Hedge fund tycoons bankroll Liam Fox office as Werritty affair deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

What we are seeing with this "Dr Fox" story is the integration of warmongering, freemarket fundamentalist, Neocons into British government and Conservative Party structures.

Two more items below:

Adam Werritty set up Liam Fox meeting with Iranian regime lobbyist

Revelation likely to add to claims that Werritty was running a shadow, more hawkish, foreign policy on Iran

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Ian Black and Luke Harding guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 October 2011 21.03 BST

Adam Werritty personally arranged a meeting between Liam Fox and a senior Iranian lobbyist with close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime, the Guardian has learned.

The Iranian lobbyist visited Fox in May 2009 at Portcullis House. Werritty met him at the entrance of the parliamentary building and escorted him up to Fox's office, sitting in for half a meeting on Iran. "I thought Werritty's was Fox's assistant," the lobbyist who declined to be named told the Guardian. "Werritty was the main contact for meeting Fox. He was the person who arranged the time of the meeting. He collected me at the gate of Portcullis House and took me up to Fox's office.

"There was a meeting between the three of us. Werritty wasn't introduced to me. I didn't get the impression that Werritty was an especial expert on Iran. I didn't know who he was but thought he was either an official or Fox's assistant."

The lobbyist declined to reveal what was discussed. He described Werritty as "a very pleasant, sociable guy". He said he met Fox briefly twice after he became defence secretary, with others present.

The revelation is nevertheless likely to add to claims not only that Werritty masqueraded as Fox's international fixer but that he was running a shadow foreign policy on Iran a policy more hawkish than the official government position. David Cameron is said to have been annoyed by some of Fox's more neo-con pronouncements on the subject.

In February, Werritty and Fox flew to Israel for a high-profile strategic conference on regional security. Fox called for stronger sanctions to compel Iran to give up its nuclear weapons programme. He warned the Commons during the same period that it was "entirely possible" Iran could have a nuclear weapon by 2012.

Werritty also arranged and attended a dinner at the conference with Fox and Matthew Gould, Britain's ambassador to Israel. Other top political figures also attended. The Independent reported that senior Israeli diplomats were under the impression that Werritty was an official adviser to the defence secretary. It is not clear why Werritty, rather than Foreign Office officials, organised the dinner.

Werritty attended the same conference in February 2009 as an "expert" on Iran. He was a guest of a UK-based pro-Israeli lobbying organisation. The British Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom) paid for his flight and hotel bill.

Lorna Fitzsimmons, Bicom's chief executive, said: "We have only ever done two things with Adam Werritty in the five years I have been at Bicom. We funded him to go to the Herzliya conference in 2009 to talk on a panel on Iran and I accepted an invitation from him to talk to a panel on Iran at an event in London in 2009 or 2010."

It's unclear, however, how deep Werritty's Iranian connections are, and on what basis he is a specialist on the region. Richard Dalton, Britain's ambassador in Tehran between 2003-2006, said: he had not come across Werritty, either during his time in Iran and subsequently. "He hasn't broken the surface of Iran expert circles. I've never read anything written [on Iran] by him."

One Iranian exile said that he had met Werritty in London to discuss Iranian politics. "We met over coffee several times", he said. "He [Werritty] even spoke a few words of Persian," the exile recalled. A second Iranian exile added that Werritty was a regular participant at seminars on Iran held by Chatham House, the foreign affairs thinktank, and the Royal United Services Institute.

The source said that Werritty had visited Iran once back in 1997 and the Iranian chamber of commerce. He said that when he met Werritty in 2005-2006 he described himself as "someone very close to Liam Fox".

The source added: "I heard recently from Arab colleagues that Werritty had called himself an adviser to Fox. I didn't get the impression he was an Iran expert. He could talk convincingly but I didn't see any depth in his Iran information."

It is understood that Bicom paid less than £1,000 for Werritty to fly to Israel to attend the 2009 conference, an annual event organised by academics and former luminaries of the country's intelligence and security establishment to discuss strategic and Middle Eastern issues and promote Israel's view of them.

Werritty was invited to attend by one of its organisers, Tommy Steiner, a Nato and international relations expert who served as the executive director of the Atlantic Forum of Israel, a network-based policy organization that promoted "Israel's relations with the Euro-Atlantic Community". Steiner was unavailable for comment.

Werrity is described in the list of 2009 Herzliya participants as "Dr Adam Werritty, Advisor, Office of Shadow Defense Secretary; UK Executive Director, The Atlantic Bridge" but is not listed as speaking on Iran or anything else. He does not appear in the list of 2011 participants.

In his speech in February Fox spoke of the need to resolve the Palestinian issue as way of undercutting Iran's ability to cause trouble in the Middle East. The 2009 conference was held just weeks after the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.

Liam Fox took five MPs to Washington with donor's money

Michael Lewis, who donated almost £14,000 to Fox's Atlantic Bridge charity, paid for newly elected Tory MPs' flights in 2005

Rupert Neate guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 October 2011 09.38 BST

A major donor to Liam Fox's controversial charity paid for the defence secretary to take five freshly elected MPs on a first-class trip to Washington.

Three of the MPs joined Fox on the flight from London to Washington on October 18 2005, the same day as the first round of voting in the leadership election, which Fox subsequently lost to David Cameron. The other two MPs joined the trip on different dates.

It is thought that Fox's long-term travel companion Adam Werritty was also on the trip, but this could not be confirmed. Fox and Werritty did not respond to requests to comment.

The Tory MPs Mark Harper, member for the Forest of Dean; John Penrose, Weston-super-Mare; Brooks Newmark, Braintree; Adam Holloway, Gravesham; and Philip Dunne, Ludlow had only months earlier been elected to parliament.

All of the MPs declared in the register of members' interests that their flights and hotel bills were paid for by Michael Lewis. Lewis has donated £13,832 to Fox's Atlantic Bridge charity, which was shut down last month after regulators found it was primarily promoting Tory ideals.

"18-21 September 2005, to USA. Travel and accommodation costs met by Dr Liam Fox's office from a donation by Mr Michael Lewis, a businessman from London. I received flight upgrades on outward and return journeys from London to Washington from Virgin Atlantic," Harper registered on 17 October 2005. The other MPs' registers include similar entries, although some dates differ.

Electoral Commission records show Lewis, who is deputy chairman of the Israeli lobby group Bicom, donated £5,000 to Fox's leadership campaign on 27 July 2005.

Bicom paid for Werritty's flight and hotel bill to attend a conference in Israel in 2009 where he was asked to join a panel and talk about Iran. The Herzliya conference was one of the events listed by the Ministry of Defence at which he met Fox.

Kevan Jones, Labour's defence spokesman, said: "This is yet another question Liam Fox needs to answer. Why during his campaign to be Tory party leader, did Dr Fox's office fund a visit to the United States for new Tory MPs from a donation by businessman Michael Lewis? The only declaration of money to Liam Fox from Mr Lewis is in regards to his leadership campaign. Did he use this money donated to his campaign to fund these visits?"