False Flags for Newbies

Britain is in a media frenzy over the recent poisoning of the former Russian intelligence service colonel turned British spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England. British PM Theresa May demanded that Russia explain itself, claiming that they were poisoned using a nerve agent called “Novichok” (Russian for “Newbie”) that was a product of Soviet biological weapons research. It is no longer produced and the destruction of its stockpiles has been verified by international observers. However, its formula is in the public domain and it can be synthesized by any properly equipped chemical lab, such as Britain's own Porton Down, which, incidentally, is just an 18-minute drive from Salisbury.

May provided no evidence to back up her claims of Russian complicity in the attempted murder. Russia's Foreign Ministry has requested that Britain turn over all available evidence to back up its accusation of chemical weapons use (under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention Britain must do so within 10 days) but Britain has refused. Therefore, Russia's FM Sergei Lavrov has announced that Russia will not be responding to such baseless allegations.

An important key to spotting a false flag is that the “knowledge” of who is to blame becomes available before any evidence is in. For example, in the case of the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines MH-17 over Eastern Ukraine, everyone in the West was convinced that “pro-Russian separatists” were to blame even before the means could be established. To this date, it isn’t understood how they could have done it given the equipment they had at their disposal. In this case, Russia was accused almost immediately, while British FM Boris Johnson was quick to volunteer that Britain should not send its team to the World Cup in Russia this summer, disclosing the real reason behind the assassination attempt.

Is there anything new and different behind this latest provocation? Not really; it seems like a replay of the Litvinenko assassination back in November 2006. The choice of an exotic poison (Polonium 210), the lack of evidence (the British claimed that compelling circumstantial evidence exists but haven’t provided any), and the instantaneous leap to “blame Russia” are all the same. The Russians offered to prosecute whoever is responsible if only the British would provide them with the evidence, but the British have failed to do so.

Giving the British story the benefit of the doubt, let’s see what would compel Russia’s secret services to go after Skripal. In Russia, he was convicted and sentenced for treason, then pardoned and released to the British in a prisoner exchange that included ten Russian spies who had worked in the US, including the rather memorable Anna Chapman. It is a very important rule of the spy business that those released in a spy swap are never acted against; if this rule were violated, the resulting bad faith would make spy swaps impossible to negotiate. Thus, if the Russian authorities were to order the hit on Skripal, this would not just be immoral and illegal. That would be neither here nor there, since there are instances where raison d’état obviates the need for such scruples. Worse than that, such behavior would have been unprofessional.

Then there is the question of timing. Russia’s presidential elections will take place in just a few days, on March 18. This is a particularly inopportune time to cause an international scandal. What possible urgency could there have been behind killing a pardoned former spy who no longer possessed any up-to-date intelligence, was living quietly in retirement, and at that moment was busy having lunch with his daughter? If the Russian government were involved in the poisoning, what possible reason could have been given for not waiting until after the election?

The attack on Skripal is by no means an isolated incident; there have been multiple suspicious murders of high-profile Russians within the UK for which no adequate explanation has been given. There is a consistent pattern: a strange murder; an instantaneous leap to “blame Russia”; and an attempt to exploit the incident politically. It would be beneficial to put this incident in context, but that would require a much longer article.

You would be justified in thinking that none of this makes much sense. Given the dearth of evidence, to make sense of this story we are forced to indulge in a bit of conspiracy theory. However, if a conspiracy theory is what it takes to produce the simplest, most elegant and most internally consistent explanation, then that in itself can be considered as circumstantial evidence for the existence of a conspiracy. My simple and consistent explanation, expressed in a single sentence, is as follows:

Under direction from their colleagues in the US, and closely following a script previously worked out in the Litvinenko case over a decade ago, the British secret services, in close coordination with the British government and the press, poisoned Skripal and his daughter using a nerve agent obtained from Britain’s military research base at Porton Down in order to obtain an excuse to compromise the World Cup games in Russia this summer and also to create a scandal immediately before the Russian presidential election.

This is deplorable, of course, but there is a silver lining to this cloud as far as Russia is concerned: Britain (and, by association, the US) will now have a much harder time recruiting double agents from inside the Russian government, since their recruitment prospects will now know that they will remain vulnerable even if they escape, or are pardoned and exchanged. Clearly, the British consider them disposable and see it fit to kill them in exotic ways, then to exploit the incident for political purposes.

As far as Skripal himself… well, that’s just a really sad story: reputation ruined, life ruined, living in exile, wife dead from cancer, son dead from liver failure, and now this. All for the sake of serving as a warning unto others, which is: Don’t trust the Anglos, for they are devious and without shame.