#DavidKelly :The #Iraq Oil Ministry

It is well known that the Iraqi Oil Ministry was the only major government installation guarded by American troops following the fall of Baghdad. Indeed it was guarded extremely well according to an April, 2003 news story at

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/16/1050172643895...
Since US forces rolled into central Baghdad a week ago, one of the sole public buildings untouched by looters has been Iraq's massive oil ministry, which is under round-the-clock surveillance by troops.

The imposing building in the Al-Mustarisiya quarter is guarded by around 50 US tanks which block every entrance, while sharpshooters are positioned on the roof and in the windows.

The curious onlooker is clearly unwelcome. Any motorist who drifts within a few metres of the main entrance is told to leave immediately.

Baghdad residents have complained that US troops should do more to protect against the looters, most of them Shi'ite Muslims repressed by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime who live in the vast slum known as Saddam City on the northern outskirts.

But while museums, banks, hotels and libraries have been ransacked, the oil ministry remains secure.

The ostensible reason for this extraordinary focus was to protect Iraq’s primary asset. Indeed an American captain is quoted in the article as saying, "Anyone who says we're protecting this ministry to steal Iraqi oil doesn't know what's really going on in this country."

#DavidKelly #Kokal Followed by #Weiss : ALL Suicides ALL Opposed To Iaq War ?

SNIP


http://www.rense.com/general45/violnt.htm

'''He was wired into the intelligence community, and there were a lot of mystical secrets we weren't privy to,' said Harris Gilbert, a Nashville attorney who had been friends with Mr. Weiss since childhood. 'He was very interested in diplomatic strategy and was VERY, VERY OPPOSED TO THE IRAQ WAR. It was the first military action he ever opposed, but he believed we shouldn't go to war in the Middle East without knowing what we were getting into.''' (emphasis added)

 

Might it not appear that if one is sufficiently connected to power, strong opposition to our ongoing naked aggression in the fertile crescent could well be fatal?

 

Let's see if The Post's belated obituary

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42132-2003Dec6.html

 

clears matters up, or muddies the waters further: ( Link Removed ?)

 

Gus W. Weiss, 72, a former White House policy adviser on technology, intelligence, and economic affairs, died Nov. 25 of a fall from the Watergate East residential building in the District. The D.C. medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.

 

A spokesman for the D.C. police said that officers found his body at a service entrance to the apartment cooperative. Dr. Weiss lived in the building.

 

Dr. Weiss was a graduate of Vanderbilt University in his native Nashville. He received a master's degree in business from Harvard University and a doctorate in economics from New York University, where he also taught.

 

#Cameron family fortune made in tax havens

Revealed: David Cameron's father built up legal offshore funds in Panama and Geneva

David Cameron's father set up offshore investment funds which explicitly boasted of their ability to remain outside UK tax jurisdiction. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/PA

 

David Cameron's father ran a network of offshore investment funds to help build the family fortune that paid for the prime minister's inheritance, the Guardian can reveal.

Though entirely legal, the funds were set up in tax havens such as Panama City and Geneva, and explicitly boasted of their ability to remain outside UK tax jurisdiction.

At the time of his death in late 2010, Ian Cameron left a fortune of £2.74m in his will, from which David Cameron received the sum of £300,000.

Cameron and other cabinet members have recently suggested that they would be willing to disclose their personal tax filings amid growing scrutiny following the budget, but this would only shed light on annual sources of income rather than accumulated wealth or inheritance.

The structure employed by Cameron senior is now commonplace among modern hedge funds, which argue that offshore status can help attract international investors. UK residents would ordinarily have to pay tax on any profits they repatriated, and there is nothing to suggest the Camerons did not.

Nevertheless, the dramatic growth of such offshore financial activity has raised concerns that national tax authorities are struggling to pin down the world's super-rich.

Ian Cameron took advantage of a new climate of investment after all capital controls were abolished in 1979, making it legal to take any sum of money out of the country without it being taxed or controlled by the UK government.

Not long after the change, brought in by Margaret Thatcher after her first month in power, Ian Cameron began setting up and directing investment funds in tax havens around the world.

Leaving his full-time role as a City stockbroker, Ian Cameron went on to act as chairman of Close International Asset management, a multimillion-pound investment fund based in Jersey; as a senior director of Blairmore Holdings Inc, registered in Panama City and currently worth £25m; and he was also a shareholder in Blairmore Asset Management based in Geneva.

However, the family will – a public document seen by the Guardian – only details the assets of Ian Cameron's estate in England and Wales. Offshore investments would only be listed in submissions to HMRC for inheritance tax purposes. It is unclear what those assets – if any – are worth and which family member owns them.

In 2009 the compilers of the Sunday Times Rich List estimated Ian Cameron's wealth at £10m.

He was survived by his wife, Mary Fleur Cameron, who as his spouse would not have had to pay inheritance tax on sums transferred between them.

In 2006 Ian's eldest son, Alexander, became the sole owner of the family's £2.5m house in Newbury, Berkshire, where David had been brought up.

Another family home in Kensington, London, worth £1m, passed to his two daughters in equal share.

Cameron's father was "instrumental" in setting up the Panamanian company, Blairmore Holdings, in 1982, which was exempt from UK tax, when David was a pupil at Eton aged 16.

The fund shares its name with the family's ancestral home in Aberdeenshire, Blairmore House, in which Ian Cameron was born in 1932 but which the family no longer owns.

A lengthy prospectus for Blairmore Holdings written in 2006 and meant to attract high net worth "sophisticated" investors, with at least $100,000 to buy shares, is explicit about how the fund sought to avoid UK tax. At the time more than half of the fund's 11 directors were UK nationals.

Under Panamanian law the fund was excluded from taxation derived from other parts of the world.

"The fund is not liable to taxation on its income or capital gains as long as such income or capital gains are not derived from sources allocated within the territory of the Republic of Panama," the 2006 prospectus reads.

"The Directors intend that the affairs on the Fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for UK taxation purposes. Accordingly ... the Fund will not be subject to United Kingdom corporation tax or income tax on its profits," the prospectus continues.

The investor document also credits Ian Cameron as a founder member of Blairmore Holdings and states that as an adviser he would be paid $20,000 a year – the highest paid director – whatever profits were realised.

In fact, the long-term Panamanian investment fund performed above market rate over many years averaging a 116% return from 2002-2007. Today many of the fund's largest holdings are in blue-chip stocks such as Apple, Unilever and Coca Cola.

Before his death, aged 77, Ian Cameron was also chairman and shareholder of Close International Equity Growth Fund Ltd, registered in Jersey and worth £9m according to papers filed in 2005. In that year just under half of the fund's holdings were in UK listed stocks.

A third fund set up in Geneva, Switzerland, had a shorter life span and finally dissolved in 2007 but had many of the same registered shareholders as the Panamanian outfit. These included a number of former employees of Panmure Gordon, the stockbroking firm where Ian Cameron spent much of his career and those from Smith and Williamson investment management where Cameron senior was a consultant.

One notable investor into the Panama fund was a charity established by Tory peer Lord Vinson. Accounts from 2009 show that a charitable trust set up under his own name invested £82,000 into the fund – almost one quarter of its investments in shares.

Vinson's trust that year went on to donate tens of thousands of pounds to rightwing think tanks including the Institute of Economic Affairs and Civitas.

David Cameron has recently remarked on companies who have taken advantage of offshoring to legally avoid tax. Speaking at the start of the year to small business leaders in Maidenhead, he said: "With the large companies, that have the fancy corporate lawyers and the rest of it, I think we need a tougher approach.

"One of the things that we are going to be looking at this year is whether there should be a general anti-avoidance power that HMRC can use, particularly with very wealthy individuals and with the bigger companies, to make sure they pay their fair share."

The row also comes as the top rate of tax was lowered in last month's budget from 50p to 45p and the rate of corporation tax continue to drop to achieve the chancellor's ambition of giving the UK one of the lowest rates of corporation tax in the G7.

Responding to opposition criticisms over the lowering of the top tax rate, Cameron said: "The cut in the 50p tax rate is going to be paid five times over by the richest people in our country."
Downing Street said it did not want to comment on what was a private matter for the Cameron family.

A spokesperson added: "The government's tax reforms are about making sure that some of the richest people in the country pay a decent share of income tax."

The investment managers Smith and Williamson, for whom Ian Cameron worked, chose not to comment.


Source :The Guardian

#DavidKelly :Doctors Renew Call For Kelly Inquest.

DOCTORS campaigning for a fresh inquiry into the death of scientist David Kelly have submitted a new application calling for Attorney General Dominic Grieve to ask the High Court to order an inquest.

Mr Grieve rejected calls for an inquest last June, following a lengthy review of the case of Dr Kelly, whose body was found in 2003, shortly after he was identified as the source of a report about the government’s dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The attorney general found there was no possibility that an inquest would reach a different conclusion from the Hutton Inquiry, which found in 2004 that Dr Kelly committed suicide.
But Dr Andrew Watt and Brian Spencer argue that Mr Grieve relied on a “misleading and inadequate assessment” of evidence that Dr Kelly’s body may have been moved in the hour after its initial discovery by volunteer searchers.

http://www.newsrt.co.uk/news/doctors-renew-call-for-kelly-inquest-344203.html

#DavidKelly #Kokal :Iraq Analyst John J.Kokal Another Dr. David Kelly Mysterious Death.

MYSTERY SURROUNDS DEATH

OF STATE DEPT. OFFICIAL

by Wayne Madsen

(special to From The Wilderness) 

November 20, 2003 (FTW), WASHINGTON -- In a case eerily reminiscent of the death of British Ministry of Defense bio-weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly, an official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John J. Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7. Police indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department. Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20 foot window well, 8 floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters near the 23rd and D Street location. Kokal's death was briefly mentioned in a FOX News website story on November 8 but has been virtually overlooked by the major media.

Interestingly, the FOX report states that State Department officials confirmed Kokal's death to The Washington Post yet the Post - according to an archive search - has published nothing at all about Kokal's death. A subsequent search revealed that the Post had made a short three-paragraph entry the death in the Metro section on November 7,  2003. However, the Post entry stated that Kokal did not work in intelligence and the story does not show up in the archives.

Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived in Arlington, Virginia.

However, a colleague of Kokal's told this writer that the Iraq analyst was despondent over "problems" with his security clearance. Kokal reportedly climbed out of a window and threw himself out in such a manner so that he would "land on his head." At the time Kokal fell from either the roof or a window, his wife Pamela, a public affairs specialist in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, was waiting for him in the parking garage. Mrs. Kokal had previously worked in Consular Affairs where she was involved in the stricter vetting of visa applicants from mainly Muslim countries after the Sept. 11 attacks.

State Department officials dispute official State Department communiqués that said Kokal was not an analyst at INR. People who know Kokal told the French publication Geopolitique that Kokal was involved in the analysis of intelligence about Iraq prior to and during the war against Saddam Hussein.

Another INR official, weapons expert Greg Thielmann, said he and INR were largely ignored by Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton and his deputy, David Wurmser, a pro-Likud neo-conservative who recently became Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser. Kokal's former boss, the recently retired chief of INR, Carl W. Ford, recently said that Bolton often exaggerated information to steer people in the wrong directions.

A former INR employee revealed that some one-third to one-half of INR officials are either former intelligence agents with the CIA or are detailed from the agency. He also revealed it would have been impossible for Kokal to have gained entry to the roof on his own. INR occupies both a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on the sixth floor that has no windows and a windowless structure on the roof that has neither windows nor access to the roof, according to the former official. The other windows at the State Department have been engineered to be shatter proof from terrorist bomb attacks and cannot be opened.

INR and other State Department officials report that a "chill" has set in at the State Department following Kokal's defenestration. A number of employees are afraid to talk about the suspicious death. It also unusual that The Northern Virginia Journal, a local Arlington newspaper, has not published an obituary notice on Kokal.

(Wayne Madsen, a frequent FTW contributor, is a former US Naval officer and intelligence analyst who is currently an author, freelance writer and commentator in Washington, D.C.)


http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112003_kokal.html

#DavidKelly : Suicide riddle of weapons expert who worked with David Kelly: Scientist tells wife he is going for a walk, then takes his life in a field... just like his friend

• Body of Dr Richard Holmes discovered in a field four miles from the Porton Down defence establishment
• Police said there were no suspicious circumstances in latest case but revealed scientist was 'under a great deal of stress'
• He resigned from Porton Down last month, but it is unclear why

A weapons expert who worked with Dr David Kelly at the Government’s secret chemical warfare laboratory has been found dead in an apparent suicide.
In circumstances strongly reminiscent of Dr Kelly’s own mysterious death nine years ago, the body of Dr Richard Holmes was discovered in a field four miles from the Porton Down defence establishment in Wiltshire. It is not yet known how he died.
Mr Holmes, 48, had gone missing two days earlier after telling his wife he was going out for a walk – just as Dr Kelly did before he was found dead at an Oxfordshire beauty spot in July 2003.

'Stressed': The cause of Richard Holmes's (left) death is still unknown. David Kelly (right) was found dead nine years ago

Police said there were no suspicious circumstances in the latest case but revealed that Dr Holmes  had ‘recently been under a great deal of stress’.
He resigned from Porton Down last month, although the centre yesterday refused to explain why.
Inevitably, the parallels between the two cases will arouse the suspicions of conspiracy theorists.
Despite Lord Hutton’s ruling eight years ago that Dr Kelly committed suicide, many people – among them a group of doctors – believe his inquiry was insufficient and have demanded a full inquest.
Some believe Dr Kelly, who kept an office at Porton Down right up until his death, was murdered. He was outed as being the source of a BBC report that Downing Street ‘sexed up’ evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war.

 

More...

• British expat Neil Heywood left his family so broke a business associate had to pay for plane tickets for them to attend his funeral

Although it is not clear if the two scientists were close, one source told The Mail on Sunday that they were friendly when they worked at Porton Down in the Nineties.
At the time, Dr Holmes ran a project organising the installation of chemical protection equipment in RAF Sentinel spy planes, while Dr Kelly was head of microbiology and frequently toured the former Soviet Union as a weapons inspector.
After the first Gulf War, Dr Holmes is also thought to have worked on the production of chemical protection suits for troops. In 1991 he was the joint author of a scientific paper about an RAF chemical and biological protection system.
Yesterday, a Porton Down spokesman confirmed Dr Holmes had quit his job but declined to comment further. ‘It is not our policy to speak openly about any individual who works for us,’ she said.

Riddle: The Porton Down establishment, where Dr Holmes had recently resigned from his post

Before finding his body, Wiltshire Police made a public appeal for information but warned people not to approach Dr Holmes for their own safety because they believed he had been ‘looking at information on the internet regarding self-harm and the use of toxic substances’.
Friends of Dr Holmes say this disclosure irritated his family, who questioned why a scientist engaged in chemical warfare research would ‘need to Google toxic substances’.
Dr Holmes’s widow, Susan, is  a chemist who also works at  Porton Down as head of business administration.
One of the Government’s most sensitive and secretive military facilities, the site has long been the focus of controversy.
Three years ago hundreds of ex-servicemen who were used as chemical warfare guinea pigs there between 1939 and 1989 were given compensation and an apology from the Ministry of Defence.

Grim discovery: The scene at Harrowdown Hill, where the body of Dr David Kelly was discovered in 2003

They were tested with the nerve agent sarin, but some of those involved claimed they had been  told they were taking part in cold-remedy trials.
Many suffered serious illnesses after exposure to the gas, which was developed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
An inquest into Dr Holmes’s death was opened and adjourned by Wiltshire Coroner David Ridley last week. Coroner’s officer Paul Tranter said Dr Holmes’s family had grown concerned for his wellbeing after  he failed to return from a walk on April 11.
A search party involving police and members of the other emergency services began combing waste ground close to his home in the Bishopsdown area of Salisbury.
Police discovered his body half a mile away in a field used regularly by dog-walkers and joggers in the village of Laverstock.
Mr Tranter said the results of tests carried out to establish the cause of death would not be known for several weeks.
He added: ‘Police do not consider this death to be suspicious in any way, nor do they believe there was any third-party involvement.’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133201/Dr-Richard-Holmes-Suicide-riddle-weapons-expert-worked-David-Kelly.html#ixzz1skmZ4VfU

#Iraq #Blair: The Secret Downing Street Memo.

The Sunday Times - Britain  May 01, 2005  The secret Downing Street memo , fair use

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING, From: Matthew Rycroft,  Date: 23 July 2002,  S 195 /02 23 July 2002,  S 195 /02 23 July 2002,  S 195 /02


cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

page 2

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battle plan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban war fighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.
John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions.

CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

page 3

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)

MATTHEW RYCROFT

(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)

#America #Torture :The Bush Administration Torture Document

In this explosive interview, Scott Horton of Anti War Radio discusses with journalist Jason Leopold, the release of the
“Pre-Academic Laboratory (PREAL) OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS.”
This once secret document is a 37-page instruction manual detailing torture techniques “designed” to extract false confessions thereby lending credibility to bogus terror threats.
The interview starts with the fact that another news agency received the document some time ago, but did NOTHING with the
story. With the document now released by the DoD, the story comes out.

Bush- Era war crimes revealed in “Guidebook to False Confessions…”

Video:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/10135.html