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The Cover-up of the Impeachment Coverage

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Chris Stevenson | A 7/31/08 report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) shows even the most token coverage of the impeachment hearings as receiving no respect: “CNN’s Election Center program devoted a July 25 report to mocking a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee investigating White House abuses of power. ‘Believe it or not, there was a congressional hearing today about impeaching the president,’ scoffed host Campbell Brown, who added: ‘It was all stagecraft, though.’ Brown went on to introduce the report by CNN correspondent Erica Hill by saying, ‘Tell us about this piece of Kabuki theater, Erica.’’ According to FAIR Brown is married to Dan Senor; a former deputy. press secretary for Bush.

The word Kabuki derives from the verb Kabuku; “to lean” or “to be out of the ordinary” as in avant-garde or bizarre theater. Attributing the word to the Kucinich hearings is a shot at his lack of coverage and political support. Hill explained: “The Democratic leadership made it clear impeachment is not on the table at this hearing today for two reasons. Not only is there not enough time left in President Bush’s term, but also they know any real impeachment hearings at this point could cause a major backlash.” This goes deeper than partisan issues, when any firm bombards their colleges and clients with corruption, there will be those who’ll find ways to defend it. What the Bush administration has done is inspire or give license to all the difficult personalities within various sectors of government and secular industry from civil rights divisions to law inforcement, to oil, real estate etc., to play fast and loose with the public’s rights, liberties and priviledges just by their watching him.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holzman who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during Richard Nixon’s impeachment proceedings, is the author of HR 23 which is the article to remove Bush for a similar crime as Nixon; wiretapping. I say forget the time issue and why let all that writing go to waste? Democrats.com said a couple years ago that Conyers took impeachment off the table because he was afraid “Fox News” would attack him permanently and at that time he needed 218 votes. I wondered then if he and Pelosi thought this was going to be easy.

FAIR continued: “The report closed with Hill assuring voters that George W. Bush was not threatened by any of this: ‘As for the president today, clearly, not too worried about this hearing. He was in Peoria, Illinois. As you can see here, kissing babies, smiling, taking pictures.’” Sadly Bush can afford to relax, the efforts to remove him have obviously been sporadic.

A recent interview by Katrina vanden Heuvel; the editor of “The Nation” with Nancy Pelosi on why she dropped the impeachment issue, instead of admitting she got cold feet, she hinted this would risk national unity. “When I interviewed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about her new book, Know Your Power, I asked her the question all of us have been asking for two years: how could she take impeachment ‘off the table’? Her answer: she wants Democrats to control the House… and in order to stop the wealthiest 1% from “sucking the money out of the middle class” and creating a “caste system.”

According to Democrats.com , “Many progressives disagree with Speaker Pelosi because they believe holding this administration accountable for its staggering abuse of power is essential for preserving our Constitution. They also believe the American people would reward those who defend the Constitution.” Since I take it personally when the right-wing is trying to push W as one of the all-time great presidents, this in itself should be enough incentive to oust the one whom even Reagan called “shiftless” looking. Bush needs impeachment on his permanent record; a record his Daddy can’t expunge. Like I said, the impeachment movement needs players, not acclimated zombies who went from disregard to indoctrination due to over-exposure to corruption.

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~Chip’s note: Fact checking on Holtzman & HR 23 in process.

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Extent of secret Government IRA links revealed

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

The full extent of a secret 20-year “back channel” between the British government and the IRA is revealed today by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, who declares that the peace process might never have been possible without the link.

In the first authoritative account of the link by a British official, Jonathan Powell tells the Guardian that a Derry businessmen, Brendan Duddy, and a series of MI5 and MI6 officers risked their lives to allow the British government and the IRA leadership to communicate in private between 1973 and 1993. In the latest extracts from his memoirs, serialised in the Guardian this week, Powell writes: “It is very hard for democratic governments to admit to talking to terrorist groups while those groups are still killing innocent people.

“Luckily for this process, the British government’s back channel to the Provisional IRA had been in existence whenever required from 1973 onwards.” The secret link was only used on three major occasions: to negotiate an IRA ceasefire in the mid-1970s; during the first IRA hunger strike in 1980; and in the early stages of the peace process in the 1990s. But Powell writes that the simple fact that a link existed from the IRA leadership to Downing Street - mainly via Duddy and his MI6 handler Michael Oatley - was of huge significance.

Powell writes: “It was, metaphorically, contained in a locked box, the key to which was in the possession of Brendan Duddy and behind which, wherever he happened to be in the world, was Oatley, known to the IRA as ‘Mountain Climber’.”

The link broke down in 1993 when Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator, reacted furiously to claims that he had sent a message purportedly saying that the IRA’s “conflict is over”. Duddy told the BBC’s Peter Taylor, in an interview published in today’s Guardian, that he was interrogated for four hours by four “very senior Provisionals” after he was wrongly suspected of sending the message.

Powell admits that the message is in dispute, but he says it laid the grounds for the peace process. “What that message succeeded in doing, true or not, was to get the attention of the British government. John Major really thought: ‘Gosh, here is a chance that we can make a breakthrough in Northern Ireland’.”

The DUP leader, Ian Paisley, condemned Major for the secret back channel when it was revealed in 1993. But Powell reveals in his memoirs that 10 years later the DUP established its own secret channel to Sinn Féin when Paisley’s party won the elections to the Northern Ireland assembly of 2003. The channel was kept secret because the DUP refused to meet Sinn Féin at the time on the grounds that the IRA was still active. Powell says: “They [the DUP] were no different from the British government at the time of John Major or Margaret Thatcher saying they never had contacts with the IRA - but actually [they were] doing so as well. It did play an important role in making possible that extraordinary meeting between Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. They had never met, they had never spoken until they sat down for that photo-opportunity in March 2007. If you hadn’t had that back channel building confidence over time, it would have been difficult.”

Nicholas Watt
The Guardian,

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Diana inquest probes world of espionage

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

Intelligence officers are facing unprecedented public scrutiny as they take the stand at the inquest into Princess Diana’s death to deny claims that the security services killed her on the royal family’s orders.Their former boss has already given a fascinating glimpse into the murky world of espionage — but this is not all about glamorous 007 figures. Theirs is a more mundane world of bureaucratic checks and balances.

With his deadly array of guns and gadgets, James Bond has a Licence to Kill in his constant battle to thwart villains plotting world domination.

In reality, the world’s most famous spy would need a Class Seven authorisation agreed by his line managers and personally signed by the Foreign Secretary.

Former spy chief Richard Dearlove gingerly lifted the lid on this secret world when giving evidence to the inquest into the 1997 deaths of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed in a Paris car crash.

“His testimony made the security services sound more like a firm of accountants than a bunch of 007s,” The Daily Telegraph concluded.

Now it is the turn of 10 serving and former intelligence officers to appear in court — but their identities will be protected and they will be just referred to as numbers or letters.

The court will be cleared of the media and public on Tuesday when they start to give evidence, which will be piped by audio link to an annex.

In an unprecedented move by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) they are going public to deny allegations from Dodi’s father, luxury storeowner Mohamed al-Fayed, that the security services killed the couple on orders from Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband and Diana’s former father-in-law.

Dearlove dismissed al-Fayed’s allegations as “utterly ridiculous” and went into a detailed description of the bureaucratic hoops a real-life James Bond would face.

“When the paperwork was completed — and this would apply to an initiative overseas as much as to one developed within head office –it would be signed off by, let’s say, the senior regional official,” he said.

But the checks do not stop there.

“It would come to me for further signature and then it would go down restricted channels to the Foreign Secretary,” Dearlove told the court.

Renegade British spies have in the past accused British intelligence of hatching plots to assassinate Serbia’s President Slobodan Milosevic and Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

But both these allegations have been officially denied and Dearlove was adamant when asked in court if he was ever aware of the Secret Intelligence Service ever assassinating anyone during his 38 years with the organisation.

“No I was not,” he told the jury which now faces a week listening to the evidence of 10 intelligence officers who could offer further intriguing insights into just how spies operate.

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Ex-spy chief denies group killed Diana

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

By Robert Barr

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The former head of MI6 denied yesterday that the British intelligence agency killed Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, in 1997.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who was MI6’s director of special operations at the time of Diana’s death in Paris, told a coroner’s inquest that MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, didn’t assassinate anyone between 1994 and 1999, when he was director.

He also denied that MI6 mounted any operations against her or Fayed, including surveillance or bugging.

Dearlove also testified that an operation by rogue agents would have been impossible.

Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has accused MI6 of engineering the death of his son and the princess at the behest of Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

As director of special operations, Dearlove said it was his responsibility to sign off on any operation that would otherwise be illegal. The operation would then have to be approved by the foreign secretary, a senior member of the government.

Al Fayed’s assertion that Philip directed MI6 was “utterly ridiculous,” Dearlove said. There was no formal relationship between the agency and the prince, although Philip had visited the agency with the queen, he said.

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Former Spy: MI6 could have killed Diana

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Daily Mail

Diana in blue dress Former spy Richard Tomlinson revealed that the crash that killed Diana was bore and ‘eerie similarity’ to an MI6 assassination plot

A former spy told the Diana inquest today he believed the Princess could have been murdered by MI6 officers.

Sacked secret agent, Richard Tomlinson, said he realised there could have been a conspiracy to assassinate Diana after seeing a documentary alleging there was a flash as her car entered a Paris tunnel.

The ex-MI6 officer said that after watching the film he had remembered an MI6 training session in which he was shown how a strobe gun could be used to kill targets.

He also spoke about MI6 plans to assassinate a top Balkan leader in a way that was almost identical to Diana’s fatal crash.

Speaking via videolink, Mr Tomlinson, understood to be in Marseille, spoke about a secret agent named only as “A” who had drawn up the Balkan plan.

The court heard that Mr Tomlinson, who was recruited by MI6 in 1991 after studying at Cambridge, told a Scotland Yard team investigating Diana’s death: “MI6 do have a capacity to stage accidents whether by helicopter, aeroplane or car and also that the strobe light was shown to us by the SBS at Poole during our training.”

He explained that drunk driver Henri Paul would have been the “first choice” for MI6 to recruit and that one of the paparazzi following the princess may also have been in the pay of the service.

Mr Paul died in the Paris crash that killed the princess and her lover Dodi Fayed on 31 August 1997.

Mr Tomlinson, who was jailed for a year in 1997 for breaking the Official Secrets Act, said he became aware of a possible assassination bid in mid-1998.

Richard Tomlinson claimed that MI6 could have used a strobe light to kill Diana in a car crash

He said: “I happened to see a thing on TV about it and that made me wonder whether something that I had seen within MI6 when I was working there might have been relevant.î

He told the inquest that a colleague, referred to as “A”, had shown him a document proposing the assassination of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

Mr Tomlinson claimed in his book The Big Breach - published after his dismissal from the service - that the options outlined included staging a crash in a tunnel involving a blinding flash of light from a strobe gun while Mr Milosevic was at a peace conference in Geneva, the court heard.

But the jury was told that in an earlier draft of the book he had spoken instead of a drive-by ambush.

He admitted during his evidence today that he could have become confused about the details of what was in the document but said such specifics were a “distraction” from the central issue of whether MI6 was ever involved in assassination attempts in principle.

He told the inquest it would be difficult but “not impossible” to assassinate somebody.

He also said he had read documents alleging there was a French source at the Ritz hotel. “There is no doubt that Henri Paul would have been of interest to the intelligence services. If you wanted to recruit one person within the Ritz hotel to work for you it would be a security officer. He would be your first choice,” he said. The inquest continues.

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Ex-private secretary denies role in Diana death

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

James Sturcke and agencies

The Queen’s former private secretary today said he could not have helped to “murder” Princess Diana because he was in a rural church hall listening to a talk by the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey.

Lord Fellowes, Diana’s brother-in-law, told the inquest into her death that he was not in Paris on the night she died, but was listening to John Mortimer in Norfolk.

The Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed - who is convinced the car crash, in which his son, Dodi, and Diana were killed, was an MI6 murder plot - believes Fellowes was involved.

He claims Fellowes helped co-ordinate the “conspiracy” by commandeering a section of the British embassy in Paris to send messages to GCHQ shortly before the crash.

Fayed also says Diana “feared” Fellowes, who is married to her sister, Lady Jane Fellowes.

Ian Burnett QC, counsel to the Diana inquest, told him: “It had been suggested, particularly in a letter from Mr Fayed, that it was said you had been present in the British embassy at 11 o’clock on the evening of the 30th of August 1997, commandeering the communications centre to send messages to GCHQ.

“In other words, it was being suggested that you were intimately concerned in the murder of your sister-in-law. You understand that that was the allegation?”

Fellowes nodded. Asked whether he had been in Paris that night, he replied: “No.

“We were in Norfolk that evening, we had people to stay, we went to an entertainment by Mr John Mortimer in Burnham Market church.”

He also told the inquest, being held in London, that rooms at Buckingham palace were regularly swept for bugs by MI5.

He said the security service conducted the sweeps in rooms used by the Queen and her private secretary to conduct business to provide “reassurance”.

The detail emerged during questioning about the “Squidgygate” and “Camillagate” tapes - recordings of telephone calls involving Diana and the Prince of Wales.

Fellowes told the court how the recordings - which were revealed in the press - prompted high level meetings and correspondence involving the heads of MI5 and GCHQ, the government’s listening station, in early 1993.

It was also revealed that the then home secretary had blocked a full security service investigation for fear that such a move would leak out and be misrepresented in the press.

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Ex-MI6 Chief to Testify at Diana Inquest

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

The former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency said Monday he will testify that his organization had nothing to do with the death of Princess Diana when he appears at her inquest later this month.

Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son Dodi died with Diana in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, blames Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service for killing the couple to prevent them marrying.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who was chief of the agency also known as MI6 from 1999 to 2004, said in a statement that he welcomes the opportunity to “refute the allegations of SIS involvement in the accident which led to the deaths of the Princess of Wales” and Dodi Fayed.

Dearlove, the agency’s operations director at the time of Diana’s death, will testify on Feb. 20, Britain’s Foreign Office said.

French authorities blame the crash on driver Henri Paul, who was shown by blood tests to be over the legal limit for alcohol. Paul also died in the crash.

A British police inquiry concluded in 2006 that the three deaths were a “tragic accident” and that allegations of murder were unfounded.

The inquest into Diana’s death - required by British law when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or of unknown causes - began last year after a 10-year delay due to exhaustive investigations by French and British police.

On Monday, Britain’s former ambassador in Paris denied Al Fayed’s claim that he ordered Diana’s body to be embalmed to cover up a pregnancy.

“You are aware that it has been suggested that you personally ordered the embalming of the body of the Princess of Wales on the instructions of MI5 to conceal the fact that she was pregnant with Dodi’s child?” asked Ian Burnett, a lawyer for the coroner.

“There is no truth in this allegation whatsoever,” the former ambassador, Michael Jay, replied.

Jean Monceau, an embalmer who was called to the hospital, has said he told the British consul-general in Paris that the body should be embalmed. Other witnesses at the inquest have disputed Al Fayed’s claim that Diana was pregnant when she died.

Jay also denied Al Fayed’s claim that Diana’s brother-in-law, Robert Fellowes, had been in Paris on the night of her death to coordinate a murder plot initiated by Prince Philip. Fellowes, who is married to Diana’s sister Jane, is scheduled to testify on Tuesday.

Al Fayed was also due to testify next week, Lord Justice Scott Baker said.

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‘MI6 team in Paris at time of Diana crash’

Monday, February 11th, 2008

An MI6 team was operating at the British Embassy in Paris at the time of Princess Diana’s death, her inquest has heard.

But former ambassador Lord Jay told the High Court hearing he had no reason to believe their presence had anything to do with Diana’s death in a car crash in the French capital.

Lord Jay - then known as Sir Michael Jay - said that the first he was even aware of her presence in Paris was when he was awoken with news of the crash just over an hour after the smash in the early hours of August 31, 1997.

Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi Fayed was also killed in the Alma Tunnel, is convinced the crash was staged as part of an MI6 murder plot to eliminate the couple to prevent them marrying.

Mr al Fayed believes spies based at the Embassy were operating at the behest of the Duke of Edinburgh.

Asked by counsel to the inquest Ian Burnett whether the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - better known as MI6 - had a presence at the Embassy in 1997 he confirmed that it had.

He added that there had also been a representative of the Security Service MI5 working there at the time.

He agreed with a passage from his earlier police statement which said: “There was such a team at the British Embassy in Paris staffed by members of the Secret Intelligence Service and one member of the Security Service.”

He explained: “It’s to liaise with the French authorities on issues such as counter terrorism, anti-drugs work, security issues and to share intelligence on matters of foreign policy.”

Asked if he had to be kept informed about MI6 operations in Paris he said: “Yes, if it had been a major operation which was likely to raise particular sensitivities then I would expect to have been told.”

Mr Burnett continued: “You have indicated that you would have been aware of anything significant going on, was there anything significant going on of which you were aware?”

He replied: “No”.

Mr Burnett said: “You are aware that it has been suggested that you personally ordered the embalming of the body of the Princess of Wales on the instructions of MI5 to conceal the fact that she was pregnant with Dodi’s child.”

Lord Jay replied: “There is no truth in this allegation whatsoever.”

Mr Burnett: “It has also been suggested that Lord Fellowes, who was at the time the Queen’s private secretary and also a brother-in-law of the Princess of Wales, was in Paris on the night of August 30 and had commandeered the operations room in the Embassy essentially to oversee and organise the murder of his sister-in-law. Was he in Paris?”

Lord Jay: “No. He was not.”

Earlier, the inquest heard that Mr Fayed had hinted that he and Diana were engaged.

Just days before the fatal crash, the 42-year-old rang his father’s legal adviser, Stuart Benson, to tell him he had “very exciting news”, which the lawyer interpreted to mean that the couple had decided to get married.

No other details were given during the brief call made as Mr Fayed and the Princess cruised around the Mediterranean on a luxury yacht.

But Mr Benson was asked if he was free the following Monday to discuss issues arising from the news.

The inquest has already heard that a ring was bought for the royal by Mr Fayed at the Repossi jewellers hours before their deaths on August 31, 1997.

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Diana’s bodyguard had help pleas ignored

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

Bodyguards for Princess Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed had calls for extra security rejected during their fateful trip to Paris, the inquest into their deaths has heard.

Trevor Rees, who was one of two bodyguards assigned to the couple, said he believed Dodi and Diana should have had four security guards protecting them from hordes of photographers and onlookers in the days before their fatal car crash in the French capital.

Photographs of the couple had been splashed across newspapers around the globe as they holidayed aboard Dodi’s yacht in late August 1997.

By the time they arrived for a one-night stopover in Paris on August 30, dozens of photographers were waiting to track their every move.

In the early hours of the next day, Diana, Dodi and their driver Henri Paul were killed after their Mercedes crashed in an underground tunnel after apparently being pursued by photographers. Mr Rees was the only survivor.

Making his second appearance at the inquest, Mr Rees told how he and his fellow bodyguard Kes Wingfield repeatedly contacted top security chiefs for Dodi’s father, Harrods billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, in London pleading for extra help during the couple’s holiday but none ever showed up.

“At that stage, it (the relationship between Diana and Dodi) was in the open, in the media, and the attention both from the paparazzi and general public would have been a lot higher,” he said.

“I would have expected, or I would have thought, it would have been good to have a four-man team, the same as would have been with Mr (Al) Fayed.

“We didn’t get any extra security. I believe at one stage we got an extra crew member to help the crew on the yacht, but we didn’t get any extra security.”

Mr Rees suffered extensive injuries in the crash which claimed the lives of the princess, Dodi and their driver.

He has rejected recent media reports suggesting his memories about the crash were gradually returning.

The inquest continues.

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Diana crash survivor to testify

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

The only survivor of the crash that killed Princess Diana is scheduled to testify Wednesday at the inquest into her death.

Trevor Rees, formerly known as Trevor Rees-Jones, was the front-seat passenger in the Mercedes that carried Diana, her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul. He sustained serious injuries in the Aug. 31, 1997 crash.

Rees has said he has no memory of the crash. The last thing he remembers that night was the car pulling away from the Ritz Hotel in Paris, he has said. His next memory is more than a week later, in his hospital bed, when his parents told him everyone else in the car was dead.

At the time of the crash, Rees was a bodyguard employed by Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed. He was assigned to guard the younger Fayed and, because she was Dodi Fayed’s companion on the trip, the princess as well.

Rees suffered major injuries to his lower jaw, the base of his brain, and his pulmonary system and has had several surgeries and hospitalizations, some of which Al Fayed paid for.

He no longer works on Al Fayed’s security team, and Rees has said what was once a good relationship with his former employer has broken down.

In an interview with CNN’s Larry King Live in 2000, Rees said he left because Al Fayed pressured him to support conspiracy theories about the crash.

“I felt my level of trust was breaking down” in the Al Fayed organization, Rees said. “I was informed by my solicitors that if I continued at work, they felt they could no longer represent me. That I was just being seen as a mouthpiece for whatever theories were being chucked up. And I made the decision eventually to leave.”

In 2000, Rees published a book, “The Bodyguard’s Story: Diana, the Crash, and the Sole Survivor,” offering his account of the events surrounding the crash. He said Al Fayed tried unsuccessfully to stop the book’s publication in England.

Rees told CNN he wrote the book to give a definitive account of what he remembered and knew, but also to counter Al Fayed’s accusations that his unprofessionalism caused the accident. Rees also said proceeds from the book helped pay his legal bills.

Rees, a former soldier, was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash, but he has said that was routine for his work as a bodyguard because it meant he was free to move around.

Rees has said he wasn’t happy with the Ritz departure plan on the fateful night, and that Dodi Fayed hadn’t given him or the driver enough advance notice of their destination.

The plan to leave the Ritz by the back door, Rees told CNN, “was not the plan that I was happy with.” He also didn’t approve of Dodi Fayed’s plan to travel in a single vehicle — the Mercedes — with no security following behind.

Other former bodyguards have testified at the inquest that Fayed rarely planned his schedule far in advance and was often eager to get to his destination quickly.

Source

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“Inconsistencies” over Diana driver samples

Monday, January 21st, 2008

The procedures used by French medical experts to collect samples from the body of Princess Diana’s chauffeur suffered “inconsistencies”, the inquest into her death was told on Monday by a leading British toxicologist.

French and British police investigations have both concluded that Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed died in a high-speed Paris car crash because chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk.

But Dodi’s father, luxury storeowner Mohamed al-Fayed, alleges that her son and Diana were killed by British security services on the orders of Prince Philip.

He has also questioned the results of the tests taken on Henri Paul’s body after his death.

Professor Robert Forrest, who reviewed all the medical reports into Paul’s death, ran through them again in meticulous detail for lawyers at the inquest.

The court was told that important blood samples from Paul were originally thought to have come from the heart but in fact came from his chest cavity, a much less reliable measure.

Forrest said Dr Gilbert Pepin, responsible for the French toxicology tests, believed they were heart samples.

“I was there when Dr Pepin was told it was not cardiac blood, it was chest cavity blood. I still have a vivid recollection of the way that his face changed when he was told. He looked surprised,” Forrest told the court.

There was also confusion over just how many samples of blood were taken and when exactly they were taken.

“There are unresolved incompatibilities — inconsistencies I should say rather than incompatibilities,” Forrest said.

He told the court: “The interpretation of samples is only as good as the samples themselves,” he told the court.

“It doesn’t matter how sophisticated the analysis is, if you don’t have good material to work with, you have to qualify the interpretation of the data your laboratory generates,” he said.

Reuters

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Energy rip-off exposed

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

Steven Swinford and Jon Ungoed-Thomas

BRITAIN’S biggest energy companies have stifled competition to raise prices and make record profits of more than £4.5 billion, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

The six companies that control Britain’s gas and electricity are now facing demands that they be referred to the Competition Commission.

Executives in charge of the six major companies were last week confirmed to be holding confidential meetings at least every two months to discuss market strategy. Smaller rivals are excluded.

The new disclosures come as a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times reveals that more than eight out of 10 customers believe they are being “ripped off” by the energy firms. Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is to meet Sir John Mogg, the head of regulator Ofgem, tomorrow for an explanation of the latest round of price rises.

Industry insiders said they are ready to give evidence about how the “big six” have driven up prices and boosted profits by:

- Keeping each other’s prices in step by raising and lowering tariffs within a few weeks of each other.

- Denying smaller rivals fair access to energy from their own power plants at affordable prices.

- Charging loyal customers significantly more than those who switch, so keeping up profits.

- Stifling competition by supporting laborious and expensive accreditation for new companies.

Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, the consumer watchdog, said: “The problem with the energy market is that it’s lazy, complacent and uncompetitive. It has been able to drive out the possibility of any vigorous challenge to the prominence of the big six energy suppliers.”

The companies enjoyed a “bumper year” in 2007, profiting from a dramatic fall in the wholesale price of gas amid allegations they failed to pass on savings to householders. Analysts believe the companies are now poised to report record annual profits of more than £4.5 billion.

The companies last week confirmed that they were meeting regularly under the auspices of the Energy Retail Association. The association says market-sensitive issues are never talked about and pricing policies are discussed only in the context of a public debate about best practice. Rival energy companies say the association is a “closed shop” for the dominant companies and the minutes of meetings should be published.

The Sunday Times YouGov poll found that 85% of customers felt they were being ripped off by the energy firms. This compares to 76% of people who felt they were being ripped off by the railways; 74% by the petrol companies; and 59% by the banks and financial service industry.

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New probe aims to cover up CIA tortures

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

By John Catalinotto

In an attempt to limit political damage and protect the highest officials, the new U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has ordered a special investigation of the decision in 2005 to destroy tapes of CIA interrogations made in 2002 of two alleged high-level Al-Qaeda officials. The investigation is limited to how the decision was made and who made it. It is not supposed to probe the content of the tapes, which are said to show brutal interrogations using torture.

Washington often claims to be the champion of “human rights” and uses an alleged lack of human rights to attack or impose sanctions on those it considers its enemies. Since the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, however, Washington and especially the CIA have become identified with torture of prisoners, from Baghram in Afghanistan, to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, to Guantánamo on the U.S.-occupied eastern tip of Cuba.

Since torture is illegal within the U.S.—at least on paper if not in practice—the CIA has even outsourced interrogations to client states, a process called “rendition.”

The tapes destroyed involve hundreds of hours of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Both were captured in 2002 and are now being held at Guantánamo Bay among the 275 remaining prisoners of the 800 who had been held there since 2001. Zubaydah was captured in a firefight in Pakistan in March of 2002 and interrogated then at a CIA safe house in Thailand. Al-Nashiri was captured in the United Arab Emirates.

Zubaydah confessed to being a high-ranking al-Qaeda official. Al-Nashiri said he planned the 2000 attack against the USS Cole in Yemeni waters, which blew a hole in the side of the guided-missile destroyer and killed 17 sailors. The U.S. authorities classified both as “enemy combatants.”

Since U.S. interrogators admittedly used extreme sensory and sleep deprivation, along with waterboarding—and who knows what else—to get these confessions, it is possible that in 2002 the two prisoners told their interrogators anything they believed might stop the punishment. Both have since challenged the confessions, saying they were obtained under torture.

By the end of 2002, the CIA says it stopped taping interrogations. For the next three years, CIA legal counsels, CIA heads George Tenet and Porter Goss, discussed among themselves and with White House counsel whether or not the CIA could get away with destroying the tapes. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter advising the CIA not to destroy the tapes.

Bush gang promotes torture methods

Despite legal advice that destroying the tapes might interfere with future investigations, the CIA kept pushing to destroy the tapes. The Bush administration, whose Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez had provided a legal defense of brutal interrogation techniques (while refusing to call them torture), at the very least failed to order the CIA to desist from destroying the tapes.

In June 2005, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered the Bush administration to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay,” which would include the above tapes. Nevertheless, in November 2005, the CIA destroyed the tapes, under orders from Jose Rodriguez, who headed the National Clandestine Service.

The CIA claimed it destroyed the tapes to protect the safety of the interrogating officers from retaliation from al-Qaeda. Other observers said it was also to protect these officials’ careers.

But most suspect the CIA destroyed the tapes with the blessing of the White House because public exposure of the torture would make Washington even more hated than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal did.

The New York Times wrote: “Interrogations of Abu Zubaydah had gotten rougher, with each new tactic approved by cable from headquarters. [U.S.] American officials have said that Abu Zubaydah was the first al Qaeda prisoner to be waterboarded, a procedure during which water is poured over the prisoner’s mouth and nose to create a feeling of drowning. Officials said they felt they could not risk a public leak of a videotape showing [U.S.] Americans giving such harsh treatment to bound prisoners.” (Dec. 30)

Mukasey, while being questioned by Congress before his appointment as attorney general, refused to say if he believed that waterboarding was torture. The tapes would leave no doubt that it is.

While the Justice Department is attempting to limit the investigation, a popular revulsion against the Bush administration makes it possible that the probe will go further than expected. Already, progressive organizations of attorneys like the Center for Constitutional Rights—which has taken the lead in organizing legal defense of the prisoners in Guantánamo and elsewhere—have raised protests against the Bush gang’s attack on constitutional rights and have called on Congress to act. The last word on the CIA tapes is yet to be spoken.

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‘British spies bugged Diana, leaked tapes to smear her’

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

British intelligence was spying on Princess Diana and recording embarrassingly private conversations, which were later leaked to the world, three years before she separated from the heir to the throne, her former bodyguard has said.

Ken Wharfe, Diana’s former bodyguard, told the long-running inquest into her death that the infamous “Squidgygate” tapes of Diana talking in an intimate fashion to an alleged lover were recorded by the British intelligence listening station GCHQ.

They were later deliberately leaked to embarrass the Princess, he said, in a damaging suggestion the royal family was “jealous” of Diana’s “popularity” and aides to the British Queen and her husband were “sharpening their knives” against her.

The revelation, splashed as the front-page lead story of the traditional and generally monarchist Daily Telegraph newspaper, has transfixed royal-watchers. Many believe it gives ballast to 10-year-old conspiracy theories about Establishment involvement in Diana’s death in Paris, alongside Dodi, the playboy son of Egyptian millionaire grocer Mohammed al-Fayed.

But Wharfe, the beefy, thickset, veteran royal protection officer who formerly cashed in on his association with Diana by writing a book about the six years he served her, added the caveat that British security services also regularly bugged other members of the royal family and cabinet ministers in the 1980s and 1990s, ostensibly to help protect them against assassination by the IRA.

On the ‘Squidygate’ tapes, which were relayed to a prurient world three years after Diana’s 1989 conversation with childhood friend and alleged lover James Gilbey, the man is heard repeatedly telling her “I love you”. The half-hour conversation had Gilbey, heir to the eponymous gin empire, calling Diana “Squidgy”, a pet name, 53 times.

The allegation that the tapes were made at the British government’s top secret monitoring station had Wharfe claiming that “Diana Diana did say to me on a number of occasions she felt she and other members of the family were being monitored.”

Wharfe’s account is seen to square with long-held suspicions the tapes were leaked to smear Diana at a time her relationship with Prince Charles was at its most acrimonious.

Barely a year after the tapes were leaked, Diana hired electronic surveillance experts to sweep her apartments for bugs, the bodyguard claimed.

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Diana ‘believed she would be bumped off’

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

By Nick Allen

Diana, Princess of Wales believed she was going to be “bumped off” by MI6 because of her high profile campaign against landmines, the inquest into her death has been told.

Her friend Simone Simmons said the Princess was about to “name names” and publish a dossier called Profiting Out of Misery.


	Diana, Princess of Wales, ‘believed M16 were out to kill her’

“Top of her list of culprits was the Secret Intelligence Service which she believed was behind the sale of British landmines that were causing so much misery to so many people,” Miss Simmons said.

On one occasion the Princess sent her a note which said: “If something happens, MI5 or MI6 will have done it.”

Miss Simmons said the Princess gave her the landmines dossier, which was up to six inches thick, and she kept it for several months under her mattress along with the note.

Later, she burned them. She said: “I was more than nervous. If I had the material, I might have been bumped off as well.”

At Kensington Palace in February 1997, the Princess asked her to listen into a phone call she was on in which she was threatened over the landmine campaign, Miss Simmons said.

“This person was saying to her that she shouldn’t interfere in matters she knew nothing about,” she said.

The caller told the Princess “Well accidents can happen” and she was “very pale” after the conversation.

Miss Simmons said the Princess told her the caller was Conservative MP Nicholas Soames.

Mr Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, has previously told the inquest that the suggestion was “grotesque and preposterous”.

According to Miss Simmons, the Princess had secret meetings with Tony Blair in the months before he became Prime Minister about becoming a roving ambassador in relation to landmines.

“That’s what he promised her and she thought he was going to announce it when he was elected.

“She was very disappointed,” Miss Simmons said.

The testimony of Miss Simmons, who describes herself as an “energy healer”, provided an insight into the world of the Princess, including her belief in alternative therapies.

From 1993 she went to Miss Simmons up to three times a week at a complementary medicine clinic.

They later became friends and she would go to Kensington Palace up to five times a week and was teaching the Princess how to be a healer herself, Miss Simmons said.

The Princess’s flat had “bad energy” which Miss Simmons had to clear it of in an “exhausting” procedure.

The two women once spent 10 hours on a single phone call to each other, the inquest heard.

“We talked about everything and if she was upset I would calm her down reassure her,” Miss Simmons said.

“I believed her calls were being listened to and every time there was a click on the phone she used to say ‘hello boys, time to change the tape’.”

In November 1996 she had a premonition the Princess would be one of four people in an accident in a Mercedes.

When she told the Princess, she replied: “Oh my God, Charles”.

The inquest also heard about an “Arab conspiracy”.

Miss Simmons said: “She wasn’t paranoid, somebody had told her there was a fatwa on her head because the Arabs liked Charles.”

The inquest continues.

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