Free Republic

Hillary Clinton is back, and so is Chris Steele, this time in the United Kingdom. They are no less than implying that current Conservative (Tory) Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a Russian plant. And it’s no mistake that these allegations are being made just before a U.K. general election on December 12 that will decide the fate of Brexit. It started last month, when the U.K.’s leftwing Guardian newspaper reported the existence of a secret report that said the Russians spent five years “cultivating leading Tories including Johnson…” The 50-page “dossier” from the U.K.’s intelligence and security committee is “based...

Spooks dig for secrets of Saddam As Blair prepares to issue his dossier on Iraq's weapons, Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy assess the quality of intelligence - and the difficulty of obtaining it Peter Beaumont in London and Ed Vulliamy in New York Sunday September 15, 2002 The Observer He is there at almost every official photo-opportunity with Saddam Hussein, a compact and wiry military officer, his khaki shirt rolled up to his elbows, a beret pulled across his brow. A heavy handlebar moustache hangs over a solid jaw, grey with a permanent five o'clock shadow. The recent prominence of...

The Foreign Office mounted a fightback yesterday against allegations that Jack Straw and Colin Powell had expressed serious doubts about whether Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction before the start of the Iraq war. As Tony Blair faced allegations from a former Cabinet colleague that he had "duped" the British people over Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities, the Foreign Office issued a detailed rebuttal of allegations, made in the Guardian newspaper, that were seized on by news media around the world. The paper said Mr Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Mr Powell, his United States counterpart, had privately expressed serious doubts...

Saddam's Shadow Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 Copyright 1997 Indigo Publications Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 SECTION: MINING; DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO; N. 207 LENGTH: 787 words HEADLINE: Saddam's Shadow BODY: It's not only diamonds and base metals that interest big mining companies and the latter are not alone in being interested in Katanga. In the delegation that the United States sent to Kinshasa on June 2 under its ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, the state department's African affairs department was represented by Marc Baas, director for Central Africa. (Susan Rice, director for African...

Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believed the Government’s controversial Iraq weapons dossier actually understated the case against Saddam Hussein, according to documents released today by the Foreign Office. The papers released by the FO show that British officials at the United Nations in New York showed a draft of the dossier to Dr Blix in September 2002, two weeks before the final version was published. A note from one official, Adam Bye, said that Dr Blix had liked the section on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as he believed that it did not exaggerate the facts. According to...

BBC chief resigns over Iraq weapons adviser report ( ) LONDON, Jan 29, 2004 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- British Broadcasting Corp. chief Greg Dyke resigned Thursday, the second top BBC official to step down after a judicial inquiry harshly criticized the broadcaster's journalistic standards. On Wednesday, senior judge Lord Hutton criticized the 81-year-old network for an "unfounded" report it broadcast last year accusing the government of "sexing up" a prewar dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction with information it knew was wrong. Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC's board of governors, resigned Wednesday - the first time...

<p>Media organizations prepared Tuesday to oppose any efforts by the Justice Department to subpoena journalists and their notes to learn who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak.</p> <p>Subpoenas could be challenged on the basis of First Amendment guarantees of freedom of the press, said Bill Felber, editor of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury and freedom of information chairman for the Associated Press Managing Editors. But they could also be challenged, he said, if they were too broad or if the information could be obtained in other ways.</p>

Gilligan admits dossier row errors BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan has admitted making mistakes in live broadcasts reporting claims the government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Mr Gilligan stood by the story he based on a conversation with government weapons expert Dr David Kelly. But under tough cross-examination at the Hutton inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, Mr Gilligan said he had made "slips of the tongue" in unscripted broadcasts. He was followed into the witness box by BBC director of news Richard Sambrook, who said there were errors in the BBC's strongly-worded response to the...

In their zeal to retroactively rebut the argument for the Iraq war, critics of President Bush have tried to discredit a British intelligence report -- cited by the president in his State of the Union address -- that concluded Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa. The most important evidence against the British report is the undisputed conclusion by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that documents purporting to show an Iraq-Niger uranium deal were forgeries.What Bush's critics have ignored is that ElBaradei and the IAEA also presented evidence that tends to...

Despite an Iraqi offer to allow United Nations weapons inspectors “unfettered access” to the country, America's efforts to push through a tough new UN resolution are intensifying. A newly-published assessment by the British government of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction has bolstered America's case Blair has no doubts THE latest Iraqi offer came from General Amer al-Saadi, the senior adviser on weapons to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator. He said Iraq was ready to give unfettered access to United Nations inspectors so that they could establish the truth about whether his government was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD)....