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No 10 is accused of masterminding sale of hostages' stories

 
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Chaos Warrior
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 5:58 pm    Post subject: No 10 is accused of masterminding sale of hostages' stories Reply with quote

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Tony Blair has been dragged into the "cash for hostages" fiasco as he is accused of allowing the Iran captives to sell their stories as part of a crude Government spin operation.

General Sir Michael Rose, one of Britain's most respected former Army officers, said he was convinced the decision to allow 15 sailors and Marines held captive in Iran to cash in on their ordeals had been driven by the Prime Minister's office.

MPs from all sides of the Commons said they too suspected a deliberate strategy aimed at hitting back at Iran, widely seen to have won the "propaganda war" during the detainees' time in captivity.
As anger grew over the decision to allow Leading Seaman Faye Turney and her fellow captives sell their accounts, the Government refused to explain why ministers failed to intervene.

Downing Street has confirmed that the Prime Minister was notified of the decision, but yesterday repeatedly refused to say when.

In an ominous development for Defence Secretary Des Browne, Number Ten appeared to be attempting to lay the blame for the debacle firmly at the door of the Ministry of Defence.

Leading Seaman Turney was not among the captives who appeared at an open-to-all Ministry of Defence press conference on Friday - prompting suspicions that she was "held back" to increase the value and impact of her story.

In the end, she did a deal with the Labour-supporting Sun newspaper, which has close links to Downing Street, and ITV's Tonight with Trevor Macdonald programme.

Mr Browne is expected to be hauled before MPs on Monday to answer questions about why Mrs Turney and another captive, Arthur Batchelor, were allowed to hawk their stories for enormous sums.

In the past, the Queen's Regulations, which govern the behaviour of personnel, have been understood to ban chequebook interviews.

MoD officials claimed Mr Browne had been asked to "note" the Navy's different interpretation of the rules, rather than approve it.

But Sir Michael, who led the UN force in Bosnia, said: "In my view, the decision to treat the returning hostages as heroes from the outset can only have come from Downing Street - for I cannot believe that any Service chief would have signed up to a policy that is so ultimately damaging to the military ethos.

"There would, however, be a clear political advantage for Blair, who had so evidently mishandled the initial diplomatic situation, and who had been continually outmanoeuvred by President Ahmadinejad throughout the crisis, to receive the returnees as heroes."

The Tories blamed "ministerial incompetence" for the controversy, accusing Labour of putting spin before the "dignity, professionalism and discipline" of the Armed Forces.

And former Labour defence minister Peter Kilfoyle accused ministers of shirking responsibility for a decision that "beggared belief" and had made Britain's Armed Forces a "laughing stock" around the world.

"What you cannot get away from is that responsibility rests with ministers," he said.

Former Tory Defence Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said both the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary must now spell out clearly their involvement in the affair.

"If Mr Blair was indeed aware of it, it shows his judgement was just as poor as Des Browne's," he said.

"I think we can safely assume that if these soldiers and Marines had been in any way critical of the Ministry of Defence or the Government, they would not have been given permission to give these interviews."

Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of the Sun, also hinted at political involvement.

"I know that David Hill (Mr Blair's director of communications) was whistling round newspaper offices last week asking editors if they needed help with their editorials in relation to the freeing of the 15 - ie that you must get over the sense that Tony Blair had had a major triumph," he said.

Air Marshal Sir John Walker, former chief of Defence Intelligence, demanded to know who was responsible for the "divisive decision" to allow the personnel to sell their stories.

He said allowing them to do so had been "profoundly damaging" and smacked of a "knee-jerk effort to get column inches".

The head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has also let it be known he was appalled by the decision.

Education Secretary Alan Johnson - favourite to become Labour's next deputy leader - admitted it had been "wrong" to allow military personnel to take money.

A ban has been hastily imposed on any more paid interviews, pending a review.

Mr Johnson said: "Des Browne is a very good Secretary of State. This is not an issue that should call into question his job.

"These things happen in government when there's a short time-span. Very quick decisions have to be made.

"We actually think some of these decisions were the wrong decisions, which is why we are revising them to ensure we don't set any dangerous precedent."

The permission granted by ministers also led to a "heated" squabble over money among the hostages, it is understood.

A bitter argument raged between the Royal Marines of the group, who suggested equally sharing the spoils of any media fees, and the Navy sailors, who wanted to keep the cash.

A military source said: "The Marines were firmly of the view that whatever money they got should be shared out equally, in the traditional spirit of military comradeship. But the sailors wanted to keep anything they earned.

"Someone stood up and suggested to Faye Turney she should share the money, but she didn't want that. It was a very heated discussion, to put it mildly."

Mrs Turney has pledged to give "a percentage" of her fee to the crew of her ship, HMS Cornwall, and place the rest in a trust fund for her three-year-old daughter Molly.

She is presently on compassionate leave, but her future in the Navy appears far from certain.

One senior military source said: "It is gong to be very difficult for her when she returns to work.

"If you're in the Army or Navy, the people in your unit are your second family. You work together, fight together, socialise together. You don't stab them in the back by walking off with a load of money."

An entry on the Army Rumour Service said: "I imagine there are servicewomen up and down the country with mouths agape at this walking embarrassment to her cap badge."

Another contributor wrote: "I dare not watch it (Turney's interview) as the TV would be out the window. She has set back the reputation of servicewomen everywhere."

Navy chiefs are also said to be smarting at the almost universal condemnation.

The First Sea Lord Sir Jonathon Band is under intense pressure to explain what part he played in the damaging strategy.

A spokesman for Mr Blair insisted: "This was a decision taken by the Navy. What's now important is to look into the issues in the round. I'm not going to get into the process of who knew what when."


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_artic le_id=447676&in_page_id=1770

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Mark Gobell
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And the story now is the row between Bliar's crew and the MOD.

The original questions and debate about the "capture" becomes obscured.

A false news item to replace a news item about a false news item.

Business as usual.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This has been pulled from the Wayne Madsen blog

Blair covering up pedophile scandal?
Wayne Madsen
April 10, 2007

While British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under criminal suspicion in the “honors-for-cash” scandal that has rocked his Labor government, we have been told that there is an even more explosive scandal that Blair, up to now, has managed to hide behind the draconian British policy of issuing “D-Notices,” government orders that prohibit the British media from reporting on certain “national security” cases.

In 1999, an international investigation of child pornographers and pedophiles run by Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service, code named Operation Ore, resulted in 7,250 suspects being identified in the United Kingdom alone. Some 1850 people were criminally charged in the case and there were 1451 convictions. Almost 500 people were interviewed “under caution” by police, meaning they were suspects. Some 900 individuals remain under investigation. In early 2003, British police began to close in on some top suspects in the Operation Ore investigation, including senior members of Blair’s government. However, Blair issued a D-Notice, resulting in a gag order on the press from publishing any details of the investigation. Blair cited the impending war in Iraq as a reason for the D-Notice. Police also discovered links between British Labor government pedophile suspects and the trafficking of children for purposes of prostitution from Belgium and Portugal (including young boys from the Casa Pia orphanage in Portugal).

Tony Blair: stifling investigations of pedophiles in his Labor government.

In the United States, Operation Ore’s counterpart was Operation Avalanche. However, U.S. authorities only charged 100 people out of 35,000 investigated. The international pedophile investigation began when Dallas police and the US Postal Inspection Service raided the offices of Landslide Productions of Fort Worth, Texas and confiscated records on thousands of people around the world who were child pornography customers of the firm. Landslide’s halcyon days as a Fort Worth-based international online marketplace of kiddie porn was during the term of Texas Governor George W. Bush.

WMR has learned that the Bush administration, like that of Blair, is rife with pedophiles in top positions. The pedophile network also extends to the U.S. defense industry, particularly some of the companies that have been involved in the sexual abuse of minors at overt and covert U.S. prisons in Abu Ghraib, Iraq; Guantanamo, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Thailand, and now, at three prisons in Ethiopia.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:56 am    Post subject: The Highest Bidder Reply with quote

The Highest Bidder

It is interesting to note that only the sailors who are prepared to sell their stories to the highest bidder are being criticized, not the bidders. The point being that when the experiences of service men and women become an item for fiscal negotiation, such stories then become highly questionable. Obviously the highest bidders, in Fay Turney’s case, The Sun and ITV's Tonight programmes with Trevor Macdonald, are not going to pay absurd amounts of money for her to tell their readers and viewers that “I had a wonderful time, and I’m thinking of going back to Iran for my next holiday.”

So, if the British sailors are to be allowed to sell their stories, they should be prepared to tell them while connected to a Polygraph. Although erroneously known as ‘lie detectors’, these devices can often indicate whether or not those connected to them are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

However, when it comes to politicians and journalists Polygraphs are useless, because such people are so used to telling lies, or passing them on, that their heart rates don’t even waver by a quarter of a beat per minute, and their sweat glands have ceased to react to emotional stresses, in the rare cases when they experience any.

Go for the so-called journalists and their editors, they are the ones who disseminate the falsehoods.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tony Blair did instruct the MOD to reverse the pro Iranian feelings that spread with the kind treatment shown to the 15 marines.

It has backfired miserably for blair. What an utter joke.

"They said i looked like Mr Bean and i started crying like a baby"
Blair and the MOD have made the whole army look stupid.
What soldier could ever be taken seriously?

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.ifilm.com/video/2841762
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