Seymour Hersh is a Chicago native, and a man who, some would say ‘taken very seriously’ by the White House since 1960’s, let alone the menials in the corridors of power.
Hersh’s 10,000-word article about the events surrounding Osama bin Laden’s killing on 1st May 2011 was published by the London Review of Books in May 2015. It has created a global stir amongst the powers that be, to put it mildly. Clearly, Hersh has touched a nerve that has triggered a tsunami of counter efforts by the US Government.
The summarized version of his article on the ‘staged’ killing of OBL is; “Almost everything that has been said or written about this massively documented event (9/11), including the White House’s version of the killing of OBL, isn’t true”!
Hersh was the courageous journalist, who first reported the U.S. military’s stockpiling of chemical and biological weapons used during the Vietnam War. His 1969 account of U.S. Army atrocities in the Vietnamese village of ‘Mai Lai’ was the show stopper for the Vietnam War.
He has the distinction of unearthing some of the most consequential US Government shenanigans of the past half-century. His investigative reporting exposed the Nixon administration’s efforts to destabilize Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973. His 1973 article about the Watergate burglary defendants, who were paid hush money with funds from Nixon’s re-election campaign, eventually lead to Nixon’s resignation.
Hersh exposed the illegal spying by the CIA in 1974 along with the Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. Hersh also exposed the gun-running and drug-smuggling by Panamanian dictator and CIA man, Manuel Noriega in 1986. Hersh exposed Gen. Barry McCaffrey’s alleged war crimes during the Persian Gulf War. He also exposed the 2004 abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghuraib prison.
Robert Mirald, a critic of Seymour Hersh, wrote a book about him in 2013 and wrote;
“He explodes onto page one, his critics say ‘it ain’t so’, and yet in the end he’s proven to be correct. Over time, Hersh’s accounts stand up”.
On June 19th, 2015 Press TV Reported:
“Senior members of the Bush administration are being sued by an international team of lawyers, led by former attorney general Ramsey Clark, over the illegal war in Iraq.”
The lawsuit was filed on May 27 2015, on behalf of a widowed Iraqi mother, Sundus Saleh, against former US President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
According to the complaint filed in the US Court of Appeals, Bush administration officials “broke the law in conspiring and committing the crime of aggression against the people of Iraq.”
“The invasion resulted in the total destruction of a beautiful, peaceful country,” said Sundas Saleh. “The invasion didn’t destroy only the country’s infrastructure, buildings and heritage; it destroyed millions of families and their dreams.”
On 17 June 2015, a top US Federal Court ruled, that the people held for months on end for immigration violations following Sept. 11, 2001, can now sue top government officials for racial profiling and other abuses.
The split decision from a three-judge panel on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals came after more than a decade of litigation and is likely to lead to increased scrutiny of the US Government’s behavior following the 2001 terror attack.
Judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard Wesley, who gave the landmark verdict, wrote in their 109-page decision:-
“We simply cannot conclude at this stage that concern for the safety of our nation justified the violation of the constitutional rights on which this nation was built”.
It is evident to those, sitting in the corridors of power that, what has been researched and written by Seymour Hersh in May 2015, about the ‘staged’ killing of OBL has a lot of merit.
Gauging by his previous track record of meticulous research, the history would eventually prove his narrations right. This Magnus Opus of Sy’s work has shaken the United States Government and its allies to the core. If the facts would surface, as it seems that they will now, then the US Government and its allies shall be risking a lot more than just the US$ 6 Trillion that has already been spent by the US Tax payers since the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The razor sharp article by Seymour Hersh and the law suit filed by the former US Attorney General perhaps encouraged the landmark decision against Bush and Co. for their deeds post 9/11.
All these happenings make a strong case for the moral stand taken by Edward Snowdon in unraveling of the hidden dark facts behind the so-called ‘war on terror’ and the mass surveillance on a global scale by the NSA and GCHQ.
UK Government’s Communications Headquarters or simply GCHQ started its work in the earlier part of 1940’s if not before and had more staff working for it then MI6 and MI5 combined, according to a book titled, ‘GCHQ’, written in 2011 by Richard Aldrich.
Its deep cover work and activities have shaped and continue to shape international events since 1940’s, leading to regime changes favouring British interests around the world. Needless to say, the UK Government never really acknowledged GCHQ, as the structured shadow intelligence organization, operating above the remit of governmental oversight, until 1976-77.
British investigative journalist par excellence, Duncan Campbell became famous in the UK as the ‘C’ in the infamous ABC Official Secrets Act case of 1977-78. The case was initiated because of the first public exposure of the deeds of GCHQ acting above the law.
The UK government prosecuted two journalists and an ex soldier, for discussing the existence of GCHQ and its shadow workings globally. The ABC case (named after the three defendants, Aubrey, Berry and Campbell) ended in November, 1978, causing grave embarrassment for the UK government.
Thus, Duncan Campbell was the journalist who revealed the existence of the global British electronic intelligence agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), in his 1976 article titled, ‘The Eavesdroppers’. His story led to the “ABC” trial in 1978, and the UK government’s failed attempt to jail him for up to 30 years under the Official Secrets Act laws.
Duncan Campbell exposed that the GCHQ, along with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) was operating a massive global electronic surveillance network from locations around Britain, without any parliamentary accountability or any public scrutiny.
Campbell’s co-author, Mark Hosenball was deported on the grounds of being a threat to the UK’s national security. After the story about the GCHQ, Campbell became a target for British intelligence, which started to illegally track his activities.
In 1980, Duncan Campbell published a series of articles about the British Intelligence overstepping their constitutional limits. The articles revealed the likely location of Britain’s communications tapping centers. Duncan Campbell also exposed the potential financial burden of the intelligence services on the British tax payers.
Campbell’s work for the BBC’s Panorama programme investigation the UK security services was blocked by the Downing Street according to the 2011, National Archives cache of Downing Street correspondence released on the issue. Several Private and Confidential Memos detailed the Prime Minister Lady Thatcher and her advisors attempting to block or ban the programme.
The memos also revealed the historic paranoia of the British Government about the impact of Campbell’s work, along with other investigative journalists like him, and their level of motivation to expose the hidden facts. His ground breaking research on GCHQ and the subsequent publishing of the stories about the British intelligence agencies caused grave concern at the highest levels of the British government.
In 1980 he exposed the role of the United States National Security Agency’s (NSA) Menwith Hill Station, Yorkshire and its role in illegal interception of worldwide communications with the complicit cooperation of the GCHQ.
Campbell was injured in a cycling accident in 1984 and it was revealed through secret memo’s that Special Branch officers were given his bicycle pannier and papers. At the precise moment his house was also raided on a search warrant.
In 1987, Campbell was invited by the BBC to write and present a six-part documentary series the Secret Society. Before running the programme, and reviewing its blunt and factual content, the BBC top management got nervous and approached the government for advice. The British Government’s reaction resulted in the raid at the BBC’s Scottish headquarters including Campbell’s home. The Special Branch seized the films that were recorded as, The Zircon Affair.
Zircon revealed the existence of a secret £500m British spy satellite programme of the same name. Campbell’s investigation detailed how the government policy was being decided by a group of unaccountable committees operating beyond the scrutiny of parliament and the public. Eventually, the Zircon films were returned, but the BBC chose not to release the episodes. The redacted and much altered version appeared on Channel 4 in 1991.
In 1988, Campbell revealed the existence of the GCHQ’s top secret ECHELON project. Due to Campbell’s work, finally in 1997, the ECHELON become controversial throughout the world.
In 1998, Campbell was asked by the European Parliament to report on the development of surveillance technology and the risk of abuse of economic information, especially in relation to the ECHELON system. His report, “Interception Capabilities 2000” was approved by the European Parliament in April 1999, and tabled at the EU Parliament in February 2000. In July 2000, the EU Parliament appointed a committee of 36 MEPs to further investigate the ECHELON system. The efforts to block ECHELON fell apart since 9/11 happened and the world got ‘exposed’ to a new ‘global terrorism’ threat.
In 1997 Campbell became one of the founding members of the Centre for Public Integrity in Washington D.C. The Center helped found the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). ICIJ is designed to be a cross border investigative outfit “focusing on issues that do not stop at national frontiers.”
In 2002, Campbell became part of an investigation into the role of private security firms and lobbyist groups in the wars being waged across the globe by the US and UK. The investigation titled, ‘Making a Killing: The Business of War’ exposed the increasing use of private security firms and mercenaries and the how the multi-billion dollar defense industry’s lobbying methods lack any accountability.
In 2006, the ICIJ started a project with a much wider scope. The investigation focused on how the global trade funds terrorism, organized crime and how the tax sheltering/loss of tax revenues hurt the developing economies from where the big business earn billions of dollars and avoids paying taxes by using shell companies.
Finally In 2013, ICIJ began publishing the results of its investigation linking tax havens to the global movement of money to avoid tax. The investigation called “Offshore Leaks,” is one of the largest journalism collaboration in the modern history.
The data from this collaboration forms the core of the material that has been published in series of stories by the Guardian, Sunday Times, and Sydney Morning Herald etc.
The citizens of the British Common Wealth, the Overseas Territories and in particular our direct reading audiences in the Cayman Islands are often dismissive of the sporadic evidence against the FCO with skepticism. The message and the writ of the British Governance through their UK appointed representatives in the OT’s such as Cayman is that; there can be no wrong on part of the Crown and its law enforcement entities, and anything said or brought against their abuse of power it is either malicious or ‘forged’.
The suppression of Operation Tempura report, the Aina Report, the recent review of the performance of the Office of the DPP and so many others in the past, by the successive Governors of the Cayman Islands, perfectly fit the pattern of ‘secrecy’ and suppression in the mother country, UK. The Crown appointed Auditor Generals are way too trigger happy to blast the locally elected members of the legislative assembly and their ‘mismanagement’ of the tax payers dollars, they would not dare raise their pen to ink any gross wastage of public money paid out for this fancy reports, by the very tax payers of the Cayman Islands, who have every right to read the findings of the reports that they fund. The Auditor General cannot also criticize the DPP or the Attorney General for prosecuting cases that fall flat on their face in the courts, resulting in wastage of public funds and at times paying huge settlement costs. The Auditor General can also not write or comment in the RCIP’s funding and spending nor can comment on the covert operations funding in the country. The spending by the Crown is simply off the charts.
The 2003 Iraq War’s Chilcot Inquiry, Lord Janners Child Abuse inquiry, Ex British PM Edward Heath’s child abuse inquiry and the UK Met Police sex abuse inquiry to name a few are all suppressed or not made public in the UK in the name of ‘public interest’.
The cherry on the top is the Scotts Report commissioned in 1992 to investigate the 1980’s large export of lethal weapons to Iraq including chemical and biological warfare equipment. The equipment was sold under the able guidance of the FCO. The inquiry never saw the light of the day. UK went to war with the very country it supplied weapons to, during the 1980’s. So much for facts Mr. Blair!
So here is the question, Do we really need to ‘forge’ any more evidence to prosecute those sitting in the corridors of power at the very top or are the rules of engagement different for the common man, who is at the receiving end of the law? It seems that those who enact and impose the laws are above it at all, every times, for as long as ‘we’ allow the sun to never set on the British Empire.
The first part of this commentary was published in Tuesday, 11 July’s edition of The Cayman Reporter. It is available online at www.caymanreporter.com
http://www.caymanreporter.com/2015/08/12/uks-official-secrets-act-forgeries-facts-part-2/
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EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌ 