TABOO 10: THE SECRET OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT
The British Foreign Secretary at the time, Boris Johnson, didn’t bat an eye as he looked directly into the camera—and lied. He claimed researchers at the UK’S Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down had determined Russia was responsible for the attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal using a nerve agent from the Novichok group. In fact, Johnson was already aware of a fact later to be announced by Porton Down’s chief executive, Gary Aitkenhead: “We have not identified the precise source.” For regular British citizens, it is discrepancies such as this that make it difficult to trust their government. So far Downing Street has produced no entirely conclusive evidence that Russia committed the attack. A critical situation—because Russia has been skillfully using the British accusations to its own benefit. The Russian defense in short: Anyone
can see that the anti-russian policies of the West are not fact-based. This is the same position Russia seeks to promote in defense of the accusations of election tampering in the U.S., the illegal annexation of Crimea, and the hacking of the German parliament. The tactic has in part been effective: Media that are often critical of Russia sometimes question the rapidity with which such accusations are made— and they ask provocative questions: Is there a British government taboo against telling the truth? What is the government trying to hide? Is Russia being used as a scapegoat?
Though these questions may sound as if they were posed by conspiracy theorists, they are nonetheless worth asking. While the British government has made claims in the past that only Russia is in possession of Novichok, there are reports that the poison has been synthesized in Iran as well as in the Czech Republic. The U.S. is also known to have been working with Uzbekistan since 1991 to dismantle the sites where Novichok and other chemical weapons were developed and tested. Experts say the UK must also be in possession of Novichok to have compared it with the nerve agent used in the attempted assassination. Another question that’s worth asking: Why has there been no investigation of Orbis Business Intelligence?
The London-based security firm has been the subject of a lawsuit that accuses it of spreading fake news about Russia and Russians. (The suit was dismissed by a U.S. federal judge in August of 2018.) And: Former MI6 agent Pablo Miller, who had recruited Skripal for British intelligence, is said to have worked for the same security firm. These are some of the issues that the British government will have to clarify if it doesn’t want to lose the most effective weapon it has in this information war: credibility.