The very secret service

[Emillereid]

David Kelly referred obliquely to Operation Rockingham. What role did this mysterious cell play in justifying the Iraq war?

Michael Meacher
Friday November 21, 2003
The Guardian

David Kelly, giving evidence to the prime minister's intelligence and security committee in closed session on July 16 - the day before his suicide - made a comment the significance of which has so far been missed. He said: "Within the defence intelligence services I liaise with the Rockingham cell." Unfortunately nobody on the committee followed up this lead, which is a pity because the Rockingham reference may turn out to be very important indeed.

What is the role of the Rockingham cell? The evidence comes from a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, who had been a US military intelligence officer for eight years and served on the staff of General Schwarzkopf, the US commander of allied forces in the first Gulf war. He has described himself as a card-carrying Republican who voted for Bush, but he distinguished himself in insisting before the Iraq war, and was almost alone in doing so, that almost all of Iraq's WMD had been destroyed as a result of inspections, and the rest either used or destroyed in the first Gulf war. In terms, therefore, of proven accuracy of judgment and weight of experience of the workings of western military intelligence, he is a highly reliable source.

In an interview in the Scottish Sunday Herald in June, Ritter said: "Operation Rockingham cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD Unscom was showing the opposite."

Rockingham was, in fact, a clearing house for intelligence, but one with a predetermined political purpose. According to Ritter, "Britain and America were involved in a programme of joint exploitation of intelligence from Iraqi defectors. There were mountains of information coming from these defectors, and Rockingham staff were receiving it and then selectively culling reports that sustained the claims. They ignored the vast majority of the data which mitigated against such claims." ...

· Michael Meacher was environment minister, 1997-2003.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1089931,00.html

Anybody know any more about Rockingham and its US equivalent in the Pentagon, The Office of Special Plans?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair

http://www.sundayherald.com/34491

08 June 2003
Investigation: By Neil Mackay

BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.
Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added.

'Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasising reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.'

[leftchick]

2. wow! I didn't realize Blair had his own "OSP"....

Yet it all makes sense. PNAC boys at work with their collaborators the Iraq defectors (chalabi et al)feeding "intelligence to the set up agencies and the news media (miller at NYT!). Oh God I wish we had a free press in the US.... :grr:

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

3. Mate, this is Britain

we know f-all about what SIS, SS & DIS get upto! Ritter so far is the best source on "operation Rockingham" & the two times he's been quoted at length (in the Sunday Herald (http://www.sundayherald.com/print34491 & http://www.sundayherald.com/34461)) & through Meacher in the Guardian article above) the story went absolutely nowhere.

(& see also "Operation Mass Appeal" which was basically the fruits of Rockingham turned into media propaganda (at least during 97-8). It's another example of where Ritter was spot on (an Mi6 officer confirmed it to the Times at the end of last year).

Oh for a free press ... ;)

[Gin]

4. It operates just like Lettermans unfair edit.....take a word from a few

sentences and change the meaning entirely.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Yep, it is the UK equivalent of OSP

BTW, here is a link to an article featuring Meacher when in the US a while back. Both wars were planned well before 9/11.
http://new.globalfreepress.com/article.pl?sid=03/09/19/1527251