The murder of Pat Finucane

Mov­ing swiftly past the pruri­ent, thigh-rub­bing glee that most of the old media seems to be exhib­it­ing over the alleged details of Juli­an Assange’s love life, let’s re-focus on the heart of the Wikileaks dis­clos­ures, and most import­antly the aims under­pin­ning them: trans­par­ency, justice, and an informed cit­izenry liv­ing with­in fully-func­tion­ing demo­cra­cies.  Such quaint notions.

In the media mael­strom of the Cableg­ate dis­clos­ures, and the res­ult­ing infant­ile and thug­gish threats of the Amer­ic­an polit­ic­al class, is easy to lose sight of the fact that many of the leaked doc­u­ments refer to scan­dals, cor­rup­tion and cov­er-ups in a range of coun­tries, not just the good old US of A.

Pat_FinucaneOne doc­u­ment that recently caught my atten­tion related to the notori­ous murder twenty-one years ago of civil rights act­iv­ist, Pat Finu­cane, in North­ern Ire­land.  Finu­cane was a well-known law­yer who was shot and killed in front of his wife and three small chil­dren.  There has long been spec­u­la­tion that he was tar­geted by Prot­est­ant ter­ror­ist groups, in col­lu­sion with the NI secret police, the army’s notori­ous and now-dis­ban­ded Forces Research Unit (FRU), and/or MI5.

Well, over a dec­ade ago former top plod, Lord (John) Stevens, began an inquiry that did indeed estab­lish such state col­lu­sion, des­pite hav­ing his inquiry offices burnt out in the pro­cess by person/s allegedly unknown half-way through the invest­ig­a­tion.  Stevens fought on, pro­du­cing a damning report in 2003 con­firm­ing the notion of state col­lu­sion with Irish Loy­al­ist ter­ror­ist activ­it­ies, but nev­er did cla­ri­fy exactly what had happened to poor Pat Finucane.

How­ever, Finu­cane’s trau­mat­ised fam­ily has nev­er stopped demand­ing justice.  The recent dis­clos­ure shines a light on some of the back-room deals around this scan­dal, and for that I’m sure many people thank Wikileaks.

The “Troubles” in North­ern Ire­land — such a quint­es­sen­tially Brit­ish under­state­ment, in any oth­er coun­try it would have been called a civil war — were decept­ive, murky and vicious on both sides.  “Col­lu­sion” is an elast­ic word that stretches bey­ond the strict notion of the state.  It is well-known that the US organ­is­tion, NORAID, sup­por­ted by many Amer­ic­ans claim­ing Irish ances­try, was a major fun­drais­ing chan­nel for, um, Sinn Féin, the polit­ic­al wing of the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA, from the 1970s onwards. 

Peter_kingSuch net­works provided even more sup­port than Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya with his arms ship­ments, and the cash well only dried up post‑9/11.  As you can see in this recent art­icle in the The Tele­graph, even the incom­ing Chair­man of the House Home­land Secur­ity Com­mit­tee, New York Con­gress­man Peter King (who iron­ic­ally called for the des­ig­na­tion of Wkileaks as a “for­eign ter­ror­ist organ­isa­tion”) appears to have been a life long sup­port­er of Sinn Féin.

With this in the back of our minds, it appears that Dub­lin and Wash­ing­ton kept push­ing for a full inquiry into Finu­cane’s murder — and in 2005 it looked like MI5 would finally co-oper­ate

How­ever, the dev­il was in the detail. Coin­cid­ent­ally, 2005 was the year that the UK gov­ern­ment rushed through a new law, the Inquir­ies Act, which scan­dal­ously allowed any depart­ment under invest­ig­a­tion (in this case MI5) to dic­tate the terms and scope of the inquiry. 

Col­lu­sion by any state in the unlaw­ful arrest, tor­ture, and extraju­di­cial murder of people — wheth­er its own cit­izens or oth­ers — is state ter­ror­ism.  Let’s not mince our words here.  Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al provides a clear defin­i­tion of this concept.

As the The Guard­i­an  art­icle about Finu­cane so succintly puts it:

When a state sanc­tions the killing of cit­izens, in par­tic­u­lar cit­izens who are law­yers, it puts the rule of law and demo­cracy in jeop­ardy. And when a state enlists aux­il­i­ary assas­sins, it cedes its mono­poly over state secrets: it may feel omni­po­tent, but it is also vul­ner­able to disclosure.”

Mercenaries1Indeed.  North­ern Ire­land was like a Petri dish of human rights abuses: tor­ture, Dip­lock courts (aka mil­it­ary tribunals), kid­nap­pings, curfews, shoot-to-kill, inform­ers, and state col­lu­sion in assassinations.

The infec­tion has now spread.  These are pre­cisely the tac­tics cur­rently used by the US, the UK and their “aux­il­i­ary assas­sins” across great swathes of the Middle East.  Per­haps this explains why our nation states have been out­flanked and have ceded their mono­poly over secrets.

Will justice ever be done?  In the past I would have said, sadly, that would be highly unlikely.  How­ever,  cour­ageous organ­isa­tions like Wikileaks and its ilk are improv­ing the odds.

Sir John Sawers, head of MI6, makes historic public appearance

For the first time in 100 years “C”, the head of the UK for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice SIS (com­monly known as MI6) has gone public.

Former career dip­lo­mat Sir John Saw­ers (he of Speedo fame) yes­ter­day made a speech to the UK Soci­ety of Edit­ors in what appeared to be a pro­fes­sion­ally dip­lo­mat­ic rear-guard action in response to a num­ber of hot media top­ics at the moment.

Choos­ing both his audi­ence wisely and his words care­fully, he hit on three key areas:

Tor­ture: Leg­al cases are cur­rently going through UK courts on behalf of Brit­ish vic­tims of tor­ture, in which MI5 and MI6 intel­li­gence officers are alleged to have been com­pli­cit.  The Met­ro­pol­it­an Police are cur­rently invest­ig­at­ing a num­ber of cases.  Over the last week, a Brit­ish mil­it­ary train­ing manu­al on “enhanced” inter­rog­a­tion tech­niques has also been made pub­lic. How­ever, Saw­ers unblush­ingly states that MI6 abides by UK and inter­na­tion­al law and would nev­er get involved, even tan­gen­tially, in tor­ture cases.  In fact, he goes on to assert that the UK intel­li­gence agen­cies are train­ing the rest of the world in human rights in this regard.

 

 

Whis­tleblow­ing: In the week fol­low­ing the latest Wikileaks coup — the Iraq War Diar­ies, com­pris­ing nearly 400,000 doc­u­ments detail­ing the every­day hor­ror of life in occu­pied Iraq, includ­ing war crimes such as murder, rape and tor­ture com­mit­ted by both US and UK forces — Saw­ers states that secrecy is not a dirty word: the intel­li­gence agen­cies need to have the con­fid­ence that whis­tleblowers will not emerge to in order to guard agent and staff iden­tit­ies, as well as main­tain­ing the con­fid­ence of their inter­na­tion­al intel­li­gence part­ners that their (dirty?) secrets will remain, um, secret.  One pre­sumes he is advoc­at­ing against the expos­ure of war crimes and justice for the victims.

This, one also pre­sumes, is the jus­ti­fic­a­tion for US politi­cians who pro­pose cyber-attacks against Wikileaks and the declar­a­tion by some US polit­ic­al insiders that Juli­an Assange, spokes­man of the organ­isa­tion, should be treated as an unlaw­fully des­ig­nated “unlaw­ful com­batant”, sub­ject to the full rigour of extra-judi­cial US power, up to and includ­ing assassination. 

Spuri­ous media claims of unveri­fied “dam­age” are the hoary old chest­nuts always dragged out in whis­tleblower cases.  After Wikileaks released its Afghan War Blog in July, gov­ern­ment and intel­li­gence com­ment­at­ors made apo­ca­lyptic pre­dic­tions that the leak had put mil­it­ary and agent lives at risk.  US Defense Sec­ret­ary Robert Gates has since gone on the record to admit that this was simply not true. 

Dur­ing the Shayler whis­tleblow­ing case a dec­ade ago, the gov­ern­ment repeatedly tried to assert that agent lives had been put at risk, and yet the form­al judge­ment at the end of his tri­al stated that this was abso­lutely not the case.  And again, with the recent Wikileaks Iraq War Blog, gov­ern­ment sources are using the same old man­tra.  When will they real­ise that they can only cry wolf so many times and get away with it?  And when will the journ­al­ists regur­git­at­ing this spin wake up to the fact they are being played?

Account­ab­il­ity:  Saw­ers goes on to describe the mech­an­isms of account­ab­il­ity, such as they are.  He accur­ately states, as I have pre­vi­ously described ad nauseam, that under the 1994 Intel­li­gence Ser­vices Act, he is notion­ally respons­ible to his polit­ic­al “mas­ter”, the For­eign Sec­ret­ary, who has to clear in advance any leg­ally dubi­ous for­eign oper­a­tions (up to and includ­ing murder – the fabled “licence to kill” is not fic­tion, as you can see here).

The 1994 ISA also estab­lished the Prime Min­ister­’s Intel­li­gence and Secur­ity Com­mit­tee (ISC) in Par­lia­ment, which many com­ment­at­ors seem to believe offers mean­ing­ful over­sight of the spies.  How­ever, as I have detailed before, this is a mere fig leaf to real account­ab­il­ity: the ISC can only invest­ig­ate issues of policy, fin­ance and admin­is­tra­tion of the spy agen­cies.  Dis­clos­ures relat­ing to crime, oper­a­tion­al incom­pet­ence or involve­ment in tor­ture fall out­side its remit.

But what hap­pens if intel­li­gence officers decide to oper­ate bey­ond this frame­work? How would min­is­ters or the ISC ever know?  Oth­er spy mas­ters have suc­cess­fully lied to their polit­ic­al mas­ters in the past, after all.

Sir John has the gall to say that, if an oper­a­tion is not cleared by the For­eign Sec­ret­ary, it does not pro­ceed.  But what about the Gadaf­fi Plot way back in 1996, when MI6 was spon­sor­ing a group of Islam­ic extrem­ist ter­ror­ists in Libya to try to assas­sin­ate Col­on­el Gadaf­fi without, it has been asser­ted, the pri­or writ­ten approv­al of the then-For­eign sec­ret­ary, Tory politi­cian Mal­com Rif­kind?  This was repor­ted extens­ively, includ­ing in this art­icle by Mark Thomas in the New States­man. What hap­pens if rogue MI6 officers blithely side-step this notion­al account­ab­il­ity — because they can, because they know they will get away with it — because they have in the past?

MoS_August_97_QPlot_CredibleIn the interests of justice, UK and inter­na­tion­al law, and account­ab­il­ity, per­haps a new Conservative/Coalition gov­ern­ment should now reas­sess its approach to intel­li­gence whis­tleblowers gen­er­ally, and re-exam­ine this spe­cif­ic dis­clos­ure about Libya, which has been backed up by inter­na­tion­al intel­li­gence sources, both US and French, in order to achieve some sort of clos­ure for the inno­cent vic­tims in Libya of this MI6-fun­ded ter­ror­ist attack? And it is finally time to hold the per­pet­rat­ors to account — PT16, Richard Bart­lett, and PT16B, Dav­id Wat­son, who were the seni­or officers in MI6 respons­ible for the murder plot.

As civ­il­ised coun­tries, we need to rethink our approach to the issue of whis­tleblow­ing. Lies, spin,  pro­sec­u­tions and thug­gish threats of assas­sin­a­tion are beneath us as soci­et­ies that notion­ally adhere to the prin­ciples of demo­cracy.  If we can only real­ist­ic­ally hope that the actions of our gov­ern­ments, mil­it­ary forces, and intel­li­gence agen­cies are trans­par­ent and account­able via whis­tleblowers, then we need to ensure that these people are leg­ally pro­tec­ted and that their voices are heard clearly.

 

The Secret Garden Party, UK 2010

SGP_2010 In July I was invited back to speak at the Secret Garden Party, a music, polit­ics, and arts fest­iv­al held annu­ally some­where, er, secret in the UK.

What a fab week­end.  I have a well-known anti­pathy to sleep­ing under can­vas, but this was an excel­lent fest­iv­al — and even the com­post loos were not too grim. 

Lis­ted as one of the “Star Acts” in the prin­ted fest­iv­al pro­gramme (I blush), I had the lux­ury of an hour and a half to speak in the première debate tent in the Rebels and Intel­lec­tu­als sec­tion of the fest­iv­al — The For­um — a concept that the organ­iser, Ben de Vere, prom­ises to trans­plant to Lon­don some­time in the near future.

Any­way, I ser­i­ously recom­mend put­ting this fest­iv­al in your diar­ies for next year, and keep an eye open for the spread of The Forum.….

Here’s the video:


 

Diamonds and Rust

Diamonds_and_rust_in_the_bullringSo Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya has been dish­ing out the dip­lo­mat­ic gifts gen­er­ously to the former US admin­is­tra­tion.  Lis­ted in the pub­lic declar­a­tion are even such items as a dia­mond ring presen­ted to former Sec­ret­ary of State, Condaleeza Rice, and oth­er gifts to the value of $212,000.

This seems a slightly uneven dis­tri­bu­tion of lar­gesse from the Middle East to the West.  Before 9/11 and the ensu­ing war on ter­ror, Gad­dafi was still seen by the west as the head of a “rogue state”.  Bombs, rather than gifts, were more likely to rain down on him.

How­ever, since 2001 he has come back into the fold and is as keen as the coali­tion of the “will­ing” to counter the threat from Islam­ic extrem­ist ter­ror­ists.  So now he’s the new best­est friend of the US and UK gov­ern­ments in this unend­ing fight. 

But that was kind of inev­it­able, was­n’t it?  As a sec­u­lar Middle East­ern dic­tat­or, Gad­dafi has tra­di­tion­ally had more to fear from Islam­ists than has the West.  Par­tic­u­larly when these same Islam­ist groups have received ongo­ing sup­port from those very gov­ern­ments that are now cosy­ing up to Gaddafi.

Just to remind you, the reas­on I helped Dav­id Shayler in his whis­tleblow­ing on the crimes of MI5 and MI6 was because of just such a plot- the attemp­ted assas­sin­a­tion of Gad­dafi in 1996 that was fun­ded by the UK extern­al intel­li­gence gath­er­ing agency, MI6.  In 1995 Shayler, then the head of the Liby­an sec­tion in MI5,  was offi­cially briefed by his coun­ter­part in MI6, Dav­id Wat­son (oth­er­wise known as PT16/B), about an unfold­ing plot to kill Gad­dafi.  A Liby­an mil­it­ary intel­li­gence officer, sub­sequently code-named Tun­worth, walked in to the Brit­ish embassy in Tunis and asked to speak to the res­id­ent spook. 

Tun­worth said he was the head of a “ragtag group of Islam­ic extrem­ists” (who sub­sequently turned out to have links to Al Qaeda — at a time when MI5 had begun to invest­ig­ate the group), who wanted to effect a coup against Col­on­el Gad­dafi.  They needed fund­ing to do this, and that was where MI6 came in.  As a quid pro quo, Tun­worth prom­ised to hand over the two Lock­er­bie supsects for tri­al in Europe , which had for years been one of MI6’s pri­or­ity tar­gets — not to men­tion all those juicy oil con­tracts for BP et al.

Over the course of about 5 months, MI6 paid Tun­worth’s group over $100,000, thereby becom­ing con­spir­at­ors in a murder plot.  Cru­cially, MI6 did not get the pri­or writ­ten per­mis­sion of their polit­ic­al mas­ter, the For­eign Sec­ret­ary, mak­ing this action illeg­al under the terms of the 1994 Intel­li­gence Ser­vices Act

Mani­festly, this coup attempt did not work — Gad­dafi is now a strong ally of our west­ern gov­ern­ments.  In fact, an explo­sion occurred beneath the wrong car in a caval­cade con­tain­ing Gad­dafi as he returned from the Liby­an People’s Con­gress in Sirte.  But inno­cent people died in the explo­sion and the ensu­ing secur­ity shoot-out.

So, MI6 fun­ded an illeg­al, highly reck­less plot in a volat­ile part of world that res­ul­ted in the deaths of inno­cent people.  How more hein­ous a crime could there be?  But to this day, des­pite a leaked MI6 doc­u­ment that proved they knew the exist­ence of the pro­posed plot, and des­pite oth­er intel­li­gence sources back­ing up Shayler­’s dis­clos­ures, the UK gov­ern­ment has still refused to hold an enquiry.  Quite the oppos­ite — they threw the whis­tleblower in pris­on twice and tried to pro­sec­ute the invest­ig­at­ing journalists.

Some people may call me naïve for think­ing that the intel­li­gence agen­cies should not get involved in oper­a­tions like this.  Put­ting aside the retort that the spies often con­flate the idea of the nation­al interest with their own, short-sighted career­ism, I would like to remind such cyn­ics that we are sup­posed to be liv­ing in mod­ern demo­cra­cies, where even the secret state is sup­posed to oper­ate with­in the rule of law and demo­crat­ic over­sight.  Illeg­al assas­sin­a­tion plots, the use of tor­ture, and false flag, state-sponsored ter­ror­ism should remain firmly with­in the retro, pulp-fic­tion world of James Bond.