\nDances with Bears\u00a0
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Austria officially confirmed this week that the British Government\u2019s allegation that Novichok, a Russian chemical warfare agent, was used in England by GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, in March 2018, was a British invention.<\/p>\n
Investigations in Vienna by four Austrian government ministries, the BVT intelligence agency, and by Austrian prosecutors have revealed that secret OPCW reports on the blood testing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, copies of which were transferred to the Austrian government, \u00a0did not reveal a Russian-made nerve agent.<\/p>\n
Two reports, published in Vienna this week by the OE media group and reporter Isabelle Daniel, reveal that the\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0publication of the cover-page of one of the OPCW reports exposed a barcode identifying the source of the leaked documents was the Austrian government. The Austrian Foreign Ministry and the Bundesamt f\u00fcr Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbek\u00e4mpfung (BVT), the domestic intelligence agency equivalent to MI5 or FBI, have corroborated the authenticity of the documents.<\/p>\n The Austrian disclosures also reveal that in London the\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0editor, Roula Khalaf, four of the newspaper\u2019s reporters, \u00a0and the management of the Japanese-owned company have fabricated a false and misleading version of the OPCW evidence and \u00a0have covered up British government lying on the Skripal blood testing and the Novichok evidence.<\/p>\n On Wednesday afternoon this week, OE24, a news portal of the OE media group in Vienna, broke the first story (lead image, right) that the barcode found on the OPCW document photograph published in London had been traced to several Austrian state\u00a0ministries<\/a>. The next day, OE political editor Isabelle Daniel reported the Austrian Foreign, Defence and Economics Ministries had received copies of the barcoded OPCW dossier, and that the Justice Ministry and prosecutors were investigating \u201cpotential moles\u201d.<\/p>\n Daniel also\u00a0quoted<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0a Foreign Ministry source as saying its copy of the documents had been securely stored in its disarmament department safe, and that there were \u201cno tips\u201d the leak had come from there. Daniel also quoted a BVT spokesman as confirming the authenticity of the OPCW file had been verified. \u201cWe have checked it recently. Officially it has not come to us.\u201d<\/p>\n The leak had been an \u201cexplosive secret betrayal\u201d and a criminal investigation was under way, \u00a0OE24 reported. OE is a privately owned Austrian media group, based in Vienna. It\u00a0publishes\u00a0<\/a>a newspaper, the news portal OE.at, radio and television.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0report\u00a0<\/a>first exposing the OPCW documents appeared on July 9. \u00a0Details of how the newspaper fabricated the interpretation the OPCW had corroborated Russian involvement in the Novichok attack can be read\u00a0here<\/a>. For the full Skripal story, read the\u00a0book<\/a>.<\/p>\n At an OPCW Executive Council meeting on April 14, 2018, five weeks after the Skripal attack, the British Government confirmed that a few days earlier \u201call States parties\u201d had received copies of the OPCW dossier. This included Austria, as the Viennese sources now acknowledge.<\/p>\n \u201cThe OPCW responded promptly to our request to send their experts to the United Kingdom,\u201d declared Peter Wilson, the British representative to the OPCW on April 14, 2018. \u201cThey conducted a highly professional mission. The OPCW\u2019s designated laboratories have also responded professionally and promptly. What the Director-General said was really important on this, and the Technical Secretariat\u2019s presentation shows how professional that work was. The report the Technical Secretariat presented to us on 11 April was thorough and methodical. The Technical Secretariat responded quickly to our request to share that report with all States Parties. All have had the chance to see the quality of that work.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson went on to say: \u201cAs you know, on 4 March Yulia and Sergei Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, the United Kingdom, with a chemical weapon, which United Kingdom experts established to be a Novichok. OPCW has now clearly verified those findings.\u201d<\/p>\n The Austrian copy of the OPCW file now confirms this was a misrepresentation of the chemical formula and other evidence the OPCW had gathered.<\/p>\n Wilson went on to conclude: \u201cthe identification of the nerve agent used is an essential piece of technical evidence in our investigation, neither DSTL\u2019s [Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down] analysis, nor the OPCW\u2019s report, identifies the country or laboratory of origin of the agent used in this attack. So let me also set out the wider picture, which leads the United Kingdom to assess that there is no plausible alternative explanation for what happened in Salisbury than Russian State responsibility. We believe that only the Russian Federation had the technical means, operational experience, and the motive to target the Skripals.\u201d<\/p>\n The first qualifying sentence was the British truth; the conclusion was the British lie. The Austrian evidence now verifies there was no evidence of a Russian source in the blood and other test samples; no evidence of Novichok; and no evidence to corroborate the British allegations of a Russian chemical warfare attack.<\/p>\n In its report, the\u00a0Financial Times\u00a0<\/em>displayed a partial photograph of the cover-page of one of the OPCW documents in its possession (lead image, left). A classification stamp appears to be showing through the title page, but no barcode is visible. The London newspaper appears to have cropped the published picture so as to hide the barcode. That concealment \u2014 proof of the Austrian source \u2013 allowed the newspaper reporters to claim the source of the document was unknown, probably Russian, as the headline implied: \u201cWirecard executive Jan Marsalek touted Russian nerve gas documents.\u201d<\/p>\n A British military source was reported as claiming \u201cthe documents were \u2018unlikely\u2019 to have come from OPCW member states in western Europe or the US.\u201d \u00a0Khalaf and her reporters added: \u201cThe OPCW, which is based in The Hague, said this week that it was investigating the matter, but declined further comment. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u201d With the barcode in their possession but hidden, they knew they were publishing a combination of disinformation and lies.<\/p>\n The disclosure of the barcode to the Austrians appears to have followed after they had requested it from Khalaf. She checked with her superiors in the newspaper management before handing it over. They believed they were doing so in secret.<\/p>\n It is not known if\u00a0Motohiro Matsumoto<\/a>\u00a0(right), the Nikkei executive responsible for the London publishing company, \u00a0\u00a0was alerted and gave his authorization; he refuses to answer questions.\u00a0 Matsumoto, one of the five directors of Financial Times Ltd., is the general manager of Nikkei\u2019s global business division. He takes The Austrian press has yet to report how the barcode was obtained from the newspaper. Because the BVT and state prosecutors in Vienna are involved in their search for the \u201cmoles\u201d, it is likely they contacted their counterparts at MI5 and the Home Office, and that the newspaper agreed to hand over its copy of the OPCW file to the latter. The collaboration of the journalists with the secret services to falsify evidence against Moscow in the Novichok story remains a sensitive secret.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/johnhelmer.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/4-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-92.png\")
<\/figure>\nLeft: Isabelle Daniel of OE, Vienna. Right, Roula Khalaf Razzouk, editor of the\u00a0Financial Times\u00a0<\/em>since her recent appointment by the Nikkei group, the newspaper\u2019s owner. Her full name and concealment of her Lebanese political and business interests can be followed\u00a0here<\/a>. \u00a0The names of the four\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0reporters who have participated in the misrepresentation and cover-up are Paul Murphy, investigations editor; Dan McCrum, a reporter; Helen Warrell, NATO correspondent; and Max Seddon of the Moscow bureau.\u00a0<\/code><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/johnhelmer.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/4-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-93.png\")
<\/figure>\nSource:\u00a0https:\/\/www.opcw.org\/<\/a><\/code><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/johnhelmer.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/4-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-94.png\")
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\nhis running orders from Nikkei\u2019s chairman and a long-time media executive, Tsuneo Kita. Matsumoto replaced Hirotomo Nomura at the head of the\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0on March 25, 2020. \u00a0When Nikkei bought the newspaper from Pearson Plc in 2015, Nikkei became its sole proprietor.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/johnhelmer.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/4-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-%E2%80%94-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%8F-95.png\")
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