Is it possible that BAE is to Tony Blair what General Dynamics, Brown & Root, Halliburton and Bell Corporation were to Lyndon Baines Johnson? LBJ paid back his financial backers with the Vietnam War. Is it possible that Blair and Bush are repaying their supporters with the Iraq War. We all know about Bush's relationship with Halliburton. What about Blair's relationship with BAE Systems? After all, this is the British company that has made the most money from the Iraq War.

Here is an account of Blair’s relationship with BAE that appeared on the Campaign Against Arms Trade website:

http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/companies/baes.php

BAE Systems has a turbulent relationship with the MoD and has faced accusations of heavy-handed lobbying tactics and poor project management. However, whatever its problem with the Ministry and its civil servants, BAE Systems can always rely on Tony Blair.

Ever since Blair arrived in government in 1997 it has been apparent that he has supported BAE Systems against all comers and all rational argument. He pushed through controversial sales to Zimbabwe and Tanzania and lobbied, amongst others, the South Korean and South African Presidents on behalf of BAE Systems.

Striking confirmation of the relationship was provided by Robin Cook in his book 'The Point of Departure'. He states 'In my time I came to learn that the Chairman of British Aerospace appeared to have the key to the garden door to Number 10. Certainly I never once knew Number 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to British Aerospace'.

The extent to which Blair's love of BAE Systems permeates the UK government isn't entirely clear, but it is clear that BAE Systems receives 5-star treatment from a wide variety of official sources:

• minister after minister trooped out to promote the sale of the Hawk aircraft to India, regardless of the level of conflict over Kashmir.

• corruption allegations, reported to the government, have not been fully investigated.

• changes to guidelines have weakened arms export controls in areas relevant to BAE Systems, most obviously those announced in July 2002 which facilitated the transfer of the company's equipment to Israel via the US.

• the DSEi and Farnborough arms fairs receive financial assistance and ministerial support.

• the Defence Export Services Organisation continues to dedicate 600 civil servants to the arms trade under the leadership of an arms industry boss, currently seconded from BAE Systems.

• there is a proliferation of 'advisory bodies' which give the major arms companies preferential access to civil servants and ministers.

• a new Missile Defence Centre has appeared for no apparent reason other than to help UK companies win US 'Son of Star Wars' contracts, with BAE Systems as the lead contractor.

• and to bring things right up to date, just last month Prince Andrew and the UK's Ambassador to Bahrain opened BAE Systems' first office in Bahrain.

The reason for Blair's affection for BAE Systems isn't immediately obvious. It's often assumed that UK jobs lie at the heart of his interest but BAE Systems' record on that score is poor. In 2003 it stated that it would make 470 workers at its Hull Brough plant redundant if it didn't receive a contract from the MoD for Hawk jets. BAE Systems was duly given the contract even though the Treasury said an open competition would save the taxpayer £1 billion (£2 million for each of the 470 jobs!). In April 2004, less than a year on, BAE Systems announced the loss of 760 jobs and the following week a further 1,000 jobs. There has been little outcry. Jobs appear only to be important when BAE Systems wants to win a contract.

Tony Blair is fully aware of this so we need to look elsewhere to understand his enthusiasm for the company. The most likely explanation revolves around Blair's fondness for big business generally and his zeal for the grand foreign policy/military statement. BAE Systems brings these together in one entity and seems to hit all the right buttons.

BAE Systems continues to receive more than its fair share of corruption allegations. And, despite the unwillingness of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the MoD to investigate, they won't go away.

In September 2003, the Guardian published details of its investigation into allegations of a £20m 'slush fund' set up by BAE Systems to bribe Saudi officials. It reported that a confidential letter from the head of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to the MoD alleged a possible fraud operation involving BAE Systems in relation to the massive Al Yamamah arms deals with Saudi Arabia. Neither the SFO nor MoD pursued the allegations despite being provided with a box of relevant invoices and other documents by a former employee of BAE Systems' front company.

Earlier allegations that BAE paid £7m commission into a Jersey trust for Qatar's foreign minister also ended with a failure to investigate. This, despite the SFO being asked for help by the Jersey authorities, and the UK Government admitting that it had a report of this commission payment in 1998.

Other allegations have been met with an alternative official response, if a similar end result. In June 2003 the Guardian alleged that 'BAE Systems paid millions of pounds in secret commissions' to win a South African Hawk jet contract. Astonishingly, it stated that the UK government had confirmed the payment but refused to reveal the amount paid. The DTI did, however, say it was 'within acceptable limits'!

There have been other allegations relating to the Czech Republic and India, but none of the allegations draw much of a reaction from BAE Systems. The company has a standard response of ignoring specific allegations and offering a variation on the theme, 'BAE operates rigorously within the laws of both the UK and countries in which it operates.' BAE Systems is certainly careful regarding corrupt practices, but the suspicion must be that it is careful to hide them rather than shun them. The Guardian recently reported that in 1997 BAE moved 'filing cabinets full of evidence of corrupt payments to foreign politicians to a vault in Switzerland' using a subsidiary registered in the Virgin Islands.

Over the last few years the Serious Fraud Office have been investigating BAE Systems. Barry George, acted as BAE’s agent during the government sale of two British frigates to Romania. Apparently, BAE paid Barry George over £7m in commission for this deal.

The deal was arranged in 2003 by William Bach, the government’s arms sales minister. Ironically, Tony Blair has been lecturing Romania on tackling corruption before being accepted into the EU. Obviously, he does not think they are sophisticated enough in their corruption. Maybe he will have to give them advice on this.

BAE Systems have a long record of corruption. Last year, it was alleged in Chile that BAE had paid more than £1m to intermediaries linked to ex-president Pinochet in return for arms deals.

In 1996 a secret £7m payment from BAE to the foreign minister from BAE to the foreign minister of Qatar was discovered in a Jersey account after an arms deal to the state.

In 2003 a whistleblower alleged that a £60m slush fund was being used by BAE to provide presents to the head of procurement for the Saudi air force.

Is it possible that BAE have been involved in providing money to Tony Blair?

Peter Henry Goldsmith, a prosperous lawyer, who gave money to Tony Blair’s New Labour Project. In 1999 he was rewarded when Blair gave him a peerage. An early example of “cash for honours”.

In June, 2001, Blair appointed him as his Attorney General. In this post it become his responsibility to argue the case for the legality of the invasion of Iraq. Blair refused to make the advice public. Lord Goldsmith's original memo, written on March 7, 2003, was eventually leaked to the press, which led to its official publication on 28 April 2005. In the memo, Lord Goldsmith discusses whether the use of force in Iraq could be legally justified by Iraq's 'material breach', as established in UN Security Council Resolution 1441, of its ceasefire obligations as imposed by Security Council Resolution 687 at the end of the First Gulf War. Lord Goldsmith concludes that 'a reasonable case can be made that resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorisation [of the use of force] in [Resolution] 678 without a further resolution.' However, Lord Goldsmith did concede that 'a court might well conclude that [operative paragraphs] 4 and 12 do require a further Council decision in order to revive the authorisation.'

In his final advice to the Government, written on March 17th 2003, Lord Goldsmith stated that the use of force in Iraq was lawful. This advice stated Lord Goldsmith's preferred view in more unequivocal terms than his earlier memo, without reference to the doubts expressed therein. This has led to allegations that Lord Goldsmith succumbed to political pressure to find legal justification for the use of force against Iraq. Shortly after the leak Lord Goldsmith released a statement in response to such allegations, saying that the two documents were consistent, pointing to the difference in the nature of the two documents and the firm assurances he had received between 7th and 17th March that Iraq was indeed in breach of its obligations under Security Council resolutions.

The controversy was furthered by the resignation of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, on 20 March 2003. A full version of her letter of resignation became public in March 2005. In this she stated that the reason for her resignation was that she did not agree with the official opinion that the use of force in Iraq was legal. She also accused Lord Goldsmith of changing his view on the matter. This is now the man who will decide if Blair faces prosecution for the "cash for honours" scandal or for BEA Systems bungs.

In November, 2006, Blair argued that Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system should be renewed before he is ousted from power. Some reports suggest the system will cost in the region of £79bn. Gordon Brown has already made a speech where he has argued he is in favour of renewing Trident, although it will clearly break the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

Article VI of the NPT states that each of the parties to the treaty should undertake to pursue "negotiations in good faith on effective measures" relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race and to nuclear disarmament. In 2005, Rabinder Singh QC and Professor Christine Chinkin stated their opinion that the replacement of Trident is likely to constitute a material breach of Article VI. "The linkage between the principles of non-proliferation and the obligation to negotiate towards disarmament ... indicate that Article VI is a provision 'essential to the accomplishment of the object or purpose of the treaty'.

Last week the Ministry of Defence secured a £1.7bn increase in its budget. Currently we are spending £32bn a year on defence. This is in cash terms, the second biggest defence allocation in the world.

It is not made clear why we need the latest attack submarines or anti-tank weapons. Who are we pointing our nuclear weapons at? We used to be told it was the Soviet Union who wanted to invade us. Since the fall of communism they are only interested in killing its political opponents on the streets of London. What we do know is that our current enemy is extremely to reluctant to use conventional tactics on the battlefield. Nuclear missiles and the Eurofighter is not very good at dealing with terrorists.

The Ministry of Defence agrees with this assessment. In a white paper published in 2003 it stated: "there are currently no major conventional military threats to the UK or NATO ... it is now clear that we no longer need to retain a capability against the re-emergence of a direct conventional strategic threat".

A leaked NATO policy document concedes that "large-scale conventional aggression against the alliance will be highly unlikely". As George Monbiot pointed out in yesterday’s Guardian: “No country that is capable of attacking NATO countries is willing to do so. No country that is willing is capable. Submarines, destroyers, Eurofighters and anti-tank rounds are of precious little use against people who plant bombs on trains.”

Who is making money from this obscene arms trade? The main beneficiary is BAE Systems. In his book Blair’s Wars, John Kampfner records that “from his first day in office Blair was eager not to antagonise British arms companies, and BAE Systems in particular, which developed extremely close relationships with senior figures in Downing Street.” A Downing Street aide told Kampfner that whenever the head of BAE encountered a problem, “he’d be straight on the phone to No 10 and it would be sorted”.

BAE Systems latest problem concerns the Serious Fraud Office’s three year investigations into allegations that illegal commissions into allegations that illegal commissions may have been paid to Saudi royals by BAE Systems. The SOF is also looking at arms deals between BAE and General Augusto Pinochet.

Both these deals date back to Margaret Thatcher’s time in government (her son was also involved in these deals). This helps to explain why Thatcher was so keen on helping Pinochet stay in office and from being tried in court for crimes against humanity.

What has this to do with Tony Blair? Maybe he is keen for these arms dealers to pay off the Labour Party debts (£17 million needs to be paid back during the next 12 months).

BAE is apparently claiming that the Saudis are threatening to pull-out of a £6 billion contract to provide 72 Eurofighter Typhoons and give it to the French if Blair does not call off the SFO.

The Guardian revealed on November 6th, 2006, that secret payments of millions of pounds from BEA has been found in Swiss accounts linked to Wafic Said, a billionaire arms broker for the Saudi Royal family. Apparently, Said is a close friend of Peter Mandleson. Now, there is a man that Blair finds difficult to refuse a favour.

BAE Systems is not only a corrupt company, it is also very inefficient (these two things often go together). In December, 2006, the National Audit Office disclosed that the five major domestic weapons projects experiencing the greatest cost overruns and the six most delayed projects were all managed by BAE Systems. The overspend for these projects is nearly £3bn and the delay 25 years.

In the first week of December, 2006, Lord Goldsmith said he had no intention of interfering with the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the BAE-Saudi Arabia contract. A week later Goldsmith said the Serious Fraud Office was "discontinuing" its investigation into Britain's biggest defence company, BAE Systems. its corruption inquiry into a £6bn fighter planes deal with Saudi Arabia. The reason given was one of "national security".

It later become clear that the reason Goldsmith changed his mind was because he came under pressure from Tony Blair to drop the case. Blair admitted this in a television interview. He justified the decision on the grounds of national security. Allegedly the Saudi government had threatened Blair that they would withdraw help on the war on terror if the investigation continued. (It is also claimed that the Saudis have threatened Bush that if he withdraws troops from Iraq they will provide help to the Sunni Muslims.)

In other words, the prime minister has broken an important aspect of the British Constitution. That is: “the rule of law requires that the executive does not intervene in the operation of the course of justice”.

SFO investigators have discovered that BAE Systems has a £1 billion slush fund. The issue is not about bribes being paid to members of the Saudi royal family. It is about this money finding its way back to politicians. We now know how New Labour is going to solve its problems of its £17m debt. It will be paid off by BAE Systems and the Saudis. Not directly of course but via someone like Lord Sainsbury.

What triggered off these events? If we know this, we can work out why Lord Goldsmith had to change his mind about his decision not to interfere in the SFO’s investigation. It was a decision taken in Switzerland that caused this action. The Swiss authorities decided to give the SFO access to BAE’s offshore banking transactions with Saudi middlemen. The normally highly-secret bank records were handed over to the SFO. Details of these accounts were leaked to the Sunday Times. The report then appeared in the newspaper. One would have assumed that this news would be followed by a decline in BAE’s share-price. In fact, the opposite happened - the share-price went up. People in the know, realized that this news would mean that Tony Blair would stop the investigation. One of the things that Blair is guilty of is insider dealing.

Blair knew that once the SFO had access to these bank accounts, they would be able to trace the money back to BAE executives and their political lapdogs. Lord Goldsmith ordered a meeting with Helen Garlick and her team of SFO officers. After they presented their considerable evidence on the case, Goldsmith ordered them to bring the inquiry to an end.

The problem for Blair and Goldsmith is the reason for this decision. The reason for this is that Britain is a signatory to the OECD’s anti-bribery convention. Article 5 of the convention precludes “taking into account considerations of the national economic interest or the potential effect upon relations with another state”. Therefore, Blair and Goldsmith were forced to give the excuse that the investigation was being called off for reasons of “national security”. This enables them to say they cannot go into any more detail as this would itself “endanger national security”.

Once again, as with the invasion of Iraq, Blair is hiding behind national security in order to cover-up his illegal actions. Everybody can see this, and anybody with even a brief understanding of the subject, knows that Blair is a corrupt politician who is willing to lie to all and sundry in order to hold onto power.

In his autobiography, written before his early death, Robin Cook wrote: “I came to learn that the chairman of BAE (Sir Dick Evans) appeared to have the key to the garden door to No. 10. Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE.”

In his diary Cook remarks on how in December, 2001, Tony Blair lobbied very strongly for a BAE arms deal involving a military radar system with the government in Tanzania. So did the MOD. Cook pointed out that Clare Short (Overseas Development) seemed to think that the deal was corrupt: “Clare… reads all the telegrams and knows what is happening.”

Blair put Jack Straw (Foreign Secretary) and Patricia Hewitt (DTI) under pressure to agree the deal. Only Gordon Brown joined Cook and Short in arguing against the deal.

The contract was worth $40m. Short argued that the system was overpriced and unnecessary. She also pointed out that Tanzania was one of the world’s poorest countries and could not afford to spend money on this system.

The Guardian disclosed today that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has discovered a secret Swiss bank account owned by BAE Systems. Sailesh Vithlani, a Tanzanian middle-man has confessed that BAE paid $12m in commission via this account. He claims that he made no disbursements from this account to public officials “in Tanzania”. It is not known who this money went to other than it was to people living outside of Tanzania.

Short is quoted in the Guardian today as saying that Blair was “personally responsible for forcing the licence for the Tanzania deal through the cabinet. No 10 insisted on letting this go ahead, when it stank. It was always obvious that this useless project was corrupt.”

The Serious Fraud Office is also looking at a BAE Systems contracts with the South African government. BAE created an offshore front company, Red Diamond. It also established a highly secret unit within BAE called HQ Marketing. Between 2000 and 2005, South African agents received over £70m through Red Diamond and over £6m and through HQ Marketing. Four senior BAE executives are being investigated, including former chairman, Sir Dick Evans, its chief executive, Mike Turner, its marketing director, Mike Rouse and Julia Aldridge, also from the marketing department.

On Thursday the Blair government was severely criticised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for its decision to terminate the Serious Fraud Office’s inquiry into allegations that BAE paid bribes to Saudi royals. Representatives from 35 countries expressed “serious concerns” about the behaviour of Tony Blair. Britain has been given two months to provide further explanations before the OECD decides what to do about the matter.

Officials from America and France are especially upset because their countries have been trying to enforce OECD’s anti-bribery policies. In doing so, they have been losing contracts to Britain.

A more important development is the admission from Sir John Scarlett, the head of M16, that he never possessed intelligence that Saudi Arabia planned to cut security links with Britain over the BAE Systems investigation. Once again, Blair has been caught lying about what he was told by the intelligence services. As these are “state secrets” Blair assumes he can lie about these matters without getting caught. As with WMD in Iraq, the truth sometimes emerges and Blair is exposed for being a liar.

Blair has had a fairly easy ride so far in the UK over this issue. Blair is being portrayed as being someone willing to lie and break the law in order to obtain jobs at BAE Systems for the British people. In today's world this appears to be morally acceptable. However, that is not the real issue. The termination of the SFO investigation is not to protect corrupt Saudi officials, but to protect BAE executives. The investigation into BAE’s Swiss bank accounts shows that a large amount of this slush fund has arrived back into Britain. Some of this could have gone to people working for BAE. An interesting question is what happened after that. Did it go to the people who gave the deal government approval? Did it go to the people who have tried to cover-up the corruption at BAE? If so, that money would have found its way to Tony Blair and the Labour Party. Is it BAE that has really been providing donations and loans to the Labour Party?

We know from the investigations into the BAE deals with Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and South Africa, that the company uses front organizations to pay the bribes. Has BAE been using the same system to provide money to the Labour Party? Does this explain the confusion of Lord Sainsbury when he could not remember paying large sums to the party? It is also necessary to keep a close watch on Blair after he leaves office. It will be necessary for journalists to investigate who is really paying for Blair’s lucrative lecture tours in the United States. They should also take a close look into the financial accounts of Cherrie Blair.

Report on the BBC website this morning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6315799.stm

The UK sold a "useless" air traffic control system to Tanzania in 2001 in a "scandalous" and "squalid" deal, the House of Commons has been told.

Ex-International Development Secretary Claire Short joined the Tories in accusing Tony Blair of pushing through the £28m sale by BAE Systems.

Ministers said the deal had not damaged Tanzania's economy or its development.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is currently investigating claims that BAE bribed Tanzanian officials.

Ms Short, who is now an independent MP, has consistently argued Tanzania could have paid much less for the same equipment.

"I believe that all the parties involved in this deal should be deeply ashamed," she said in a Commons debate on Tuesday night.

She said the deal was "useless and hostile to the interests of Tanzania" and had been opposed by senior cabinet members including Chancellor Gordon Brown.

She said Barclays Bank had "colluded" with the government by loaning Tanzania the money, but lying to the World Bank about the type and size of the loan.

Lynne Featherstone, of the Liberal Democrats, said Britain had to be "squeaky clean" if it wanted to "retain any influence, reputation or credibility in world affairs".

"Somewhere between the government, BAE and Barclays - and perhaps all three - our reputation worldwide is in tatters," she said.

Shadow international development secretary Andrew Mitchell said BAE had used "ageing technology" and said the system was "not adequate and too expensive".

Mr Mitchell said the deal had "all the warning signs of impropriety - a vastly inflated price, an unsuitable product and unorthodox financing".

"Despite the opposition of all the most informed, respected and qualified observers approval for the licences was forced through a divided cabinet by the prime minister."

He called on his opposite number, Hilary Benn, to explain the government's "profoundly unattractive" conduct.

Mr Benn said the government had considered whether "the export would seriously undermine the economy or seriously harm the sustainable development of the recipient country".

"The government at the time judged it would not and, looking back from this vantage point, it would be hard to argue that it did."

He said he could not comment on bribery allegations because they were under investigation.

Officials from the SFO have already visited Tanzania to look into claims BAE gave bribes to ensure the deal would go through.

BAE says it is co-operating fully with the inquiry, but has strongly denied operating a secret slush fund to sweeten deals.

The SFO recently decided to drop a long-running BAE corruption probe into a huge arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Reports said the Saudis had threatened to pull out of a new BAE deal unless the probe was brought to an end.

Opposition politicians accused the government of putting cash before principle.

It has been reported today that it was Tony Blair who insisted that the charges against BAE Systems be dropped. There was an interesting article by Lord Lester about the activities of Blair and Lord Goldsmith.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2003297,00.html

Thursday February 1, 2007
The Guardian

When Peter Goldsmith became attorney general five years ago, I tried to convince him that his office should become less political and more constitutionally independent, as is the case in numerous other democracies. I suggested that this would enhance his role as the senior legal adviser to government and, occasionally, to parliament, and as legal guardian of the public interest in criminal and civil matters. I did so in part because my experience as special adviser to the home secretary, Roy Jenkins, in Harold Wilson's second administration had convinced me that the attorney general - like the lord chancellor before the Constitutional Reform Act - wore too many hats. I had seen at first hand the powerful political pressure exerted on Sam Silkin as attorney general during a turbulent political period in the mid-70s, when the rule of law was seriously at risk.

I did not persuade Lord Goldsmith and he continues to believe that the attorney general should be at the heart of government so that he may be politically influential. The folly of his stance is underlined by this week's second arrest of Lord Levy. As the cash-for-honours inquiry moves closer to No 10, Lord Goldsmith's insistence that he has no choice but to decide whether anyone should be prosecuted looks ever more unsustainable. But events across the past five years have illustrated the need to reform the present arrangements in order to restore public trust in government and to strengthen the rule of law.

In his autobiography, In My Time, Wilson's attorney general, Lord Elwyn-Jones, recalled that Francis Bacon described the office as "the painfullest task in the realm". A few centuries later, Sir Patrick Hastings, Ramsay MacDonald's attorney general, noted that to be a law officer was to be in hell. In the early days of the office, the attorney general was called "the bulldog of the crown", though Elwyn-Jones liked to think of himself as "the corgi of the community", the corgi being Welsh and the Queen's favourite dog. It would be invidious to suggest an apt canine description for Lord Goldsmith, who would indignantly repudiate any suggestion that he is Tony Blair's poodle.

Good governance in accordance with the rule of law depends upon the proper working of the constitutional rules and conventions, and the political will to make them work. Stretched to breaking point over the Iraq invasion, those rules and conventions have now been broken in halting the criminal investigation into the British Aerospace affair.

It was wrong that the cabinet were content to discuss whether it would be lawful, in the absence of a security council resolution, to invade Iraq without a written brief from Lord Goldsmith, relying instead only on what he said to them. It was also wrong for the House of Lords to have been given only a Downing Street precis of his conclusions, without the benefit of his actual advice - including an explanation of what led him to change his advice of March 7 2003 within 10 days. When we debated the legality of the invasion we were kept in the dark, and it was only because his advice was leaked to the press that we learned something of the truth.

I share the opinion of almost all public international lawyers in this country that the invasion was unlawful without a new UN security council resolution authorising the use of force. To her great credit, the deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, promptly resigned because she did not agree that the use of force in Iraq was legal. She considered that Lord Goldsmith had reversed his view.

In December we learned that, in 1956, the law officers had been kept in the dark about the attack on Egypt during the Suez crisis. They were bypassed by Eden and his cabinet - presumably because they knew that what they were planning was plainly illegal. That episode provides another illustration of the need for reform today.

In addition to his role as government legal adviser and head of the government legal service, the attorney general also has important responsibilities for the enforcement of the criminal law in the courts. There are a number of offences where, by act of parliament, a prosecution cannot be brought without the fiat of the attorney general. These include offences under anti-corruption and race hate legislation. A member of the government should not decide whether to prosecute for a political offence, whether involving corruption or to prosecute Nick Griffin for his alleged incitement to racial hatred.

The manner in which the criminal investigation of alleged corruption was halted by the attorney general in relation to BAE Systems, like the Suez example, shows how fragile and inadequate are our present constitutional arrangements for protecting the rule of law. This scandal will not bring down the government. But it has gravely eroded public confidence in the government's integrity and it will be an unsavoury part of Tony Blair's precious legacy.

In halting the criminal investigation, the government has acted in clear breach of its obligations under the OECD convention against corruption. It has stained the international reputation of this country and set a terrible example. It has weakened the battle against corruption in international trade.

The weaving and ducking, buck-passing and hand-wringing, involving the prime minister, the attorney general, the Serious Fraud Office and the intelligence and security services, as to why and how and at whose behest the pending criminal investigation was halted, are what Lord Jenkins of Hillhead used to call a degringolade - a shambles harming the government's reputation as well as the reputation of British Aerospace and the Saudis, and adding to already widespread public distrust and cynicism about standards in public life.

I am delighted that Lord Falconer has indicated that the attorney general's role needs to be changed as part of further constitutional reform, and that Gordon Brown is considering radical reform to the attorney general's role so as to restore public trust. The sooner this happens the better it will be for the good governance of this country under the supreme law of the British constitution, or what should be our supreme constitutional law.

Tony Blair has just purchased his fifth property. His latest purchase is a £800,000 Georgian mews house that backs on to the £3.65m townhouse in London’s Connaught Square. Blair also owns a house in Sedgefield and two flats in Bristol. He rents out three of his properties (estimated at £8,000 a month income) but has to find £20,000 a month in mortgage repayments.

Blair earns £115,000 a year after tax. His wife is reported to earn £250,000 a year. Even so, it is impossible to make these repayments on their current income. Clearly, he has some other source of income.

As a member of the ADF, this is pretty interesting. BAe Systems hold a number of contracts within Australia (though none that come to mind that are subject to any type of controversy).

I have to admit, I do not follow British politics (though I will discuss it with a number of workmates, who are ex-UK personnel who have recently done a 'lateral transfer' to the ADF) but I'd like to ask some questions.

In Australia, Labor is widely perceived (within the ADF) as being 'detrimental' to Defence. Rightly or wrongly, they are seen by many to cut the Defence budget too severely. Even so, there are many personnel within the ADF who will not be voting for Mr Howard.

Is the UK Labor party seen in a similar light?

I noticed in the news the comparison between Mr Howard and Mr Blair; Mr Blair was being portrayed as cutting back on the RN, whilst Mr Howard is supporting the expansion of the RAN.

The Labour Party used to be seen in this way. During previous periods of government: 1945-51, 1964-1970 and 1974-9, Labour governments tried to reduce the defence budget in order to increase welfare spending. These periods also saw increases in the higher-rates of income-tax.

Tony Blair's policy since 1997 has been very different. Income-tax rates have been kept low and as a result the gap between rich and poor has grown (in previous Labour administrations the opposite happened). Defence spending has increased rapidly. This is why BAE Systems pulled out of the Airbus project, it claimed that more money could be made by producing war planes than passenger planes.

The UK does not like to believe its politicians are corrupt. The media is always telling us we have the most honest democracy in the world. It is of course not true. It is not "honest" or democratic". Blair has taken corruption to a new level and hopefully this will eventually be recognised and we can then start to reform this deeply flawed political system.

This is the news article to which I previously mentioned, though I am surprised & disagree with the conclusions drawn.

At the risk of derailing the thread, Australia's unique position has meant that we depend heavily upon our Sea Lines Of Communication. Additionally, apart from our northern borders, any aggressor force must traverse a large expanse of ocean to threaten Australia. This is why, along with the Air Force, the RAN has been the nation's first line of defence.

(The current employment of those defence forces is a matter for separate discussion, and WOULD derail the thread)

The UK, on the other hand, faces all of the traditional threat avenues (as well as the asymmetric).

John, do you think that (in light of a possible association with BAe) Mr Blair is favouring one service at the expense of another? Or might it be that he still holds some notion of an Empire and considers this the best way to support it?

BAE Systems is the only real international player in the UK.

It is reported that the US is furious with Blair and Goldsmith for covering up this corruption. The main complaint is that these bribes have undermined free and fair competition. The European Commission has also been asked to investigate whether the decision to drop the case against BAE has breached European Union competition rules. It clearly has and Blair has a lot of explaining to do.

There is a state within a state in the United Kingdom, a small but untouchable domain that appears to be subject to a different set of laws. We have heard quite a bit about it over the past two months, but hardly anyone knows just how far its writ runs. The state is BAE Systems, Britain's biggest arms company. It seems, among other advantages, to be able to run its own secret service.

This week, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) hopes to obtain a court order against BAE. The order would allow it to discover how the arms company obtained one of its confidential documents. CAAT instructed its lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, to seek a judicial review of the government's decision to drop the corruption case against BAE, which is alleged to have paid massive bribes to members of the Saudi royal family. Leigh Day sent CAAT an email containing advice on costs and tactics. The email ended up in the hands of the arms company.

How? Correspondence between a plaintiff and his lawyers couldn't be more private. The last people you would show it to are the defendants in the case. But somehow the letter found its way to BAE's offices.

The arms company argues that it was the unwitting and unwilling recipient of the email. So why does it refuse to tell CAAT who sent it? Why, far from assisting CAAT's attempt to explain this mystery, has it threatened the group with costs for seeking to reveal BAE's source?

CAAT has good reason to be suspicious. In 2003, the Sunday Times revealed that BAE had carried out a "widespread spying operation" on its critics. "Bank accounts were accessed, computer files downloaded and private correspondence with members of parliament and ministers secretly copied and passed on." The paper said the arms company made use of a network run by a former consultant for the Ministry of Defence called Evelyn Le Chene. "Le Chene recruited at least half a dozen agents to infiltrate CAAT's headquarters at Finsbury Park, north London, and a number of regional offices." They provided BAE with advanced intelligence on CAAT's campaign against the sale of its Hawk aircraft to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. The arms company also obtained CAAT's membership list, its bank account details, the identity of its donors, its letters to ministers, even the contents of private diaries belonging to its staff.

After the story was published, CAAT asked a team of investigators to examine the messages sent from its offices. They found that one of the group's most senior members of staff, the national campaigns and events coordinator, had sent 181 emails to an unfamiliar address. Many of them contained extremely sensitive information.

The coordinator, Martin Hogbin, denied that he was an agent of Le Chene's. He claimed that the mysterious email address belonged to a former CAAT volunteer, and that he had been sending him this information because he might find it interesting.

The investigators contacted the former volunteer, who told them that he had not received any messages from Hogbin, and did not recognise the address. CAAT took the case to the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner, who found that the email address belonged to "a company with links to Evelyn Le Chene". Both Le Chene and Hogbin refused to assist the investigations. If it was true that Hogbin was working for Le Chene, it would be a tremendous coup for her and her clients. As campaigns and events coordinator, he knew more than anyone else about CAAT's plans. If BAE were to obtain and make use of such intelligence, it could anticipate and outmanoeuvre the Campaign's attempts to expose or embarrass it.

BAE's spying operations represent just one way in which the company looks like a parallel state. It also appears to enjoy crown immunity. Last August, this column suggested that the Saudi corruption case might be dropped, in order to protect a new order for 72 BAE jets. It was not a hard prediction to make - Saudi Arabia had made the new deal conditional on the abandonment of the case. But I could not have guessed that both the attorney general and the prime minister would make such a show of squashing the investigation. They seemed to go out of their way to demonstrate to BAE's clients that they would do whatever it took to protect the new order, even if it meant exposing themselves to allegations of collusion.

The prime minister has never taken such a risk on behalf of one of his departments, let alone his ministers or officials (witness how Lord Levy and Ruth Turner have been left to swing). There are just two friends for whom he will put his legacy on the line: George Bush and BAE.

In 2001, Blair overruled Clare Short and Gordon Brown to grant an export licence for BAE's sale of a military air-traffic control system to one of the world's poorest countries, Tanzania. The World Bank had pointed out that the contract was ridiculously expensive - Tanzania could have bought a better system elsewhere for a quarter of the price. In January the Guardian revealed that BAE Systems allegedly paid a $12m (£6.2m) "commission" to an agent who brokered the deal.

In 2005, Blair made a secret visit to Riyadh to expedite BAE's deal with the Saudi princes. He then sent both John Reid and Des Browne to clinch the order. Ministers in the UK have always acted as unpaid salesmen for the arms companies, but seldom has a prime minister muddied his hands this much. Blair pushed the order through by promising the Saudis that they could have the first 24 planes ahead of schedule. How? By selling them the jets already allotted to the RAF. BAE's interests, in other words, trump the requirements of our own armed forces.

Blair has also broken his government's pledge to publish the report by the National Audit Office on BAE's dealings in Saudi Arabia. It remains the only NAO report never to have been made public. We can only guess why the prime minister needs to protect it.

It could be argued, with some force, that this government has always had a special relationship with big business, rather like its special relationship with George Bush (it gets beaten up and thanks him for it). But the special favours it grants BAE are deeply resented by other corporations. After the suppression of the Saudi case, F&C Asset Management, a very large institutional investor, wrote to the government to complain that its decision undermined the rule of law and the predictability of the investment climate. Hermes, Britain's biggest pension fund, said that it threatened the UK's reputation as a leading financial centre, and the chairman of Anglo-American wrote that the abandonment of the case "damaged the reputation of Britain".

At what point does the government conclude that this company has got out of control? That it presents a danger to national interests, to the reputation of the prime minister, to the privacy and civil liberties of its opponents? Why does it appear to be above the law? For how much longer will it be permitted to run what looks like a parallel secret service? Of all the questions we might ask of our ministers, these are the least likely to be answered.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2011751,00.html

Last week, Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions, was reported to be having an affair with a female barrister. Macdonald’s boss, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, defended him by saying it was a “private matter”.

The Sunday newspapers today have revealed that Goldsmith has also been having an affair Kim Hollis, a lawyer who was the first Asian woman to reach the rank of Queen’s Counsel. When interviewed by journalists, Goldsmith admitted the affair but claimed it was a “private matter”.

What we do know is that on two occasions in the past, the legality of the invasion of Iraq and the non-prosecution of BAE Systems, Goldsmith was reluctant to go along with Blair’s wishes. However, in both cases, Goldsmith changed his mind and gave into pressure from Blair.

Goldsmith and Macdonald are going to play important roles in the prosecution or non-prosecution of Tony Blair and his mates over the “cash for honours” scandal.

Is it possible that the reason that Goldsmith and Macdonald have given into Blair is because they were being blackmailed over their secret affairs? Lyndon Johnson always made sure he had people in key positions who could be blackmailed.

Is it possible that enemies of Tony Blair have leaked these stories? After all, they can no longer be blackmailed by Blair.

Despite mountains of documents suggesting enormous cash sums heading the Saudis' way, the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, told parliament the investigation was dropped for lack of evidence - and because MI5 and MI6 believed Britain's national security would be in danger if justice was pursued (though, interestingly, the heads of those agencies have refused to endorse that claim). In an incredible sentence, Goldsmith explained that the decision had been made in the wider public interest, which had to be "balanced against the rule of law". But the rule of law should not be balanced against anything. If it is, you descend down the slippery slope into dictatorship.

In normal times, the SFO decision alone might have forced Blair's exit: to suspend the law because of threats from a foreign government is as serious as it gets. But the issue gained no traction, because there is nowhere for political outrage to go. How can you demand that Blair quit when he's quitting anyway? The result is an eerie lethargy in British politics, thanks to which the prime minister is unconstrained.

Jonathan...

How nice to see you back visiting the forum for another fly-bye.

It would be unfair to accuse you of plaigiarism, as you only appear to plaigiarize yourself. Nevertheless, it's interesting to compare your simulataneous entries in three threads about Tony Blair, all of which contain over-lapping extracts from your latest article.

This is the briefest of the three.

Does it contain a coded message?

Or is the key take-home message the proposition that the British PM and Attorney General are even more bent than the heads of MI5 and MI6?

Story that has just appeared on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6728773.stm

A Saudi prince who negotiated a £40bn arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia received secret payments for over a decade, a BBC probe has found.
The UK's biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.

Prince Bandar would not comment on the investigation and BAE systems said they acted lawfully at all times.

The MoD said information about the Al Yamamah deal was confidential.

Up to £120m a year was sent by BAE from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington.

The BBC's Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Banda for his role in the 1985 deal to sell more than 100 warplanes to Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the prince's private Airbus.

David Caruso, an investigator who worked for the American bank where the accounts were held, said Prince Bandar had been taking money for his own personal use out of accounts that seemed to belong to his government.

He said: "There wasn't a distinction between the accounts of the embassy, or official government accounts as we would call them, and the accounts of the royal family."

Mr Caruso said he understood this had been going on for "years and years".

"Hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars were involved," he added.

According to Panorama's sources, the payments were written into the arms deal contract in secret annexes, described as "support services".

They were authorised on a quarterly basis by the MoD.

The payments were discovered during a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation.

The SFO inquiry into the Al Yamamah deal was stopped in December 2006 by attorney general Lord Goldsmith.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said at the time it had been dropped because of national security concerns.

Prince Bandar, who is the son of the Saudi defence minister, served for 20 years as ambassador and is now head of the country's national security council.

Jane Corbin, from Panorama, explained that the payments were Saudi public money, channelled through BAE and the MoD, back to the Prince.

The SFO were trying to establish whether they were illegal when the investigation was stopped, she added.

And she said she believed the payments would thrust the issue back into the public domain and raise a number of questions.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said that if ministers in either the present or previous governments were involved there should be a "major parliamentary inquiry".

"It seems to me very clear that this issue has got to be re-opened," Mr Cable told BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight.

"It is one thing for a company to have engaged in alleged corruption overseas. It is another thing if British government ministers have approved it."

I thought it might be worthwhile to explain some background detail to this BAE scandal.

The story begins in December 1984 when Margaret Thatcher approached Prince Bandar bin Sultan and asked him to help BAE get a new weapons contract with Saudi Arabia. At the time Bandar was Saudi ambassador to Washington. He was also a close friend of George Bush. Bandar had to do a deal with Bush before he could arrange for the arms contract with BAE to go ahead. Bush and Reagan gave their blessing to the deal in return for the appropriate rewards.

There were several reasons for this. Bush and Reagan did not mind where they got their bribes from. They also were aware that it had been illegal in the US since 1977 (the work of Jimmy Carter) for corrupt payments to be made to foreign politicians. However, the main reason concerned the unwillingness of the Reagan administration to be associated with an arms deal with an Arab nation. They knew that this would upset the powerful Israeli lobby.

The deal was arranged for the government by Charles Powell, Thatcher’s top political advisor (or in other words, her bagman). Others involved in these negotiations included Prince Bandar, Colin Chandler (Ministry of Defence) and Dick Evans (BAE Systems). Charles Powell is the brother of Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff who is currently being investigated for the cash for honours scandal. It is Powell who introduced Blair into the world of corruption.

In 1985 the Al-Yamamah agreement was signed by Michael Heseltine and Prince Sultan. The deal is worth £45bn to BAE.

In 1989 the National Audit Office started an inquiry into allegations that huge bribes were paid to land Al-Yamamah contract. In 1992 the auditor-general Sir John Bourn agrees to suppress the report after Thatcher claims its publication would upset the Saudis.

In 2001 a whitleblower at the Ministry of Defence claims that a BAE “slush fund” exists. BAE with the help of the MoD manage to cover-up the story. A second whistleblower provides information on the story to the Serious Fraud Office in 2004. The SFO begins an investigation into corruption at BAE. This is significant as in 1999 Blair signed up to OECD anti-corruption agreement. In 2002 the British government followed the US example by making it illegal for corrupt payments to be made to foreign politicians.

Over the next two years the SFO discover a considerable amount of evidence that the BAE had been involved in corrupting politicians from several countries including Saudi Arabia, Chile and South Africa. In 2006 Tony Blair orders the SFO to stop its investigation into Saudi Arabia. The reason is that the SFO is just about to gain access to Swiss accounts thought to have been linked to the Saudi royal family.

However, David Leigh of the Guardian continues to carry out his own investigation. He passed his information to the BBC who will broadcast next Monday details of how since 1985 BAE have given Prince Bandar over £1bn. It is also be made clear that the MoD and government ministers, both Tories and Labour, were aware of these payments.

The real issue is about what Prince Bandar did with this money. How much went to Margaret Thatcher, John Bourn, Charles Powell, Colin Chandler, Tony Blair, Lord Goldsmith, etc.?

Never let members of this government complain about corruption abroad. Never let them blame the failure of Tony Blair's mission to rescue Africa on venal dictators and grasping officials. The allegations published in the Guardian yesterday about slush funds used to oil the Al-Yamamah deal suggest that there is nothing that foreign despots can teach us about corruption.

In 2003, the Guardian uncovered evidence suggesting that the arms company BAE had been running a £60m slush fund, which it used to provide gifts and prostitutes to Saudi officials to facilitate its massive weapons deal. Prince Turki bin Nasser, the Saudi minister for arms procurement, was alleged to be a beneficiary. But the new allegations are on a different scale altogether. They allege that BAE channelled over £1bn to another Saudi official, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, as payment for ensuring that Al-Yamamah proceeded. Most damagingly for this government, the fees are alleged to have continued, with the authorisation of the Ministry of Defence, after 2002, when the payment of commissions to foreign officials became illegal in the UK. Prince Bandar yesterday denied the payments were secret or backhanders, and said they were within the contracts.

The Guardian's initial revelations gave the Serious Fraud Office little choice but to open an investigation. In 2005, the Saudi government informed Blair it would not lodge another order with BAE (for 72 Eurofighters) unless this case was abandoned. Last December, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, instructed the SFO to drop the case. He and the prime minister cited "national security" as the reason for this surrender. Something was being secured all right: but it was BAE's income and the backsides of the ministers - led by Blair - who put the company's interests ahead of the nation's.

This was not the first time Goldsmith intervened to prevent justice from being done. He has come to symbolise everything that is wrong with Blair's government: the cowardice of ministers, lawyers' truths, capitulation to corporations and foreign governments, and the judicial abuses permitted in a nation without a constitution. He represents something very old - the British establishment's closing of ranks - and something new: the corruption of purpose and method that has attended the project of liberal interventionism from its inception.

In fairness to our craven attorney general, all this goes back a long way. The Defence Export Services Organisation (Deso), which allegedly oversaw these payments, has channelled money to corrupt officials in foreign governments since it was founded by the government 40 years ago. As documents unearthed by the Guardian show, this was and is its main purpose. Since the Al-Yamamah deal was signed in 1985, Britain has been supporting, financially and militarily, one of the world's most despotic regimes.

This makes a mockery of successive governments' claims to be supporting democracy around the world, and ensures our security is now entangled with that of the Saudi princes. Al-Qaida's primary complaint is directed against the Saudi monarchy and the western support it receives. Like the war in Iraq, like Blair's support for Israel's invasion of Lebanon and his uneven treatment of Israel and Palestine, this deal helps ensure Britain is a primary target for terrorism: not because our government acted on principle, but because it acted without it. Blair has invoked all the strategic threats from which he claims to defend us.

Close down Deso. Reopen the investigation. Sack the attorney general and the senior civil servants at the Ministry of Defence. Open a public inquiry to determine what Blair knew. Wage war on tax havens and secret offshore accounts. Hold BAE to account. Then lecture the rest of the world on good governance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2098302,00.html

Yesterday, Tony Blair defended his actions with the words: "This investigation, if it had gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations and investigation being made of the Saudi royal family and my job is to give advice as to whether that is a sensible thing in circumstances where I don't believe the investigation would have led to anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital interest to our country. We would have lost thousands, thousands of British jobs."

Does this mean that no charges will be made against anyone if a conviction might mean the loss of jobs? This argument could be used about any criminal investigation of any company.

Blair's fear was about the loss of jobs from within the government and the MoD. The reason that the investigation was called off in 2006 was not about Prince Banda's bank account in Washington but about BAE bank accounts in Switzerland. The SFO was close to finding out the other people being paid out of BAE's slush fund. I suspect this money went to politicians and officials at the MoD who made the deal possible.

It was disclosed yesterday that Lord Goldsmith failed to disclose to the OCED anti-corruption team that he knew about BEA/Prince Banda’s Washington bank account. Goldsmith claimed that this was because of “national security” reasons. This was the same excuse given for withholding documents in the Duke of Kent’s death, the Suez Crisis in 1956, Watergate and the assassination of JFK. This excuse allows governments to “get away with murder” (and I do mean murder).

I do not imagine that the government or parliament will investigate this case. Hopefully, the OCED will continue with its investigation.

George Monbiot also posted this Guardian article to the thread ' The Corruption of Tony Blair: Britain’s Watergate?'.

I've replied to it HERE

There are several factors concerning the BAe Al Yamama deal that can be further elucidated.

Fistly, the arms deal was originally a covert conduit for arms sales to Saddam's Iraq. Opening anything up about that would be stamped on immediately.

Secondly, BAe evidently can always use its intimate knowledge of subterranean matters to blackmail anyone in government in the UK (see point 1).

Thirdly, Wafic Said, the BAe Saudi agent in this deal and Mark Thatcher were reported to be jointly administering the "commissions" related to the deal via the so called "Savoy mafia." One beneficiary of Mark Thatcher's generosity is believed to have been the Conservative Party. The sum paid to it, if I recall correctly, was approximately £200 million to one of its bank accounts in Switzerland. I'm struggling to remember them, possibly Rothchilds was the bank and the accounts were known as the "three rivers accounts" - but I may be misremembering them incorrectly.

I was also told that Margaret Thatcher benefited personally to the tune of an odd couple of hundred million or so. The total figure of Thatcher/Conservative Party commissions was somewhere between £400-450 millions, I was told.

I seem to remember a rumour that was published by Scallywag Magazine which claimed that the Tory party money later "disappeared" courtesy of Lord MacAlpine and that it was news of this that triggered Michael Heseltime's heart attack and brough to an end his hope of ever leading the Party.

David

Thank you for this summary. It is not clear how much Margaret Thatcher, Mark Thatcher and the Conservative Party received as a result of this deal. That they received large sums is not in dispute. One can understand why the Tories are giving support for Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith over this issue.

There was another interesting story published in today's Guardian. It claims that BAE Systems used a secret payments system to transfer more than £13m to a company called Defence Consultancy Ltd (DCL). This company was registered anonymously in 1997 in the British Virgin Islands, with a bank account at the Henry Ansbacher merchant bank in Guernsey. The chairman of this bank at the time was Louis Hart. His son is David Hart, Thatcher's political adviser. Hart of course masterminded the destruction of the mining unions under Thatcher. He was also working at the time as a political adviser to BAE.

BAE used a front company, Red Diamond, for this transaction. Over the last 20 years BAE has used Red Diamond to channel hundreds of millions of pounds to confidential agents with offshore accounts all over the world.

Very interesting, John. Defence Consultantcy Limited sounds (to my untuned ear) very similar to Defence Systems Limited, part of the "Palace Group" of companies that include such luminaries as Sandline and Executive Outcomes. DSL is owned by Armor Holdings Inc -- very Pentagon-Langley... The Palace Group used to have some very nice (!) South African crooks, er, I mean boys, associated with it that I have bumped into (or been bumped into by) over the years when I was tracking Project Hammer. I well remember the merchant bank Henry Ansbacher from my early days in the City. I even think I have some curious financial papers that cite their name in some odd and doubtless crooked transaction. Meanwhile, you could always get Blochs book "British Intelligence and Covert Action" that will undoubtedly add more gravey to this story.

But isn't it absoliutely fascinating that Richard Bethel - now Lord Westbury - a former old Harrovian SAS thug who was part of the Palace Group founded a related outfit called, yes, the "Hart Group" (website no longer functioning -- fortunately, I saved a copy ;->) and I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if his choice of company name wasn't dictated by an infusion of funds/direction from the Hart's named above. Otherwise coincidence really does exist in spooksville and that would mean changing my attitude pdq!

Betheld's Hart Group was very interested in protecting vessels at sea from "piracy" - doubtless he was smirking at the joke when this was written. Similarities also for "Red Diamond" becuase another company that formed part of the Palace Group was "Diamond Works". I believe (but haven't really investigated this to any great extent) that there is also a American version of the Defence Systems Limited (of the Palace Group), which would be USDS Inc, - United States Defense Systems Inc., which is, itself, a subsidiary of Armor Holdings. I also think there is a Saudi arm too that might connect to an entity called Saudi Finance. (SaudiFin) based in Geneva that connects to the Bin Laden family.

Things get soooo complicated, don't they.

David

Very interesting, John. Defence Consultantcy Limited sounds (to my untuned ear) very similar to Defence Systems Limited, part of the "Palace Group" of companies that include such luminaries as Sandline and Executive Outcomes. DSL is owned by Armor Holdings Inc -- very Pentagon-Langley... The Palace Group used to have some very nice (!) South African crooks, er, I mean boys, associated with it that I have bumped into (or been bumped into by) over the years when I was tracking Project Hammer. I well remember the merchant bank Henry Ansbacher from my early days in the City. I even think I have some curious financial papers that cite their name in some odd and doubtless crooked transaction. Meanwhile, you could always get Blochs book "British Intelligence and Covert Action" that will undoubtedly add more gravey to this story.

But isn't it absoliutely fascinating that Richard Bethel - now Lord Westbury - a former old Harrovian SAS thug who was part of the Palace Group founded a related outfit called, yes, the "Hart Group" (website no longer functioning -- fortunately, I saved a copy ;->) and I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if his choice of company name wasn't dictated by an infusion of funds/direction from the Hart's named above. Otherwise coincidence really does exist in spooksville and that would mean changing my attitude pdq!

Bethel's Hart Group was very interested in protecting vessels at sea from "piracy" - doubtless he was smirking at the joke when this was written. Similarities also for "Red Diamond" becuase another company that formed part of the Palace Group was "Diamond Works". I believe (but haven't really investigated this to any great extent) that there is also a American version of the Defence Systems Limited (of the Palace Group), which would be USDS Inc, - United States Defense Systems Inc., which is, itself, a subsidiary of Armor Holdings. I also think there is a Saudi arm too that might connect too via an entity called Saudi Finance. (SaudiFin) based in Geneva that connects to the Bin Laden family.

Corruption and thievery get soooo complicated, doesn't it.

David

Anyone see tonight's Panorama on the BAe/Al Yamamah deal? It was strange to the extent that the only Saudi Prince to be named was Bandar. Is he being hung out to dry - limited hangout, I wonder?

Remember, any government scandal always turns out worse than first it seems. Remember too that if it involves an assertion by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, race to the kitchen and count your spoons.

I thought that little more could be squeezed from the Guardian's BAE/Saudi corruption story until the BBC's revelation on Monday that long-denied bribes had actually been countersigned by the Ministry of Defence. Those who jeer at the ethical standards of foreign governments should understand that these officials, were they in Washington, would now be in handcuffs.

Even the French, since the 1998 OECD anti-corruption convention, have held eight prosecutions for international bribery. Britain has held none. If the al-Yamamah case ever comes within sight of justice, it will be no thanks to an honest prime minister, an alert cabinet, a Wilberforce-style MP, a government auditor, a policeman or a lobbyist. It will be thanks to a muck-raking media, described yesterday by Tony Blair as a "feral beast" of cynicism.

I recall a British civil servant seeing a picture of a veiled Margaret Thatcher descending the steps of a jet to grovel at the feet of some Saudi princes at the time of the 1985 al-Yamamah contract. "This," he said with a sigh, "will end in tears." Thatcher was also negotiating the Pergau dam deal with Malaysia, heavy with kickbacks. Tony Blair did likewise with the Tanzania radar contract, a third of which comprised bribes. Prime ministers seemed to think themselves above the law. In both latter cases they overruled ministers and officials.

The £43bn al-Yamamah deal was not so much about defence as laundering huge sums of surplus oil revenue into the pockets of the Saudi rich, distorting Britain's heavily subsidised defence industry into the bargain. The Saudis do not fight. They have no plausible army. Their purchases of overpriced ships and planes must be operated by mercenaries from Pakistan and elsewhere and sit rusting in docks and deserts.

Saudi foreign policy is based shrewdly on paying for protection from fundamentalist groups that might stir internal dissent. The Saudis financed the Taliban in Afghanistan, and intelligence suggests this is continuing through Gulf "charities". It is inconceivable that Saudi intelligence, so highly valued by Blair, was ignorant of Osama bin Laden's activities before 9/11, which were run mostly by Saudis. The threat to the present Riyadh regime is internal and is not to be met by Tornados and British destroyers. It is met with brutal repression, torture, sharia law and medieval treatment of women and foreigners. Yet this is a government that Britain's most sanctimonious of prime ministers calls a "good friend of ours".

Industry estimates put the price of 120 al-Yamamah jets at roughly 30% over cost. While America was excluded from the contract by its Israel lobby, the alternative supplier, France, must be assumed not to have overbid the British but to have declined to pay so much "commission". This went chiefly to the very man who negotiated the deal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The money, accepted as more than £1bn, was paid to a Riggs Bank account in Washington - now closed - to cover his gigantic jet and other luxuries.

Al-Yamamah was not just the biggest arms contract in the world but also the most opaque. It was awarded unprecedented protection from audit, a unique Bank of England facility, and payments through offshore companies into various Swiss bank accounts. All prime ministers and defence secretaries have taken oaths of allegiance to these mysteries as a mark of their machismo. All participants protest their innocence of wrongdoing, yet go berserk at the mention of the National Audit Office, the Serious Fraud Office or, more recently, the OECD. I repeat, in any honest country they would be in jail.

BAE announced this week that the former lord chief justice, Lord Woolf no less, had been ensnared into "heading an inquiry into the company's operations and ethical practices", but he had been warned off al-Yamamah, presumably because it is considered beyond the power of whitewash. When BP asked James Baker, a former US secretary of state, to look into its safety record, he was told specifically to examine the Texas City catastrophe, the reason for his appointment. Lord Woolf must be soft in the head to fall for BAE's ruse.

Goldsmith announced last December that the SFO's head, Robert Wardle, had spontaneously recalled his investigators from Switzerland for "reasons of national security". Goldsmith briefed that the £2m investigation, which he had approved, was collapsing for lack of evidence. This is now seen as the reverse of the truth. The inquiry was called off for gathering too much incriminating evidence, after frantic lobbying by the prime minister. This indicated that BAE's protestations of innocence were untrue. Bandar's "commission" went way beyond Trade Department protocols stipulating that no more than 5% of a contract value be paid to "local agents". Far worse for Goldsmith, the inquiry had discovered the government's own fingerprints all over the disbursements from the Bank of England.

Panorama revealed that the Ministry of Defence specifically processed, and may still be processing, quarterly invoices for £30m to Bandar. It so happens that the head of the relevant MoD sales unit, Alan Garwood, is a former BAE executive. He reports to Lord Drayson, the arms sales minister, who gave Labour £500,000 within weeks of being made a life peer in 2004 and described himself as "entrepreneur-in-residence" at the Said Business School in Oxford. Wafic Said was Bandar's aide in negotiating al-Yamamah and is assumed to figure among its many beneficiaries. That Blair should have made Drayson political overseer of the Bandar payments cannot be a coincidence.

As the onion skins peel back, al-Yamamah emerges as not a defence contract at all but a vehicle for financial "skimming" by rich Saudis (and Britons such as Mark Thatcher). While British governments could argue that before the 1998 convention such payments were legal, that has not been so since and they were specifically outlawed in 2001. Whitehall has been complicit in a colossal, secret and illegal act of bribery to win a grossly inflated contract. That is why Goldsmith had to suppress the SFO inquiry and why BAE dare not let Lord Woolf near the stinking trough. And Blair has the gall to call the press cynical.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,2101560,00.html

On those "other luxuries"...

Years ago I was told that Bandar was trying to purchase a small and very private Swiss bank in Basel and it was, therefore, interesting that during the Panorama doco there was a segment discussing Bandar travelling to Basel in his private plane just after the BAe payoff story broke. The filmmakers considered this important, in view of the SFO's statement in the film that it was when they began looking into the Swiss bank (unnamed) connections of Bandar that the pressure was put on them to close down their investigation.

The story got really very strange because the bank Bandar was negotiating with back in the 1990's to purchase, was Bank Kuenzler AG, Basel. Kuenzler is, of course, a German name of Jewish origin. Even stranger was that a suitable "Chairman" had been selected to manage the bank on Bandar's behalf. The gentleman in question was both a Special Assistant to President Reagan (during that Administration) and a leader in the Mormon Church (which was where my interest was centred because of the gold laundering activity of numerous Mormons).

The American spelling of the name is Kunzler - without the "e" and there is, or was, a company with that name that was a Gambino crime family front (or something similar anyway -- memory lapses these days).

I remember thinking at the time how strange the whole set-up was... a Saudi prince looking to buy a Jewish bank domiciled in Switzerland that was quite possibly associated with the Sicialian mafia and that was to be managed by a leading Mormon. Talk about cross-denomination business interests...

I don't know if the Kuenzler bank deal was ever consumated but with some of the abundant wealth at his disposal, Bandar was also at that same time , looking to purchase Hackney Greyhound stadium -- of all things. And a bolt-hole (niftly described as "in times of deployment) for his direct family in the Algarve.

On these deals, Bandar was operating under the patronage of HRH Mutaab and not off his own bat.

I find it completely repulsive when British politicians go onto television and claim that we have the least corrupt political system in the world. It is just the least reported corrupt system. Not the same thing at all.

It is an important point that these defence contracts are a money laundering scam. It is government ministers and MoD officials who are being well paid for this service.

Attorney General Lord Goldsmith is to step down after six years in office. He said he will leave his post next week - as Tony Blair quits after 10 years as prime minister. Goldsmith says he has resigned but in reality he has been told by Gordon Brown that he was going to be sacked.

The legal spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, Simon Hughes, said Lord Goldsmith would be remembered as "one of the most controversial attorney generals in post-war British politics... He will always share responsibility for the decision to invade Iraq and to drop the investigation into alleged corrupt dealings between BAE and the Saudi government in connection with Britain's biggest ever defence contract."

Hughes is being too kind. Goldsmith is the most corrupt Attorney General in our history. Gordon Brown has made a gesture that he is about to clean-up politics. I only believe that if he orders a re-opening of the investigation into BAE and the Saudi government.

I heartily agree with your sentiments John, but I really don't see Brown opening up the BAe scar again.

Firstly, Brown is part of the same American influenced school as Blair and other leading members of New Labour. Neither Brown nor Blair were direct members of BAP but they were, as you can see, heavily influenced by them. See: http://www.unclenicks.net/bilderberg/www.b...erg.org/bap.htm and also: http://www.nthposition.com/inlovewithamerica.php

Secondly, the Saudi royal family are, besides being thoroughly greedy and corrupt --- not to mention very nasty --- far too close and important to America to allow the newly formed scab on this scandal to be torn open again.

This is only a personal view, but it is based on some insights. Several years ago I was given a brief opportunity to read hundreds of pages of Saudi royal family documents relating to all sorts of business projects and other matters that made fascinating reading. These included a Saudi financed GCC contract for the removal of Iraqi chemical weapon residue ("war gases") from Kuwait in the post Desert Storm period. Since it officially remains the case, in the west (because we supplied Saddam with his "toys"), that Saddam didn't use chemical weapons at any point during Gulf War I, you can see how embarrasing this fact alone would be if the House of Al Saud leaked the story with corroborating documentation. Imagine the financial burden of compensation that would land at the door of the MoD and the Pentagon (just to name two) from Vets suffering (and from families where Vets have died) from Gulf War Illness that results from exposure to chemical weapons, but which both countries still officially deny were used or even deployed by Iraq in Kuwait.

My guess is that if the Saudi's went down then a whole load of other people in America and Europe know they would go down with them.

David

You are probably right that Gordon Brown will continue to participate in the cover-up. However, it is true that Brown hates Blair with a passion and that he could use these legal cases to destroy his reputation as an honest politician (some people would argue that this reputation has already been destroyed).

So far the right-wing press have gone fairly easy on Blair over the BAE Systems scandal. That is because of Margaret Thatcher’s involvement in the original deal. However, as we move closer to the General Election, Brown will be very vulnerable to attacks about covering up New Labour scandals. Brown might find that he will need to expose Blair’s involvement in these scandals in order to protect his own reputation and to keep his job as prime minister.

There are several rumours circulating at the moment about Lord Goldsmith. It has been noted that he resigned late on Friday night. This is the best time to bury bad news. The timing of this is very significant. Why did he not announce his intentions several weeks ago? For example, when John Reid and Hilary Armstrong announced their intentions not to serve in Brown’s government (they both knew they would be sacked by Brown).

One rumour is that just before he goes next week, Lord Goldsmith will announce that he has decided not to prosecute any of those involved in the cash-for-honours affair. There would be an outcry but because the front pages would be dominated by news of Brown’s arrival as prime minister, he will get away with it.

Another possibility is that Brown will appoint a Liberal Democrat as Attorney General. For example, Lord Carlile and Lord Lester, have been suggested as people who might replace Goldsmith. Then Brown could then argue that the decision not to prosecute Lord Levy for selling honours was taken by someone outside the Labour Party. The problem with this is how can Gordon Brown ensure that the new Attorney General makes this decision? All I will say on this is that Lord Goldsmith, Lord Levy, Lord Carlile and Lord Lester have something in common. They also have this in common with the people who initially funded Blair’s campaign to become prime minister.

Lord Carlile would be my choice if I was Brown. Carlile has been a loyal government supporter of the Blair government. He is the so-called independent reviewer of British anti-terrorist laws, and has advocated the development of legislation in conformity with provisions of the Bush government's USA PATRIOT Act. Among those civil liberties targeted included the right to a trial, the requirement that charges be issued against the imprisoned, and limits on government wiretapping of citizens.

UK defence firm BAE Systems has said it is the subject of an anti-corruption probe by the US Department of Justice. According to BAE, the probe will look at its compliance with anti-corruption laws including its business "concerning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia". BAE faces allegations that it ran a fund to help it win plane and military equipment orders from Saudi Arabia.

Maybe it was the BAE Systems deal that gave George Bush a hold over Tony Blair. Now that Blair is going, Bush has allowed the US Department of Justice to go ahead. It might be used to negotiate with Gordon Brown if he is thinking of removing all British troops from Iraq.

The interesting thing about the al-Yamamah contract is that it was between the British and Saudi governments, not between BAE and Saudi Arabia, and that BAE was only the contractor.

Blair as Middle East envoy is currently being prosposed and discussed.

Would this allow him to keep his fingers in the till, as it were?

In truth Blair will be working as an arms salesman in the Middle East. It is not in the interests of the arms manufacturers in the UK and the US for a peace agreement in the Middle East.

Interesting development in the BAE scandal has recently emerged. Politicians have to find ways of getting bribes into their accounts. For example, LBJ did it via his wife’s radio station in Texas. The money took the form of paid advertising. If you look through the radio station’s accounts you can find some strange companies buying advertising on the radio station.

The Blairs set up a family trust in 1997. This was used to buy property. This included the famous incident where Cherie arranged for Australian crook, Peter Foster, to buy two flats in Bristol (Cheriegate). It was claimed that these flats were to be for the Blair children when they were at university. This was in itself embarrassing as it was at the same time when Blair had reneged on his promises on university fees. Unfortunately most students don’t have parents to buy them flats while at university.

It has emerged that a company called Thales has paid a large sum for the use of these flats for their Bristol executives. Thales and the Blair Trust have refused to reveal how much money was paid to rent these flats. Thales is a company that gets defence contracts from the government. Alex Dorrian, chief executive of Thales, successfully lobbied ministers to stop the SFO inquiry into the alleged bribery of Saudi Arabia officials in the multi-billion-pound al-Yamamah arms deal. Thales now stands to earn tens of millions of pounds from the supply of Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia, which had been threatened by the bribes inquiry.

Martin Paisner is one of two trustees who run the Blair trust. He is the co-owner of Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), a London legal firm. BAE Systems is also being investigated for corruption by South African officials. They have discovered that Thales paid a £69,000 bribe to Jacob Zuma, former Vice President of South Africa, to stop an investigation into another multi-million arms deal. This money was paid to Zuma via a Berwin Leighton Paisner bank account. Just a coincidence of course.

That’s very interesting John. I remember Cheriegate very clearly and well, darn it, I just jumped to the conclusion about payoffs and corruption etc. Cynical old me.

Thales is the new spin name of the old bad-press name Thomson CSF that originally arose as a joint French American (General Electric) company but which Mitterand nationalised. Then Raytheon crept into the picture via a joint venture company. From the point of view of corrupt practises, it has more “hair” on it than Madonna.

If you press in some of its more sensitive parts, the Saddam and weapons of mass destruction issue pops up. Ditto the name Bin Laden. I also seem to remember some appalling accusations of corruption made against the very nice Jacques Chirac and the special relationship he had with what is now Thales. Also, wasn’t there a real rumpus years ago about graft and corruption centred on the equally very nice former Chancellor Kohl where the money originated in France?

Thales also has close ties to the French aircraft company Dassault. Btw, I once met him you know, the young Dassault. Very charming fellow. Awfully corrupt according to whispers I’ve heard (obviously totally untrue, naturally).

Then, of course, there was that special arms deal between Saddam and Thales for a formidable radar system valued at billions of euros that was negotiated by Saudi prince Nayef – that is to say, the two-ton-pure-Colombian- cocaine-toting suitcases-shipped-into-France-on-a-Saudi-jet-under-diplomatic-immunity prince Nayef.

What I say is that it’s just as well that these profiteering deals are in the national interest. And that they are usually covered by government backed ECGD insurance. For if the importer neglects to pay for his goods and services, then it is only fair that the British taxpayer picks up the bill. After all, we can’t all be multi-billionaires can we. And only a few can be above the law or else anarchy would reign. Init.

David

Having mentioned Raytheon, Saudi jets and royals and Osama Bin Laden (well, Bin Laden anyway) in almost one breath, I feel compelled to add a rider.

Because, Raytheon, or more specifically, the Raytheon private hanger terminal at Tampa airport is where the so caled "phantom flight" carrying Saudi royals left hot on the heels of 911 -- when US airspace was closed to everyone. Little did I know, until I got an email message this morning from Danny Hopsicker about his latest story (see: http://www.madcowprod.com/06282007.html) that the FBI now admit that Osama bin Laden may have privately chartered a plane in the wake of 911 to escape from the good ol US of A.

David

Here is the new Attorney General. Will she reopen the BAE/Saudi investigation? Will she prosecute Lord Levy and Tony Blair over the loans for honours scandal?

Will she Hell.

BAE, Baroness Symons, In Black Operations Against LaRouche
by Anton Chaitkin

http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/breaking_...ns_Blackops.asp

As documented in the widely circulating broadside, "BAE Scandal Demands Cheney's Immediate Impeachment" (see lead article in this section) Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to bury the BAE scandal in both Britain and the United States, precisely because investigation of this $80-100 billion British/Saudi slush fund could reveal the authors of very "black" Anglo-American covert intelligence operations, amongst them 9/11. According to British and other news accounts, Cheney prevailed upon Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith to shut down the British Serious Fraud Office's investigation of BAE, on "national security" grounds.

Ongoing investigations also shed new light on the role of Cheney crony Baroness Elizabeth Symons in covering up the BAE operation and in British black propaganda attacks on Cheney's leading U.S. political antagonist, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Based on this background, it is hardly remarkable that Symons baldly proclaimed to Reuters news agency on Feb. 27, 2007, that the British criminal investigation of BAE was shut down because there was no evidence of bribery—"the reason they did not find anything is because there was nothing to find." Symons' attempt to bury the matter occurred just at the time that the cries of "coverup" were reaching a crescendo in the British press, and major investigations of BAE were developing internationally.

Elizabeth Symons was one of a handful of political operatives who shaped the 1990s rise of Tony Blair's New Labour as a poorly disguised Thatcherism. Her father, Ernest Vize Symons, had been director-general of the U.K. tax department (Inland Revenue), and a governor of the English-Speaking Union, which sought to reunite the U.S.A. with the British Empire. When her father retired in 1979, Elizabeth began working in the trade union division of the Inland Revenue, and later in other unions, in an effort to emasculate the unions and separate them from political power.

In 1996, Tony Blair nominated Symons for a life peerage for having helped create a labor-free Labour Party. By this time, Symons had long been a Fellow of the British-American Project for the Successor Generation, a project to tie together British and American defense and secret services strategists. (This was begun by Sir Charles Villiers in 1985, when his son-in-law, John Negroponte, now U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, was boosting the Contras as Ambassador to Honduras.)

As Prime Minister in 1997, Blair appointed Baroness Symons to the post of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office. Symons represented the Foreign Office in the House of Lords in March 1998, when she was questioned about the coup and countercoup in Sierra Leone in West Africa. Executive Outcomes, a mercenary group tied to the British Crown, had moved a protection racket into Sierra Leone in 1993, taking its payoff in diamonds. When Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was elected President of the country in 1996, he acted on the encouragement of U.S. President Bill Clinton to cancel the British mercenaries' contract, despite the Executive Outcomes threat that he would be overthrown.

A military coup then removed Kabbah; British High Commissioner Peter Penfold, in exile with Kabbah, successfully urged him to hire Sandline, Executive Outcomes' partner mercenary company. Sandline shipped in 30 tons of arms, contravening the United Nations sanctions on arms to that civil-war-devastated country.

Sandline had fully informed the Foreign Office, and others in the Anglo-American black-operations chain of command. A Foreign Office official had told BBC on March 9, 1998, that Baroness Symons was in the circles that had been briefed on the transactions, and that she knew of the ongoing criminal investigation by British law enforcement.

On March 10, 1998, Lord Avebury, a Liberal Democrat in the House of Lords, asked Baroness Symons on the official record, would she investigate press reports that "the future diamond resources of the country have been mortgaged in an illegal arms transaction in which a British company, Sandline International, was involved?"

Symons denied all, obfuscating that "the newspaper article to which the noble Lord refers ... was in several respects not entirely accurate, or at least not on all fours with the reports that Her Majesty's Government are receiving." There were then calls for Symons' resignation, which Blair rebuffed. As BBC reported the same day: "The Prime Minister has leaped to the defence of foreign office minister Baroness Symons, at the centre of allegations that she misled parliament over the arms-to-Africa affair. Tony Blair told MPs ... that he had not asked her to resign and said there was 'not a shred of evidence' that she ... had deliberately misled anyone."

In 2000, Dick Cheney, chairman and CEO of the Halliburton oil services company of Houston, Texas, and candidate for Vice President, was the American co-chairman of a British conference held April 14-16, on the subject of privatizing the British and American armed forces. This was the special project of Baroness Symons, whom Blair had appointed in 1999 as Minister for Procurement in the Ministry of Defence. The conference was attended by all the main Ministry of Defence officials working to implement her plans for military "Public Private Partnerships," the "Smart Acquisition" initiative, and the "Private Finance Initiative." The event was sponsored by the Rand Corporation, and hosted by the Ditchley Foundation, an Anglo-American power elite group in which Baroness Symons is a trustee and governor.

In his opening remarks to the conference, Cheney referred to his own leadership, first, as Defense Secretary (1989-93), in scheming to have private companies and mercenary soldiers usurp the traditional national military function, and then, steering his Halliburton company to play that role. Cheney said: "I have approached the question of privatization of defense support services from several different perspectives: first as a member of Congress, then as Secretary of Defense, and currently as chairman and chief executive officer of Halliburton." He noted that "our British colleagues are far ahead of us in ... successful privatization efforts." Cheney complained that a "challenge for DoD [Department of Defense] is to develop a strategy for countering political resistance. This conference ... provides a tremendous opportunity for us to share experiences, and to learn how the U.S. might take advantage of the concepts and principles that are embodied in the U.K. experience."

Cheney's personal appearance in England at just that moment coincided with Baroness Symons' first planned big privatization: Martin Kitterick, a Defence Ministry consultant on Symons' "Private Finance Initiative," spoke to the conference on the scheme to turn transport of battle tanks over to private companies' trucks and drivers, a contract that Halliburton wanted.

On April 17, 2000, the day after the Cheney-Ditchley conference, the Ministry of Defence announced Baroness Symons' plan for privatizing the British government's giant Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. Baroness Symons then led the parliamentary debate on the plan, reassuring the Lords that she was working closely with the Americans.

After the Supreme Court decision of Dec. 12, 2000, Dick Cheney was designated as Vice President and George W. Bush as President of the United States, to take office Jan. 20, 2001.

The announcement by Baroness Symons, that a consortium headed by the Halliburton company was awarded the £300 million contract to privatize military heavy transport, was graciously delayed until Jan. 24, after the inauguration. Cheney was then presumed to be out of the company, although his Halliburton stock options and continuing compensation became an increasingly heated Washington topic. While Cheney was in England, another British contract went up for grabs. The U.S. Lockheed Martin Corporation was bidding for the Joint Strike Fighter program. In 1994, just after Dick Cheney had taken the helm at Halliburton, his wife, Lynne, had become a Lockheed director, serving on the board's Finance, Nominating, and Corporate Governance committees. Lynne Cheney stepped down from the Lockheed board on Jan. 5, 2000.

On Jan. 17, just before Dick Cheney took power, Symons was in Washington. At the Pentagon she ceremonially signed Britain's commitment to the Joint Strike Fighter program. This Anglo-American venture was labelled "the largest defense procurement program ever conceived." The Defence Ministry announcement awarding British funds to Lockheed in the Joint Strike Fighter program came in October 2001, at a decent time interval from the Halliburton announcement.

On June 11, 2001, Baroness Symons moved out of the Defence Ministry, becoming simultaneously Minister of State for the Middle East, in the Foreign Office, and Minister of State for Trade, in the Department of Trade and Industry.

On July 1, 2001, just after Symons' departure from Defence, the shape of her overall scheme for a private power-and-money grab came before the public. The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency was split into a huge private firm, to be called QinetiQ, and a smaller residual government agency. In the next year, the Blair government shocked some people with the announcement that the Carlyle Group—the private equity fund tied tightly to the Bush family—was to be awarded a large stake in QinetiQ, the "public private partnership." On Feb. 28, 2003, less than a month before the Cheney-Blair-Bush invasion of Iraq, the Carlyle group paid £42.3 million for a 34% holding in QinetiQ. When a large block of QinetiQ stock shares was later put on the public market, the Carlyle Group got about an eight-fold return on its investment. Among those reaping gold from Baroness Symons' planning was former Tory Prime Minister John Major, who had become European Chairman of the Carlyle Group while Baroness Symons was Minister for Defence Procurement.

Baroness Symons' own machinations on behalf of BAE Systems began surfacing in 2005, when the Observer newspaper described her earlier intervention with her Washington circles. This had been in the Summer of 2002, when Cheney was driving hard for war with Iraq.

The story, as told by the British media, is that, at a dinner given by a neo-conservative professor, the Baroness sat next to Attorney David Mills, husband of Tessa Jowell, Blair's Minister of Culture, Media, and Sport. Mills had arranged a $200 million deal with BAE Sy