Con Coughlin, Journalist or MI6 Mole?

[TonyGosling]

The journalist who broke the 45 minute WMD story strikes again

Russia on the march - again
By Con Coughlin
13/04/2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=3A0TL4KLV1NT5 QFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/04/13/do1303.xml

The new Cold War won't be like the last one, with massed tank divisions stretched across the German plain ready to repulse a Communist invasion of Western Europe. No, the looming power struggle between resurgent Russian nationalism and Western liberty will be determined by raw economic muscle and political clout or, in Russia's case, blackmail and intimidation.

You have only to look at the implosion of Ukraine's fledgling democratic institutions to see the effectiveness of the new tactics the Russian bear is using to claw back its influence over its former empire.

Moscow has not forgiven Ukraine for its Orange Revolution in late 2004, which saw Kiev sweep away decades of Soviet repression and assert its desire to become a functioning, Western-style democracy. On that occasion, the Kremlin resorted to the decidedly unsubtle tactic of poisoning Viktor Yushchenko, the principal pro-democracy campaigner, who, thanks to the prompt intervention of a team of Viennese toxicologists, survived the assassination attempt and went on to win the election.

Since then, Moscow has adopted a different approach, seeking to use its new economic strength to intimidate its former ally. Early last year, it switched off the oil and gas supplies, in effect leaving the country without heat or light in the depths of a Ukrainian winter.

More recently, the Russians reached for their cheque books and bought off enough parliamentarians (the going rate for a Ukrainian MP is said to be £2.5 million) to render the democratic process unworkable, to the extent that President Yushchenko, as he now is, was compelled this week to prorogue parliament and call new elections.

The reason the Russians have gone to such lengths to eradicate the seeds of Ukrainian democracy is their fear that, left to its own devices, Kiev would follow the same path as other former Soviet republics and seek to guarantee its hard-won freedom by joining the EU and Nato.

This is anathema to Moscow, where the heady days of glasnost and perestroika, and the prospect of Russia becoming a democracy, are but a distant memory. These days, Vladimir Putin, the autocratic Russian President, makes no secret of his contempt for the EU and Nato, which he insists took unfair advantage of Russia's economic weakness in the 1990s to advance into areas in eastern Europe that the Kremlin regards as its natural sphere of influence.

Putin wants to restore Russia to the superpower status it enjoyed under the Soviet Union, whose demise he describes as "the geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century".

It is often said that the primary cause of the collapse of the USSR in the 1980s was the fall in oil prices to $10 a barrel. Now, with crude prices averaging $60, Moscow is awash with petrodollars, not least because of the brutal manner in which Putin has renationalised the nation's lucrative energy resources, with opponents driven into exile or, in the case of Mikhail Khordokovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil conglomerate, handed lengthy jail sentences in Siberia.

And Putin has not been slow to use these riches to fund a range of subversive activities aimed at destabilising and reclaiming the former satellite states. Apart from usurping Ukrainian democracy, the Kremlin has placed an economic stranglehold on Georgia and Moldova, arguably two of the weakest former Soviet republics.

Similar pressures have been applied to the Baltic states, which, despite joining both the EU and Nato, have found themselves subjected to economic and political intimidation by their former occupiers.

It is against this unpromising background that Putin has found the confidence to confront the West, citing the Bush Administration's plans to establish missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic as his justification. The intended purpose of America's national missile defence project is to protect both America and most of Europe from nuclear missile attacks from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.

The Pentagon insists the new system will be configured to intercept ballistic missiles fired from the Middle East and Far East, and that they would be useless against the much more sophisticated Russian missile technology. It has even been suggested that the system could be used to protect Russia, a notion dismissed out of hand by the Kremlin.

Not for Putin the detente of the Reagan-Thatcher era that ended three decades of nuclear stand-off. On the contrary, the Russian President seems intent on using the proposed American missile deployment to fund a new East-West arms race. Russia's all-powerful security council - which reports directly to Putin - announced earlier this month that it needed a new military "configuration" to counter the threat posed by Nato's expansion and Washington's missiles, and Russia's military budget has been dramatically increased.

Nor is there any realistic prospect of Putin being dissuaded from initiating a second Cold War against the West. The Kremlin's suppression of political opposition has been so successful that the most vociferous opponents today are the likes of Garry Kasparov, the former chess grand master, whose bravery in denouncing Putin's autocratic tendencies is not matched by any groundswell of public support.

Kasparov and his supporters have been successful in organising a number of street protests - more are planned for this weekend - but, in Putin's Russia, such open defiance is more likely to see Kasparov languishing in Siberia than taking over the Kremlin.


previous stuff...

[Sinclair]

Postman Patel has an article on Con Coughlin HERE

[TonyGosling]

Controversial stuff this

Gilligan launches attack on Coughlin

Con Coughlin - Executive Foreign Editor of the Daily Telegraph - but hopefully not for long

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Coughlin

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2007/11/gilligan_launches_attac k_on_co.html
November 28, 2007 11:58 AM

I mentioned yesterday a lecture by Andrew Gilligan. But, since that posting, I've had time to listen to [Listen Now] the Q&A session that followed it, in which he was less than complimentary about his former Sunday Telegraph colleague, Con Coughlin.

He spoke about the relationship between journalists and the intelligence services and began by urging the audience to read a New Statesman article by The Observer correspondent David Rose. (It is, by the way, an excellent piece). Gilligan explained how shadowy spokespeople for MI5 and MI6 brief selected journalists and that what they say has to be taken on trust because it cannot be checked with another source. "A number of journalists," he said, "are rather uncritical recipients of what can only be described as intelligence services spin."

As an example he named Coughlin, citing "the belly dancers of death", a story published in July 2001, which suggested that Saddam Hussein's intelligence chiefs were using the dancers to report on and eliminate Iraqi opposition abroad. It even claimed that the women were undergoing a 45-day intensive training course focusing on poisoning and organising car accidents.

According to Gilligan, this "complete load of old drivel was swallowed wholesale by the Sunday Telegraph." It was published under another staff member's byline, though I can't tell you who it was because the paper has since taken it down from the website, as you can see here.

Gilligan assured the audience that it came from Coughlin, and went on to mention another example of a Coughlin story - involving Gadaffi's son - which led to a court action. This, said Gilligan, was also "completely wrong" and planted by MI6.

Will Coughlin take this lying down, I wonder?



The journalist who broke the 45 minute WMD story strikes again
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/01/361101.html
Daily Telegraph political editor investigated over misleading articles...again
Press Release – 29th January 2007

The Press Complaints Commission have launched their third investigation of Daily Telegraph political editor, Con Coughlin, in as many months, after a number of high level complaints about his latest ariticle on Iran. The investigation is looking at an article by Mr Coughlin on 24 January relying on an unnamed “European defence official” alleging that North Korea is helping Iran prepare a nuclear weapons test and follows the recent publication of a report detailing a catalogue of innaccurate and misleading stories about Iran by. The report, put together by Campaign Iran and published last month, revealed that Mr Coughlin, the man who ‘broke the story’ of Iraq’s 45 minute WMD capacity, is behind sixteen articles containing unsubstantiated allegations against Iran over the past twelve months. The PCC will examine whether the stories, all based on unnamed or untraceable sources, are in breach of Clause 1 of their Code of Practice, requiring accuracy.

The veracity of Coughlin’s writing on Iran is already under investigation by the PCC following complaints about a headline article in last month’s Telegraph that claimed that Iran was “grooming Bin Laden’s successor”. The story, universally dismissed by Middle East experts, led the organisation Campaign Iran to conduct a broader analysis of the accuracy of Mr Coughlin’s stories and the journalistic methods he uses. Analysing 44 articles by Mr Coughlin on Iran, the report finds some stark patterns in terms of his journalistic technique:

• Sources are unnamed or untraceable, often “senior Western intelligence officials” or “senior Foreign Office officials”.
• Articles are published at sensitive and delicate times where there has been a relatively positive diplomatic moves towards Iran.
• Articles contain exclusive revelations about Iran combined with eye-catchingly controversial headlines;
• The story upon which the headline is based does not usually exceed one line or at the most one paragraph. The rest of the article focuses on other, often unrelated, information.

The report also reveals that Coughlin has a history of breaking politically important stories that are later shown to be inaccurate. He is the journalist who, discovered “the fact” that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. He was also the journalist who, in 2003, unearthed “the link” between the 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Ata, and the Iraqi intelligence.

Professor Abbas Edalat of Campaign Iran said today: “The quoting of unnamed sources has always been an essential aspect of news reporting, but Coughlin is abusing the practice in order to give substance otherwise implausible political stories. These stories are repeated as fact on news outlets and websites across the world. They cannot be easily challenged because the unnamed source can never be revealed. During the build-up to the invasion of Iraq Coughlin was behind two very influential stories that helped pave the path to war. Both were later found to be completely untrue. We must be vigilant against similar inaccuracies being used to prepare the path for intervention against Iran, and we call on the PCC to take action against Coughlin and to safeguard the integrity and accuracy of our press.”

The report, ‘Conning the Nation: An Analysis of Con Coughlin’s Reportage on Iran’ has been compiled by Campaign Iran, based on research led by Dr Majid Tafreshi.

For more information visit http://www.campaigniran.org/

Appendix 1
Sources used by Coughlin’s for his articles published in the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph within the last one year.
10/10/2006: “The West woke up too late to the nuclear threat of rogue states” Source: none.
04/08/2006: “Teheran fund pays war compensation to Hizbollah families” Source: “A senior security official”.
21/07/2006: “Meanwhile, Iran gets on with its bomb”Source: none.
14/07/2006: “Israeli crisis is a smoke screen for Iran's nuclear ambitions” Source: none.
13/07/2006: “Cat and mouse games on border that is 'our front line with Iran’” Source: An Israeli soldier.
12/06/2006: “Iran accused of hiding secret nuclear weapons site” Source: A senior western diplomat”
11/04/2006: “The West can't let Iran have the bomb” Source: “An official closely involved in the IAEA's negotiations with Iran”
07/04/2006: “Iran has missiles to carry nuclear warheads” Source: “A senior US official”
07/04/2006: “UN officials find evidence of secret uranium enrichment plant” Sources: “A diplomat closely involved in the IAEA's negotiations with Teheran” and “A senior diplomat attached to the IAEA headquarters in Vienna”.
04/04/2006: “Iran's spies watching us, says Israel”Sources: “A senior Israeli military commander” and “an officer with Israel's northern command”.
06/03/2006: “Teheran park 'cleansed' of traces from nuclear site” Source: “A senior western official”
11/02/2006: “Iran plant has restarted its nuclear bomb-making equipment” Source: “A senior Western intelligence official”
30/01/2006: “Iran sets up secret team to infiltrate UN nuclear watchdog, say officials” Source: “a senior western intelligence official”
16/01/2006: “Iran could go nuclear within three years” Sources: “A senior western intelligence officer” and “an intelligence official”
27/11/2005: “Teheran secretly trains Chechens to fight in Russia” Source: “a senior intelligence official”
29/10/2005: “Smuggling route [from Iran] opened to supply Iraqi insurgents” Source: “The National Council of Resistance of Iran”

[TonyGosling]

Bet Connie (Or should that be Cocky?) has lots of fun with any high class MI6 call girls he gets as part of this little deal with the devil.

The mole with further war crimes in his sights.
Here he goes again, after being exposed by Andrew Gilligan as an MI6 mole, in tomorrows Telegraph. From Iran he has now turned his attention to Pakistan....

The Britons with us in their sights
British-born terrorists are returning to the UK after learning deadly skills in the world’s most dangerous country........... Despite the efforts of British and Pakistani security officials monitoring the movements of the estimated 400,000 "Brit-Paks" (British passport holders of Pakistani descent) travelling between the two countries, some simply disappear the moment they arrive...............

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/3778462/The-Br itons-with-us-in-their-sights.html

[Annie]

More detail on Coughlin can be found here on how he is, at the very least, a "useful idiot":

http://www.anniemachon.com/annie_machon/2008/07/spooks-politici.html