The suspected nerve agent attack upon former Russian
intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, which also affected his daughter in the
English city of Salisbury last Sunday, has given rise to too much speculation,
too much hysteria, and too little analysis or insight. It has provided
ammunition for the Russophobic Western media to make accusations that it was
another example of Russia in general and Vladimir Putin in particular disposing
of a supposed enemy of the Kremlin.
As with the Mueller investigation into the alleged Russian
interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election there are accusations with
varying degrees of wildness, but little or no actual evidence that would get
past first base in any independent court of law.
First, what are the known facts,
only some of which have been accurately reported in the western mainstream
media? The victim (assuming it was a deliberate attack upon him and
his daughter) was formerly a Colonel in the Russian military intelligence
service (the GRU). This is the largest of the Russian intelligence agencies
and, as with its western equivalents, has a wide variety of functions, of which
“spying” is only one.
In the early 1990s Skripal was recruited by an MI6 agent Pablo
Miller, whom the British media declined to name. Miller was an MI6 agent in
Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Miller’s main task was recruiting Russians to
provide information about their country to the British. An interesting fact,
possibly coincidental, was that the MI6 officer under diplomatic cover in
Moscow at this time was Christopher Steele. Steele was later to become better
known as the principal author of the infamous Trump dossier.
When Steele returned to London, he ran MI6’s Russia desk between
the 2006 and 2009. The information that Skripal disclosed would have been given
to Steele, first in Moscow and later in London.
Skripal was arrested in 2004. In 2006 he was convicted of
treason and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. In 2010 he was released as part
of a prisoner exchange deal with Russian spies in U.S. jails. He went to live
in the United Kingdom where he has lived in supposed retirement ever since.
Another interesting fact, although again possibly coincidental, is that
Salisbury, where Skripal lived, is only about 12 kilometres from Porton Down,
the U.K.’s principal research centre for nerve agents.
If the Russians had
wanted to kill him, they had ample opportunity to do so during the years when
he was imprisoned or the eight years he lived in retirement in Salisbury. If
they did wish to kill him, it is not a very credible that they would do so very
publicly and by a means that could not be bought off the shelf in the local
pharmacy. The handling and the administering of these very dangerous substances
require professional expertise. The obvious candidates for the attempted murder
are therefore government agencies, but which government is the unanswered
question.
This is where the facts become thinner, but the interesting
connections of Skripal offer scope for some tentative hypotheses. While living
in Salisbury, Skripal became friendly, according to a report in the UK newspaper the Daily
Telegraph, with none other than the aforementioned Pablo Miller – whom the
Telegraph declined to name but has since been identified on the web.
Miller is now working with a British security consultancy named
Orbis Business Intelligence. Again according to the Telegraph, Miller’s
association with this company has now been removed from Miller’s LinkedIn
profile.
The obvious question again is: why do so now?
Orbis is the same private intelligence agency as that of
Christopher Steele. It seems more than a mere coincidence that the same three
men who had personal and professional links going back to the 1990s should have
a continuing association at the same time as the Steele dossier was being
compiled and later as the so-called Russiagate inquiry was imploding. Former
FBI Director James Comey described the Steele dossier as “salacious and
unverified” in a Senate hearing.
The former British
ambassador Craig Murray has suggested on his blog that a motive for
the attempted murder of Skripal and his daughter was to further promote the
anti-Russian hysteria that inflicts the Western media and the body politic.
That is certainly plausible, and it has certainly been one of
the consequences, as the abysmal coverage of the ABC among other outlets makes
clear. But an alternative hypothesis presents itself in the light of the above
facts, and this hypothesis has not even been mentioned, let alone discussed by
our major media.
My admittedly speculative hypothesis (but I would argue, not an
unreasonable one) is that Skripal was likely involved in the production of the
Steele dossier. He was therefore in a position to offer potentially very
damaging information into the circumstances of the Steele dossier. As noted
above, that particular narrative has not only spectacularly collapsed, but the
revelations reflect very badly on, among others, the U.S. intelligence
community, the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, the Obama White House
and the Clinton campaign.
In any major criminal
enquiry one of the basic questions the investigation asks is: who had the
means, the motive and the opportunity? Framed in that light, the Russians come
a distant fourth behind the other prime suspects; the U.S. and U.K.
intelligence agencies themselves, and those elements of the deep state that
sought to prevent Trump winning, and subsequently to undermine his presidency. The
primary motive being ascribed to the Russians is revenge for Skripal’s
treachery more than a decade ago.
A second major question asked in any criminal investigation is
cui bono – who benefits? It is difficult to perceive a credible argument that
Russia is a beneficiary of Skripal’s poisoning.
Further support for the
hypothesis that this was a false flag operation comes in this statement that
British Prime Minister to Theresa May made to the UK Parliament. The statement
was frankly absurd and could only have been made when the intention was to
further demonize and punish Russia, rather than any attempt to establish the
truth and apply ordinary principles of evidence and factual analysis.
May’s argument is
thoroughly deconstructed on the Moon of Alabama
website, which pointed out that Russia had destroyed all left over stocks from the
Soviet Union’s chemical weapon program and does not currently produce chemical
weapons. Further, there are any number of governments capable of carrying out
the Salisbury attack. “If someone is run-over by a BMW is it ‘highly likely’
that the German government is responsible for it?” the Moon of Alabama asks.
The obfuscations of the British reinforce in the view that
Skripal was dangerous to the anti-Trump forces and the authorities therefore
sought to have them removed. There is ample precedent for such actions and
those familiar with the “suicide” of Dr. David Kelly will recognize the
parallels.
The chances of the truth emerging have become vanishingly small
at the same time as a serious conflict with Russia becomes correspondingly
greater.
James O’Neill is a Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He
can be reached at joneill@qldbar.asn.au.