24 September 2002 At 8 am on 24 September 2002, only thirty minutes prior to the deadline for the headline in the Evening Standard‘s first edition, Charles Reiss, the paper’s political editor, was allowed to see the government’s intelligence dossier on Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). After reading about Iraq’s ‘strategic missile systems’ and its…
18 September 1961 Mounting evidence suggests the involvement of British intelligence services in the assassination of UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, on 18 September 1961. He was killed along with 15 others, when his DC-6 aircraft, which had taken off from Leopoldville, the capital of Belgian Congo, was downed shortly after midnight on its approach…
19 August 1953 On 19 August 1953, British intelligence, helped by the CIA, staged a coup to oust Muhammad Mossadegh, the moderate nationalist prime minister of Iran, who had been a firm believer in liberal values, democracy and the rule of law. London’s angst was over Mossadegh’s determination that Iran should be able to run…
23 July 2002 On returning from Washington on 23 July 2002, the head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, was summoned by Tony Blair to join a hastily arranged meeting in the Prime Minister’s office. Also present were Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, Cabinet Secretary Richard Wilson, Chief of…
7 March 2004 Abdel Hakim Belhaj was a Libyan dissident belonging to an organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which though banned in Libya was not considered to be a terrorist organization by the British. He had fled Libya to China where he hoped to to be beyond the reach of Gadaffi’s security forces. However…
26 February 2004 On 26 February 2004, Clare Short, who had left Tony Blair’s Cabinet a few weeks earlier, informed astonished listeners to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that MI6 had spied on the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as part of its attempt to obtain a second UN resolution to support a war against…
21 January 1964 On 21 January 1964, Robin Young, a British political officer in the newly created Federation of South Arabia, noted in his diary the latest rules of engagement for covert terror operations inside neighbouring North Yemen, as laid down by Sir Kennedy Trevaskis, the British High Commissioner. London was determined that Egyptian forces,…
17 January 1961 On 17 January 1961, Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister, was abducted, tortured and then shot dead in a coup masterminded by MI6. To prevent any possible autopsy, Belgian mercenaries, who had been involved in his death, dug up and dismembered his body from where it had been hastily buried,…
SUSPECT ARAB REBEL HUNG JUST FIVE DAYS AFTER HIS ARREST [ 27 November 1937 ] At 8 am on the morning of Saturday 27 November 1937, Sheikh Farhan al-Sa’di, an Arab village elder, was executed by hanging at the crusader castle at Acre. NO WMD HERE BUT WE FOUND MARMALADE ! [ 27 November 2002…
Douglas-Home considers the ‘crocodile option’ for Congo’s ousted prime minister [ 19 September 1960 ] In May 1960, Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister of the Congo. He was a troublesome believer in independent economic development, who thought Congolese nationals rather than foreigners should be allowed to run the important offices of government and that…
