London Insider Nekrassov: UK Intelligence Completely botched the Skripal False Flag

- Joining us from London is our good friend and political scientist Alexander Nekrassov. Alexander, the UK is shaking its finger at us again. This time it was the head of the secret service who said that we are oh, so bad, and brought up the Skripal case again. So what is happening in England to make them bring up the Skripal case again?

 

Alexander Nekrassov, Political Scientist: Good evening, Vladimir! Well, this is an unprecedented situation when the head of MI5 not only gives a speech, bud does so in another country, on TV, while throwing in such colorful metaphors as a fog of lies or the light that should shine through this fog of lies that is allegedly unleashed by Russia. So here's what we can take away from this. First, Andrew Parker's appearance on air shows that they have huge problems with the Skripals and this whole story, because some of the journalists, public activists and even MPs here in the UK have already started to wonder where those Skripals are and whether anything actually happened in the first place, since no updates have been given as to the fate of those people. And this gives rise to all kinds of suspicions. It has also caused a number of rumors mostly spread by journalists in small media outlets, for example about Skripal having had ties with Czech intelligence, as well as with Spanish intelligence during his time in the UK. Apparently, he had some business interests.

And I would say that the most unsettling news for the UK and its intelligence is the appearance of new rumors that Skripal contributed to the compiling of the infamous Christopher Steele's dossier that nearly prevented Trump from becoming US president. Trump himself was absolutely outraged by this dossier, and as I hear, he even told his guys from the CIA to deal with this problem. That's why the most unbelievable suspicions and rumors started popping up that connected Skripal to this dossier. And I can tell you that there's now a trial taking place in Florida against Christopher Steele who named one of Russian businessmen in his dossier. That businessman has filed a lawsuit against Steele. His lawyers demand that Steele submits a list of the sources that gave him the information that ended up in the dossier. That gave everyone quite a scare, and the judicial authorities have even announced that they might bar Steele from divulging that list or even giving any kind of testimony, oral or written, at any trial. And as you can understand, this turmoil lead to the resurfacing of this case. But when the head of MI5 started to talk about it publicly, everyone's eyebrows started to go up, because first of all, the head of MI5 never gives public speeches. This is unprecedented. I was told by people in the know that this could only happen if 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister, told him, "Step up, man, fight back. The things are starting to go south." He's not a stupid person, from what I hear, so he was forced to make these statements. Although I think he somewhat overdid it because these absolutely wild accusations against Russia are not befitting of the head of British intelligence. He just went too far. But I believe that the tone and impudence of these statements show that the situation around this case is getting worse for them, and they start to look quite stupid. Because it's time that they give some information to the public about what happened and where those people, the victims, are. So it's a difficult time for the British intelligence community. And the things are not going so well for the political elite either.

- Did the British media pay any notice to the firing of the director of a Czech laboratory who told President Zeman about him having worked on the Novichok class of agents? Or are the British papers selective to the point where they are only good for wrapping?

- Well, you know, this topic doesn't get a lot of coverage, and I, for one, get all the information about it from talking to journalists who I know and who are well-informed. Basically, I haven't seen any mention of it. The only mention, and I've already talked about it, was in connection to the lawsuit against Christopher Steele who is now in hot water, let's put it this way. That's what made the Skripal case resurface again. But I'll tell you one thing. I was asked a question here on TV that went something like this, "If it wasn't Russia, who else could have been behind this incident?" My first response was that there's a chance that the American intelligence agency that was handling the Trump dossier situation could engineer this whole thing and try to punish him for contributing to the dossier. That's what I said. And of course, everyone in the studio lashed out at me. There were other guests there who said, "It's impossible. This cannot be true. US intelligence doesn't do that kind of thing." So I had to reply that US intelligence does do that kind of thing and even worse. I reminded them about the invasions of Iraq, Libya and so on. But that's something they always deny because they don't want to trace it back to their big sins. They start biting back, saying that I'm going off topic instead of discussing a particular case. So I told them on more than one occasion, "Guys, you cannot cling to isolated situations which are not even supported by any evidence while ignoring the beam in your own eye. You are trying to forget your own wrongdoings which are still causing repercussions not only in the Middle East, but also in other countries, Europe included. Your wrongdoings are now causing big problems in Europe, and Russia is forced to clear up the mess that you've made at its border, in Ukraine. How can you keep bringing up these isolated cases, blaming Russia and saying that it's not a civilized country, while turning a blind eye to your own horrific sins?"

I want to tell you the example I gave them. Imagine, a head of some Russian defense agency would give a speech, let's say, in Minsk and say that we shouldn't trust these rascals, these criminals—and Andrew Parker called us irresponsible criminals— because they destroyed Iraq, they destroyed Libya, they are destroying Yemen, they went to Ukraine and brought down its regime, they've turned Afghanistan into the biggest heroin dealer. So let's stop doing business with them. Let's love their people — like Parker said that they love Russian people— but break off relations with their governments. Everyone would be shocked, "What's going on? How could he say that?" Right? I mean everyone in the West. But these guys—just look at them!— do things that are completely out of line. And to tell you the truth, even the western journalists that I know here, including American and British ones, sometimes tell me in private, "You know, we don't understand anything anymore. Is there any kind of control in the government or in the political circles?"

I can give you my view of what's going on in the West and has been for a long time. In the West, the biggest leaders have terrible advisers. I mean leaders like Trump, May, Macron or Merkel. You can clearly see that from their actions, from their strange decisions, from their absolutely insane statements. Because it's the advisers who create the context for the leader. They inform him about the current situation, about what is actually going on in the world. What I can see is that the briefings these world leaders receive are complete nonsense.

- They should listen to our program, to you, and it'll clear things up for them. They'd learn a lot of interesting information.