  UbL returns to Saudi Arabia.  Decision by MAK to continue to support jihadist causes.  Thinking around "the base" or "foundation" (translation: Al Qaida) for further operations articulated.

1988-89   UbL disagreement over focus of the cause and starts to form Al Qaida. [...]

So, MI5's version of the aetiology of the 'Qaeda' name makes no mention of computer databases, or its use by western intelligence agencies before 1989, and it repeats previous explanations as to its origins.  So, either Cook and Bunel were wrong, or they were right but wrong to reveal it.  And while Bunel is a peripheral figure lacking credibility, Robin Cook was neither.

When I first read Cook's July 8th article, and the zinger about 'al-Qaeda' as a database, I wondered about what secret he might reveal to us next.  But now I wonder about what, say, MI6 thought about the possibility of the former foreign secretary, who had signed the Official Secrets Act for life, revealing other things that he shouldn't (if, that is, the database story were true).  Then, it would have become a matter of national security.  How could they prevent him from repeating his mistake?  Could they have had him arrested and charged under the OSA?  Did they try to speak to him, between July 8th and August 6th, 2005, to warn him as to his future conduct?

If Robin Cook was starting to spill secrets, his sudden death one month later would have saved the defence, intelligence and security services from having to confront a difficult problem, one which would have had no obvious, certain solution.

The Wilson Doctrine, revisited

I've written before about the Wilson Doctrine, which theoretically prevents the Security Service from bugging MPs' communications.  After Tony Blair recently announced that the ban would remain, I stopped thinking about it.  The admirable Spy Blog didn't, and nor did the Lib Dems.

We have asked questions about whether or not Members of the Scottish Parliament, Members of the Welsh Assembly, Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, UK members of the European Parliament, or foreign Members of the European Parliament, are or are not covered by the "Wilson Doctrine", which pre-dates all of these institutions

Our questions and the Parliamentary Questions tabled by Liberal Democrat MP Dr. Vincent Cable have, so far, been stonewalled by Tony Blair and the bureaucracy, but they do still need to be answered.

What about the parliament of the Isle of Man, the Tynwald ?

What about the Channel Islands i.e. the States Assembly of Jersey ?
and the States of Deliberation in Guernsey ?

What about the House of Lords in Westminster ?

Good questions all, to which Blair's reply is to refer to his previous statements re-affirming the ban on MPs.  In other words, and this is my reading of it, the Wilson Doctrine only applies to the MPs in the Commons, not to peers, MEPs, MSPs, AMs, and the rest.  Because peers and MEPs influence policies applied nationally, those two categories of parliamentarians maybe should be included in the ban. 

F*ck, it's John Reid

Gawd help us for we have sinned - John Reid is in the Home Office and he is the Chosen One to replace Blair.  Now, the political events of the past few weeks start to make more sense.  Blair, his closest allies, and his friends within the security agencies have done all they can to reduce Gordon Brown's, and to increase John Reid's, chances of becoming the next PM.  They maybe believed Reid needed to hold an office of state (home, foreign or treasury) to compete, in a leadership election, with the gravitas Brown has gained though being Chancellor.  Hence the press campaign against Charles Clarke.  At the time I didn't write about Clarke because there was no great substance to the allegations in the press, and I found the Prescott affair far more revealing.  Now, it appears plain that there was an orchestrated media campaign against Clarke, so that he could be removed from the Home Office to allow Reid to be as best positioned as possible to assume the leadership.  And MI5 pulled the carpet from under Prescott in time for the reshuffle, for him to have his department taken from him and to be politically emasculated.  (See here and here for my speculations on Prescott, MI5 and Tracey Temple).  And Jack Straw - like, before him, Cook, Blunkett, and Prescott - had let himself be seen as a bridge between the current government and a future Brown premiership, so he's been demoted and will now have less weight to throw behind Brown.

I fear somewhat for Gordon Brown.  He and his supporters believe he should inherit the prize by right, and perhaps they're right.  But it appears he has powerful enemies, who might stop at almost nothing to prevent him from becoming leader and to install their own candidate instead.  If Brown were prudent, he might retire from active politics now, while the going was still good.

I will may write at a later date on the surreality of having John Reid in charge of law and order.

Warning to Labour politicians

Preface 2006.05.19  When I wrote this, I was struck by some coincidences between the downfalls of Robin Cook, David Blunkett and John Prescott; in Cook's case, his perceived ability to deliver a Brown premiership, and his relationship with his diary secretary.  I've since reconsidered this whole theory.  I think I had some of the dots, was missing others, and those that I did have I was joining up wrongly.  I'm keeping this posting here for histrorical purposes, not because I still stand by its message, especially concerning Robin Cook.  For more on Robin Cook, please see: Lingering Questions about Robin Cook's Death, and subsequent entries.

If you are a current Labour Party Cabinet minister, or a former Cabinet minister, don't come out too strongly in favour of a smooth transfer of power to Gordon Brown.  If you choose to ignore this advice, then please take these precautions, even though they may not save you.

    Don't go hill-walking.

    Don't boast about your friendship with Gordon.  Beware of strangers offering you directorships.  Avoid Annabel's nightclub - some believe it's a spooks' playground. 

    Don't have an extramarital affair with anyone who's likely to be an MI5 agent.

Seriously...

Robin Cook was all set for a high-level political comeback under Gordon Brown, perhaps even as deputy leader.  He died, suddenly and unexpectedly, on August 6th, 2005, while hill-walking with his second wife.   (It may be pertinent to point out that Gaynor Regan had been the Tracey Temple of her day, except the trajectory of that story differed much from l'affaire Prescott.)

A month later, David Blunkett was letting it be known, through his biographer Stephen Pollard, that he and Gordon Brown had patched up their differences and that he, Blunkett, could expect a senior position in the coming Brown administration [Sunday Times, Sept. 4th, 2005]. Then, as this Guardian timeline helpfully shows, all hell broke loose around Blunkett, for two months, until he had to resign from Cabinet, for the second time, on November 2nd.

And now John Prescott.  If there was one more duty in public life that Prescott had hoped, and was expected, to achieve it was to help smooth the handover of power from Blair to Brown.   But now he's finished politically.

So, within the space of nine months, Gordon Brown has lost his three heavyweight supporters, the three who maybe mattered most in his campaign to become PM.  It's quite spooky - it's almost as if there were a curse on anyone who could make a Brown premiership a reality. 

As mentioned below, John Prescott's sex-life, and exposure to state secrets, made him a gaping security risk. (There are new revelations today of the DPM as a "serial groper", and more will surely follow.)  MI5 would have been failing in its responsibilities if it hadn't ensured that his weakness wasn't being exploited by a foreign power.  As it happens, Tracey Temple had previously worked for Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Ireland Secretary.  It would also have made sense for the Security Service to have had eyes and ears within Mowlam's office, given Mo's previous contacts with Sinn Fein/PIRA.  Mowlam left parliament in May 2001.  Tracey Temple then, after a gap, transferred to John Prescott's office and the affair began at the end of '02, only to be ended by the most unlikely of circumstances.  Now, I'm not alleging that Temple is an MI5 agent - I am asserting that she should have been.

And if, IF, she were an MI5 asset, and given what happened to David Blunkett, and perhaps even to Robin Cook, then the curse against a Gordon Brown premiership looks less like a curse and more like a plot to prevent him becoming prime minister.  So, if you are a senior Labour politician, and you want a political future, don't act as if a Brown premiership is inevitable.  And remember what the Queen told the butler: "There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge".

John Prescott and national security

According to the, er, Daily Mail:

The political commentator of the Labour-supporting Sun newspaper, Trevor Kavanagh, told Radio 5 Live:  "Learning that John Prescott's had an affair is a bit like learning that Simon Hughes is gay.  I mean, everyone knew he has affairs.  He's had a string of affairs throughout his life and this has come as no surprise."

Except, perhaps, to his wife, his constituents and to the rest of the country not in the know.  My question is this:  would MI5 have done background checks on the lovers of the Deputy Prime Minister to check they weren't also sleeping with, for example, a foreign diplomat?  According to, er, today's Sun, Tracey Temple had several other lovers on the go -  did MI5 do checks on any of them?  I don't suppose Prescott is entrusted with the UK's biggest secrets but he must surely know enough to be a valid target of foreign intelligence services.

If MI5 knew that the DPM liked to have a lady friend in London, and if it was on top of its game, it would have ensured that Prescott's lover worked for our side, for MI5, so that if he was ever indiscreet it wouldn't much matter.  It would also have meant that MI5 could have had some leverage over Prescott if it ever believed such a need arose.  I don't suppose Tracey Temple is working for the Security Service, but maybe she should have been.