{"id":184854,"date":"2019-03-08T08:47:14","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T08:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=184854"},"modified":"2019-03-12T08:43:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T08:43:40","slug":"pure-ten-points-i-just-cant-believe-about-the-official-skripal-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=184854","title":{"rendered":"Pure: Ten Points I Just Can\u2019t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Craig Murray \u2013 craigmurray.org.uk March 7, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"

Forensic investigations at the scene of the crime in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

I still do not know what happened in the Skripal saga, which perhaps might more respectfully be termed the Sturgess saga. I cannot believe the Russian account of Boshirov and Petrov, because if those were their real identities, those identities would have been firmly established and displayed by now. But that does not mean they attempted to kill the Skripals, and there are many key elements to the official British account which are also simply incredible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the \u201cgood guys\u201d and the \u201cbad guys\u201d in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no \u201cgood guys\u201d, as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official account:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) PURE<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This was the point that led me to return to the subject of the Skripals, even though it has brought me more abuse than I had received in my 15 year career as a whistleblower.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few months ago, I was in truth demoralised by the amount of abuse I was receiving about the collapse of the Russian identity story of Boshirov and Petrov. I had never claimed the poisoning, if any, was not carried out by Russians, only that there were many other possibilities. I understood the case against the Russian state is still far from established, whoever Boshirov and Petrov really are, and I did not (and do not) accept Bellingcat\u2019s conjectures and dodgy evidence as conclusive identification. But I did not enjoy at all the constant online taunts, and therefore was not inclined to take the subject further.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is in this mood that I received more information from my original FCO source, who had told me, correctly, that Porton Down could not and would not attest<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that the \u201cnovichok\u201d sample was made in Russia, and explained that the formulation \u201cof a type developed by Russia\u201d was an agreed Whitehall line to cover this up.<\/span><\/p>\n

She wanted to explain to me that the British government was pulling a similar trick over the use of the word \u201cpure\u201d. The OPCW report had concluded<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that the sample provided to them by the British government was \u201cof high purity\u201d with an \u201calmost complete absence of impurities\u201d. This had been spun by the British government as evidence that the novichok was \u201cmilitary grade\u201d and could only be produced by a state.<\/span><\/p>\n

But actually that is not what the OPCW technical experts were attempting to signal. The sample provided to the OPCW had allegedly been swabbed from the Skripals\u2019 door handle. It had been on that door handle for several days before it was allegedly discovered there. In that time it had been contacted allegedly by the hands of the Skripals and of DC Bailey, and the gloves of numerous investigators. It had of course been exposed to whatever film of dirt or dust was on the door handle. It had been exposed to whatever pollution was in the rain and whatever dust and pollen was blowing around. In these circumstances, it is incredible that the sample provided \u201chad an almost complete absence of impurities\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

A sample cannot have a complete absence of impurities after being on a used doorknob, outdoors, for several days. The sample provided was, on the contrary, straight out of a laboratory.<\/span><\/p>\n

The government\u2019s contention that \u201calmost complete absence of impurities\u201d meant \u201cmilitary grade\u201d was complete nonsense. There is no such thing as \u201cmilitary grade\u201d novichok. It has never been issued to any military, anywhere. The novichok programme was designed to produce an organo-phosphate poison which could quickly be knocked up from readily available commercial ingredients. It was not part of an actual defence industry manufacturing programme.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a final problem with the \u201cof high purity\u201d angle. First we had the Theresa May story that the \u201cnovichok\u201d was extremely deadly, many times more deadly than VX, in minute traces. Then, when the Skripals did not die, it was explained to us that this was because it had degraded in the rain. This was famously put forward by Dan Kaszeta<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, formerly of US Intelligence and the White House and self-proclaimed chemical weapons expert \u2013 which expertise has been strenuously denied<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by real experts.<\/span><\/p>\n

What we did not know then, but we do know now, is that Kaszeta was secretly being paid<\/a> to produce this propaganda by the British government via the Integrity Initiative.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the first thing I cannot believe is that the British government produced a sample with an \u201calmost complete absence of impurities\u201d from several days on the Skripals\u2019 doorknob. Nor can I believe that if \u201cextremely pure\u201d the substance therefore was not fatal to the Skripals.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) Raising the Roof<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Craig Murray details ten reasons why he doesn\u2019t believe the officials accounts of the Skripal\u2019s poisoning. Both the Russian and the British versions <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sergei-skripal-poisoning"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184854"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184859,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184854\/revisions\/184859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}