Gaddafi threat and Ex-head of MI5

Revealed: Gaddafi threat to Britain over Megrahi

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• TOP-LEVEL CONTACT: Tony Blair shakes Gaddafi’s hand during the now-infamous desert tent meeting in 2004 as Britain tried to bring the dictator ‘in from the cold’. Picture: PA

JODY HARRISON

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5 Sep 2011

THE Gaddafi regime threatened Britain there would be “dire consequences” for UK-Libya relations if the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing died in his Scottish jail cell.

The extent of lobbying by the Libyan Government in the lead-up to Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds in August 2009 was revealed yesterday after reporters found confidential documents in the abandoned British Embassy building in Tripoli.

According to one, senior Foreign Office official Robert Dixon wrote to then Foreign Secretary David Miliband in January 2009, stating Muammar Gaddafi wanted Megrahi back home in Libya “at all costs”.

“Libyan officials and ministers have warned of dire consequences for the UK-Libya relationship and UK commercial operations in Libya in the event of Megrahi’s death in custody,” he wrote.

Mr Dixon added: “We believe Libya might seek to exact vengeance.”

Other documents found in the Embassy in Tripoli suggest MI5 traded information with the Libyan security service

Megrahi was the only man convicted over the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, an attack in which 270 people died.

Diagnosed as suffering from terminal prostate cancer, he was released from Greenock Prison after doctors told the Scottish Government he had only three months to live.

After a review of the paperwork in the case, Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell said in February ministers in the last Labour Government believed Megrahi’s release would be the “best outcome” as they feared that UK interests in Libya would be damaged if he was allowed to die in a Scottish jail.

It is also claimed that Prince Andrew was also to be used as a high-profile go-between in attempts to free Megrahi.

A spokesman for Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who took the decision to release him, said: “The Scottish Government were the only ones playing with a straight bat – in stark contrast to the astonishing hypocrisy of the last UK Labour Government.”

Former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling told The Andrew Marr Show: “There is no doubt that from our point of view we wanted to bring Gaddafi in from the cold because at the time we thought that was possible, and there is no doubt that Gaddafi wanted Megrahi out.”

Other documents suggested British security service MI5 traded information with its Libyan counterparts, providing intelligence on British-based Libyans opposed to the Gaddafi regime.
In return, MI5 received updates on information disclosed by terrorist suspects under interr-ogation in Libyan prisons.
Also found was a letter then prime minister Tony Blair wrote in 2007 to help Gaddafi’s son Saif with his PhD thesis. It begins “Dear Engineer Saif” and is signed off: “Best wishes, yours sincerely, Tony Blair”.
Documents had already been found in the Tripoli offices of former head of Libyan intelligence Musa Kusa that indicated close co-operation between British intelligence and the former Gaddafi regime.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said yesterday: “These chilling revelations show just how cosy British authorities became with a regime known to torture.”
Details also emerged in the documents of a trip to Britain arranged for Gaddafi’s sons Saadi and Khamis, who are said to have been in charge of a brigade that massacred civilians during the recent fighting.
They watched an SAS combat display in Hereford and were wined and dined at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Mayfair.
The papers found in Kusa’s office also included commun-ications between British and Libyan security ahead of Mr Blair’s now infamous desert tent meeting with Gaddafi in 2004.
Britain is said to have helped Gaddafi with speech-writing.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “[The documents] relate to a period under the previous governments ... I have no knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes at that time.”

Ex-head of MI5 retains power to raise alarm

Published on 5 Sep 2011

COMMENT: ANNE SIMPSON

Either to stay on the right side of any pension arrangements, or continue to keep loved ones in the dark, they reserve their truly scandalous secrets for the grave, leaving post-burial historians to do the digging, and thriller writers to put fictional flesh on the bones.

Tomorrow, though, might be different when Eliza Manningham-Buller delivers the first of three Reith lectures for Radio 4. Ever since 2007 when she stood down as director general of MI5, she hasn’t shirked from saying out loud what governments don’t wish to hear. Last year her testimony to the Chilcot inquiry into the lead up to war in Iraq amounted to a scathing indictment of the Blair administration.

Ms Manningham-Buller made it clear she warned the Prime Minister that invasion – on the basis of “fragmentary intelligence” – would “undoubtedly” increase the terrorist threat to Britain. But her advice was superseded by that from MI6 which, she said witheringly, had “over-promised and under-delivered” when it came to Iraq. Rivalries between national security agencies are nothing new, of course. Those trained in covert activity never stop being watchful of everyone.

In the early 1980s the British traitor Michael Bettaney, working in MI5’s counter-espionage unit, shared an office with two of Ms Manningham-Buller’s assistants. At the time she was one of only five people who knew that Oleg Gordievsky, deputy head of the KGB at the Soviet Embassy in London, was actually a double agent. Mr Gordievsky’s evidence was crucial to Bettaney’s Old Bailey conviction in 1984, but had his name been mentioned previously in Bettaney’s presence, the Russian would have been the target of an inevitable Soviet hit squad. Later, Mr Gordievesky acknowledged that Ms Manningham-Buller’s ability to keep a secret had saved his life.

Recently the political philosopher John Gray downplayed the significance of the British “ice-cold deceiver”, Kim Philby, because, in gazing outwards from his Moscow flat, Philby failed to predict the future. Today cyber-intrusion deludes us into thinking there are no secrets left to leak; even WikiLeaks – which last year “revealed” much already guessed – was overtaken by the more immediately gripping sensations of News International’s hackgate.

So, how do spies now occupy their time? We’re beyond the days when spooks looked dingier than a private eye’s raincoat, walked with a limp and had half a finger missing. In Russia itself some veterans, who acquired a gourmand’s girth while sleuthing, have become food writers, recalling past moments in grand restaurants beyond the Iron Curtain, when, seduced by sensual vapours from the kitchen, they put the Motherland on hold and forgot to activate the tape recorder hidden in the table napkin.

My only brush with a spy began at the Soda Fountain in Fortnum and Mason when Misha – not his real name – was the appointed Russian official organising my trip to Moscow to report on Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. His wife, he grumbled, hadn’t taken to London. So she stayed indoors bringing resentment to the boil. And the media didn’t help matters, he said. “I take you journalists to lunch. I buy you alcohol and lobster thermidor, and in return you tell me nothing.” That should have been a clue, although the Moscow assignment proceeded without any creepy incidents: no bugged cocktail olives, no lumpen stalkers watching morosely from the shadows.

But six months later Misha was among a dozen Soviets evicted from Britain for spying. On television that night we caught a glimpse of him at Heathrow, looking like an unhappy whippet. In tomorrow’s recorded lecture, MI5’s former boss will refer to 9/11 by exploring whether that heinous event was a terrorist attack or an act of war. “Or was it something different?” Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller may be a retired spy-catcher, but she still knows how to raise an alert by asking a cryptic question.

The Reith Lectures begin on Radio 4 on Tuesday at 9am.

Gaddafi wants to get him back at all costs: Embassy documents revealed tyrant vowed 'holy war' if mass killer died in Scottish prison

By Ian Birrell
Last updated at 1:10 AM on 4th September 2011


Britain paved the way for the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi after receiving repeated threats of 'dire consequences' from Colonel Gaddafi if he died in his Scottish prison cell.
Officials were warned the Libyan dictator would view this as 'a death sentence' and unleash a series of reprisals similar to the 'holy war' he launched against the Swiss after they arrested one of his sons.
A series of documents marked 'confidential' and 'restricted' reveal that British diplomats feared these would include harassment - 'or worse' - of British nationals; the cancellation of lucrative contracts with firms such as BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas); and the end of defence deals and counter-terrorism co-operations.

Warning: Gaddafi (left) threatened Britain of 'dire consequences' if Megrahi (right) died in his Scottish cell

As a result, the British Government ignored the anger of both America and the families of Lockerbie victims to push for the fastest possible release, by signing a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya.
Two years ago, Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds and returned to Tripoli, where he received a hero’s welcome from Gaddafi. He was suffering terminal prostate cancer and was said to have less than three months to live. Last week he was tracked down to his Tripoli home and it emerged he is still alive, although very ill.

The cache of uncensored documents discovered in the Libyan capital makes it clear the last Government worked frantically behind the scenes to appease Gaddafi’s ‘unpredictable nature’ – even suggesting Prince Andrew be used as a go-between.

Labour Ministers repeatedly claimed that the decision to release Megrahi was taken by the Scottish administration alone – a position the Scots, keen to underline their independence, endorsed.
And earlier this year, an internal Government inquiry headed by Sir Gus O’Donnell, Britain’s most senior civil servant, concluded there was no evidence of London pressuring the Scottish Executive to release Megrahi.

My father, the despot: Gaddafi pictured with daughter Aisha, now a 35-year-old lawyer

Discovered: Gaddafi with one of his grandsons at his vast Bab Al Aziziah complex in Tripoli

However, a dramatically different picture has now emerged from the uncensored documents.
One memo sent to the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell in January 2009 says: ‘Gaddafi wants Megrahi to return to Libya at all costs.
'Libyan officials and ministers have warned of dire consequences for the UK-Libya relationship and UK commercial operations in Libya in the event of Megrahi’s death in custody.’
The memo, written by Robert Dixon, head of the North Africa Team at the Foreign Office, added that one prominent Libyan minister warned Gaddafi would regard this as ‘a death sentence’. Mr Dixon concluded: ‘We believe Libya might seek to exact vengeance.’
British diplomats had little doubt Gaddafi’s threats were genuine, and suggested attempts to appease him using both ‘well-timed telephone contacts’ between Mr Brown and the dictator, and the Duke of York’s personal contacts with both Gaddafi and Musa Kusa, his foreign secretary who defected to Britain in the early stages of the war.

Relatives: Gaddafi's blonde daughter Aisha (right) who is dubbed the 'Claudia Schiffer of North Africa' is pictured with a friend

Possible consequences for Britain were spelled out in several documents. One said the UK was vulnerable to the tactics used against the Swiss after the arrest of Gaddafi’s son Hannibal for beating servants.
These included the arrest of businessmen for ‘visa irregularities’, closing down local subsidiaries of Swiss companies, cancelling commercial flights and withdrawing billions from Swiss banks.
One memo also lays bare the duplicity of the Brown Government. It says Mr Rammell laid out ‘parameters’, which included stressing that decisions on release were made by Scottish Ministers and ensuring the Americans did not see the Government as ‘conniving in Megrahi’s unjustified removal from the UK’. It adds that informal soundings with the Scottish Executive had led to an understanding they would agree to compassionate release.
Officials accepted there were ‘presentational risks’, over the release of Megrahi, who was jailed for life for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 when it exploded over Lockerbie. They predicted his release would lead to public suspicions that ‘the UK is prepared to do anything to maintain its commercial and other ties with Libya’. They also accepted there were ‘real risks for the UK-US relationship’.
The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it is revealed, twice raised American concerns over the affair with David Miliband in March 2009. But diplomats made it clear they preferred American fury to ‘a series of potentially extreme risks to UK staff, nationals and our long-term energy security in the event of a Libyan overreaction to Megrahi’s death in custody’.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033493/Gaddafi-wants-costs-Embassy-documents-revealed-tyrant-vowed-holy-war-mass-killer-died-Scottish-prison.html#ixzz1Wwunmdqs

What Obama does not want you to know about Gaddafi

CIA and U.S. Government worked closely with Gaddafi's regime (and even helped him write his speeches)

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:13 PM on 3rd September 2011

American intelligence co-operated closely with Muammar Gaddafi's regime, according to reports based on documents found in Libyan government offices.
The papers allegedly show that the U.S. sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite the country's reputation for torture.
They reveal new details of the close relationship between the two countries, including how CIA officers helped Gaddafi write a speech to show him in a positive light.

Close relationship: The documents include a speech written for Gaddafi by the CIA (file picture)

The documents were discovered in the Tripoli offices of former head of Libyan intelligence Moussa Koussa and also include talks between British intelligence organisation MI6 and the Gaddafi regime.
Reports of such cooperation have surfaced before, but the documents provide new details on the ties between Western countries and Gaddafi's regime.

Many of those same countries backed the NATO attacks that helped Libya's rebels force Gadhafi from power.
One notable case is that of Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, commander of the anti-Gaddafi rebel force that now controls Tripoli.
Belhaj is the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a now-dissolved militant group with links to al-Qaeda.

New regime: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Libyan National Transitional Council chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil and head of Libya's rebel National Transitional Council Mahmoud Jibril attend a bilateral meeting in Paris September 1 2011

Belhaj says he was tortured by CIA agents at a secret prison, then returned to Libya.
Two documents from March 2004 appear to be American correspondence to Libyan officials to arrange Belhaj's rendition.
Referring to him by his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq, the documents say he will be flown from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Libya and asks for Libyan government agents to accompany him.
It also requests American 'access to al-Sadiq for debriefing purposes once he is in your custody.'
'Please be advised that we must be assured that al-Sadiq will be treated humanely and that his human rights will be respected,' the document says.

Discovery: The documents were found in an abandoned government building (file picture)

Another document in a folder marked CIA seems to be a speech drafted for Gaddai just before Christmas in 2003.
The one-page speech appears intended to depict the Libyan dictator in a positive light.
It concluded: 'At a time when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of our contributions towards a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion, the Great Jamhariya [revolutionary name for Libya] presents its honest call for a WMD-free zone in the Middle East,' referring to weapons of mass destruction.
Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, which found the documents, called the ties between Washington and Gaddafi's regime 'a very dark chapter in American intelligence history, and it remains a stain on the record of the American intelligence services that they cooperated with these very abusive intelligence services.'
In Washington, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood declined to comment on any specific allegation related to the documents.
'It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats,' she said. 'That is exactly what we are expected to do.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033333/CIA-U-S-Government-worked-closely-Gaddafis-regime.html#ixzz1Wwqr7z5A