p2pnet - rss feed: Censored CIA material online
p2p news / p2pnet: Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray is being threatened with a breach of copyright charge if he doesn’t remove certain material from his web site.
While in office he, “publicly criticised the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, against the wishes of the British government, an action that he alleges was the reason for his removal,” says Wikipedia, going on, “He also privately criticised the UK government for committing torture by proxy, that is, sending terrorist suspects to Uzbekistan for their security services to extract intelligence of dubious value; in the phrase he is best known for, he accused his government of ’selling our souls for dross’.“
Murray posted full texts of passages the Foreign Office ordered deleted from the book version of Murder in Samarkand, “the former Tashkent ambassador’s account of alleged British complicity in torture by the despotic Uzbekistan regime,” says The Guardian Unlimited.
His book contains links to the site.
“The passages detail CIA intelligence reports that Mr Murray says were false, and accounts of US National Security Agency intercepts and conversations with John Herbst, the US ambassador in Uzbekistan at the time,” says the story. “The Foreign Office says release of the material is damaging.
“One previously censored passage describes how numerical codes on intelligence reports revealed they came from the Uzbek secret police, via the CIA, who shared them with MI6. These included, he says, ‘nonsensical’ claims that Islamist militants were ready to swoop on the town of Samarkand from hilltop camps, and that Uzbek dissidents were linked to al-Qaida.”
After a “purported’ Islamist terrorist attack, the story goes on, Murray wrote, “We had communications intercepts of the senior leadership of … al-Qaida, based variously in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. They were all phoning each other up and saying ‘Does anyone know what the hell is happening in Tashkent?’ This was very inconvenient for the Americans, who desperately wanted it to be al-Qaida.”
The Foreign Office told Murray the revelations of intelligence capacity were “damaging to the national interest,” the article says. “It wrote that an allegation by Mr Murray that the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, lied about al-Qaida links to Uzbek dissidents was ‘potentially damaging to relations with the US’.”
So, too, the Foreign Office said, according to the story, “was a long account of a debate with Mr Herbst in which the resident US ambassador allegedly said support for the Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov was part of the post 9/11 defence of the lifestyle of the US. He was quoted as saying: ‘Karimov’s got to keep a tight grip on the Muslims’.”
The Foreign Office has also demanded changes in a passage describing a meeting between Matthew Kydd, one of its senior officials, and a protesting Mr Murray, says The Guardian Unlimited, adding:
“But tactical use of copyright in the Murray case seems unlikely to succeed. Copyright law is designed to protect the commercial interests of writers and artists, not alleged state secrets.
“Lawyers say Mr Murray would be able to argue a defence of public interest for his own non-commercial disclosures, as would the media if quoting from the government documents on his website while reporting on current news events.”
On his site, under Murder In Samarkand - Documents, Murray posts:
In publishing “Murder in Samarkand” I had wanted to publish the supporting documentation in the book to cooroborate my story, especially as the FCO is claiming that the story is essentially untrue. In that sense, perhaps the most interesting link in the documents below is the very first document, which is a table of detailed amendments the FCO insisted be made to the text. This is fascinating if you consider just how much it confirms was true, particularly in the conversations it refers to between officials.
Many of the other documents I managed to have released under the Freedom of Information Act or Data Protection Act. I was astonished when the FCO announced that they would still take legal action against me if I published them. They argue that - and this astonished me - even if a document is released under the DPA or FoIA, it is still copyright of the Crown and so cannot be published. I was even more amazed when the lawyers of the publisher said that this was probably true, and certainly could not be fought without potentially a milliom pound legal case.
It appears that, among so many attacks on civil liberties in recent years, the Blair government has managed to administratively negate its own Freedom of Information Act. Robin Cook must be spinning in his grave.
Net posting is not breaching copyright because there is no charge to access the documents. This site may, of course, be subject to technical attack, so I would be grateful if those who can mirror these documents on their own sites, do so.
These are contemporary documents from my time as Ambassador in Uzbekistan. They do I believe include the real smoking gun on Britain’s, and the CIA’s, use of intelligence obtained by torture abroad. They also show the FCO getting increasingly angry with me over my being “over-focussed on human rights”, rahter than building good relationships with Karimov, our ally in the War on Terror.
They do not give a smoking gun that proves that the allegations brought against me, of which I was eventually cleared, were trumped-up and motivated by a desire to get rid of me for policy reasons. Being internal FCO documents, they are written to maintain the facade of a proper disciplinary investigation. You need to be prepared to read between the lines - and read the book!
He points out that some some of the following documents are no longer available on his site.
“They have been removed as a consequence of legal action by the British Government, which acknowledged the authenticity of the documents and claimed Crown Copytight over them.”
Document 1 - FCO Comment
Document 2 - IMF Telegram
Document 3 - Declaration
Document 4 - Speech
Document 5 - Hill Negotiation
Document 6 - Michael Wood memo of 13 March
Document 7 - Telegram of 18 March 2003 headed US Foreign Policy
Document 8 - Letter from Simon Butt dated 16 April 2003
Document 9 - Exchange of emails with Linda Duffield
Document 10 - Colin Reynolds’ report of 26 June 2003
Document 11 - Minute of my meeting with Howard Drake
Document 12 - Letter from British Businessmen in Tashkent
Document 13 - Email to Kate Smith
Document 14 - Minute of 26 September 2003
Document 15 - Telegram
Digg this.
Also See:
The Guardian Unlimited - Former ambassador posts censored passages from memoir on website, July 11, 2006
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July 15th, 2006 at 11:32 am
The government forced Murray to take the docs down, but not before they were mirrored all over the web. Try Blairwatch.co.uk or Dahrjamail.com, or just google.