Daily Mail report.

A former Russian spy's dossier which suggests that Government scientist David Kelly was 'exterminated' in a planned assassination is being studied by the Attorney General.

Boris Karpichkov, who fled to Britain after 15 years as a KGB agent, claims a London intelligence contractor linked to MI5 told him Dr Kelly's death was not suicide.

PA report.

Ministers could still use their powers to turn the July 7 London bombings inquests into a public inquiry to prevent secret MI5 evidence being released, a hearing has been told.

The Government said it would not launch a legal challenge to the coroner's ruling that she should investigate alleged police and security service failings.

But Home Secretary Theresa May reserves the right to launch a public inquiry and halt the inquests, potentially adding extra cost and delay to the process, the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London was told.

David Hughes' Telegraph blog.

In his statement to the Commons on September 24, 2002, Tony Blair was unequivocal about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. He told MPs that the Joint Intelligence Committee had concluded:

…that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population, and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

Chilling stuff. How does it measure up against today's testimony from Baroness Manningham-Buller at the Chilcot inquiry? The former MI5 chief has revealed that she advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited" and that the intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was "fragmentary". And she added: "If you are going to go to war, you need to have a pretty high threshold to decide on that."

Independent report.

In a letter copied to the Prime Minister, Reprieve has requested that Sir Peter Gibson step aside as his impartiality is fatally compromised.

As the Intelligence Services Commissioner (ISC), it has been Sir Peter's job for more than four years to oversee the Security Services; he cannot now be the judge whether his own work was effective.

The Leveretts comment. They refer to this article quoting Philip Giraldi.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the strange case of Shahram Amiri is the behavior and public statements of U.S. officials since Amiri returned to Iran. These officials are talking to the media about Amiri in a way that makes one think they are out to goad the Iranian government into prosecuting Amiri for espionage. Why would they do that? Are they simply immature and unprofessional? Or, could it be that Amiri told them something they did not want to hear?

Richard Ingrams comments in the Independent.

While the media pursue these red herrings, the most likely reason for Megrahi's release will go unmentioned. It is generally forgotten that, at the time of his release, he was engaged in a lengthy appeal hearing against his original conviction. Evidence showing the flimsiness of the case against him would have been produced; well-founded allegations of the bribery of witnesses and the possible planting of evidence on the crash site by the CIA would have been aired. It could all have ended with the exposure of one of the most scandalous miscarriages of justice ever acknowledged in a British court. No wonder that in the circumstances the Justice Minister, Jack Straw, was so keen to see the back of Megrahi and the discontinuation of his appeal hearing.

Guardian report.

The true extent of the Labour government's involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens after the al-Qaida attacks of September 2001 has been spelled out in stark detail with the disclosure during high court proceedings of a mass of highly classified documents.

From Jeff Stein's "Spy Talk" (Washington Post).

Reza Kahlili, a self-proclaimed former CIA "double agent" inside Iran's Revolutionary Guards, appeared in disguise at a Washington think tank Friday claiming that Iran has developed weapons-grade uranium and missiles ready to carry nuclear warheads.

The pseudonymous Kahlili, whose previous accounts have been greeted with widespread skepticism, also said Iran was planning nuclear suicide bombings with "a thousand suitcase bombs spread around Europe and the U.S."

[...]

Several current and former U.S. intelligence officials in the audience "rolled their eyes" at Kahlili's claims, said one observer who was present.

Chris Ames in the Gaurdian's CiF.

Ross rams the point home at the end of his statement when he addresses the inquiry's failings:

"It is striking that in my preparations for this testimony, I found several documents germane to the inquiry whose existence was not revealed by earlier witnesses, including those who authored them. Other documents by certain officials contradicted the testimony they have given at this inquiry and yet these witnesses were not questioned about these contradictions."

Independent report.

Britain and the US did not believe Iraq's weapons programmes posed a "substantial threat" before launching the 2003 invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, the inquiry into the war heard today.

Former UK diplomat Carne Ross claimed that the Government "intentionally and substantially" exaggerated its assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in public documents.

Obsolete on the Liquid Bombs case.

Not that any of the trials have ever even began to prove that the supposed bombmaker, Assad Sarwar, was capable of creating the bombs which would have been used to destroy the aircraft they were going to target. Indeed, the prosecution made clear that wasn't a part of their case, even if it was scarcely reported; there was no evidence that a viable device had been created, just that "eventually" they would have been able to have done so, despite it taking the government's own experts 30 attempts with the same materials before they succeeded. Instead all have been tried simply on conspiracy to murder, even if they would have never been able to do so without working explosives.

Nafeez Ahmed writes.

While in opposition David Cameron and Nick Clegg both supported the call for an independent public inquiry into the 7/7 terrorist attacks. Yet now that power is theirs, the duo's coalition regime is challenging the 7/7 inquest's attempts to explore the "preventability" of the attacks. Three weeks ago, MI5 declared they were now preparing to apply for a judicial review of that decision.

Mark Curtis in the Guardian.

But Whitehall's view of Islamist militants as handy weapons or shock troops is far from historical. In 1999, during Nato's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the Blair government secretly trained fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army to act as Nato's soldiers on the ground. The KLA was openly described by ministers as a terrorist organisation, and worked closely with al-Qaida fighters who joined the Muslim cause; their military centre was in the same camp network in Kosovo and Albania where the SAS were providing training. One KLA unit was led by the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's right-hand man. This murky feature of Blair's "humanitarian intervention" remains conveniently overlooked in most accounts of the war.

James Denselow in the Guardian.

In 2009 the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "A high number of deaths inevitably makes you question what we are doing, how we are doing it. The conclusion one has to reach is, going right back to basics on this, that this mission is really important." Yet Dannatt is guilty of a moral triangulation that has typified the avoidance of a real audit into Afghan deaths.

Indeed, the constant repetition of the British death toll and fiscal expenditure is part of the "blood and treasure" argument that, in a country that supports its soldiers, places a firewall in front of any real debate on the war itself, typified by the consensus during the recent election campaign.

Guardian report.

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who established the Commons All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, said: "I am appalled but not entirely surprised by the extent of British involvement in extraordinary rendition which these documents appear to reveal. I was extremely concerned to read the telegram [giving the go-ahead for removing those detained in Afghanistan to Guantánamo] attributed to Jack Straw. If it is from him, it reveals that as foreign secretary in 2002 he stated that the transfer of UK detainees to Guantánamo Bay was the 'best way' and should take place 'as soon as possible' after the detainees had been interviewed by a British team."

"Yet Jack Straw subsequently claimed that he had no knowledge of any British involvement in rendition. Worse, he dismissed the concerns of those of us who had raised this issue over many years as 'conspiracy theories'. "I hope there is a good explanation. In the absence of one, for a Foreign Secretary to have issued such denials, after having apparently endorsed the rendition of UK detainees three years earlier, would further erode the public's trust in politics. That has already been badly damaged by the Iraq war."

Daily Mail report.

Our new revelations include the ambiguous nature of the wording on Dr Kelly's death certificate; the existence of an anonymous letter which says his colleagues were warned to stay away from his funeral; and an extraordinary claim that the wallpaper at Dr Kelly's home was stripped by police in the hours after he was reported missing - but before his body was found.