Equalities watchdog says it will investigate the operations, with one member of the public saying it was akin to ‘Nazi Germany’

The Home Office faces investigation by the equalities watchdog over stop-and-check operations condemned by new Labour peer Doreen Lawrence.

The Independent revealed today that officials had conducted a series of “racist and intimidatory” spot checks to search for illegal immigrants in the wake of the Government’s “go home or face arrest” campaign.

Officers wearing stab vests conducted random checks near stations in the London suburbs of Walthamstow, Kensal Green, Stratford and Cricklewood over the past three days. Nationwide, more than 130 alleged “immigration offenders” have been arrested including in Durham, Manchester and Somerset.

Speaking this morning Mrs Lawrence said: “Why would you focus mainly on people of colour?

”I’m sure there’s illegal immigrants from all countries, but why would you focus that on people of colour, and I think racial profiling is coming into it.“

The mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, asked if the spot-checks were a cause for her to take up in her new role in the House of Lords, replied: ”Definitely so.“

Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, said she had received reports from constituents who had been stopped at around 7am yesterday outside the train station by a team of around a dozen Home Office officials.

“I’ve been told they were only stopping people who looked Asian or African and not anyone who was white,” she said. “This kind of fishing expedition in public place is entirely unacceptable. I will not have my constituents treated in such a manner.”

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is now set to look into what happened, as well as the Government’s controversial poster van warning immigrants of the risk of staying in Britain illegally.

A spokesman said: ”The Commission is writing today to the Home Office about these reported operations, confirming that it will be examining the powers used and the justification for them, in order to assess whether unlawful discrimination took place.

“The letter will also ask questions about the extent to which the Home Office complied with its public sector equality duty when planning the recent advertising campaign targeted at illegal migration.”

The Home Office denied that its raids were connected to the “go home” vans. However, officials could provide no evidence of similar “random searches” taking place in the past.

Onlookers described their shock at the operations, with one member of the public saying it was akin to “Nazi Germany”. The Labour MP Barry Gardiner had written to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, demanding an investigation into the checks which he said violated “fundamental freedoms”. The raids come just a few months after Ms May took direct responsibility for immigration from the disbanded UK Border Agency.

“We do not yet live in a society where the police or any other officers of the law are entitled to detain people without reasonable justification and demand their papers,” Mr Gardiner wrote. “The actions of your department would however appear to be hastening us in that direction.”

Witnesses who saw the operations in London claimed the officers stopped only non-white individuals, and in Kensal Green said that when questioned, the immigration officials became aggressive.

Phil O’Shea told the Kilburn Times: “They appeared to be stopping and questioning every non-white person, many of whom were clearly ordinary Kensal Green residents going to work. When I queried what was going on, I was threatened with arrest for obstruction and was told to ‘crack on’.”

Another witness, Matthew Kelcher, said: “Even with the confidence of a free-born Englishman who knows he has nothing to hide, I found this whole experience to be extremely intimidating. They said they were doing random checks, but a lot of people who use that station are tourists so I don’t know what message that sends out to the world.”

The Home Office said a Ukrainian woman aged 33, an Indian man aged 44 and a 59-year-old Brazilian woman had been detained as part of the checks at Kensal Green. At Walthamstow Central station, immigration officials arrested 14 people after officers questioned people to check if they were in the UK illegally.

Christine Quigley tweeted: “Sounds like UKBA checkpoint today in Walthamstow only stopping minority ethnic people. FYI UKBA – not all British people are white.”

In Stratford, photographs posted on Twitter appeared to show Home Office officials talking to men of Asian origin. The Home Office said a Bangladeshi man had been arrested on suspected immigration offences. In Cricklewood on Tuesday in a joint operation with the Met, more than 60 people were questioned near the railway station. Police said three men were arrested for “immigration matters”, and 27 men received notices requiring them to surrender at Eaton House immigration centre for further investigation.

Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council, said he believed that there was no coincidence between the “go home or face arrest” van and the new random checks in Kensal Green. “I am sure it is probably connected and it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth,” he said. “These so-called spot checks are not only intimidating but they are also racist and divisive. It appears from speaking to people who witnessed what happened in Kensal Green that it was only black and Asian-looking people who were asked to prove their identity. What about the white Australians and New Zealanders who may have overstayed their visas?”

Oliver Wright, Adam Withnall
Friday, 2 August 2013

Find this story at 2 August 2013

© independent.co.uk

Police watchdog report says many forces do not understand how to use powers effectively nor their potential impact

Home Office figures show that black people are still seven times more likely to be searched on the street than white people. Photograph: Stuart emmerson/Alamy

The misuse of “intrusive and contentious” stop and search powers is threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the police, an official watchdog has warned.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) says that most (30) of the 43 forces in England and Wales do not understand how to use stop and search powers effectively nor the impact their use has on the communities being policed.

The official report also says that the priority given by senior police officers to improving the use of stop and search powers has slipped down the agenda since the publication in 1999 of the official inquiry report into the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Home Office figures show that black people are still seven times more likely to be searched on the street than white people.

The HMIC report, published on Tuesday, was commissioned by the home secretary, Theresa May, in response to renewed concern about the way the police use stop and search powers in the wake of the 2011 August riots.

The home secretary anticipated one of the report’s key findings last week when she launched a six-week consultation over the future use of the powers, saying the fact that only 9% of the 1.2m stop-and-searches that take place every year led to an arrest had caused her to question whether it was being used appropriately.

The HMIC inquiry, which included a public survey of 19,000 people, found that too many forces are not collecting sufficient information to assess whether the use of the powers has been effective.

It says that 27% of the 8,783 stop-and-search records examined by HMIC did not include sufficient grounds to justify the lawful use of the powers.

“The reasons for this include poor understanding among officers about what constitutes ‘reasonable grounds’ needed to justify a search, poor supervision, and an absence of direction and oversight by senior officers,” says the report.

The report adds that fewer than half the forces complied with a requirement for stop and search activities to be open to public scrutiny.

It describes the street stop and search powers under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace) as “some of the most intrusive and contentious powers granted to the police” and warns that although some might think it will help to “control the streets” in the short term, its heavy-handed use may lead to major disorder in the long term.

Stephen Otter of HMIC said urgent action was needed to tackle the lack of understanding of the powers to prevent and detect crime. He said the investigation found that the exercise, recording, monitoring, supervision and leadership oversight of the use of stop and search powers all too often fell short of the Pace codes of practice, which set the standards to ensure the powers were not used unlawfully and incorrectly.

Tom Winsor, the chief inspector of constabulary, said: “The police service in the UK is almost unique in investing its lowest ranking officers with its greatest and most intrusive powers. These include those of stop and search.

“The lawful and proper use of the powers is essential to the maintenance of public confidence and community acceptance of the police, without which the British model of policing by consent cannot function.

“It is therefore crucial that police officers can show, with the greatest transparency, that they use these powers with the utmost lawfulness and integrity at all times,” said Winsor.

A Home Office spokesperson said the home secretary had made clear that the government supports the ability of police officers to stop and search suspects within the law.

“But if stop and search is being used too much or with the wrong people, it is not just a waste of police time, it also serves to undermine public confidence in the police,” he said.

He added that specific proposals in response to the report and the public consultation would be published by the end of the year.

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
The Guardian, Tuesday 9 July 2013

Find this story at 9 July 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

In 27 per cent of cases police did not have reasonable grounds
This is the same as 250,000 people every year being stopped and searched
The report warns of the potential to stir-up significant social unrest

More than a quarter of police stop and searches are ‘unlawful’ and risk promoting ‘major disorder’, government inspectors warned last night.

In a blistering report, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary said that, in 27 per cent of cases, police failed to show they had reasonable grounds to carry out the search.

It is the equivalent of 250,000 people every year being stopped and subjected to hugely intrusive searches without the police sticking to the rules.

In 27 per cent of cases, police failed to show they had reasonable grounds to carry out the searches

Legally, nobody should be stopped unless there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ they are guilty of carrying drugs, weapons or intending to carry out a burglary or other crime.

The report – commissioned in the wake of the 2011 riots – warns of the potential to stir-up significant social unrest.

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It states: ‘Apart from the fact that it is unlawful, conducting stop and search encounters without reasonable grounds will cause dissatisfaction and upset, and whilst some may think it will help to ‘control the streets in the short term’, it may lead to major disorder in the long-term’.

The HMIC report, led by ex-chief constable Stephen Otter, is also hugely critical of the way police are targeting their resources.

Most police forces said their priorities were reducing burglary, theft and violence.

Yet only nine per cent of stop and searches focussed on finding weapons, and 22 per cent were for stolen property or going equipped to steal.

By contrast, half of operations were targeted on possession of drugs – usually only small amounts which would only result in a police warning.

Theresa May warned that police could be wasting hundreds of thousands of hours by interrogating stopping people who had done nothing wrong

The report will increase the clamour for a major scaling back of the stop and search regime.

Last week Home Secretary Theresa May warned that police could be wasting hundreds of thousands of hours by interrogating stopping people who had done nothing wrong.

Last year, police conducted 1.2million stop and searches – but only nine per cent, or 107,000, ended in arrest.

In some parts of the country, the figure is as low as three per cent, raising huge question marks over whether the power is being properly used.

The HMIC warned of a ‘noticeable slippage’ in attention given to the use of stop and search powers by senior officers since the 1999 Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.

Mr Otter warned that use of the powers was becoming a ‘habitual’ practice

Around 27 per cent of the 8,783 stop and search records examined by inspectors did not include sufficient grounds to justify the lawful use of the power.

Police officers are able to conduct stop and searches under 20 different powers, but the most common laws used are the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act.

The report found that less than half of forces complied with the requirements of the code to make arrangements for stop and search records to be scrutinised by the public.

And half of forces did nothing to understand the impact on communities.

The inspection found that the majority of forces – 30 out of 43 – had not developed an understanding of how to use the powers of stop and search so that they are effective in preventing and detecting crime.

Only seven forces recorded whether or not the item searched for was actually found, the study found.

Mr Otter warned that use of the powers was becoming a ‘habitual’ practice that was ‘part and parcel’ of officers’ activity on the streets.

Last night a Home Office spokesman said: ‘The Home Secretary has made it very clear that the Government supports the ability of police officers to stop and search suspects within the law.
‘But if stop and search is being used too much or with the wrong people, it is not just a waste of police time, it also serves to undermine public confidence in the police.

‘That is why last week the Home Secretary announced a public consultation into the use of stop and search.

‘The Government will respond to the HMIC report and the replies to the public consultation with specific proposals by the end of the year.’

By James Slack

PUBLISHED: 00:03 GMT, 9 July 2013 | UPDATED: 06:30 GMT, 9 July 2013

Find this story at 9 July 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Warning: IPCC says racism complaints are being thrown out on the basis of an officers denial of them

The Met is failing to tackle complaints of racism properly and needs a major “cultural change” to improve the way it deals with London’s minorities, the police watchdog said today.

In a highly critical report, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said that Met investigators were often wrongly rejecting allegations of racism simply on the basis of an officer’s denial.

It warns that other complaints are being thrown out because of the “unwillingness or inability” of officers to pursue them and highlights a further widespread failure to follow official guidelines when investigating alleged racist conduct.

The report said that instead, the force tends to respond only to “overt” racism such as use of “n****r” and when other evidence such as mobile phone footage or whistleblower testimony is provided.

The findings, which will raise concerns about the force’s progress since being labelled “institutionally racist” in Sir William Macpherson’s report following the murder of Stephen Lawrence, came as the watchdog also revealed details of new racism cases within the Met. Today’s report discloses that:

Two thirds of appeals over racism complaints rejected by the Met were upheld by the watchdog last year.

The Met has little understanding of covert or subconscious racism by officers.

Complainants’ perceptions of racism are often not taken seriously.

Letters sent to complainants are regularly blighted by jargon, are defensive and fail to deal with specifics.

Unveiling today’s report, Deborah Glass, the IPCC’s commissioner for London, said that racism remained a “toxic” issue for the Met and that big changes were urgently needed.

“There is an enormous amount of guidance out there which the Met’s officers are not following and the only way to change that is through cultural change,” she said. “If the Met Commissioner wants to be credible when he says that there is zero tolerance of racism in the force then his officers need to understand what racism is.”

Ms Glass said that dealing with complaints of racism against officers properly was vital to public confidence in London because of the large ethnic population and the lack of faith among some residents in police attitudes. She added: “Race is an incredibly sensitive and sometimes toxic issue for the Met as we have seen over decades. They have made progress, but there is still some way to go.”

The report comes after a year-long inquiry by the IPCC following a spate of highly publicised racism allegations against the Met. One of those resulted in the dismissal of Pc Alex MacFarlane for gross misconduct despite his acquittal at Southwark crown court last year over an alleged racially aggravated public order offence involving the alleged use of racist language against a 21-year-old man.

The report is based on an analysis of 511 racist allegations against Met officers or staff made by the public in 2011/12, plus monitoring of 61 cases referred to the IPCC in April and May last year and a detailed study of 20 other complaint files.

It found that although cases passed to Scotland Yard’s directorate of professional standards were generally dealt with well, those resolved at borough level — which form the majority — were poorly handled.

The report said that officers were “routinely asked for brief accounts via email” rather than being questioned on specifics and that a denial frequently resulted in a complaint being rejected with not enough weight placed on the complainant’s account.

Met Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne said that he was summoning all 32 borough commanders and other senior officers to study the findings in one of a series of measures to improve the force’s performance.

He added that all investigations into racism complaints would also be overseen by Scotland Yard for the rest of the year to raise standards, but conceded that the Met was failing the public over the issue. Victims of racism by police will also be invited to meet senior officers to talk about their experiences to “help our understanding” of the problem, Mr Byrne said.

Martin Bentham

Published: 17 July 2013

Updated: 15:41, 17 July 2013

Find this story at 9 July 2013

© Evening Standard Limited

Figures show that since 2009, 57% of discharges have hit chest area, even though Taser warns of ‘serious complications’

Police using a taser during the attempted capture of Raoul Moat. Firing the devices at suspects’ chests carries the risk of inducing a cardiac arrest. Photograph: Jamie Wiseman/Daily Mail/Rex

British police have fired Tasers hundreds of times at suspects’ chests despite explicit warnings from the weapon’s manufacturer not to do so because of the dangers of causing a cardiac arrest, the Guardian can reveal.

Following the death last Wednesday of a man in Manchester after police hit him with a Taser shot, figures obtained from 18 out of 45 UK forces show that out of a total of 884 Taser discharges since 2009 – the year when Taser International first started warning the weapon’s users not to aim for the chest – 57% of all shots (518) have hit the chest area.

There is evidence that shots to the chest can induce cardiac arrest. Dr Douglas Zipes, an eminent US cardiologist and emeritus professor at Indiana University, who last year published a study that explored the dangers of chest shots, told the Guardian: “My admonition [to UK police] would be avoid the chest at all costs if you can.”

He said the proportion of shots landing on the chest was huge, adding: “I think the information is overwhelming to support how a Taser shot to the chest can produce cardiac arrest.”

The manufacturer’s warning in its training materials is clear. It states: “When possible, avoid targeting the frontal chest area near the heart to reduce the risk of potential serious injury or death.

“Serious complications could also arise in those with impaired heart function or in those with an implanted cardiac pacemaker or defibrillator.”

Firing at the back is the preferred option where practical.

Zipes said Tasers were first found to have the ability to “capture” heart rhythm in a way similar to that of a pacemaker after Taser itself commissioned a study on pigs published in 2006.

If fired close enough to the heart, the 50,000 volt weapons have the ability to interfere and take over the electrical signals in the heart in rare cases – something that can be avoided altogether by hitting other parts of the body.

Zipes, who has acted as an expert witness in Taser death cases, said his peer-reviewed paper for the Journal of the American Heart Association documented eight cases of people in the US who have died or suffered significant brain damage following a cardiac arrest linked to a Taser shot.

But, despite the apparent dangers of chest shots, a series of requests under the Freedom of Information Act suggests that police are routinely aiming Taser shots at that part of the body.

Records from Gwent police force, for example, show that 82% of 55 Taser discharges by its officers hit people in the chest. Officers from Lancashire police fired Tasers 186 times between 2009 and October 2012, with 65% of shots hitting the chest.

There have been 10 deaths since the introduction of Tasers by UK police forces in 2004. The most recent was last Wednesday evening after a 23-year-old factory worker, Jordan Begley, from Gorton, east Manchester, was said to have suffered a “medical episode” and died after police fired at him with the weapon.

The chief constable of Greater Manchester, Sir Peter Fahy, and its police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, met the dead man’s family and expressed their condolences.

No cause of death has been directly linked to the high-voltage charge emanating from the weapons in the UK. But two of the 10 cases, including last week’s death in Manchester, continue to be investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), which is responsible for Taser guidance, told the Guardian that following the 2009 warning, an independent panel of experts re-examined the threat to life from Tasers but found no substantial risk.

Simon Chesterman, deputy chief constable of West Mercia police and Acpo lead on armed policing and Taser use, said that after the 2009 Taser warning Acpo asked the medical panel whether police training needed to be changed. “The answer that came back is that as they’ve said all along, the risk from the electricity is very low,” he said.

Chesterman said the panel had maintained that guidance to this day and it was felt there was no need for police “to adjust our point of aim”.

He said: “We don’t train them [officers] to go for the chest, we just train them to go for the biggest thing they can see, ie the major muscle groups.

“When you’ve got a violent assailant who is facing you, coming towards you and you have to make a split second decision whether to use Taser or not, the chances are that clearly you’re going to aim for the torso and it may well be that one or both of the barbs will attach within the chest area.

“I’m not saying Taser is a risk-free option,” he said, but added: “We haven’t had what you could describe as a Taser-related death in the United Kingdom – that’s despite the fact that we’ve been using them for 10 years”

A separate FOI from February found that in 2011 Tasers were discharged 1,371 times in the year ending March 2011, a 66% rise on the previous year.

In a statement to the Guardian, Steve Tuttle, vice-president of communications for Taser International, said that in the vast majority of cases, “the cause of death has nothing to do with the Taser deployments and to date in the UK there are no deaths in which the Taser has been listed as the cause of death”.

He said the company’s “preferred targeting zones” were “best practices” that “take into consideration the most effective areas for placement on moving and/or violent subjects that don’t always co-operate.

“We occasionally modify recommendations and warnings to reflect a best practices approach for our customers to consider,” he added. “The release of our [2009] training bulletin should not be interpreted as a significant change in how our products should be used. The recommendations should be viewed as best practices that mitigate risk management issues resulting in more effective deployments while maximising safety considerations such as avoiding face, neck, and chest/breast shots.”

In the US, Taser was recently ordered to pay $5m (£3.3m) to the family of 17-year-old Darryl Turner, who died in 2008 after being shot by police with a Taser.

The lawyer in that case, John Burton, from Pasedena, California, said that by aiming for the chest, UK police were being irresponsible.

“This is just so irresponsible. I’m shocked to hear this,” Burton said. “If UK cops are shooting people in the chest it just shows that they just don’t take things seriously.”

Sophie Khan, a UK solicitor who specialises in Taser cases, said Taser’s guidance “is meant to be there to protect the public and the police from civil claims”.

She added: “From what I see people are being shot in the chest and stomach, when they don’t even need to be Tasered in the first place, that’s what’s happened.”

Shiv Malik and Charlie Mole
The Guardian, Sunday 14 July 2013 19.43 BST

Find this story at 14 July 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies

A woman arrives with flowers at the scene in Gorton, Manchester, where a man was shot with a Taser and later died. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

A man has died after police shot him with a Taser, Greater Manchester police have said.

The 23-year-old was said to have suffered a “medical episode” and died after police fired at him with the stun gun.

Officers were responding to a disturbance at around 8.15pm on Wednesday in Gorton, Manchester, when they used the Taser while detaining the man.

The police force has referred the case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan said: “Police received a 999 call reporting a disturbance on Beard Road in Gorton where there was a man with a knife.

“Officers were dispatched immediately and arrived in eight minutes. On arrival a Taser was discharged to detain a 23-year-old man.

“At this time it is unclear what happened, but at some point afterwards the man suffered a medical episode.

“Paramedics performed first aid on the man at the scene before he was taken to hospital where he sadly died.”

The death had been referred to the local coroner and police family liaison officers were supporting the family, police said.

Press Association
theguardian.com, Thursday 11 July 2013 06.50 BST

Find this story at 11 July 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

A SECRET email reveals that intelligence chiefs were told that Omagh was a prime target for a terrorist attack – weeks before the Real IRA bomb that devastated the town.
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The communique from FBI spy David Rupert warned that dissident republicans were in the final stages of planning a major attack, and identified Omagh as a likely target.

The confidential memo now forms a key part of a report commissioned by victims’ families who are campaigning for a full public inquiry into the atrocity. Relatives claim the dossier proves that authorities failed to share vital intelligence, which they say could have prevented the bombing.

Although the report was presented to the British and Irish governments more than a year ago, the families have not been told if an inquiry will be held.

The victims’ relatives said they would go to court if their calls are rejected. It is understood that legal action could begin within weeks.

Michael Gallagher (pictured), who lost his son Aidan in the 1998 massacre, said the lack of answers from the governments was prolonging the families’ agony. The families were particularly critical of Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Justice Minister Alan Shatter.

INFORMANT

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice in Dublin said Mr Shatter is still considering the report, presented to him by the group in July 2012.

The report draws on 4,000 emails from Mr Rupert, an American informant who infiltrated the Real IRA and Continuity IRA, and his MI5 handler. The huge tranche of emails are understood to provide detail on potential planning, locations and personnel for an attack in the weeks leading up to August 1998.

One of the emails identifies Omagh as being one of two likely targets. The note is marked secret and dated April 11, 1998 – four months before the bombing – and was sent by Mr Rupert to his handlers.

“Derry or Omagh would be 2 suspect viable targets,” it states.

Speaking in Omagh yesterday, Mr Gallagher said he was startled by the correspondence.

“We feel there was an enormous amount of intelligence available – that intelligence was not used properly. As a result of that we have had no convictions,” he said. He said that if a decision wasn’t made, or their calls were rejected, the families would launch legal action.

Adrian Rutherford – 09 August 2013

Find this story at 9 August 2013

© Independent.ie

In death, Seamus McKenna is an unlikely hero, a man who, according to the dissident Republican Network for Unity, had nobly spent his life “confronting partition and British rule in Ireland” and a man worthy of a paramilitary funeral this month.

In reality, his life was, by McKenna’s own admission, “a largely unhappy existence”. Not only was he very strongly suspected of driving the car bomb into Omagh that led to the deaths of 29 people and two unborn children in 1998, he was also a chronic alcoholic and a lonely, isolated man incapable of holding down work for more than a few weeks at a time.

I got to know him very well over the last two years. As an attorney in New York, I had discussed with some wealthy Irish-Americans the possibility of McKenna giving evidence against one of the accused in the Omagh case – the last-gasp attempt to finally win some convictions in the worst atrocity of the Troubles.

I first tracked him down to Simon Community-supported housing in Dundalk, where he had been living after splitting with his wife Catherine. I left a note under his door and he called me several hours later. In the window, I could see a pair of pants and a crinkled shirt drying in the living room and an empty can of beans and an unwashed plate on the table. Several of the men in nearby accommodation were long-term alcoholics who, like McKenna, would be homeless without subsidised housing.

I met him the next day, New Year’s Day 2011, at a Chinese restaurant in Dundalk.

He was wearing the khaki pants and chequered shirt that had been hanging in his living room and was wearing a smart pair of glasses. He looked nothing like his post-Omagh mugshot, when he was dragged into a police station still dressed in a building site woolly jumper and with unkempt, hopelessly outdated Seventies-style sideburns.

Over a meal, McKenna asked me why I had come all the way from America to see him. I said that I and many other people would be willing to help him out if he was willing to give evidence.

“About what?” “About events 13 years ago,” I said. “Events 13 years ago” needed no further explanation. “Ah … no, I don’t think I could do that,” he said, but added that he was willing to listen.

He was so nervous about any mention of the word “Omagh” that his hand would jitter and he would stumble to take a swig of his drink, so we used alternative phrases like “the thing that happened” or, as he preferred, “the civil action”. (He was the only one not found liable in a civil action taken by victims’ families against five of the bombers – the others included McKenna’s building company boss Colm Murphy and his workmate Seamus Daly.)

He told me that, as a result of the bombing, he had been barred, at least temporarily, from many of the pubs in Dundalk. “But not this one,” he said with pride, referring to the pub to which we had walked after our meal, as he ordered yet another pint of the Dutch lager he loved because, so he claimed, it gave a less severe hangover than Harp.

When he drank, he would open his mouth fully to meet the pint glass and take in a giant mouthful between his lips. If too much went in, he would blow some back into the glass before wiping his mouth and look at me through bleary, worn eyes.

He said that he could not give evidence on Omagh because it had taken him so long to rebuild a relationship with his family. I asked if his concern was security for his family or loss of esteem in their eyes.

“Loss of esteem,” he said bluntly. “I would give everything I have to bring my father back to life, I don’t want to lose my son.”

Although largely isolated, he found company in animals. His neighbour said McKenna left out bread for the wild birds in the winter and took great satisfaction in watching them eat it. “Sure who else would feed them?” McKenna said to me once.

Just when I was starting to enjoy his conversation, the depravity of Omagh would come back to mind. He had a habit of sitting sideways as he drank, and as he lifted his pint, it occurred to me that the hand in front of me is the one that allegedly changed the gears in a stolen Vauxhall that exploded in Omagh, killing the son of my friend Michael Gallagher, destroying three generations of the Grimes family, leaving Liz Gibson without a sister and permanently blinding Claire Gallagher, a talented young pianist.

“What do you think of the Omagh bombing?” I once asked in a pub in Dundalk in May 2011. “Do you think, like Padraig Pearse, that the blood of the people has to flow or do you think it was an atrocity?”

“I think it was a terrible thing,” he said. “But having said that, I would like to see British soldiers shot dead and I’d like to be the one pulling the trigger.”

“To what end?” I asked. “What better society can be created by killing more soldiers?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but like I say, I’d like to be the one pulling the trigger.”

So much of his limited self-esteem was caught up in the republican cause that it was impossible for him to let go, and after a split in the Continuity IRA, he sided with the more militant Oglaigh na hEireann.

He wasn’t a boaster or a hard man like some IRA members, but he enjoyed a certain menace. “If you had approached me like this 10 years ago, you’d have been shot,” he told me over and over until I told him to shut up and deal with the present reality of his life.

When he was drinking, he made clumsy, pathetic moves on women. At closing time one night, the barmaid opened the door to let us out. “Ah, pet you’re great,” said McKenna, giving her a huge hug and refusing to let go, while pushing his body as close as possible to hers. She looked over her shoulder and grimaced at me. I told him we had to go. “Good girl,” said McKenna. “Good girl,” repeating it until I gripped his arm. “Jesus, great knockers,” he said to me as explanation for this excruciating scene.

The next morning, instead of joining my girlfriend and me at a local cafe for breakfast, he was already in the pub.

“Ye carry on, come over to the pub after,” he said. When we got there at 11am, he was already drunk, and leering all over my girlfriend, breaking off conversation with me to stare at her buttocks when she went up to the bar. He then asked her to come to his house to see “my wee dog. You’d like him. Come to my house any time,” he said, while wiping lager from his lips.

Despite the international outrage over Omagh, he soon got over his six-month-long self-pitying bender and was back building car bombs. In 2003, he was caught red-handed with some of the other suspects building a 1,000lb car bomb – twice the size of the Omagh bomb.

He found himself in Portlaoise jail with his old boss, Colm Murphy, who was in on unrelated charges and whom he found “quiet and very withdrawn, a bit odd really”.

Although he liked Murphy, he had nothing but disdain for Liam Campbell, the officer commanding of the Real IRA and the man who allegedly made the last of the vague warning calls on the day of the Omagh bombing. Campbell blamed McKenna for giving unclear details of the car’s locations to the rest of the bomb team. I asked McKenna directly why he didn’t like Campbell. “Why do you think?” he said bluntly.

Most upsetting for McKenna, and the other disaffected foot soldiers of the dissident terror groups, was the Criminal Assets Bureau investigation into Campbell, which revealed that he had more than €800,000 in the bank, a network of other payments to close associates, and at least five properties. (Not to mention 96 magnums of champagne found in his cow shed.)

“And we had nothing,” said McKenna. He said that he and now deceased Omagh suspect, Kevin ‘Kiddo’ Murray, and even Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt, realised too late that Campbell was using the Provisional IRA, and then the Real IRA, to disrupt security services along the border while he creamed off vast profits from smuggling. Their phoney war, which led to the deaths of so many innocent people, had been a giant scam.

McKenna admitted it one night, when he was preparing to walk to his sad little apartment. He could not afford a taxi and could only stagger home. “Campbell did us all in,” he said through sad eyes. “And we have nothing left. Nothing at all.”

By Sean O’Driscoll – 29 July 2013

Find this story at 29 July 2013

© www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Security forces had two agents in the Real IRA but did not share that information with Northern Ireland officers, report claims

The Omagh Support and Self Help Group report focuses on the role of two state agents who infiltrated the Real IRA. Photograph: Mike Mahoney/Reuters

MI5, the FBI and Garda special branch “starved” police in Northern Ireland of vital intelligence that could have prevented the Real IRA bomb that killed 29 people at Omagh in 1998, a damning new report on the atrocity concludes.

The investigation, commissioned by families of the Omagh victims, will show evidence that they claim proves that information from two key informers inside the Real IRA – one in the United States, the other in the Irish Republic – was not passed on to the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The Omagh bomb was the single biggest atrocity of the Northern Ireland Troubles. No one has been convicted in a criminal court in connection with the bombing in the County Tyrone market town.

Ahead of the publication of the report in Omagh, the father of Aidan Gallagher, a young man killed in the blast, said access to new intelligence files proved that the FBI, the security services and the Garda’s crime and security branch (the Republic of Ireland’s main anti-terrorist unit) all withheld vital information.

Michael Gallagher, who has campaigned since the atrocity for a cross-border public inquiry, said: “All good policing is based on intelligence, especially prior intelligence before any criminal act is committed. In the case of the events running up to the Omagh bomb, it is now clear that the police in the north were starved of information. The security forces in America, Britain and the Republic had two key agents inside the Real IRA but did not share the information they were providing to the police in Northern Ireland.”

The Omagh Support and Self Help Group also demanded an inquiry into the explosion.

“There has been no full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Omagh bomb. The inquest did not inquire into the intelligence, the criminal prosecutions did not lead to any convictions, and the civil action did not deal with the issue of preventability. The police investigation has been heavily criticised and the report highlights such concerns that the states [UK and Ireland] must now establish a full cross-border public inquiry,” a spokesperson for the group said, adding that failure to do so would be a failure to comply with obligations under article 2(1) and article 3 of the European convention on human rights.

“This report is compiled from a significant amount of information some of a sensitive nature which has come into the possession of the families,” the spokesperson said.

The report, compiled by London law firm SBP, aided by several retired security experts, focuses on the role of two state agents who infiltrated the Real IRA. They were David Rupert, an American who was run by the FBI, and Paddy Dixon, a convicted criminal who procured cars in the Irish Republic for the Real IRA for transporting car bombs into Northern Ireland throughout 1998.

Rupert arrived in Ireland in the mid 1990s and offered his services first to the Continuity IRA and later the Real IRA. The 6ft 5in, 20-stone bankrupt businessman with links to Irish Americans had been targeted by the FBI as a potential agent.

By the summer of 1997, Rupert became involved with British intelligence. An FBI agent took him to a hotel in central London, where he was introduced to an MI5 officer who called himself Norman.

Norman advised Rupert not to pass all his information to the Gardai and provided him with a PO box address and a secret contact phone number.

MI5 urged him to offer intelligence to the Continuity IRA about British army and police bases in Northern Ireland. Posing as American tourists awe-struck by the security installations, Rupert and his wife would stop at border crossing points such as Aughnacloy and take pictures and videos of themselves. According to the Omagh Self Help and Support group new intelligence files indicate Rupert was also aiding the Real IRA, including sending bomb component parts from America. It was Rupert’s testimony that helped convict the Real IRA founder Mickey McKevitt of organising acts of terrorism in 2003.

Dixon provided intelligence to a Garda handler on the Real IRA throughout 1998. He had a long-standing connection with a republican in south Co Dublin known as the Long Fellow. His handler suggested – under orders from senior Garda command – that his old agent reactivate his relationship with the Long Fellow, who owned a breaker’s yard in south Dublin where Dixon’s stolen cars were replaced and huge explosive devices were secreted inside the vehicles.

Over the next seven months Dixon would give the Garda vital insight into the Real IRA terror machine. Between February and August 1998 Dixon gave the Irish police force inside information on at least nine separate Real IRA attacks culminating in the bomb at Omagh.

The Omagh families claim the “starving of intelligence” coming from Rupert and Dixon was designed to bolster the pair’s credibility in the Real IRA’s eyes. However, the Omagh campaigners claim the new report will show that this was a lethal error of judgment in relation to the terror group’s final and most catastrophic attack in 1998.

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday 8 August 2013

Find this story at 8 August 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Documents Provide New Details on Mosaddeq Overthrow and Its Aftermath
National Security Archive Calls for Release of Remaining Classified Record
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 435

Decades of Delay Questioning CIA Rationales

Have the British Been Meddling with the FRUS Retrospective Volume on 1953?
Foreign Office Worried over “Very Embarrassing” Revelations, Documents Show

The United Kingdom sought to expunge “very embarrassing” information about its role in the 1953 coup in Iran from the official U.S. history of the period, British documents confirm. The Foreign Office feared that a planned State Department publication would undermine U.K. standing in Iran, according to declassified records posted on the National Security Archive’s Web site today.

The British censorship attempt happened in 1978, but London’s concerns may play a role even today in holding up the State Department’s long-awaited history – even though U.S. law required its publication years ago.

The declassified documents, from the Foreign Office (Foreign and Commonwealth Office since 1968), shed light on a protracted controversy over crucial gaps in the State Department’s authoritative Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The blank spots on Iran involve the CIA- and MI6-backed plot to overthrow the country’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. Six decades after his ouster, some signs point to the CIA as the culprit for refusing to allow basic details about the event to be incorporated into the FRUS compilation.[1]

Recently, the CIA has declassified a number of records relating to the 1953 coup, including a version of an internal history that specifically states the agency planned and helped implement the coup. (The National Security Archive obtained the documents through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.) This suggests that ongoing CIA inflexibility over the FRUS volume is not so much a function of the agency’s worries about its own role being exposed as a function of its desire to protect lingering British sensitivities about 1953 – especially regarding the activities of U.K. intelligence services. There is also evidence that State Department officials have been just as anxious to shield British interests over the years.

Regardless of the reasons for this continued secrecy, an unfortunate consequence of withholding these materials is to guarantee that American (and world) public understanding of this pivotal episode will remain distorted. Another effect is to keep the issue alive in the political arena, where it is regularly exploited by circles in Iran opposed to constructive ties with the United States.

Background on FRUS and the Mosaddeq Period

By statute, the FRUS series is required to present “a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record” of American foreign policy.[2] That law came about partly as a consequence of the failure of the original volume covering the Mosaddeq period (published in 1989) to mention the U.S. role in his overthrow. The reaction of the scholarly community and interested public was outrage. Prominent historian Bruce Kuniholm, a former member of State’s Policy Planning Staff, called the volume “a fraud.”[3]

The full story of the scandal has been detailed elsewhere,[4] but most observers blamed the omission on the intelligence community (IC) for refusing to open its relevant files. In fact, the IC was not alone. Senior Department officials joined in opposing requests for access to particular classified records by the Historical Advisory Committee (HAC), the group of independent scholars charged with advising the Department’s own Office of the Historian.[5] The head of the HAC, Warren Cohen, resigned in protest in 1990 citing his inability to ensure the integrity of the FRUS series. Congress became involved and, in a display of bipartisanship that would be stunning today (Democratic Senator Daniel P. Moynihan getting Republican Jesse Helms to collaborate), lawmakers passed a bill to prevent similar historical distortions. As Cohen and others pointed out, while Moscow was disgorging its scandalous Cold War secrets, Washington was taking a distinctly Soviet approach to its own history.[6]

By 1998, State’s historians and the HAC had decided to produce a “retrospective” volume on the Iran coup that would help to correct the record. They planned other volumes to cover additional previously airbrushed covert activities (in Guatemala, the Congo, etc.). It was a promising step, yet 15 years later, while a couple of publications have materialized, several others have not – including the Iran volume.[7]

Institutional Delays

A review of the available minutes of HAC meetings makes it apparent that over the past decade multiple policy, bureaucratic, and logistical hurdles have interfered with progress. Some of these are routine, even inevitable – from the complications of multi-agency coordination to frequent personnel changes. Others are more specific to the realm of intelligence, notably a deep-seated uneasiness in parts of the CIA over the notion of unveiling putative secrets.

In the Fall of 2001, an ominous development for the HO gave a sense of where much of the power lay in its relationship with the CIA. According to notes of a public HAC meeting in October 2001, the CIA, on instructions from the Director of Central Intelligence, decided unilaterally “that there could be no new business” regarding FRUS until the two sides signed an MOU. Agency officials said the document would address legitimate IC concerns; HAC members worried it would mainly boost CIA control over the series. The agency specifically held up action on four volumes to make its point, while HAC historians countered that the volumes were being “held hostage” and the HO was being forced to work “under the threat of ‘blackmail’.”[8]

The CIA held firm and an agreement emerged in May 2002 that, at least from available information, appears to bend over backwards to give the IC extraordinary safeguards without offering much reassurance about key HO interests. For instance, the MOU states that the CIA must “meet HO’s statutory requirement” – hardly something that seems necessary to spell out. At the same time, it allows the CIA to review materials not once, but again even after a manuscript has passed through formal declassification, and once more after it is otherwise in final form and ready for printing. In the context of the disputed Iran volume, HAC members worried about the “random” nature of these provisions which gave the agency “a second bite at the apple.”[9] The implication is that the CIA will feel little obligation to help meet the HO’s legal requirement if it believes its own “equities” are at stake. (This of course may still affect the Iran volume, currently scheduled for 2014 publication.)

Is It the British?

As mentioned, the CIA has begun to release documentation in recent years making explicit its connection to the Mosaddeq overthrow. Even earlier, by 2002, the State Department and CIA jointly began compiling an Iran retrospective volume. These are not signs of a fundamental institutional unwillingness to publish American materials on the coup (although parts of the CIA continued to resist the notion). The HO even tried at least twice previously to organize a joint project with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Iran, but the idea evidently went nowhere.[10]

In 2004, two years later, the State Department’s designated historian finished compiling the volume. According to that historian, he included a number of records obtained from research at the then-Public Record Office in London. Among his findings was “material that documents the British role.” He added that he had also located State Department records “that illustrate the British role.”[11] By no later than June 2006, the Iran volume had entered the declassification queue. At the June 2006 HAC session, CIA representatives said “they believed the committee would be satisfied with the [declassification] reviews.”

Up to that point, the agency’s signals seemed generally positive about the prospects of making public previously closed materials. But in the six years since, no Iran volume has emerged. Even State’s committee of historians apparently has never gotten a satisfactory explanation as to why.[12]

When the IC withholds records, “sources and methods” are often the excuse. The CIA is loath to release anything it believes would reveal how the agency conducts its activities. (For many years, the CIA kept secret the fact that it used balloons to drop leaflets over Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and would not confirm or deny whether it compiled biographical sketches of Communist leaders.) On the other hand, clandestine operations have been named in more than 20 other FRUS publications.[13] One of these was the retrospective volume on PBSUCCESS, the controversial overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Furthermore, the agency has released troubling materials such as assassination manuals that demonstrate how to murder political opponents using anything from “edge weapons” to “bare hands.” In 2007, in response to a 15-year-old National Security Archive FOIA request, the CIA finally released its file of “family jewels” detailing an assortment of infamous activities. from planning to poison foreign leaders to conducting illegal surveillance on American journalists.

If the agency felt it could part with such high-profile sources and methods information, along with deeply embarrassing revelations about itself, why not in the Iran case? Perhaps the British are just saying no, and their American counterparts are quietly going along.

State Department Early Warning – 1978

The FCO documents in this posting (Documents 22-35) strongly support this conclusion. Theytell a fascinating story of transatlantic cooperation and diplomatic concern at a turbulent time. It was a State Department official who first alerted the FCO to plans by the Department’s historians to publish an official account of the 1953 coup period. The Department’s Iran expert warned that the records could have “possibly damaging consequences” not only for London but for the Shah of Iran, who was fighting for survival as he had 25 years earlier (Document 22). Two days later, FCO officials began to pass the message up the line that “very embarrassing things about the British” were likely to be in the upcoming FRUS compilation (Document 23). FCO officials reported that officers on both the Iran and Britain desks at State were prepared to help keep those materials out of the public domain, at least for the time being (Document 33). Almost 35 years later, those records are still inaccessible.

The British government’s apparent unwillingness to acknowledge what the world already knows is difficult for most outsiders to understand. It becomes positively baffling when senior public figures who are fully aware of the history have already acknowledged London’s role. In 2009, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw publicly remarked on Britain’s part in toppling Mosaddeq, which he categorized as one of many outside “interferences” in Iranian affairs in the last century.[14] Yet, present indications are that the U.K. government is not prepared to release either its own files or evidently to approve the opening of American records that might help bring some degree of closure to this protracted historic – and historiographical – episode.

(Jump to the British documents)

NOTES

[1] A recent article drawing attention to the controversy is Stephen R. Weissman, “Why is U.S. Withholding Old Documents on Covert Ops in Congo, Iran?” The Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 2011. ( http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0325/Why-is-US-withholding-old-documents-on-covert-ops-in-Congo-Iran )

[2] Section 198, Public Law 102-138.

[3] Bruce Kuniholm, “Foreign Relations, Public Relations, Accountability, and Understanding,” American Historical Association, Perspectives, May-June 1990.

[4] In addition to the Kuniholm and Weissman items cited above, see also Stephen R. Weissman, “Censoring American Diplomatic History,” American Historical Association, Perspectives on History, September 2011.

[5] Joshua Botts, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, “‘A Burden for the Department’?: To The 1991 FRUS Statute,” February 6, 2012, http://history.state.gov/frus150/research/to-the-1991-frus-statute.

[6] Editorial, “History Bleached at State,” The New York Times, May 16, 1990.

[7] Retrospective compilations on Guatemala (2003) and the intelligence community (2007) during the 1950s have appeared; collections on the Congo and Chile are among those that have not.

[8] HAC minutes, October 15-16, 2001, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/october-2001.

[9] HAC minutes, July 22-23, 2002, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2002; and December 14-15, 2009, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/december-2009.

[10] HAC minutes, July 22-23, 2002, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2002.

[11]HAC minutes, March 6-7, 2006, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/march-2006.

[12] See HAC minutes for July 12-13, 2004, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2004; September 20-21, 2004, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/september-2004; September 8-9, 2008, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/september-2008; for example.

[13] Comments of then-FRUS series editor Edward Keefer at the February 26-27, 2007, HAC meeting, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/february-2007.

[14] Quoted in Souren Melikian, “Show Ignores Essential Questions about Iranian King’s Role,” The International Herald Tribune, February 21, 2009.

Washington, D.C., August 19, 2013 – Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently declassified CIA documents on the United States’ role in the controversial operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq’s ouster has long been public knowledge, but today’s posting includes what is believed to be the CIA’s first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup.

The explicit reference to the CIA’s role appears in a copy of an internal history, The Battle for Iran, dating from the mid-1970s. The agency released a heavily excised version of the account in 1981 in response to an ACLU lawsuit, but it blacked out all references to TPAJAX, the code name for the U.S.-led operation. Those references appear in the latest release. Additional CIA materials posted today include working files from Kermit Roosevelt, the senior CIA officer on the ground in Iran during the coup. They provide new specifics as well as insights into the intelligence agency’s actions before and after the operation.
This map shows the disposition of bands of “ruffians,” paid to demonstrate by coup organizers, early on August 19, 1953. The bands gathered in the bazaar and other sections of southern Tehran, then moved north through the capital. Thug leaders’ names appear at left, along with the estimated size of their groups, and their targets. (Courtesy of Ali Rahnema, author of the forthcoming Thugs, Turn-coats, Soldiers, Spooks: Anatomy of Overthrowing Mosaddeq in Four Days.)

The 1953 coup remains a topic of global interest because so much about it is still under intense debate. Even fundamental questions — who hatched the plot, who ultimately carried it out, who supported it inside Iran, and how did it succeed — are in dispute.[1]

The issue is more than academic. Political partisans on all sides, including the Iranian government, regularly invoke the coup to argue whether Iran or foreign powers are primarily responsible for the country’s historical trajectory, whether the United States can be trusted to respect Iran’s sovereignty, or whether Washington needs to apologize for its prior interference before better relations can occur.
Pro-Shah police, military units and undercover agents became engaged in the coup starting mid-morning August 19. (Courtesy of Ali Rahnema, author of the forthcoming Thugs, Turn-coats, Soldiers, Spooks: Anatomy of Overthrowing Mosaddeq in Four Days.)

Also, the public release of these materials is noteworthy because CIA documents about 1953 are rare. First of all, agency officials have stated that most of the records on the coup were either lost or destroyed in the early 1960s, allegedly because the record-holders’ “safes were too full.”[2]

Regarding public access to any remaining files (reportedly about one cubic foot of material), the intelligence community’s standard procedure for decades has been to assert a blanket denial. This is in spite of commitments made two decades ago by three separate CIA directors. Robert M. Gates, R. James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch each vowed to open up agency historical files on a number of Cold War-era covert operations, including Iran, as a sign of the CIA’s purported new policy of openness after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.[3]
Tanks played a critical role on August 19, with pro-Shah forces gaining control of some 24 of them from the military during the course of the day. (Courtesy of Ali Rahnema, author of the forthcoming Thugs, Turn-coats, Soldiers, Spooks: Anatomy of Overthrowing Mosaddeq in Four Days.)

A clear sign that their pledge would not be honored in practice came after the National Security Archive filed a lawsuit in 1999 for a well-known internal CIA narrative about the coup. One of the operation’s planners, Donald N. Wilber, prepared the account less than a year later. The CIA agreed to release just a single sentence out of the 200-page report.

Despite the appearance of countless published accounts about the operation over the years – including Kermit Roosevelt’s own detailed memoir, and the subsequent leak to The New York Times of the 200-page CIA narrative history[4] — intelligence agencies typically refused to budge. They have insisted on making a distinction between publicly available information on U.S. activities from non-government sources and official acknowledgement of those activities, even several decades after the fact.
Anti-Mosaddeq armed forces converged on his house (left side of map) beginning around 4:00 pm, eventually forcing him to escape over a garden wall before his house was destroyed. By then, Zahedi had already addressed the nation from the Radio Transmission Station. (Courtesy of Ali Rahnema, author of the forthcoming Thugs, Turn-coats, Soldiers, Spooks: Anatomy of Overthrowing Mosaddeq in Four Days.)

While the National Security Archive applauds the CIA’s decision to make these materials available, today’s posting shows clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of damage to the national security. (See sidebar, “Why is the Coup Still a Secret?”)

Archive Deputy Director Malcolm Byrne called for the U.S. intelligence community to make fully available the remaining records on the coup period. “There is no longer good reason to keep secrets about such a critical episode in our recent past. The basic facts are widely known to every school child in Iran. Suppressing the details only distorts the history, and feeds into myth-making on all sides.”

To supplement the recent CIA release, the National Security Archive is including two other, previously available internal accounts of the coup. One is the narrative referred to above: a 1954 Clandestine Services History prepared by Donald N. Wilber, one of the operation’s chief architects, which The New York Times obtained by a leak and first posted on its site in April 2000.

The other item is a heavily excised 1998 piece — “Zendebad, Shah!” — by an in-house CIA historian. (The Archive has asked the CIA to re-review the document’s excessive deletions for future release.)

The posting also features an earlier declassification of The Battle for Iran for purposes of comparison with the latest release. The earlier version includes portions that were withheld in the later release. As often happens, government classification officials had quite different — sometimes seemingly arbitrary — views about what could and could not be safely made public.

Read together, the three histories offer fascinating variations in perspective — from an agency operative to two in-house historians (the last being the most dispassionate). Unfortunately, they still leave wide gaps in the history, including on some fundamental questions which may never be satisfactorily answered — such as how to apportion responsibility for planning and carrying out the coup among all the Iranian and outside actors involved.

But all 21 of the CIA items posted today (in addition to 14 previously unpublished British documents — see Sidebar), reinforce the conclusion that the United States, and the CIA in particular, devoted extensive resources and high-level policy attention toward bringing about Mosaddeq’s overthrow, and smoothing over the aftermath.

DOCUMENTS

CIA Records

CIA Internal Histories

Document 1 (Cover Sheet, Summary, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, Appendix D, Appendix E): CIA, Clandestine Services History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran: November 1952 – August 1953, Dr. Donald N. Wilber, March 1954

Source: The New York Times

Donald Wilber was a principal planner of the initial joint U.S.-U.K. coup attempt of August 1953. This 200-page account is one of the most valuable remaining records describing the event because Wilber wrote it within months of the overthrow and provided a great deal of detail. Like any historical document, it must be read with care, taking into account the author’s personal perspective, purpose in writing it, and audience. The CIA routinely prepared histories of important operations for use by future operatives. They were not intended to be made public.

Document 2: CIA, Summary, “Campaign to Install a Pro-Western Government in Iran,” draft of internal history of the coup, undated

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

This heavily excised summary was almost certainly prepared in connection with Donald Wilber’s Clandestine Services History (Document 1). By all indications written not long after the coup (1953-54), it includes several of the phrases Wilber used — “quasi-legal,” and “war of nerves,” for example. The text clearly gives the impression that the author attributes the coup’s eventual success to a combination of external and internal developments. Beginning by listing a number of specific steps taken by the U.S. under the heading “CIA ACTION,” the document notes at the end (in a handwritten edit): “These actions resulted in literal revolt of the population, [1+ lines excised]. The military and security forces joined the populace, Radio Tehran was taken over, and Mossadeq was forced to flee on 17 [sic] Aug 53.”

Document 3 a & b: CIA, History, The Battle for Iran, author’s name excised, undated (c. mid-1970s) – (Two versions – declassified in 1981 and 2011)

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

This posting provides two separate releases of the same document, declassified 30 years apart (1981 and 2011). Each version contains portions excised in the other. Though no date is given, judging from citations in the footnotes The Battle for Iran was written in or after 1974. It is marked “Administrative – Working Paper” and contains a number of handwritten edits. The author was a member of the CIA’s History Staff who acknowledges “the enthusiastic cooperation” of the agency’s Directorate of Operations. The author provides confirmation that most of the relevant files were destroyed in 1962; therefore the account relies on the relatively few remaining records as well as on public sources. The vast majority of the covert action portion (Section III) remains classified, although the most recent declassification of the document leaves in some brief, but important, passages. An unexpected feature of the document (Appendix C) is the inclusion of a series of lengthy excerpts of published accounts of the overthrow designed, apparently, to underscore how poorly the public understood the episode at the time.

Document 4: CIA, History, “Zendebad, Shah!”: The Central Intelligence Agency and the Fall of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, August 1953, Scott A. Koch, June 1998

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

The most recent known internal history of the coup, “Zendebad, Shah!” was written by an in-house agency historian in 1998. It is heavily excised (but currently undergoing re-review by the CIA), with virtually all paragraphs marked Confidential or higher omitted from the public version. Still, it is a useful account written by someone without a stake in the events and drawing on an array of U.S. government and published sources not available to the earlier CIA authors.

CIA Records Immediately Before and After the Coup

Document 5: CIA, memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], July 14, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Kermit Roosevelt conveys information about rapidly unfolding events in Tehran, including Mosaddeq’s idea for a referendum on his remaining in office, the prospect of his closing the Majles, and most importantly the impact President Eisenhower’s recent letter has had in turning society against the prime minister. The U.S. government publicized Eisenhower’s undiplomatic letter turning down Mosaddeq’s request for financial aid. The move was one of the ways Washington hoped to weaken his political standing.

Document 6: CIA, memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], July 15, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Responding to the resignation of Mosaddeq supporters from the Majles, Kermit Roosevelt fires off a plan to ensure that other Majles members keep the parliament functioning, the eventual goal being to engineer a no-confidence in Mosaddeq. The memo provides an interesting clue on the subject of whether CIA operatives ever bought votes in the Majles, about which other CIA sources are vague. Roosevelt urges that as many deputies as possible be “persuaded” to take bast in the parliament. “Recognize will be necessary expend money this purpose and determine precisely who does what.” At the conclusion of the document he appears to tie this scheme into the previously elaborated — but clearly evolving — coup plan.

Document 7: CIA, memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], July 16, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Roosevelt reports on developing plans involving Fazlollah Zahedi, the man who has been chosen to replace Mosaddeq. CIA sources, including the Wilber history, indicate that the military aspects of the plan were to be largely Zahedi’s responsibility. This memo supports that (even though many details are excised), but also provides some insight into the differences in expectations between the Americans and Zahedi. With some skepticism (“Zahedi claims …”), Roosevelt spells out a series of events Zahedi envisions that presumably would bring him to the premiership, albeit in a very round-about way. His thinking is clearly prompted by his declared unwillingness to commit “‘political suicide’ by extra-legal move.”

Document 8: CIA, memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], July 17, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

The CIA’s Tehran station reports on the recent resignations of independent and opposition Majles members. The idea, an opposition deputy tells the station, was to avert Mosaddeq’s planned public referendum. The memo gives a bit of insight into the fluidity and uncertainty of developments with each faction undoubtedly elaborating their own strategies and tactics to a certain degree.

Document 9: CIA, note to Mr. [John] Waller, July 22, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

This brief note conveys much about both U.S. planning and hopes for Mosaddeq’s overthrow. It is a request from Kermit Roosevelt to John Waller and Donald Wilber to make sure that a formal U.S. statement is ready in advance of “a ‘successful’ coup.” (See Document 10)

Document 10: CIA, note forwarding proposed text of State Department release for after the coup, August 5, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

This draft text from the State Department appears to be a result of Roosevelt’s request (Document 9) to have an official statement available for use after completion of the operation. The draft predates Mosaddeq’s ouster by two weeks, but its language — crediting “the Iranian people, under the leadership of their Shah,” for the coup — tracks precisely with the neutral wording used by both the State Department and Foreign Office in their official paperwork after the fact.

Document 11: CIA, Memo, “Proposed Commendation for Communications Personnel who have serviced the TPAJAX Operation,” Frank G. Wisner to The Acting Director of Central Intelligence, August 20, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Wisner recommends a special commendation for the work performed by the communications specialists who kept CIA headquarters in contact with operatives in Iran throughout the coup period. “I am sure that you are aware of the exceptionally heavy volume of traffic which this operation has necessitated,” Wisner writes — an unintentionally poignant remark given how little of that documentation has survived.

Document 12: CIA, Memo, “Commendation,” Frank G. Wisner to CNEA Division, August 26, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Wisner also requests a commendation for John Waller, the coup overseer at CIA headquarters, “for his work in TPAJAX.” Waller’s conduct “in no small measure, contributed to the successful result.”

Document 13: CIA, “Letter of Commendation [Excised],” author and recipient names excised, August 26, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Evidently after reflection, Frank Wisner concludes that there are troubling “security implications” involved in providing a letter of commendation for a covert operation.

Document 14: CIA, Memo, “Anti-Tudeh Activities of Zahedi Government,” author’s name excised, September 10, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

A priority of the Zahedi government after the coup was to go after the Tudeh Party, which had been a mainstay of support for Mosaddeq, even if the relationship was mostly one of mutual convenience. This is one of several memos reporting details on numbers of arrests, names of suspected Central Committee members, and planned fate of arrestees. The report claims with high specificity on Soviet assistance being provided to the Tudeh, including printing party newspapers at the embassy. Signs are reportedly mixed as to whether the party and pro-Mosaddeq elements will try to combine forces again.

Document 15: CIA, memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], September 21, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Roosevelt reports on an intense period of political maneuvering at high levels in the Zahedi government. Intrigues, patronage (including a report that the government has been giving financial support to Ayatollah Behbehani, and that the latter’s son is angling for a Cabinet post), and corruption are all dealt with in this memo.

Document 16: CIA, memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], September 24, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

A restless Zahedi is reported to be active on a number of fronts including trying to get a military tribunal to execute Mosaddeq and urging the Shah to fire several senior military officers including Chief of Staff Batmangelich. The Shah reportedly has not responded to Zahedi’s previous five messages.

Document 17: CIA, Memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], October 2, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

According to this account, the Shah remained deeply worried about Mosaddeq’s influence, even while incarcerated. Roosevelt reports the Shah is prepared to execute Mosaddeq (after a guilty verdict that is a foregone conclusion) if his followers and the Tudeh take any threatening action.

Document 18: CIA, Memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], October 9, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Iranian politics did not calm down entirely after the coup, as this memo indicates, reporting on “violent disagreements” between Zahedi and his own supporter, Hoseyn Makki, whom Zahedi threatened to shoot if he accosted any senators trying to attend a Senate session. Roosevelt also notes two recent payments from Zahedi to Ayatollah Behbehani. The source for these provocative reports is unknown, but presumably is named in the excised portion at the top of the memo.

Document 19: CIA, memo from Kermit Roosevelt to [Excised], October 20, 1953

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

Roosevelt notes a meeting between the new prime minister, Zahedi, and Ayatollah Kashani, a politically active cleric and once one of Mosaddeq’s chief supporters. Kashani reportedly carps about some of his former National Front allies. Roosevelt concludes Zahedi wants “split” the front “by wooing Kashani away.”

Document 20: CIA, Propaganda Commentary, “Our National Character,” undated

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

This appears to be an example of CIA propaganda aimed at undermining Mosaddeq’s public standing, presumably prepared during Summer 1953. Like other examples in this posting, the CIA provided no description when it released the document. It certainly fits the pattern of what Donald Wilber and others after him have described about the nature of the CIA’s efforts to plant damaging innuendo in local Iranian media. In this case, the authors extol the virtues of the Iranian character, particularly as admired by the outside world, then decry the descent into “hateful,” “rough” and “rude” behavior Iranians have begun to exhibit “ever since the alliance between the dictator Mossadeq and the Tudeh Party.”

Document 21: CIA, Propaganda Commentary, “Mossadeq’s Spy Service,” undated

Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release

This propaganda piece accuses the prime minister of pretending to be “the savior of Iran” and alleges that he has instead built up a vast spying apparatus which he has trained on virtually every sector of society, from the army to newspapers to political and religious leaders. Stirring up images of his purported alliance with “murderous Qashqai Khans” and the Bolsheviks, the authors charge: “Is this the way you save Iran, Mossadeq? We know what you want to save. You want to save Mossadeq’s dictatorship in Iran!”

British Records

Document 22 : FCO, Summary Record, “British-American Planning Talks, Washington,” October 10-11, 1978

Source: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) FCO 8/3216, File No. P 333/2, Folder, “Iran: Release of Confidential Records,” 1 Jan – 31 Dec 1978 (hereafter: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216)

In October 1978, a delegation of British FCO officials traveled to Washington for two days of discussions and comparing of notes on the world situation with their State Department counterparts. The director of the Department’s Policy Planning Staff, Anthony Lake (later to serve as President Bill Clinton’s national security advisor), led the American side. Other participants were experts from various geographical and functional bureaus, including Henry Precht, the head of the Iran Desk.

Beginning in paragraph 22, Precht gives a dour summary of events in Iran: “the worst foreign policy disaster to hit the West for many years.” In a fascinating back-and-forth about the Shah, Precht warns it is “difficult to see how the Shah could survive.” The British politely disagree, voicing confidence that the monarchy will survive. Even his State Department colleagues “showed surprise at the depth of Mr. Precht’s gloom.”

In the course of his presentation (paragraph 23), Precht notes almost in passing that the State Department is reviewing its records from 1952-1954 for eventual release. A British representative immediately comments that “if that were the case, he hoped HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] would be consulted.”

Document 23: FCO, Minute, B.L. Crowe to R.S. Gorham, “Anglo-American Planning Talks: Iran,” October 12, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

This memo recounts Precht’s dramatic presentation on Iran two days earlier (see previous document). “His was essentially a policy of despair,” the author writes. When the British follow up with the Americans about Precht’s outlook of gloom, they find that State Department and National Security Council (NSC) staff were just as bewildered by his remarks. One NSC staff member calls them “bullshit.” Policy Planning Director Lake laments the various “indiscreet and sensitive things” the Americans said at the meeting, and asks the British to “be very careful” how they handle them.

“On a completely different subject,” the minute continues, “Precht let out … that he was having to go through the records of the 1952/53 Mossadeq period with a view to their release under the Freedom of Information Act [sic]. He said that if released, there would be some very embarrassing things about the British in them.” (Much of this passage is underlined for emphasis.) The note goes on: “I made a strong pitch that we should be consulted,” but the author adds, “I imagine that it is American documents about the British rather than documents on which HMG have any lien which are involved.” (This is a point that may still be at issue today since the question of discussing American documents with foreign governments is very different from negotiating over the use of foreign government records.)

Document 24: FCO, Letter, R.J. Carrick to B.L. Crowe, October 13, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

An FCO official reports that Precht recently approached another British diplomat to say that “he hoped we had not been too shocked” by his recent presentation. He says Precht acknowledged being “over-pessimistic” and that in any event he had not been offering anyone’s view but his own.[5] According to the British, NSC staff members put more stock in the assessments of the U.K. ambassador to Tehran, Sir Anthony Parsons, than in Precht’s. The writer adds that U.S. Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan also shares Parsons’ judgment, and concludes, without indicating a source, that even “Henry Precht has now accepted Sullivan’s view!”

Document 25: FCO, Letter, R.S. Gorham to Mr. Cullimore, “Iran: The Ghotbi Pamphlet and the Mussadeq Period,” October 17, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

This cover note (to Document 24) refers to Precht’s revelation about the impending American publication of documents on the Mosaddeq period. The author suggests giving some consideration to the implications of this for “our own record of the time.”

Document 26: FCO, Letter, B.L. Crowe to Sir A. Duff, “Anglo-American Planning Talks,” October 19, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

FCO official Brian Crowe summarizes the October 10-11 joint U.S.-U.K. talks. The document is included here mainly for the sake of comprehensiveness, since it is part of the FCO folder on the FRUS matter. The writer repeats the remark from State’s Anthony Lake that “some of the comments” from the U.S. side on Iran (among other topics) were “highly sensitive” and should not be disclosed – even to other American officials.

Document 27: FCO, Letter, J.O. Kerr to B.L. Crowe, “Talks with the US Planners: Iran,” October 24, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

This brief note shows that word is moving up the line in the FCO about the forthcoming FRUS volume on Iran. The writer conveys a request to have the U.K. embassy in Washington check the risks involved in the potential release of U.S. documents, and “when the State Department propose to raise them formally with us.”

Document 28: FCO, letter, G.G.H. Walden to B.L. Crowe, “Anglo-American Planning Talks: Iran,” November 10, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

Still more interest in the possible State Department release is reflected in this short note, now a month after the joint U.S.-U.K. talks. Here and elsewhere, the British notes erroneously report that the release will come under the Freedom of Information Act (or the Public Information Act, as given here); they are actually slated for inclusion in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.

Document 29: FCO, R.S. Gorham cover note to Streams, “Iran: Release of Confidential Records,” attaching draft letter to Washington, November 14, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

This note and draft are included primarily because they are part of the FCO file on this topic. However, the draft letter does contain some different wording from the final version (Document 31).

Document 30: U.S. Embassy London, Letter, Ronald I. Spiers to Sir Thomas Brimelow, March 24, 1975

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

Three years before Precht’s revelation to his British counterparts, the U.K. sought general guidance from the State Department about how the U.S. would handle “classified information received from Her Majesty’s Government.” The month before, robust amendments to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act had gone into effect. This letter from the number two official in London at the time, Ronald Spiers, offers a detailed response. Britain’s awareness of the new amendments and anxiousness about their implications (including the fairly abstruse question of how secret documents would be handled in court cases) show how sensitive an issue the British considered protection of their information to be. The U.S. Chargé is equally anxious to provide the necessary reassurances. (More than a decade later, Spiers would sharply oppose efforts by the State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee to gain access to restricted documentation for the FRUS series.[6])

Document 31: FCO, Letter, R.S. Gorham to R.J.S. Muir, “Iran: Release of Confidential Records,” November 16, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

The British embassy in Washington is alerted to the possibility of documents being released on the 1952-54 period. The FCO clearly expects that, as apparently has been the case in the past, “there should be no difficulty for the Americans in first removing … copies of any telegrams etc from us and US documents which record our views, even in the case of papers which are not strictly speaking ‘official information furnished by a foreign government.'” (This raises important questions about how far U.S. officials typically go to accommodate allied sensibilities, including to the point of censoring U.S. documents.) “What is not clear,” the letter continues, “is whether they could withhold American documents which referred to joint Anglo/US views about, say, the removal of Musaddiq in 1953.”

Document 32: British Embassy in Washington, Letter, R.J.S. Muir to R.S. Gorham, “Iran” Release of Confidential Records,” December 14, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

This follow-up to Gorham’s earlier request (Document 31) is another reflection of U.K. skittishness about the pending document release. The embassy officer reports that he has spoken to Henry Precht “several times” about it, and that the British Desk at the State Department is also looking into the matter on London’s behalf. The objective is to persuade the Department to agree to withhold not only British documents but American ones, too.

Document 33: British Embassy in Washington, Letter, R.J.S. Muir to R.S. Gorham, “Iran: Release of Confidential Records,” December 22, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

The embassy updates the FCO on the status of the Iran records. Precht informs the embassy that he is prepared to “sit on the papers” to help postpone their publication. Precht’s priority is the potential impact on current U.S. and U.K. policy toward Iran. Conversely, a historian at the State Department makes it clear that his office feels no obligation even to consult with the British about any non-U.K. documents being considered. The historian goes on to say “that he had in the past resisted requests from other governments for joint consultation and would resist very strongly any such request from us.” But the same historian admits that the embassy might “be successful” if it approached the policy side of the Department directly.

The embassy letter ends with a “footnote” noting that State Department historians “have read the 1952-54 papers and find them a ‘marvelous compilation.'”

Interestingly, a handwritten comment on the letter from another FCO official gives a different view about the likely consequences of the upcoming document publication: “As the revolution [in Iran] is upon us, the problem is no longer Anglo-American: the first revelations will be from the Iranian side.” In other words, the revolution will bring its own damaging results, and the revolutionaries will not need any further ammunition from the West.

Document 34: FCO, Cover Note, Cohen (?) to Lucas, circa December 22, 1978

Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216

In a handwritten remark at the bottom of this cover note, an unidentified FCO official voices much less anxiety than some of his colleagues about the possible repercussions of the disclosure of documents on Iran. Referring to a passage in paragraph 3 of the attached letter (see previous document), the writer asks: “why should we be concerned about ‘any other documents’?” The writer agrees with the cover note author’s suggestion to “let this matter rest for a while,” then continues: “I think we ought positively to seek the agreement of others interested to Y.” (“Y” identifies the relevant passage on the cover note.)

Document 35: FCO, Meeting Record, “Iran: Policy Review,” December 20, 1978

Source : British National Archives, FCO 8/3351, File No. NB P 011/1 (Part A), Title “Internal Political Situation in Iran”

British Foreign Secretary David Owen chairs this FCO meeting on the unfolding crisis in Iran. It offers a window into London’s assessment of the revolution and British concerns for the future (including giving “highest priority to getting paid for our major outstanding debts”). The document also shows that not everyone at the FCO believed significant harm would necessarily come to British interests from the FRUS revelations. Although he is speaking about events in 1978, I.T.M. Lucas’ comment could apply just as forcefully to the impact of disclosing London’s actions in 1953: “[I]t was commonly known in [the Iranian] Government who the British were talking to, and there was nothing we could do to disabuse public opinion of its notions about the British role in Iran.” (p. 2)

NOTES

[1] Just in the last several years, books in English, French and Farsi by Ervand Abrahamian, Gholam-Reza Afkhami, Mohammad Amini, Christopher de Bellaigue, Darioush Bayandor, Mark Gasiorowski (and this author), Stephen Kinzer, Abbas Milani, Ali Rahnema, and others have focused on, or at least dealt in depth with, Mosaddeq and the coup. They contain sometimes wide differences of view about who was behind planning for the overthrow and how it finally played out. More accounts are on the way (including an important English-language volume on Iranian domestic politics by Ali Rahnema of the American University of Paris).

[2] Tim Weiner, “C.I.A. Destroyed Files on 1953 Iran Coup,” The New York Times, May 29, 1997.

[3] Tim Weiner, “C.I.A.’s Openness Derided as a ‘Snow Job’,” The New York Times, May 20, 1997; Tim Weiner, op. cit., May 29, 1997. (See also the link to the Archive’s lawsuit, above.)

[4] Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979); The New York Times, April 16, 2000.

[5] Precht recalls that he was originally not slated to be at the meetings, which usually deputy assistant secretaries and above attended. But the Near East division representative for State was unavailable. “I was drafted,” Precht said. Being forced to “sit through interminable and pointless talk” about extraneous topics “when my plate was already overflowing” on Iran contributed to a “sour mood,” he remembered. (Henry Precht e-mail to author, June 2, 2011.)

[6] Joshua Botts, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, “‘A Burden for the Department’?: To The 1991 FRUS Statute,” February 6, 2012, http://history.state.gov/frus150/research/to-the-1991-frus-statute.

Posted – August 19, 2013
Edited by Malcolm Byrne
For more information contact:
Malcolm Byrne 202/994-7043 or mbyrne@gwu.edu

Find this story at 19 August 2013

© 1995-2013 National Security Archive

Foreign Policy magazine has obtained documents confirming that the Central Intelligence Agency snooped on famed activist and linguist Noam Chomsky.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spied on famed activist and linguist Noam Chomsky in the 1970s, documents obtained by Foreign Policy confirm. While the CIA long denied it kept a file on Chomsky, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by an attorney and given to reporter John Hudson has confirmed that the CIA snooped on the professor from MIT.

Furthermore, the CIA appears to have scrubbed its record on Chomsky–a potential violation of the law.

For many years, similar requests for Chomsky’s CIA file were met with responses denying that the record existed. But FOIA attorney Kel McClanahan sent a request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and it garnered a document showing FBI and CIA communication about Chomsky.

The 1970 document is about Chomsky’s anti-war activities and asks the FBI to gather more information about a trip to North Vietnam by anti-war activists. The memo notes that Chomsky endorsed the trip. “The June 1970 CIA communication confirms that the CIA created a file on Chomsky,” Athan Theoharis, an expert on FBI-CIA cooperation, told Foreign Policy.“That file, at a minimum, contained a copy of their communication to the FBI and the report on Chomsky that the FBI prepared in response to this request.”

Theoharis added that it was clear the CIA “tampered” with the file. “The CIA’s response to the FOIA requests that it has no file on Chomsky confirms that its Chomsky file was destroyed at an unknown time,” he said, referring to the fact that past FOIA requests to the CIA were met with responses that no file on Chomsky existed.

Destroying records could run afoul of a 1950 law that requires government agencies to obtain advance approval before from the national archives before destroying records.

Theoharis also said the possible destruction of Chomsky’s file means that other files compiled by the CIA were also likely destroyed. A more recent precedent for that type of behavior was the 2005 destruction of CIA tapes showing high-level terrorism suspects being waterboarded.

In response to the revelation, Chomsky told Foreign Policy: “Some day it will be realized that systems of power typically try to extend their power in any way they can think of.”

August 13, 2013 |

Find this story at 13 august 2013

© AlterNet

For years, the Central Intelligence Agency denied it had a secret file on MIT professor and famed dissident Noam Chomsky. But a new government disclosure obtained by The Cable reveals for the first time that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s.

The disclosure also reveals that Chomsky’s entire CIA file was scrubbed from Langley’s archives, raising questions as to when the file was destroyed and under what authority.

The breakthrough in the search for Chomsky’s CIA file comes in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For years, FOIA requests to the CIA garnered the same denial: “We did not locate any records responsive to your request.” The denials were never entirely credible, given Chomsky’s brazen anti-war activism in the 60s and 70s — and the CIA’s well-documented track record of domestic espionage in the Vietnam era. But the CIA kept denying, and many took the agency at its word.

Now, a public records request by Chomsky biographer Fredric Maxwell reveals a memo between the CIA and the FBI that confirms the existence of a CIA file on Chomsky.

Dated June 8, 1970, the memo discusses Chomsky’s anti-war activities and asks the FBI for more information about an upcoming trip by anti-war activists to North Vietnam. The memo’s author, a CIA official, says the trip has the “ENDORSEMENT OF NOAM CHOMSKY” and requests “ANY INFORMATION” about the people associated with the trip.

After receiving the document, The Cable sent it to Athan Theoharis, a professor emeritus at Marquette University and an expert on FBI-CIA cooperation and information-gathering.

“The June 1970 CIA communication confirms that the CIA created a file on Chomsky,” said Theoharis. “That file, at a minimum, contained a copy of their communication to the FBI and the report on Chomsky that the FBI prepared in response to this request.”

The evidence also substantiates the fact that Chomsky’s file was tampered with, says Theoharis. “The CIA’s response to the FOIA requests that it has no file on Chomsky confirms that its Chomsky file was destroyed at an unknown time,” he said.

It’s worth noting that the destruction of records is a legally treacherous activity. Under the Federal Records Act of 1950, all federal agencies are required to obtain advance approval from the national Archives for any proposed record disposition plans. The Archives is tasked with preserving records with “historical value.”

“Clearly, the CIA’s file, or files, on Chomsky fall within these provisions,” said Theoharis.

It’s unclear if the agency complied with protocols in the deletion of Chomsky’s file. The CIA declined to comment for this story.

What does Chomsky think? When The Cable presented him with evidence of his CIA file, the famous linguist responded with his trademark cynicism.

“Some day it will be realized that systems of power typically try to extend their power in any way they can think of,” he said. When asked if he was more disturbed by intelligence overreach today (given the latest NSA leaks) or intelligence overreach in the 70s, he dismissed the question as an apples-to-oranges comparison.

“What was frightening in the ‘60s into early ‘70s was not so much spying as the domestic terror operations, COINTELPRO,” he said, referring to the FBI’s program to discredit and infiltrate domestic political organizations. “And also the lack of interest when they were exposed.”

Regardless,, the destruction of Chomsky’s CIA file raises an even more disturbing question: Who else’s file has evaporated from Langley’s archives? What other chapters of CIA history will go untold?

“It is important to learn when the CIA decided to destroy the Chomsky file and why they decided that it should be destroyed,'” said Theoharis. “Undeniably, Chomsky’s was not the sole CIA file destroyed. How many other files were destroyed?”

Posted By John Hudson Tuesday, August 13, 2013 – 9:18 AM Share

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©2013 The Foreign Policy Group,

Ironically, those calling for an inquest into David Kelly’s death – ten years on today – base their arguments on precisely the values held so dear by professional journalists: the need for a full, impartial appraisal of the facts without fear or favour.

Ten years after the death of intelligence analyst David Kelly, the campaign for a formal inquest wages on. Shortly before his unnatural death in 2003, Kelly was outed as the BBC news source for a controversial report suggesting the government had lied in building its case for war with Iraq earlier that year. The fact that key questions remain unasked about an official investigation into a controversial death is nothing unheard of in British politics. But the Kelly case is unique because the most vociferous opponents of due process are not officials or politicians, but journalists.

This is even more odd because the journalists who are most outspoken against campaigners hail not from the predominantly conservative red tops, but from the so-called “liberal” media comprised of the broadsheets and broadcast newsrooms. It is respected columnists and opinion editorialists – not government spokespeople – who are routinely called on to make the case against campaigners. These are not journalists who tend to shy away from attacking the government or challenging established viewpoints. Indeed, they are journalists who predicate their life’s work on the unfettered scrutiny of power; who place the utmost professional value on evidence, impartiality and accuracy.

Yet in relation to the cause of Kelly’s death, even the evidence presented at the widely discredited Hutton Inquiry was, by the most conservative measure, conflicting. According to the official verdict, Kelly bled to death after cutting the ulnar artery in his left wrist. Yet paramedic Vanessa Hunt, the first medically trained professional to examine his body, told Hutton that

the amount of blood that was around the scene seemed relatively minimal and there was a small patch on his right knee, but no obvious arterial bleeding. There was no spraying of blood or huge blood loss or any obvious loss on the clothing […] His jacket was pulled to sort of mid forearm area and from that area down towards the hand there was dried blood, but no obvious sign of a wound or anything, it was just dried blood.

A secondary cause of death, according to the official verdict, was that Kelly had died from a lethal overdose of painkillers. But the toxicology report showed that the level of coproximal in Kelly’s blood was less than a third of what would normally be considered fatal and less than one pill was actually found in his stomach contents. Yet this kind of evidence remains elusive to journalists who continue to circulate assumptions disguised as facts: namely that Kelly swallowed 29 tablets based solely on a blister pack of 30 found on his person with only one tablet left (and incidentally, none of Kelly’s fingerprints).

What about Kelly’s state of mind? At the Hutton Inquiry, we heard expert witness testimony that he was acutely depressed over a supposed life’s work in ruins and ravaged by the shame of having breached the civil service code. But that testimony was provided by a consultant psychiatrist who had never actually met Kelly, let alone interacted with him during his final days and hours. It was based in large part on that of other witnesses, including Kelly’s close family. While they had spoken of him as “withdrawn” and “subdued”, this was primarily in the context of the period leading up to his appearance before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on 14 July 2003. Following that, Kelly’s daughter and son-in-law, with whom he was staying at the time, described his demeanour repeatedly as “normal”, “calm”, “relaxed”, “relieved”, and eating and sleeping “very well” right up to the day of his disappearance. According to his sister (pdf), Sarah Pape, who spoke to Kelly by telephone two days before his death:

In my line of work I do deal with people who may have suicidal thoughts and I ought to be able to spot those, even on a telephone conversation. But I have gone over and over in my mind the two conversations we had and he certainly did not betray to me any impression that he was anything other than tired. He certainly did not convey to me that he was feeling depressed; and absolutely nothing that would have alerted me to the fact that he might have been considering suicide.

Of course, such testimony does not prove that Kelly did not commit suicide, any more than conflicting testimony proves that he did. But in the week following Hutton’s report, BBC and ITN journalists cited evidence that Kelly was suicidal no less than seven times in news reports without any qualification or caveat and without once mentioning evidence to the contrary.

For any journalist genuinely concerned with ‘the facts’, it would have been clear from the outset that the only thing we know in relation to this case is that we don’t know how Kelly died. It is possible that he did die in the way Hutton said he died (albeit extremely unlikely according to mainstream medical opinion), and that conflicting evidence was the result of random anomalies; just as it is possible that Kelly was murdered, with or without the connivance of elements within the British state. The point is that no cause of death has been established on the basis of likely probability, let alone beyond reasonable doubt.

But there is something else we know which is that there has been unprecedented misinformation, obstruction of justice and on-going suppression of information in relation to this case. Only around a quarter of the police documents submitted to Hutton have been published and much of the remaining evidence has been sealed under an extraordinarily high level of classification for 70 years. It includes medical reports, photographs of the body and supplementary witness statements. The justification for this enduring secrecy is to prevent undue distress to the bereaved. But David Kelly was a public servant who suffered an unnatural death in extremely controversial circumstances. In far less controversial cases, the interests of the bereaved never outweigh that of the public interest in having a formal coroner’s inquest into an unnatural death.

With occasional and notable exceptions, journalists’ persistent refusal to engage with the substance of this controversy reveals a blind spot in our system of democratic accountability, encapsulated by the label of “conspiracy theory”. This taboo, which operates within journalist and academic circles alike, has some sound basis. It discriminates against conjecture often associated with tabloid sensationalism or internet subcultures that respond to secrecy or uncertainty with unfounded reasoning. This kind of theorising has also provided the foundation for racist and extremist ideology upon which acts of terror, genocide and ethnic cleansing have been predicated.

Such a cautionary approach, however, has led to an outright rejection of the idea that particular groups of powerful people might make, in the words of terrorism expert Jeffrey Bale, “a concerted effort to keep an illegal or unethical act or situation from being made public”. Yet both historical precedent and contemporary events suggest that such instances are a regular feature of real-world politics. The Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War, for instance, has surfaced considerable evidence that the decision to invade Iraq was taken in secret and long before it was publicly announced and justified on what turned out to be false intelligence. The problem amounts to an “intellectual resistance” with the result that “an entire dimension of political history and contemporary politics has been consistently neglected” (Bale 1995).

Ironically, those calling for an inquest into David Kelly’s death – ten years on today – base their arguments on precisely the values held so dear by professional journalists: the need for a full, impartial appraisal of the facts without fear or favour. The baseless conjecture associated with conspiracy theory, on the other hand, characterises precisely the way in which most journalists have approached this case. Above all, it is the enduring silence of newsrooms which has shielded successive governments from pressure for an inquest or from challenge to their persistent refusals to hold one.

The fires of injustice rage unabated. It took a lot longer than ten years for the relatives of Stephen Lawrence, Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough victims to get some semblance of accountability from the state. For the relatives of Daniel Morgan, the victims of the Iraq War, Lockerbie, secret rendition and torture, the struggle continues. If nothing else, campaigners for an inquest into David Kelly’s death have succeeded in drawing some attention to yet another spectacular failure of British justice.

Justin Schlosberg is a media activist, researcher and lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of Power Beyond Scrutiny: Media, Justice and Accountability

By Justin Schlosberg Published 17 July 2013 8:59

Find this story at 17 July 2013

© New Statesman 1913 – 2013

Death of WMD dossier scientist contributed to erosion of trust in politics

Dr David Kelly during questioning by a Commons select committee in 2003. Photograph: PA

It was a case of the political becoming personal, only so overwhelmingly, that it crushed a man. A decade ago on Wednesday, just after 3.20pm, Dr David Kelly began a walk from his Oxfordshire home that ended the next morning with the discovery of his body, slumped in a wood.

The Kelly family lost a loved one and a chain of events was set off that damaged trust in the Blair government and decapitated the leadership of the BBC.

Kelly was the distinguished government scientist who hunted down weapons of mass destruction of the kind used by the Blair government to justify the 2003 war with Iraq. The problem was the Saddam Hussein regime did not have them.

A BBC Today programme report claimed the government had embellished or “sexed up” the intelligence it presented to the public in 2003 to justify the war.

A furore erupted between the government, led by chief spin doctor Alastair Campbell, and the BBC, which refused to back down, having failed to spot the flaws in its reporting.

Kelly was outed as the BBC’s source, felt publicly humiliated and was reprimanded by his bosses. A proud man felt let down by them, and that his reputation built up over a lifetime was being irreparably tarnished.

In the days before that final walk Kelly’s family said they had never seen him so low. As news of his death spread, the normally self-assured Blair seemed stunned when a reporter cried: “Do you have blood on your hands?”

Kelly’s death led not to an inquest, but a public inquiry by Lord Hutton, which brought a rare glimpse into the secret worlds of Whitehall, British intelligence, the low arts of high politics, and the workings of the BBC.

Its conclusion largely absolved the government of blame, and surprised observers.

Its criticism of the BBC led to the demise at the corporation of then chairman Gavyn Davies, correspondent Andrew Gilligan and director general Greg Dyke, who on Tuesday said history has proven the broadcaster was right: “Ten years on, it is very difficult to find anyone who believes they did not ‘sex up’ that document.”

Debate still surrounds Hutton’s conclusion that Kelly committed suicide. The inquiry found that Kelly died after cutting an artery, had taken an overdose of painkillers and had heart disease which left his arteries “significantly narrowed”. Thus, said experts, less blood loss may have killed the scientist than that needed to kill a healthy man.

Among those who have called for an inquest or have doubts it was a suicide are former Tory leader Michael Howard, and Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker, who wrote a book saying Kelly was most likely murdered.

A group of doctors say Hutton’s findings should be discarded and a new inquest held. Dr Stephen Frost said: “We have lots of evidence … No coroner in the land would reach a verdict of suicide as Lord Hutton did.”

Experts in forensic pathology point out the sceptics may be expert in their own fields, but not in the science of establishing the cause of death.

Hutton has kept silent since his report, breaking it only to write a letter denouncing the conspiracy theorists. Hutton’s conclusion is supported by the available facts and experts: “At no time … was there any suggestion from any counsel for the interested parties or in any of the extensive media coverage that any of the police officers engaged in investigating Dr Kelly’s death or any of the medical or scientific witnesses was involved in any sort of cover-up or plot to make a murder appear like a suicide.”

Dyke claimed that: “Some of Dr Kelly’s wider family don’t believe it’s suicide.”

But the Conservative-led government has said the evidence for suicide is so compelling there is no need for a fresh hearing.

Ben Page, chief executive of pollsters Ipsos Mori said the row over the 2003 Iraq war was part of a continued lack of trust in government and politicians: “It was part of the continuum of declining trust.”

“It is clear that Dr Kelly and anger over the reason Britain joined in with the Iraq war are intertwined.”

Later this year the Chilcot report is expected, but for ex-BBC boss Dyke, a one-time supporter of Tony Blair, the verdict is in: “History tells us Blair was destroyed by Iraq. Blair will be only remembered for that, just as Sir Anthony Eden will be remembered for Suez.”

Vikram Dodd
The Guardian, Tuesday 16 July 2013 23.07 BST

Find this story at 16 July 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

Moscow wants to exchange a married couple of Russian spies jailed this month in Germany for at least one convict jailed in Russia on charges of spying for the West, a report said Monday.
Russian spies use ‘safe’ German typewriters – Science & Technology (12 Jul 2013)
Court jails Russian spy couple – National (2 Jul 2013)
Alleged Russian spy couple in ‘Cold War’ trial – National (15 Jan 2013)

Russia’s Kommersant newspaper said that the Russian secret services wanted to bring the pair — known only by their code names Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag — back to Russia after decades as “sleepers” in Germany.

In a Cold War-style exchange, Moscow would simultaneously hand over to the West at least one spy convicted of passing secrets to Berlin or its allies, the paper said.

“The process of consultations [with Germany] on a possible exchange was started only recently, after their conviction” on July 2nd, a Russian security source told the paper.

“We will get our guys out of there,” the source added.

Another source told the paper that Moscow had waited until after the trial was over to seek the exchange, in case the legal process were toshed further light on how their cover had been blown.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied to the paper that any exchange had been discussed at talks in June between President Vladimir Putin and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The man known as Andreas Anschlag was jailed for six and a half years and Heidrun Anschlag for five and a half years by the higher regional court in the south western city of Stuttgart.

The pair had been planted there West Germany from 1988 by the Soviet Union’s KGB secret service and later worked for its successor the SVR, the court heard.

Kommersant said that the jailed couple’s lawyer Horst-Dieter Petschke confirmed that the swap was expected and told the paper that the exchange could “happen at any moment”.

It said that possible candidates to be freed in Russia in such an exchange included Andrei Dumenkov, who was jailed in 2006 for 12 years for seeking to hand Germany data on Russian missile designs.

Another name citied was Valery Mikhailov, a former colonel in the Russian security service who was jailed in 2012 for 18 years for spying for the United States.

Such spy exchanges, familiar from the Cold War era and John le Carré novels, already have a precedent in post-Soviet Russian history.

In 2010, Russia and the United States agreed a sensational spy swap of ten Russian “sleeper” agents caught in the United States for four men convicted in Russia of spying for the West.

The ten Russian spies — including the glamorous female agent Anna Chapman — were brought back to Moscow and subsequently personally welcomed by Putin.

Published: 15 Jul 2013 09:38 CET | Print version

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