Leading US House Democrat demands that Ecuador’s president “hand over” Julian Assange

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By Mike Head, wsws.org

18 October 2018

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he US is increasing its pressure on Ecuador to evict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from its London embassy, where he took political asylum in June 2012. He would then be arrested immediately by British police and subjected to extradition proceedings to face trumped-up espionage charges in the US that could see him jailed for life or even executed.

On Wednesday, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee sent a threatening letter to Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno insisting that he “hand over” Assange to the “proper authorities” as a precondition for improving relations with the United States.

In a bipartisan letter, Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, and former Foreign Relations Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, declared: “We are very concerned with Julian Assange’s continued presence at your embassy in London and his receipt of Ecuadorian citizenship last year.”

Democrats continue to break records for literally revolting behaviour. Their promised "Blue Wave" is liable to be a tsunami of human scum.

Engel’s role makes even more explicit the leading part being played by the Democrats in the drive to lock away Assange for good and silence WikiLeaks itself. In June, on the eve of a visit to Ecuador by Vice President Mike Pence, 10 Democratic Party senators called on the Trump administration to demand that the Ecuadorian government renege on the political asylum it provided Assange six years ago.

Written in bullying and contemptuous language, the Engel-Ros-Lehtinen letter warns that any further “significant progress” and “warming” in Washington’s relationship with Moreno’s government on a “wide range of issues,” including “economic cooperation” and financial aid, depends on Ecuador terminating Assange’s political asylum.

Eliot Engel's website logo, showing him—what else?—as a man of the people. His treacherous actions show otherwise. His betrayal of the public interest, not to mention disregard for international law, is all the more disgusting considering his working class background. Obviously these truths won't reach the voting public's ears, as Engel and his ilk are shielded by the whore media.

The letter effectively confirms that if Assange is forced to leave the embassy, on whatever pretext, the British government will deliver him into the hands of the US. Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has repeatedly refused to give Assange an assurance he will not be extradited to the US.

“On numerous occasions, Mr. Assange has compromised the national security of the United States,” the letter states. “He has done so by publicly releasing classified government documents along with confidential materials from individuals connected to our country’s 2016 presidential election.”

The thousands of secret US files published by WikiLeaks document US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, anti-democratic plots and interventions around the world, and massive global surveillance and computer hacking by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies.

The letter also refers to the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory concocted by the US spy agencies and the Democrats to accuse WikiLeaks of aiding Russian “interference” to secure Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. In reality, WikiLeaks published documents, which it insists were not provided by Russia, proving that top Democratic Party officials sought to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the primary elections and that Hillary Clinton gave speeches to Wall Street bankers pledging to protect their interests.

The letter brands Assange “a dangerous criminal and a threat to global security,” who “should be brought to justice.” The truth is that Assange and WikiLeaks have courageously continued to publish leaked documents that expose the truly “dangerous criminals”—the US ruling class and its allies, and their illegal invasions, assassinations, regime-change operations and mass surveillance.

As for “justice,” the American intelligence, detention and judicial agencies have a documented record of torture, frame-ups, show trials and incarceration of “enemy combatants” without trial.

The letter adds: “Most recently, we were particularly disturbed to learn that your government restored Mr. Assange’s access to the Internet.” This is also a false assertion.

Last Friday, under the guise of partially restoring Assange’s right to access the internet and receive visitors, Moreno’s government sought to impose a new “special protocol” that provides a pretext for terminating the asylum that the previous Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa granted him in 2012.

Anyone seeking to visit Assange would have to give the Ecuadorian embassy three days’ notice and wait for written authorisation by the head of the embassy, which could be arbitrarily refused or cancelled without any reason being given. Visitors would have to provide the Ecuadorian authorities with full ID details and either hand over or clear all mobile phones and other communications devices.

Assange, whose health has been severely compromised by being trapped inside the tiny embassy for six years, would have to submit to compulsory quarterly medical evaluations that could provide the pretext for a forced “medical evacuation.”

Far from restoring Assange’s basic democratic rights, the protocol would reinforce the political silencing imposed by Ecuador in March. In direct violation of the right to asylum, it seeks to forbid him from making any comments that criticise or could offend any government, particularly those with “good relations” with Ecuador.

Assange would have to “comply scrupulously” with a “prohibition” on carrying out any “activities that could be considered as political and interference in the internal affairs of other States, or that may cause harm to the good relations of Ecuador with any other State.”

The protocol states that failure to comply with any of its obligations “will entail, in addition to other possible consequences, the termination of the asylum of Mr. Julian Assange.”

One of the possible grounds for a US application to extradite Assange may well be an indictment against the WikiLeaks editor by the Mueller investigation into purported “Russian interference” in the 2016 presidential election. A concerted effort has been waged by US intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party and media outlets such as the New York Times and the Guardian to slander Assange as an agent of both the Putin regime and the Trump campaign because WikiLeaks published the damning exposures of Clinton.

In what may be related to the attempt to link WikiLeaks with Russia, Moreno’s government this week released documents purporting to reveal that it sought to get Assange out of its embassy last December by naming him as a political counsellor to the country’s embassy in Moscow.

British authorities, however, flatly rejected a request for Assange to be given an Ecuadorian diplomatic ID card. According to the documents, a letter dated December 21, 2017 from Britain’s Foreign Office said UK officials “do not consider Mr. Julian Assange to be an acceptable member of the mission.”

Russia’s embassy said on Twitter that the material was “another example of disinformation and fake news.” The embassy repeated its denial of similar reports produced by the Guardian last month. WikiLeaks associate and former British whistle-blower Craig Murray has also publicly rejected claims that Assange wanted or requested to go to Russia.

The files were made public on Tuesday at the instigation of right-wing opposition legislator Paola Vintimilla, whose Social Christian Party opposed the former Correa government’s decision to grant Assange nationality. Assange, an Australian citizen, was compelled to turn to Ecuador in 2012 because the Labor Party-led government in Australia fully lined up with the Obama administration and denied him his right to assistance and protection against persecution.

Under Moreno, who assumed the presidency in May 2017, Ecuador’s government has turned against WikiLeaks and Assange as part of its efforts to reforge relations with Washington. The decision to cut off his communication and visitation rights on March 28 this year was taken one day after the US and Ecuador held top level military talks. Moreno has since repeatedly threatened to repudiate Assange’s political asylum in an apparent effort to pressure him into “voluntarily” leaving the embassy.

As the conspiracy against the WikiLeaks editor escalates, the World Socialist Web Site reiterates its call for all defenders of democratic rights to fight for the unconditional freedom of Julian Assange. It is an essential component of the broader struggle in defence of freedom of speech and an independent and critical media in opposition to the growing censorship of oppositional views by governments and corporate giants such as Facebook and Google.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The writer works for wsws.org, a Marxian publication.

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

Stephen Colbert Goes Easy On Les Moonves For Sexual Harassment

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PATRICE GREANVILLE

Colbert

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]tephen Colbert and the recently dethroned Les Moonves typify the

Moonves

In the video below, Jimmy Dore zeroes in on this disgrace, with his usual clarity, bravura and eloquence. Go for it. —PG

ABOUT THE JIMMY DORE SHOW: The Jimmy Dore Show is a hilarious and irreverent take on news, politics and culture featuring Jimmy Dore, a professional stand up comedian, author and podcaster. With over 5 million downloads on iTunes, the show is also broadcast on KPFK stations throughout the country. It is part of the Young Turks Network-- the largest online news show in the world.

About the Author

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Prelude to World War III

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Jihadists in Idlib. The BBC and the rest of the Western press are talking about a government "takeover" of Idlib, but how can a nation "take over" its own territory?

Unless Syria will simply hand its most heavily pro-jihadist province, Idlib, to adjoining Turkey, which claims to have 30,000 troops there and is planning to add 20,000 more, World War III will probably happen soon, and here is why:

Russia’s troops are in Syria at the invitation of Syria’s Government and they have provided crucial assistance to restore the Government’s control over areas that the jihadists (sometimes called “Radical Islamic Terrorists” or otherwise) had seized. Consequently, unlike the Turks and the Americans, who are invaders of Syria, Russia is instead a defender of Syria, and is committed to doing there only what the Syrian Government authorizes it to do and what Russia is willing to do there.

Right now, the Trump Administration has committed itself to prohibiting Syria (and its allies) from retaking control of Idlib, which is the only province that was more than 90% in favor of Al Qaeda and of ISIS and against the Government at the start of the ‘civil war’ in Syria. Idlib is even more pro-jihadist now, because almost all of the surviving jihadists in Syria have sought refuge there — and the Government freely has bussed them there in order to minimize the amount of “human shield” hostage-taking by them in the other provinces. Countless innocent lives were saved this way.

Both Democratic and Republican U.S. federal officials and former officials are overwhelmingly supportive of U.S. President Trump’s newly announced determination to prohibit Syria from retaking control of that heavily jihadist province, and they state such things about Idlib as:

It has become a dumping ground for some of the hardcore jihadists who were not prepared to settle for some of the forced agreements that took place, the forced surrenders that took place elsewhere. … Where do people go when they’ve reached the last place that they can go? What’s the refuge after the last refuge? That’s the tragedy that they face.

That happened to be an Obama Administration official expressing support for the jihadists, and when he was asked by his interviewer “Did the world fail Syria?” he answered “Sure. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, the first person who failed Syria was President Assad himself.”

The way for the plan to avert that outcome to be carried out would be:

Assad and Putin both will announce that due to the complaints from the U.S. Government and from the United Nations and from the Turkish Government, Syria will give up Idlib province, and will construct on the border between it and the adjoining areas of Syria, a DMZ or De-Militarized Zone, so that not only will the residents in Idlib be safe from any attack by Syria and its allies (such as America and its allies have been demanding), but Syrians — in all the others of Syria’s provinces — will likewise be safe against any continued attacks by the jihadists that have concentrated themselves in Idlib.

If this peaceful path to ending the prelude to WW III — to avoiding the jump off a nuclear cliff — succeeds, then the world will be able to continue debating who was right and who was wrong in all of this. But, otherwise, that debate will simply be terminated by the war itself, and everyone will end up losing.

Here is how these and associated matters are being taught to school students in the United States. It’s a magazine that’s handed out free to school students in the U.S. to teach them the ‘history’ behind these current events, though it conflicts with the actual history behind them: but, of course, those children won’t know that history, because it’s not being taught to them.

About the author

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.

What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

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When TV spies get closer to reality—or do they?

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Until recently I had never watched an episode of FX's TV hit THE AMERICANS, which just concluded its sixth and final season. Years ago, when it first came to my attention, I quickly dismissed it as probably yet another typically formulaic and thinly veiled imperialist propaganda platform, another version of Homeland, or the ludicrously chauvinist 24. Well, guess what, The Americans, the brainchild of executive producer Joe Weisberg, himself a former CIA employe, and with a stellar cast that includes Keri Russell, Mathew Rhys, Noah Emmerich, Richard Thomas, Alison Wright, Annet Mahendru (the memorable Russian mole Nina), and, of course the senior KGB "handlers", played with compelling flair by Frank Langella (Gabriel), and the formidable Margo Martindale (Claudia) is a show cut from a different cloth. Its plotlines —while packed with action—are anchored in realistic and absorbing human drama. There's no black and white heroics here, just different shades of gray, and even glimmers of strong idealism—on both sides. For if there's anything that sets this show apart is that, in the midst of the most rabid russophobic climate seen in decades in the US, this show maintains a courageous distance from such malicious caricatures of Russian people and motives. In any event, I am awfully glad that (of all people!) our Paris-based correspondent Ramin Mazaheri tipped us off about this show, praising it as an example of American programming well worth watching. See his own review of the show here: Religion saves ‘The Americans’ – the superb (semi) pro-socialist TV show. Below we try to answer a question that must be on many minds who followed the Jennings' saga. —PG

Ask a Cold War Expert: How Realistic Is The Americans?

By Gwynne Watkins | Vulture.com

THE AMERICANS -- Safe House -- Episode 9 (Airs Wednesday, April 3, 10:00 pm e/p) -- Pictured: (L-R) Matthew Rhys as Philip Jennings, Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings.

Most TV spy shows don't exactly strive for realism, which is one thing that makes The Americans so intriguing. The FX drama, about undercover KGB agents masquerading as American suburbanites, was directly inspired by the Russian spy ring bust of 2010. But instead of crafting a present-day thriller, creators Joe Weisberg (a former CIA operative) and Joel Fields chose to set their show in 1981, placing agents Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) in a minefield of Cold War tensions with nary a cell phone in sight. Unlike, say, Homeland, the show's events feel like they could actually happen in our universe. But did they? To find out how closely Phillip and Elizabeth resemble actual KGB, we spoke with Dr. John Prados, a historian of intelligence and a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C.

You told me that you'd seen the pilot. Did you get a chance to watch any more episodes of the show?
Yes. Let's just say it's contrived.

In what way?
In general, spying is boring. And for purposes of drama and what they're doing, The Americans makes it be something different than that. For example, the most prominent real-life Russian illegal of the sort we see on the show was a guy named Rudolph Abel. He was a KGB colonel who was arrested in the late-fifties. And what he did was work in New York as a photographer. I think his apartment was in Brooklyn. And he didn't kill anybody [laughs], he didn't run around plotting this and that. He worked as a photographer and met his agents wherever he was supposed to, and in fact, his whole purpose was to remain anonymous.

Was the use of Russian illegals something that was actually going on in the eighties?
The Russians used illegals in waves. There was that wave in the fifties, and then there was that very recent wave that was uncovered, which presumably began in the eighties. In between the fifties and the eighties, there's no known instance of Russian illegals operating in the United States. Although you never know, because our knowledge of this is entirely dependent on the spies who have been uncovered. So the ones that were successful, we kind of don't know about. [Chuckles.]

You said that spying is boring, but Phillip and Elizabeth spend a lot of time seducing people to get information. Is that something that KGB spies would frequently do?
Actually, KGB officers have often used that tactic against Americans and others who were in Russia. Clayton Lonetree is the most important example; he was an American marine who was guarding the Moscow embassy in the eighties, and he helped the spy who seduced him to bug the building. There's also a famous case of a French ambassador by the name of Maurice DeJean, who was subjected to this when he was in Moscow in the mid-fifties. And the term of art for a woman "dangle" is actually "swallow," as in the bird. So that is a recognized tactic.

They also assume lots of fake identities. I'd imagine that if people were being planted in the U.S. with the purpose of having them blend in, then the KGB wouldn't be dispatching them to do missions in disguise. Wouldn't those jobs go to other spies?
Yes and no; there are exceptions to every rule. So if you were having a meeting with someone in a place where it was highly monitored and highly secured, you might want to resort to a disguise, simply in order to avoid revealing the cover-legend person at all. Also, there's a conflation between spy and agent here. Phillip and Elizabeth are agents, and I'm using the word agent for a person who is the officer of an intelligence service. And I'm using the word spy for the person who's working for them, the person who's actually getting the material. In the show, a lot of the stuff that the characters are doing would be work that was done by the spies, the assets, not by the agents. Think of it this way: Is it logical that the KGB officer is marching into the Pentagon and photographing documents? No. You've got to recruit a spy, an American who works for the Pentagon who has access to those documents and can photograph them and give you the information. But you don't do it yourself; somebody else does it for you.

The characters on the show are frequently being described in the press as "sleeper agents," but they seem pretty active to me. Is that term a misnomer?
It depends. A sleeper agent is positioned specifically for the purpose of becoming immersed, getting some kind of access, worming their way through the society — as that group was that was uncovered a couple years ago. And your sleeper agent remains a sleeper agent until the time that you activate them. Once you activate them, they're not sleepers anymore — they're active agents. So the characters are sleepers who have been activated.

Has the Russian government historically arranged marriages between spies?
I'm not aware of a previous instance in which the Russians put together a couple, before that most recent spy ring. But clearly it was done in that case.

In episode two, "The Clock," the agents need to bug the Defense secretary's home, so they poison the son of his maid and will only give her the antidote if she plants the bug. Couple of questions about this. First of all, Elizabeth poisons the son by pricking him with a needle that pops out of her umbrella. One Vulture commenter mentioned that the KGB has actually done this?
Yes, a Bulgarian by the name of Georgi Markov was poisoned by an umbrella, I think using ricin, in London in the late-seventies. So yes, I'm sure that's where they got that idea.

They poisoned him with ricin? You don't watch Breaking Bad, do you?
No, what is that?

Never mind. Are there any other inventive espionage poisoning tactics we might see in future episodes?
Well, the other interesting one would be the Russian defector from the SVR, which is the current Russian service — Litvinenko — in London several years ago, with a radioactive material. Polonium, I believe. And that happened in a bar just by sort of scattering the materials around where this person would touch it and it would be absorbed into his skin.

Whoa. Wouldn't that have poisoned everyone else in the bar?
As far as I know, he was the only victim. [Editor's note: It was later discovered that the polonium was planted in his tea, and other people in the restaurant have since experienced side effects of radiation.]

In terms of the poison in episode two, would the Russians have had some kind of proprietary poison where only they would have had the antidote?
Well, probably! Intelligence services put lots of research into exotic chemicals and poisons and whatnot, and often the object is specifically to come up with something only they have the antidote for. But, in Markov's case, nobody knew what was wrong with him, so they couldn't instantly come up with the antidote. So that was almost the same as being in the situation where only you have the antidote, because you know what the poison is, whereas a doctor or nurse or EMT coming onto this situation cold would have no idea what's going on.

In episode four, which takes place immediately after Reagan was shot by Hinckley, the KGB begins preparation for guerilla warfare. Elizabeth has to dig up some buried explosives. Is that an eventuality that Russian agents would be prepared for on U.S. soil? I found that idea startling.
There's a term of art, it's called "stay-behind network," and it is something that you prepare in advance for a warfare situation. This was something that the CIA did in Western Europe, in the expectation that if there was a war, Russian armies would overrun Western Europe and therefore Western Europe would be occupied, and therefore only assets that were ready before the fact with caches of buried explosives and weapons and whatnot would be available for use. So, I think the general idea is coming from that. However, an operation in the U.S. has a different character. The mechanism by which Russians get stuff into the United States is the diplomatic pouch, which uses diplomatic and embassy channels. In addition to that, Russian diplomats, including their spies, are highly regulated in terms of where they can go in the U.S. and what they can do. So, during that period of the sixties through the eighties, there were very tight restrictions on where Russians were allowed to go. Like, you can go on I-95 from Washington to New York, but you can't go more than five miles off the road. And there was a list of cities that were places they were allowed to go to, stuff like that. My point being that it would be extremely difficult for KGB to have planted caches of weapons anywhere that agents could get to them.

Tell me about the technology that would have been used by spies during this particular period. The Internet has warped our perception of how easy it is to communicate and exchange information over long distances. How would these pieces of information travel quickly from Russia to the agents to the spies?
That's a good question. I would say probably that information could nottravel that quickly.

They use radios a lot on the show.
Yeah, and radios are inherently insecure. I mean, another big focus of research and development in the intelligence business is, in fact, on communications. The CIA, we developed high-speed burst transmittersthat were highly directional, to bounce beams off satellites and move information back and forth to agents in Russia. The Russian resources in that area were less sophisticated. They had their own set of communications devices, some of them very good, but their constellation of satellites was less ample than the American and didn't afford 24-7 coverage of the whole world. So there would have been windows in which communication was possible and other times when it was not.

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Things to ponder

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

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Of A Type Developed By Liars

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By Craig Murray
Source: The author's website
Dateline: Mar 16 2018

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly researching, in the “Novichok” programme a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors such as insecticides and fertilisers. This substance is a “novichok” in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China.To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days. The government has never said the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was used by Theresa May in parliament, used by the UK at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most tellingly of all, “of a type developed by Russia” is the precise phrase used in the joint communique issued by the UK, USA, France and Germany yesterday:

This use of a military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War.

When the same extremely careful phrasing is never deviated from, you know it is the result of a very delicate Whitehall compromise. My FCO source, like me, remembers the extreme pressure put on FCO staff and other civil servants to sign off the dirty dossier on Iraqi WMD, some of which pressure I recount in my memoir Murder in Samarkand. She volunteered the comparison to what is happening now, particularly at Porton Down, with no prompting from me.

Meanwhile, you can rest assured that none of the major news organisations in the West will be beating a path to the author's door, seeking more information, or putting him in front of the cameras. Such is the travesty of corporate media "journalism" in our epoch of totalitarian hypocrisy.—The Editor

Separately I have written to the media office at OPCW to ask them to confirm that there has never been any physical evidence of the existence of Russian Novichoks, and the programme of inspection and destruction of Russian chemical weapons was completed last year.

Did you know these interesting facts?

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray with his book, Murder in Samarkand in London Monday July 17, 2006. (AP Photo/Simon Dawson)

OPCW inspectors have had full access to all known Russian chemical weapons facilities for over a decade – including those identified by the “Novichok” alleged whistleblower Mirzayanov – and last year OPCW inspectors completed the destruction of the last of 40,000 tonnes of Russian chemical weapons

By contrast the programme of destruction of US chemical weapons stocks still has five years to run.

Israel has extensive stocks of chemical weapons but has always refused to declare any of them to the OPCW. Israel is not a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention nor a member of the OPCW. Israel signed in 1993 but refused to ratify as this would mean inspection and destruction of its chemical weapons. Israel undoubtedly has as much technical capacity as any state to synthesise “Novichoks”.

Until this week, the near universal belief among chemical weapons experts, and the official position of the OPCW, was that “Novichoks” were at most a theoretical research programme which the Russians had never succeeded in actually synthesising and manufacturing. That is why they are not on the OPCW list of banned chemical weapons.

Porton Down is still not certain it is the Russians who have apparently synthesised a “Novichok”. Hence “Of a type developed by Russia”. Note developed, not made, produced or manufactured.

It is very carefully worded propaganda. Of a type developed by liars.

UPDATE

This post prompted another old colleague to get in touch. On the bright side, the FCO have persuaded Boris he has to let the OPCW investigate a sample. But not just yet. The expectation is the inquiry committee will be chaired by a Chinese delegate. The Boris plan is to get the OPCW also to sign up to the “as developed by Russia” formula, and diplomacy to this end is being undertaken in Beijing right now.

I don’t suppose there is any sign of the BBC doing any actual journalism on this?

—CM

PS/ Read the first report on this topic below.

The Novichok Story Is Indeed Another Iraqi WMD Scam

As recently as 2016 Dr Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at the UK’s only chemical weapons facility at Porton Down, a former colleague of Dr David Kelly, published in an extremely prestigious scientific journal that the evidence for the existence of Novichoks was scant and their composition unknown.

In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, ‘Novichoks’ (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the ‘Foliant’ programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published. (Black, 2016)

Robin Black. (2016) Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents. Royal Society of Chemistry

Yet now, the British Government is claiming to be able instantly to identify a substance which its only biological weapons research centre has never seen before and was unsure of its existence. Worse, it claims to be able not only to identify it, but to pinpoint its origin. Given Dr Black’s publication, it is plain that claim cannot be true.

The world’s international chemical weapons experts share Dr Black’s opinion. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is a UN body based in the Hague. In 2013 this was the report of its Scientific Advisory Board, which included US, French, German and Russian government representatives and on which Dr Black was the UK representative:

[The SAB] emphasised that the definition of toxic chemicals in the Convention would cover all potential candidate chemicals that might be utilised as chemical weapons. Regarding new toxic chemicals not listed in the Annex on Chemicals but which may nevertheless pose a risk to the Convention, the SAB makes reference to “Novichoks”. The name “Novichok” is used in a publication of a former Soviet scientist who reported investigating a new class of nerve agents suitable for use as binary chemical weapons. The SAB states that it has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of “Novichoks”. (OPCW, 2013)

OPCW: Report of the Scientific Advisory Board on developments in science and technology for the Third Review Conference 27 March 2013

Indeed the OPCW was so sceptical of the viability of “novichoks” that it decided – with US and UK agreement – not to add them nor their alleged precursors to its banned list. In short, the scientific community broadly accepts Mirzayanov was working on “novichoks” but doubts he succeeded.

Given that the OPCW has taken the view the evidence for the existence of “Novichoks” is dubious, if the UK actually has a sample of one it is extremely important the UK presents that sample to the OPCW. Indeed the UK has a binding treaty obligation to present that sample to OPCW. Russa has – unreported by the corporate media – entered a demand at the OPCW that Britain submit a sample of the Salisbury material for international analysis.

Yet Britain refuses to submit it to the OPCW.

Why?

A second part of May’s accusation is that “Novichoks” could only be made in certain military installations. But that is also demonstrably untrue. If they exist at all, Novichoks were allegedly designed to be able to be made at bench level in any commercial chemical facility – that was a major point of them. The only real evidence for the existence of Novichoks was the testimony of the ex-Soviet scientist Mizayanov. And this is what Mirzayanov actually wrote.

One should be mindful that the chemical components or precursors of A-232 or its binary version novichok-5 are ordinary organophosphates that can be made at commercial chemical companies that manufacture such products as fertilizers and pesticides.

Vil S. Mirzayanov, “Dismantling the Soviet/Russian Chemical Weapons Complex: An Insider’s View,” in Amy E. Smithson, Dr. Vil S. Mirzayanov, Gen Roland Lajoie, and Michael Krepon, Chemical Weapons Disarmament in Russia: Problems and Prospects, Stimson Report No. 17, October 1995, p. 21.

It is a scientific impossibility for Porton Down to have been able to test for Russian novichoks if they have never possessed a Russian sample to compare them to. They can analyse a sample as conforming to a Mirzayanov formula, but as he published those to the world twenty years ago, that is no proof of Russian origin. If Porton Down can synthesise it, so can many others, not just the Russians.

And finally – Mirzayanov is an Uzbek name and the novichok programme, assuming it existed, was in the Soviet Union but far away from modern Russia, at Nukus in modern Uzbekistan. I have visited the Nukus chemical weapons site myself. It was dismantled and made safe and all the stocks destroyed and the equipment removed by the American government, as I recall finishing while I was Ambassador there. There has in fact never been any evidence that any “novichok” ever existed in Russia itself.

To summarise:

1) Porton Down has acknowledged in publications it has never seen any Russian “novichoks”. The UK government has absolutely no “fingerprint” information such as impurities that can safely attribute this substance to Russia.
2) Until now, neither Porton Down nor the world’s experts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were convinced “Novichoks” even exist.
3) The UK is refusing to provide a sample to the OPCW.
4) “Novichoks” were specifically designed to be able to be manufactured from common ingredients on any scientific bench. The Americans dismantled and studied the facility that allegedly developed them. It is completely untrue only the Russians could make them, if anybody can.
5) The “Novichok” programme was in Uzbekistan not in Russia. Its legacy was inherited by the Americans during their alliance with Karimov, not by the Russians.

With a great many thanks to sources who cannot be named at this moment.

Please Also Read My follow-up to this article: “Bothered by Midgies”

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