I thought the Jun 12th Sunday Times story would have aroused some comment in the British Press, but there has been not one followup article that I've seen, and I've looked hard at the Telegraph, Guardian, Independent (come on! where are you?) and the Times itself, as well as the BBC. None of them have had anything to say on the DSM briefing paper, whatsoever, though it plainly shows Blair to have been lying at his recent US press conference (because the document details that Blair went to the UN in order to "create the conditions for war", not to seek a peaceful resolution, as he said.,)
Maybe it's been PII'd, or D-Noticed, or something
(A PII (or Public Interest [sic] Immunity certificate) is a British legal instrument, whereby a Cabinet Minister may sign a "gagging order" barring further publication of a news item. A D-Notice is (I think) an older legal instrument with the same end in view.
Gagging has happened before to cover up evidence showing criminal behaviour by Brit intel agencies.
It happened during the mid-80's Spycatcher case when reporting was forbidden on any of the contents of (ex-MI5) Peter Wright's book, which included an allegation that security service alumni had conspired to subvert the 1976 General Election. The timing of this meant that the Colin Wallace(*) case could not be reported. I remember reading in 1985 in the Guardian (or Observer) that the "security services had conducted operations against
certain organisations". They could not print that they had conducted operations against the ruling Labour Party, because of the Spycatcher D-Notice.
It happened in the early nineties, when four Thatcher cabinet members signed PII's forbidding the inclusion of evidence showing relationship between MI6 Matrix Churchill (a British company who sold, on the instruction of MI6, components for Saddam's "supergun" to Iraq).
It also happened more recently when ex-MI5 middle-east desk person David Shayler alleged that MI6 had hired Al Qaeda to assassinate Col. Gaddaffi.
ORDER FOR AN INJUNCTION
BEFORE THE ISSUE OF A CLAIM FORM
____________________________
IMPORTANT: Notice to the Defendant
1. This Order prohibits you, Martin Bright, "the Defendant", from doing the acts set out in paragraphs (1) and (2) of this Order. You should read it carefully. You are advised to consult a solicitor as soon as possible. You have the right to ask the Court to vary or set aside this Order under the civil Procedure Rules 1998, Part 23.10.
PENAL NOTICE
2. If you, the defendant, disobey paragraphs (1) or (2) of this Order you may be found guilty of contempt of court and may be sent to prison or fined or your assets may be seized.
INTRODUCTION
3. A without notice application was made on 1 November 2002 by Counsel for Her Majesty's Attorney General ("the Claimant") to the Judge who heard the application in private (having had regard to Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights) save for the making of this Order.
4. The application was supported by information provided to him by Counsel for the claimant and the Judge accepted the undertakings in Schedule 2 to this Order.
5. As a result of the application.
IT IS ORDERED THAT:
(1) The Defendant be restrained until trial [handwritten: the conclusion of the current trial of DMS [David Michael Shayler] or any retrial] or further Order whether by himself, his servants or agents or otherwise howsoever from further publishing or causing or permitting to be published or disclosed or instruction or encouraging any other person further to publish or disclose in any way whatsoever, including, for the avoidance of doubt, publication or disclosure on the Internet, the article written by the Defendant entitled, 'MI6 Hire Al Qaeda Men to Kill Gaddafi: Ex-Official" and published on 30 October 200 in Pakistan in the Dawn newspaper and on the Internet on the Dawn newspaper's Interned site or any part thereof.
See:
http://cryptome.org/r-v-bright.htm (or, as cryptome seems to be a bit wonky,
pull it from the google cache from a search on |Shayler Qaeda site:cryptome.org.|
(*) On Colin Wallace, the story was broken by Robin Ramsay, in Lobster Magazine (a low-circulation UK "journal of parapolitics") see:
http://www.variant.randomstate.org/3texts/William_Clark.html (quoted below) or google on |colin-wallace information-policy|
3. Most sensitive of all, IRD used 'black propaganda' in 'political warfare'.
Ramsay's tentative and careful analysis of the IRD, has been confirmed and extended by fairly recent (official) revelations. The same could be said of his interpretation of the revelations of Colin Wallace: an ongoing assessment going back some ten years. Wallace worked at 'Information Policy', long maintained to have been an Northern Ireland based Army press office in the 70s, but identified here as the last sighting of IRD in its 'black' role:
"Information Policy was constructed in the same way as IRD, concealing the psy-war role behind the cover role of a propaganda unit, which in turn, was concealed by the formal information role ...Disinformation was planted in the media; foreign journalists were taken into back rooms and shown 'secret' documents - diaries, leaflets, minutes of meetings; some genuine, many forged. IRD tried, yet again, to establish the insurgents as part of the Soviet global conspiracy, but after the re-election of the Wilson government in 1974 they also began to try to show support for the IRA from a Labour Party influenced by the CPGB."
Information on IRD's operations in the mainland is not only scarce but (naturally) riddled with disinformation and evasion. To penetrate the fog has required tenacious research and evaluation. Ramsay makes the important observation that his initial research looked for MI5 operations, he now accentuates three British Intelligence agencies:
"There was a group of MI5 officers, led by Peter Wright, who were plotting against the Wilson government and, for example, trying to use the Information Policy unit in Northern Ireland to spread disinformation about Wilson and other British politicians whom MI5 regarded as 'unsound'; there was also a group of ex-SIS and former military officers, led by former SIS number two, the late George Kennedy Young, operating as the Unison Committee for Action; and there was the Crozier-IRD subversion-watcher network."