This article links one into the world of propoganda as being perpetrated on the Citizens of Great Britain and America to take them for this ride to the M.East. It is one of the most important 'un-reported' stories of the year. Feel free to comment or e-mail: wahkonta@graffiti.net
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http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=United+Kingdom+%26+Europe&month=December2003&file=World_News2003122921734.xml
Govt admits MI6 planted stories in media over Iraqi WMD
Web posted at: 12/29/2003 2:17:34
Source ::: The Times

LONDON: The Secret Intelligence Service has run an operation to gain public
support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq. The government
has confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to
plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction.
The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the
run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the
circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government
weapons expert.
A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign
launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's development
of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted
misinformation. "There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons
that the public needed to know," said the official.
The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection
missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the
propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at
least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence
material.
"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than
it actually was," Ritter said last week.
He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda
tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. "Stories ran in the
media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes (to
produce weapons of mass destruction)," said Ritter. "They were sourced to
western intelligence and all of them were garbage."
Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague of
Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to the media.
"Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the media," said
Ritter.
Hutton's report is expected to deliver a verdict next month on whether
intelligence was misused in order to promote the case for going to war.
Hutton heard evidence that Kelly was authorised by the Foreign Office to
speak to journalists on Iraq. Kelly was in close touch with the "Rockingham
cell", a group of weapons experts that received MI6 intelligence.
Blair justified his backing for sanctions and for the invasion of Iraq on
the grounds that intelligence reports showed Saddam was working to acquire
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The use of MI6 as a "back channel"
for promoting the government's policies on Iraq was never discovered during
the Hutton inquiry and is likely to cause considerable disquiet among MPs.
A key figure in Operation Mass Appeal was Sir Derek Plumbly, then director
of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office and now Britain's
ambassador to Egypt. Plumbly worked closely with MI6 to help to promote
Britain's Middle East policy.
The campaign was judged to be having a successful effect on public opinion.
MI6 passed on intelligence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction
and rebuilding its arsenal.
Poland, India and South Africa were initially chosen as targets for the
campaign because they were non-aligned UN countries not supporting the
British and US position on sanctions. At the time, in 1997, Poland was also
a member of the UN Security Council.
Ritter was a willing accomplice to the alleged propaganda effort when first
approached by MI6's station chief in New York. He obtained approval to
cooperate from Richard Butler, then executive chairman of the UN Special
Commission on Iraq Disarmament.
Ritter met MI6 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal at a lunch in London in June
1998 at which two men and a woman from MI6 were present.
Ritter had previously met the MI6 officer at Vauxhall Cross, the service's
London headquarters. He asked Ritter for information on Iraq that could be
planted in newspapers in India, Poland and South Africa from where it would
"feed back" to Britain and US.
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