IraqGate: New pressure on UK Government

posted by ewing2001 on Saturday June 14, @07:16PM

Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds

Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff

Sunday June 15, 2003 -The Observer

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.

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The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'

The conclusion of the investigation ordered by the British Government - and revealed by The Observer last week - is hugely embarrassing for Blair, who had used the discovery of the alleged mobile labs as part of his efforts to silence criticism over the failure of Britain and the US to find any weapons of mass destruction since the invasion of Iraq.

The row is expected to be re-ignited this week with Robin Cook and Clare Short, the two Cabinet Ministers who resigned over the war, both due to give evidence to a House of Commons inquiry into whether intelligence was manipulated in the run-up to the war. It will be the first time that both have been grilled by their peers on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee over what the Cabinet was told in the run-up to the war.

MPs will be keen to explore Cook's explanation when he resigned that, while he believed Iraq did have some WMD capability, he did not believe it was weaponised.

The Prime Minister and his director of strategy and communications, Alastair Campbell, are expected to decline invitations to appear. While MPs could attempt to force them, this is now thought unlikely to happen. The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is expected to give evidence the week after.

The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control.

Marconi recently had some financial problems and restructured their corporation. Since March 2003, they had been relisted at London Stock Exchange:

The board of directors of Marconi (the "Directors"), Lazard Brothers & Co., Limited ("Lazard") and Morgan Stanley & Co. Limited ("Morgan Stanley") as joint sponsors to Marconi Corporation and, for the purposes of the Waiver only, Marconi have confirmed to the UKLA that Marconi is in severe financial difficulty...

Third parties involved in the negotiation of the Restructuring:

Barclays Bank PLC 22 October 2001 to present

HSBC Bank plc, London Branch (joint lead co-ordinator 22 October 2001 to present

JPMorgan Chase Bank (joint lead co-ordinator) 22 October 2001 to present

The Royal Bank of Scotland plc 22 October 2001 to present

Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, London Branch 22 October 2001 to present

Intesa BCI S.p.A 22 October 2001 to 5 March 2003

Informal committee of bondholders Period as member of committee

Cargill Financial Markets PLC 10 April 2002 to present

Appaloosa Management LP(1) 10 April 2002 to present

AIG Global Investment Corp(2) 10 April 2002 to present

Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America 10 April 2002 to present

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company 10 April 2002 to 25 November 2002

(1) Appaloosa Management LP is a member of the informal committee of bondholders as an investment manager for and on behalf of Appaloosa Investment Limited Partnership I and other funds.

(2) AIG Global Investment Corp is a member of the informal committee of bondholders as an investment adviser, for an on behalf of, The Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company, American General Life and Accident Insurance Company and other advisory clients and accounts.

Notes to Editors

About Marconi plc:

Marconi group is a global telecommunications equipment and solutions business headquartered in London. The group’s core business is the provision of innovative and reliable optical networks, broadband routing and switching and broadband access technologies and services. The group’s aim is to help fixed and mobile telecommunications operators worldwide reduce costs and increase revenues..."

Note:

AIG is run by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who decided in January 2003 to resign as a CEO.

Due to their website, AIG is the world's leading international insurance and financial services organization, with operations in approximately 130 countries and jurisdictions.

Greenberg is also Chairman of the Board of the CFR. He has ties to BENS, one of the most pre-Sep11th Pentagon advisors regarding Privatisations and Homeland Security.

More on Greenberg (from "911 Skeptics Unite -the encyclopedia")

Greenberg, once floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995, is the CEO of AIG insurance (->), manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world.

Maurice Raymond Greenberg (AIG, Kroll, CFR) was born in New York City May 4, 1925, the son of Jacob Greenberg and Ada (Rheingold) Greenberg. The young man adopted the nickname “Hank” to make people think of a popular American baseball player with the name, Hank Greenberg.

Greenberg served in the U.S. Army in the Korea conflict. He joined the insurance firm, Continental Casualty Co., in 1952. Continental executive J. Milburn Smith recommended Greenberg to the C.V. Starr insurance/spy organization, which made Greenberg its vice president in 1960, its president and CEO in 1967, and its chairman, succeeding Starr, in 1969.

Maurice Greenberg was deeply involved in chinese trade in the 80s, where Henry Kissinger (->) was one of his representatives. In the China trade, Greenberg became very close to Shaul Eisenberg, the leader of the Asian section of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and agent for the sales of sophisticated military equipment to the Chinese military.

From 1988 to 1995, Greenberg was a director of the New York Federal Reserve bank - this branch of the system is the main instrument through which Federal Reserve chiefs and the Bank of England traditionally execute their U.S. political-economic policy. Greenberg was deputy chairman of the New York Fed in 1992 and 1993, and New York Fed chairman in 1994 and 1995.

In 1993, Maurice Greenberg’s American International Group (AIG ->), became co-owner of the "private spy agency", Kroll Associates (->), as a result of rescuing Kroll from bankruptcy with a cash infusion. Kroll was notorious during the 1980s as the “CIA of Wall Street” due to the prevalence of former CIA, FBI, Scotland Yard, British secret service and British Special Air Service men Kroll employed for corporate espionage in takeover bids, as well as for destabilization of foreign nations.

During 1996, while Greenberg was deputy chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (-> CFR), he chaired the CFR task force on intelligence, which published “Making Intelligence Smarter: The future of U.S. Intelligence.” This report mostly served to exhibit Greenberg’s access to the intelligence community; but he parlayed it into a nomination by Senator Arlen Specter and others, for Greenberg to be Director of the CIA (->).

Greenberg has used his connections to covert intelligence, supranational institutions, private bankers and speculators, and his huge global cash inflow, to shape a unique personal empire.

Since 1997, Frank G. Wisner, Jr., has been a board member of Kroll , and is currently Greenberg’s Deputy Chairman for External Affairs. Wisner’s father was a founder of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who killed himself over the scandal from his being duped by British-Soviet masterspy Kim Philby.

Frank Wisner, Jr., is a director of the George Bush-linked energy giant Enron (a client for whom AIG negotiated payments from Peru over nationalization of Enron operations).

In the early 1990s, Miami-based private investigator Lou Polumbo joined Kroll Associates. According to sources in the industry, Polumbo brought with him a personal history of involvement with the Medallin and other South American narcotics cartels; his business included helping relocate some of the capabilities of these cartels out of Colombia.

The deal to bring Polumbo into Kroll was worked out by Avram Shalom, the former head of Israel’s Shin Beth secret police. Shalom went to work for Kroll; he had been fired as Shin Beth boss due to a scandalous massacre of Palestinians in the Israel-occupied territories by his Shin Beth agents.

Compare:

AIG's long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations was mentioned in a two-part series of copvcia.com (->), that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG’s stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks.

Source: http://www.copvcia.com/stories/part_2.html.

(-> Kroll O'Gara )

It should also be mentioned, that it was Kroll Associates, with the help of former employee Jerome Hauer, who hired ex-FBI anti-terror chief John O'Neill for a security job in the Twin Towers.

O'Neill, once sabotaged by former Yemen Ambassador Barbara Bodine, while he was investigating on terror ties to Bin Laden, knew also about an ENRON-Taliban connection.

He started his new job, due to the most sources, only one day before Sep11th and died one day later.

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