Quote:Germany obtained novichok nerve agent sample in 1990s, reports says

[FONT=&amp]The West's knowledge of the novichok nerve agent used to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter came from a sample smuggled to Germany in the 1990s, local media reports.
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[FONT=&amp]Britain blamed Russia for the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed its analysis.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]More than 20 Western countries expelled Russian diplomats over the issue, in the biggest expulsion since the Cold War.[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]In a joint report, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the weekly Die Zeit and broadcasters NDR and WDR said Germany's BND spy agency had secured the sample of novichok from a Russian scientist.
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[FONT=&amp]The sample was taken to Sweden for analysis and the chemical formula given to the German government and military, the report said, citing sources.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Western countries used the information to help develop countermeasures.[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]The story could help explain how Britain was able to analyse the poison it said was used to attack the Skripals in Salisbury in March.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Moscow has denied blame for the attack and accused London of not being forthcoming in how it investigated the poisoning.[/FONT][FONT=&amp]
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[FONT=&amp]"The finding about a class of weapons known as novichok developed in the former Soviet Union largely stems from a previously unknown secret operation of the BND," a summary of the German news organisations' joint report said.
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[FONT=&amp]It said it was unclear what had become of the sample, and said the Swedish government had said it could not provide information about the process on short notice. The BND also declined to comment on the report.
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[FONT=&amp]A spokesman for the German defence ministry said the military researched how to protect against chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear weapons materials, in accordance with international law, but could not provide details so as to safeguard members of the military and the German population.
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[FONT=&amp]"This includes the question about which substances are being researched and the availability of these materials," a ministry spokesman said. "As a result, statements and assertions about this are not confirmed, denied or commented on."
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[FONT=&amp]The German media report said the BND had informed the US and British intelligence agencies about the case following the analysis, and small amounts of the poison were later produced in several Nato member states to test Western protective gear, testing equipment and antidotes.
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[FONT=&amp]Mr Skripal remains in hospital in Salisbury, where his condition is said to be improving and he is no longer in a critical condition.
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[FONT=&amp]His daughter was discharged last month and is recovering at an undisclosed location.
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[FONT=&amp]Investigators are yet to identify who carried out the poisoning, the national security adviser told MPs earlier this month.[/FONT]

David Guyatt Wrote:Yulia Skripal interviewed and filmed HERE:

Peter Lemkin Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:Yulia Skripal interviewed and filmed HERE:

She didn't say much of importance [I thought]...but her physical condition was amazing considering the alleged poison and known effects - including lasting effects on those few who survive it [do not die from it]. I noted a scar from a tracheotomy on her neck. A better format would be questions and answers from Yulia - as so many areas of the matter were not addressed.

Quote:

Yulia Skripal and the Salisbury WUT

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24 May, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig

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It was happy to see Yulia alive and looking reasonably well yesterday, if understandably stressed. Notably, and in sharp contrast to Litvinenko, she leveled no accusations at Russia or anybody else for her poisoning. In Russian she spoke quite naturally. Of the Russian Embassy she said very simply "I am not ready, I do not want their help". Strangely this is again translated in the Reuters subtitles by the strangulated officialese of "I do not wish to avail myself of their services", as originally stated in the unnatural Metropolitan Police statement issued on her behalf weeks ago.
"I do not wish to avail myself of their services" is simply not a translation of what she says in Russian and totally misses the "I am not ready" opening phrase of that sentence. My conclusion is that Yulia's statement was written by a British official and then translated to Russian for her to speak, rather than the other way round. Also that rather than translate what she said in Russian themselves for the subtitles, Reuters have subtitled using a British government script they have been given.
It would of course have been much more convincing had Sergei also been present. Duress cannot be ruled out when he is held by the British authorities. I remain extremely suspicious that, at the very first chance she got in hospital, Yulia managed to get hold of a telephone (we don't know how, it was not her own and she has not had access to one since) and phone her cousin Viktoria, yet since then the Skripals have made no attempt to contact their family in Russia. That includes no contact to Sergei's aged mum, Yulia's grandmother, who Viktoria cares for. Sergei normally calles his mother who is 89 regularly. This lack of contact is a worrying sign that the Skripals may be prevented from free communication to the outside world. Yulia's controlled and scripted performance makes that more rather than less likely.
We know a little more about the Salisbury attack now:
Nobody not Porton Down, not the OPCW has been able to state that the nerve agent found was of Russian manufacture, a fact which the MSM continues to disgracefully fudge with "developed in Russia" phrasing. As is now well known and was reported by Iran in scientific literature, Iran synthesised five novichoks recently. More importantly, the German spying agency BND obtained novichok in the 1990s and it was studied and synthesised in several NATO countries, almost certainly including the UK and USA.
In 1998, chemical formulae for novichok were introduced into the United States NIST National Institute of Standards and Technologies Mass Spectrometry Library database by U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical and Biological Defense Command, but the entry was later deleted. In 2009 Hillary Clinton instructed US diplomats to feign ignorance of novichoks, as revealed by the last paragraph of this Wikileaks released diplomatic cable.
Most telling was the Sky News interview with the head of Porton Down. Interviewer Paul Kelso repeatedly pressed Aitkenhead directly on whether the novichok could have come from Porton Down. Aitkenhead replies "There is no way, anything like that could…leave these four walls. We deal with a number of toxic substances in the work that we do, we've got the highest levels of security and controls". Asked again twice, he each times says the security is so tight "the substance" could not have come from Porton Down. What Aitkenhead does NOT say is "of course it could not have come from here, we have never made it". Indeed Aitkenhead's repeated assertion that the security would never have let it out, is tantamount to an admission Porton Down does produce novichok.
If somebody asked you whether the lion that savaged somebody came from your garden, would you reply "Don't be stupid, I don't have a lion in my garden" or would you say, repeatedly, "Of course not, I have a very strong lion cage?". Here you can see Mr Aitkenhead explain repeatedly he has a big lion cage, from 2'25" in.

So the question of where the nerve agent was made remains unresolved. The MSM has continually attempted to lie about this and affirm that all novichok is Russian made. The worst of corporate and state journalism in the UK was exposed when they took the OPCW's report that it confirmed the findings of Porton Down and presented that as confirming the Johnson/May assertion that it was Russia, whereas the findings of Porton Down were actually as the Aitkenhead interview stated categorically that they could not say where it was made.
The other relatively new development is the knowledge that Skripal had not retired but was active for MI6 on gigs briefing overseas intelligence agencies about Russia. This did not increase his threat to Russia, as he told everything he knows a decade ago. But it could provide an element of annoyance that would indeed increase Russian official desire to punish him further.
But the fact he was still very much active has a far greater significance. The government slapped a D(SMA) noticeon the identity of Pablo Miller, Skripal's former MI6 handler who lives close by in Salisbury and who worked for Christopher Steele's Orbis Intelligence at the time that Orbis produced the extremely unreliable dossier on Trump/Russia. The fact that Skripal had not retired but was still briefing on Russia, to me raises to a near certainty the likelihood that Skripal worked with Miller on the Trump dossier.
I have to say that, as a former Ambassador in the former Soviet Union trained in intelligence analysis and familiar with MI6 intelligence out of Moscow, I agree with every word of this professional dissection of the Orbis Trump dossier by Paul Roderick Gregory, irrespective of Gregory's politics. In particular this paragraph, which Gregory wrote more than a year before the Salisbury attack, certainly applies to much of the dossier.

I have picked out just a few excerpts from the Orbis report. It was written, in my opinion, not by an ex British intelligence officer but by a Russian trained in the KGB tradition. It is full of names, dates, meetings, quarrels, and events that are hearsay (one an overheard conversation). It is a collection of "this important person" said this to "another important person." There is no record; no informant is identified by name or by more than a generic title. The report appears to fail the veracity test in the one instance of a purported meeting in which names, dates, and location are provided. Some of the stories are so bizarre (the Rosneft bribe) that they fail the laugh test. Yet, there appears to be a desire on the part of some media and Trump opponents on both sides of the aisle to picture the Orbis report as genuine but unverifiable.

The Russian ex-intelligence officer who we know was in extremely close contact with Orbis at the time the report was written, was Sergei Skripal.
The Orbis report is mince. Skripal knew it was mince and how it was written. Skripal has a history of selling secrets to the highest bidder. The Trump camp has a lot of money. My opinion is that as the Mueller investigation stutters towards ignominious failure, Skripal became a loose end that Orbis/MI6/CIA/Clinton (take your pick) wanted tied off. That seems to me at least as likely as a Russian state assassination. To say Russia is the only possible suspect is nonsense.
The Incompetence Factor
The contradiction between the claim that the nerve agent was so pure it could only be manufactured by a state agent, and yet that it failed because it was administered in an amateur and incompetent fashion, does not bother the mainstream media. Boris Johnson claimed that the UK had evidence that Russia had a ten year programme of stockpiling secret novichok and he had a copy of a Russian assassination manual specifying administration by doorknob. Yet we are asked to believe that the Russians failed to notice that administration by doorknob does not actually work, especially in the rain. How two people both touched the doorknob in closing the door is also unexplained, as is how one policeman became poisoned by the doorknob but numerous others did not.
The explanations by establishment stooges of how this "ten times more powerful than VX" nerve agent only works very slowly, but then very quickly, if it touches the skin, and still does not actually kill you, have struck me as simply desperate. They make May's ringing claims of a weapon of mass destruction being used on British soil appear somewhat unjustified. Weapon of Upset Tummy does not sound quite so exciting.
To paint a doorknob with something that if it touches you can kill you requires great care and much protective gear. That no strangely dressed individual has been identified by the investigation which seems to be getting nowhere in identifying the culprit is the key fact here. None of us know who did this. The finger-pointing at Russia by corporate and state interests seeking to stoke the Cold War is disgusting.

David Guyatt Wrote:Yulia Skripal interviewed and filmed HERE:

Paul Rigby Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:Yulia Skripal interviewed and filmed HERE:

Not since Sir Herbert Tooth emerged from a Donetsk pig-farm, covered only by a loin-cloth & reciting passages of Das Kapital, has there been such compelling proof of Russian perfidy.

And that Novichuk is amazingly kind to the hair.