I can't really summarise it, but I'll try. It could potentially end up bigger than the phone-hacking scandal, but only if I'm wrong about Liam Fox being either in the pay or control (or both) of the CIA. If I'm right, and he is, I suppose it'll disappear from the headlines pretty quick (the BBC already have a hilariously half-hearted "profile" of Liam Fox to accompany news of this latest scandal, with most of the details of his recent past very conspicuously left out, in favour of saying that he appeared in the sleevenotes of a Natalie Imbruglia album (
). Don't worry, though, I've got most of the details here. They are still warm).This video should serve as a decent introduction:
Right... UKers will already know that our beloved Conservative Defence Secretary and head of the MOD, Dr. Liam Fox, having come down heavily from the power-surge after his "success" in Libya, is now in big trouble over his relationship with Adam Werritty. Werritty was best man at his wedding and his former-flatmate. Fox has been taking him to official (and suspicious unofficial) defence meetings, and letting him hang out at the MOD, for the last few years - despite the fact that Werritty has no security clearance, official government role, or apparent reason to be there at all. That's been on the news all day so I guess we have all heard about it in the Yookay. Furners might not have heard at all.
But did yous Yookayers also know that Liam Fox, our defence secretary, is likely a CIA asset?
Oh, you did. Yeah, well, me too.
Actually, Semper posted something about this scandal in it's embryonic form a while ago, but it has grown fast since then.
semper occultus wrote:Wiley Fox goes downtown in Dubai
8:00AM BST 11 Aug 2011
www.telegraph.co.uk
LAST night, Defence Secretary Liam Fox arrived back from his summer holiday in Spain – presumably feeling doubly refreshed given his June jaunt in Dubai.
The trip was presented as a “stop over” by the MoD after a morale-boosting tour of Afghanistan (he’s hardly Geri Halliwell) - but curiously he stayed longer in Dubai than the warzone.
Spinners said the trip was dedicated to media work and the “limited costs” were met by the MoD.
But surely the cost would have been even more limited if Dr Fox had chosen to stay at the embassy. Instead he booked in, accompanied by a small entourage, to a discrete, backstreet establishment - the Address Hotel.
Diplomatic hands in Dubai are mystified: “It’s very strange. A visit by a cabinet minister is a major event, kicking off big security and protocol procedures,” said one.
Maybe he just needed some downtown downtime - in which case why can’t the MoD come out and say so?
This OP might be long, and have an irritating amount of bolding and me talking all through it. I'm no good at hyperlinking text so I'll just make names really big if they're worth googling. Most of 'em are.
Liam Fox is on the left here, Werrity on the right.
Liam Fox, his adviser, and an irregular meeting in Dubai
Emails shed light on contentious legal battle as MoD admits MRSA superbug case was raised at meeting
Rupert Neate
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 October 2011 21.18 BST
Just as the Dubai heat started to get unbearable one morning in June Liam Fox swept into the air conditioned comfort of the five-star Shangri-La hotel.
Inside he was whisked up to the 41st floor – which enjoys panoramic views of the city – but the defence secretary wasn't there to enjoy the view. He was there for a crucial legal meeting.
In the hotel Fox was reunited with Adam Werritty, a close personal friend of his for at least 14 years, and three Dubai-based businessmen, including British private equity boss Harvey Boulter.
The meeting, which had been organised by Werritty, who has handed out business cards embossed with a logo of the House of Commons portcullis that describe him as "an advisor to RT Hon Dr Fox MP", was to demonstrate new technology that might allow troops to call home without fear of the calls being intercepted by the enemy.
But there was a second item on the agenda: a highly contentious legal battle. The MoD's last partnership with Boulter had turned from a potentially life-saving new weapon in the fight against the MRSA superbug into a legal headache.
The MoD's innovation unit had teamed up with Boulter's Porton Capital to commercially produce technology called Acolyte (?!?) that is claimed to drastically cut the time it takes to identify MRSA infections.
At first it was a major success and the pair sold it to US Post-it note conglomerate 3M in £41m deal. But 3M later claimed the technology failed US tests and refused to pay the full amount.
Boulter was furious. He wanted to fight 3M all the way, but to do that he needed the might of HM's government. The 41-year-old businessman, who spends most of his life on a boat sailing the Gulf, spent weeks trying to get someone in government to listen. He didn't have much luck until someone introduced him to Adam Werritty.
Werritty, 34, flew to Dubai to meet Boulter and discuss his concerns in April. When he got back to London, Werritty emailed Boulter saying: "Very good meeting with you in Dubai. Thanks for passing along the below along with the e-info on the two issues [Acolyte; and the phone call encryption system] we discussed. Please leave this with me to push along as discussed."
A month later Werritty emailed Boulter again to say he had passed on Boulter's concerns to Fox's special advisers, and said: "I'd hope they'd want to make an issue out of this."
Fast forward to June, when Fox was on a morale-boosting visit to the troops in Afghanistan and stopped off in Dubai for a few days on the way home.
When he landed in Dubai he met Werritty. The MoD says Werritty just happened to be there at the same time and insists he was not part of Fox's official entourage.
Fox chose not to stay in the British embassy but at The Address, a new high-end hotel, which the MoD has not granted security clearance.
Early on the morning of Friday 17 June – a religious day in the Emirates – Werritty emailed Boulter: "Morning Harvey. He'd [Fox] prefer to have it here [at the Shangri-La]. Let's meet on the 41st floor lounge."
The meeting between the five men was a pleasant and jolly affair, but the disputed conversation turned toxic the next day.
In the early hours of the following morning Boulter fired off an email to 3M lawyers. "I had a 45-minute meeting with Dr Liam Fox, the British defence minister, on our current favourite topic … As a result of my meeting [with Fox] today you ought to know that David Cameron's cabinet might very shortly be discussing the rather embarrassing situation of George's [George Buckley, 3M's chief executive] knighthood."
Boulter suggested that a settlement "at a headline of $30m+ will allow MoD to internally save face".
When 3M failed to reply, Boulter followed up the first email with a second sent in the early hours of Sunday morning. "I need to tell something to Dr Fox's office on Sunday night," he said. "I don't really want to give a 'radio silence' message as he is secretary of defence and will not expect that. I am trying to manage all of the dynamics carefully."
This led to 3M immediately suing Boulter for "blackmail" and calling on Fox to explain exactly what he said in the meeting and whether or not he gave Boulter the go-ahead to send the late-night email.
At first Fox fought back strongly denying that the Acolyte technology was ever discussed. "Dr Fox met with Mr Boulter to discuss an entirely different matter," the MoD said. "At no point did he enter into any discussion about this legal case, nor was there any mention of anyone's knighthood."
But the Guardian tracked down both of the other businessmen present at the meeting, who confirmed that they heard the MRSA case discussed and Fox retracted his previous denial.
"During their meeting Mr Boulter disclosed his involvement in a legal case as a matter of propriety," the MoD said. "But Dr Fox did not enter into a discussion about this in any respect and at no point raised or discussed the issue of a knighthood."
However, one of the witnesses said Boulter informed Fox of the progress of the 3M legal battle, to which the defence secretary is said to have replied: "I'm sure you're handling this [the case] in the best way possible." Fox's spokesman did not respond to requests to confirm or deny the statement, and 3M is still preparing to call Fox as a witness if the blackmail case reaches court.
The highly irregular Dubai meeting has cast a spotlight on Werritty, who has operated in Fox's shadow for at least 14 years.
The Guardian understands that the pair first met while Werritty, who is from St Andrews, Scotland, was at university in the 1990s.
Although it is unclear how they first met, it is likely to have been through Werritty's degree in public policy at Edinburgh. Soon after Werritty graduated with a 2:2, he got a job at PPP, the healthcare company.
Soon after Fox founded the Atlantic Bridge charity, which was designed to promote the "special relationship" between the UK and the US, he asked Werritty to run the charity as executive director. The charity was backed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) and the hedge fund millionaire Michael Hintze.
The funding of the charity, which was supported by senior Tories and patronised by Lady Thatcher, allowed Werritty and Fox to frequently travel to events in America. In one instance Fox flew back from Washington to the UK in Hintze's private jet, the register of members' interests shows. It has been suggested that Werritty was also present on the jet.
While in London, Werritty ran the day-to-day operations of the charity from room 341 in the MPs' block at Portcullis House, which was provided to Fox at taxpayers' expense while he was in opposition until last year. Staff in the building still remember Werritty, who stands taller than Fox and has a receding hairline.
Werritty worked for the Atlantic Bridge until last summer when the regulator demanded that its "current activities must cease immediately" because "the activities of the charity have not furthered any of its other charitable purposes in any way".
The charity was finally dissolved last Friday after its remaining trustees – Fox had already resigned from the board – decided to close it down rather than address the Charity Commission's concerns.
Official records show Werritty collected £90,000 in salary from the charity between 2007 and 2010.
But it appears that running Fox's charity was not political enough for Werritty, a policy-obsessed nerd according to acquaintances.
Werritty attached himself to Fox as a self-styled adviser and took an active interest in Fox's work as shadow health secretary and shadow defence secretary.
He was on the board of a health consultancy company while Fox was leading the Tories on health. According to Companies House filings, Werritty owned 11.5% of UK Health Group and Fox owned 2.3%.
By the time Fox had moved on to become shadow defence minister, Werritty had become involved in a firm called Securities Futures, which describes its principal activities as being "promoting a better understanding of asymmetric 'security' risks that the UK faces and publishing work that encourages a better informed debate on these important issues".
When Fox entered government, Werritty appeared to want to go with him. But instead of getting a job in the civil service or for the Conservative party he knocked up his own business cards embossed with the House of Commons Portcullis logo and just happened to appear at Fox's side in Dubai and Sri Lanka.
• This article was amended on 10 October 2011. The original said Werritty stands "a couple of foot taller than Fox". (Oh Grauniad!) This has been corrected.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... ting-dubai
So, a rather shady meeting here between the Defence Secretary and his ever-present mate and the private equity manager Harry Boulter, to discuss an MRSA detection system and a method of encrypting phone calls, with Fox doing his best to keep outwith or below the radar of his own intelligence services - refusing to stay at the British embassy, and holding the meeting in a hotel that the "embassy staff" hadn't given security clearance to (ie. a hotel they hadn't yet themselves got round to bugging, or not as thoroughly as they'd like).
Fox told the private equity boss that he'd flown all that way to meet at Werritty's suggestion that he could use the threat of a withheld knighthood as leverage against the American company (3M) who were refusing to pay full whack for an (apparently no good) MRSA detector. The American company didn't play ball, brought a blackmail case, and everybody's dirty washing spilled on the floor. So far, so normal.
It also turned out that Werritty (who seems to be, essentially, unemployed) has been charging lobbyists money for access to the Defence Secretary, Derek Draper-style, for quite a long time, no doubt with Fox's approval. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... NETTXT3487
But that's pretty normal too, unfortunately.
When Fox was Shadow Health Secretary, Werritty got a job with (and bought lots of shares in) UK Health Care. When Fox moved into a defence role, Werritty switched jobs to a private 'security' firm. Given how close they obviously are, the potential for conflicts of interest and Werritty's companies being made "preferred bidders" seems obvious. But that's pretty normal too.
What's NOT normal is Liam Fox's old charity Atlantic Bridge, and the circumstances in which it was shut down.
And what's highly ABnormal (at least I wish it was) is Liam Fox's decision, last year, to hire the obvious CIA agent Luke Coffey, of CENSA, as his special advisor. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 144905.ece
Let's start with The Atlantic Bridge, because it reeks of intel.
It's been getting updated for a few days now. Can't wait to see the re-designed mission statement. Here is the old one:
A submission to the Charity Commission misleadingly claims the Atlantic Bridge is dedicated to fostering good transatlantic relations and developing policy solutions for common problems. The organisation’s website is more candid declaring, ‘the simple aim of “Strengthening the Special Relationship” exemplified by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership of the 1980s.’
This was confirmed strongly by Liam Fox himself in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review a few years back, speaking of his vision for the future of the 'Special Relationship': "... the values we have of an independent judiciary, of secular government and of human rights, we obviously want to see that spread as widely as possible. Perhaps the strongest special relationship is militarily, because we have a lot of cooperation in intelligence. We have cooperation in terms of the missions we carry out. And we have cooperation in procurement. "
"I think it is very important to create not only the intellectual framework that will strengthen the special relationship, but actually to create the network of individual people who can know one another. That needs to be in politics, and in the media, and in the military, and in academia. And that’s what we’re trying to do: We are trying to bring people together who have common interests and to recognize that in an ever-more globalized economy, we will all be called upon to defend those common interests. [/quote]
The people he is talking about here are UK and US Neocons.
There are some gems in this interview. I suppose he thought it would never be read over here, or not widely, but he's been caught out (a bit), like some squeaky-clean Hollywood star found to be advertising cigarettes and booze on Japanese TV. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 76031.html
Recently, as UK Defence Secretary (got that?), Liam Fox pledged to "buy off the shelf" - which means American hardware - and of course the Trident missile system is to be renewed at huge expense while the rest of the army is drastically pruned and the usual shoddy and outdated basic equipment is handed out to "The Borrowers" - as the US troops semi-affectionately call ours.
The Atlantic Bridge’s partisan agenda was clearly affirmed by Margaret Thatcher (with whom they are obsessed) at a dinner in New York. Concluding what the Margaret Thatcher Foundation has ranked as a major speech, she set the Atlantic Bridge a clear goal: it was to become ‘a bulwark against the… people on the left’.
...
There are some fascinating bits in Thatcher's full speech here: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111266
Yes, I have just linked to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. I apologise, but desperate times and all that.
The Charity Commission's decision that the Atlantic Bridge's UK charity must 'cease its current activities immediately' and break away from US non-profit the Atlantic Bridge Inc, is a major setback to those who would import US-style conservatism to the UK.
Officially founded by defence secretary Liam Fox and boasting three more cabinet minsters on its advisory board (William Hague, George Osborne and Michael Gove), the Atlantic Bridge was managed as an outpost of the the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC was exposed in 1998 when the US tobacco industry was forced to release thousands of internal documents as part of a multi-billion dollar settlement of dozens of lawsuits. These documents show that the tobacco industry used ALEC to lobby US legislators.
ALEC continues to be funded by the tobacco industry, but today is also supported by elements of the oil industry keen to promote climate change denial and of the pharmaceutical industry keen to block US health reforms. US members of the Atlantic Bridge led last summer's high profile attacks on the NHS.
In a bizarre ruling, the Charity Commission has decided that the objectives of the Atlantic Bridge, as described in its governing documents, are charitable but that none of its activities have furthered those objectives. That is to say it is a charity on paper only and all its current work must stop. The charity now has a year to break away from its US arm and create a new programme of entirely different activities. This means no more oxymoronic Margaret Thatcher Medals of Freedom and no more dinners in LA with Fox News personalities.
There are many gaps in the commission's short report. For example, one set of Atlantic Bridge accounts clearly states that donors to the UK charity may receive a benefit from the US charity; the commission is silent on this arrangement. Over the years for which accounts are available, the Atlantic Bridge spent £239,920 in pursuit of its non-charitable activities. The commission does not reveal how much (if any) of this charity money has been recovered.
The commission has a statutory obligation to 'increase public trust and confidence in charities', but has struggled to balance this with its obligation to promote compliance with the law. It has gone beyond forewarning the Atlantic Bridge that it was about to report by asking journalists not to refer to its action as an inquiry, but as an 'engagement'. This was part of media strategy designed to protect the Atlantic Bridge's reputation (and the reputations of all those cabinet ministers). So far, the commission has been most effective.
The commission has been inconsistent. It rightly, and famously, opened a statutory inquiry into the Labour leaning Smith Institute. That organisation had got many things wrong but the commission did find that, unlike Atlantic Bridge, most of its activities were charitable. The Smith Institute was subjected to a full inquiry and given just six months to reform.
All this means that this sorry episode is far from over. The freedom of information act is being deployed to get a better understanding of the nature of the Charity Commission's 'engagement' with Atlantic Bridge and its attitude to recovering any misspent charity money.
More excitingly, a barrister from Matrix Chambers has advised that there may be several grounds on which to seek a judicial review and potential backers of that action are being canvassed (if you, or anyone you know, might be interested in supporting this, do get in touch).
http://www.labourlist.org/atlantic-brid ... servatives
And now I'm linking to LabourList. Sorry, all, but this was a good summary of the facts, even if LabourList started out as a Derek Draper op themselves.
And this is good too (told you it'd be long):
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that [b]the Charity Commission was concerned that the decision bringing the activities of Tory charity the Atlantic Bridge to an end might lead to embarrassing questions around the role of founder Liam Fox the defence secretary, and fellow trustee Lord Astor of Hever. The documents also suggest that it was prepared to stonewall questions around charity money that had been misspent promoting the Conservative Party.
...
Now, working with solicitor Mark Lewis, who also finds himself at the centre of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, I have begun the process of seeking a judicial review of the agreement reached between the commission and Atlantic Bridge trustees. In both cases authorities appear to have chosen not to investigate serious allegations.
Given that the Atlantic Bridge trustees have already agreed that none of their expenditure to date has furthered charitable objectives, those who have benefited are particularly vulnerable. Liam Fox, the founder of the Atlantic Bridge, has already declared trips the USA and William Hague has admitted the US arm of the organisation paid for a 'celebration' of one of his books, but has refused to declare this in the MPs' register of interests.
Should the court order the recovery of charitable assets all parties agree have been misspent and the further investigation of allegations made, these senior government figures may be vulnerable. But we hope it will not come to court ... [Why not?!?!]....and that instead the commission and the Atlantic Bridge's trustees will agree to modify their agreement in a way that guarantees the recovery of the charity's assets and demonstrates that any further allegations are unfounded.
Not sure if I need to double post or if I've made (a bit of) my case already. Will post and read back to correct and expand. Nothing wrong with that.
