Cluedo, the Salisbury version: the cards stay hidden, UK Government asserts solution

The British Government says that Novichok, which is a group of nerve agents originally developed by the Soviet Union, was used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Thus, claims Theresa May, it is “highly likely” that the Russian State effectively engaged in an act of aggression on UK soil.

In response, the Russians called the Commons session where this declaration took place a “circus show”. We should take the hint that they don’t take the accusations seriously. Indeed, the leading news anchor on Russian state TV proposed that the incident was a scheme to create a pretext for “an international boycott of the World Cup”.

They immediately tried to pin it on Russia… But if you think about it closely, the only people who stand to gain from the poisoning of the former GRU colonel are the British. Just to stimulate their Russophobia.

These were the words of Dmitry Kiselyov, a supposed favourite of  Putin – although the Guardian admits that “Russian state media broadcasts do not always perfectly reflect the opinions of the Kremlin.” Be that as it may, Putin casually told a BBC reporter that Britain needs to “sort it out for yourselves, and then we will discuss this with you”, and officially, the Russian Government has stated that the incident is an internal UK affair, with nothing to do with Moscow.

The British audience of UK corporate-media is being led to believe that it is impossible for Russia to hold such a position; it is impossible for Russia to deny some kind of responsibility for the incident: the use of Novichok supposedly absolutely incriminates Russia. But this is far from the truth. Hopefully, FBEL readers will have applied some thought to the topic of how Porton Down, the British biological and chemical weapons installation, was able to identify the substance that the British Government claims was used in the poisoning. The nerve agent was recognisable, because Porton Down knew what it looked like. Is that too simple a notion?

Theresa May blamed Russia because the Soviet Union had produced the nerve agent before (in Uzbekistan), and was capable (as Russia) of doing it again.

Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down; our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so.

Somewhere in this vague fish-net casting could have been a reluctant acknowledgment of the fact that Russia has destroyed its stockpiles of chemical weapons – disposing of the last batch in a very public way:

Hamid Ali Rao, the deputy director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a Hague-based body that polices adherence to the 1993 convention, declared the event “a truly momentous occasion.”

(The OPCW report is here). The Moon of Alabama website‡ has more on this, and on the reasonable expectation that the UK is more than capable of producing its own Novichok.†

For our part, the focus will be on the tell-tale signs (focusing on one in particular in this article) that the Salisbury incident constituted what the Russians, in their scornful reaction, appeared to have been hinting at: a false flag. Before proceeding at length, we must note that the idea that Novichok was used at Salisbury featured in the corporate-media (like pre-conditioning would) ahead of May’s statement – and as far as the author can tell, appeared in conjunction with the character that came to our attention in the previous FBEL article on this subject, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon.

The following was published in the Express in the early hours of Sunday morning just gone:

We know it’s a nerve agent and both sarin and VX have been officially discounted, which leaves Novichok,” said chemical warfare expert Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former head of Britain’s Chemical, Biological Radiation and Nuclear regiment.

If we instinctively were suspicious of Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, then maybe there was good reason for it. It appears that he is central to British efforts to frame the Syrian Government for the use of chemical weapons on civilians. As such, his ever-presence in the corporate-media during the coverage of the Salisbury incident presents an opportunity to make a link between British Government propaganda to demonise Syria, and the same produced to the detriment of Russia. This will be subject matter for a forthcoming FBEL article.

Apart from claiming the use of Novichok as evidence of Russian culpability, Theresa May cited other supposed Russian aggression – such as the annexation of the Crimea (which voted in a referendum to rejoin Moscow), and the Litvinenko poisoning (which a British enquiry could not in fact convict the Kremlin of carrying out). However, this game is a double-edged sword. If we are looking for trends to suggest guilt, who is it that is an old hand at public perception shaping, and trying to create casus belli through the execution of false flags?

A big clue that this “old hand” is at work again in the Skripal poisoning resides in the narrative; even after a week, it is still very far from being settled. The concept of the deed, or the action, deviating from a (drill exercise) script has been discussed many a time here at FBEL; the resultant discrepancy between the two is thought to account for a failure on the part of the authorities to be able to tell a straight story. Other event sceptics hold that there is another method in which the deed is done by operatives who don’t care about public perception, or the narratives that have to be spun. It thereafter remains for the public-facing parts of government to supply a credible storyline as the opportunity to do so best presents itself. Maybe this is what has happened with the Skripal incident, because the narrative has begun to look like a game of Cluedo. Is it Yulia, with the parcel, in Sergei’s living room? Is it Sergei, with the parcel, in the Zizzi restaurant? Is it Reverend Green, with the flowers, at the graveyard? Is it Mrs White, with the Mickey Finn, in the pub?

While one might excuse all this as the normal emanations from a police investigation, the question remains, why does the public need to be privy to any of it? There is another explanation, and it goes like this: while the nature of the weapon has been chosen to best incriminate Russia, it might not be the weapon that was actually used. Indeed, it was first thought that the Skripals were suffering from exposure to an opoid, Fentanyl. When the weapon is not publically declared immediately, it buys breathing space in the execution of the ongoing psyop for a decision to be made on whether or not to proceed along a given course (in this case, to blame Russia). While any decision remains unmade, a number of scenarios can be floated and presented to the public, so that when the narrative can be settled on, the specifics of the crime can be chosen to best fit the weapon that can best frame the intended fall-guy.

In the case of the Salisbury incident, the weapon has been named – but the rationalisation has not been established.

Novichok is extremely potent – the Express article (linked-to above), which provides a vehicle for a poison-by-parcel theory, states that it is eight times more powerful than the VX nerve agent. In the same piece, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is quoted as follows:

It is designed to be undetectable for any standard chemical security testing. Skripal would only have needed to touch it, as he opened a parcel, for it to be absorbed into his bloodstream.

It would have taken around 40 minutes for him to feel the effects. Nerve agents usually have a high viscosity, making them difficult to spray from small containers. But it would only have needed a very small amount, placed in the parcel, to successfully target Skripal. It can also be delivered in powder form.

If we digest this correctly, the ever-present de Bretton-Gordon appears to rule out the administering of the agent by a spray, and advocates a parcel as a delivery system because it is well suited to the properties of the substance.

The idea that the Skripals were poisoned at home would perhaps explain why a doctor on the scene in the town centre examined the Skripals and suffered no ill effects. Conversely, a police sergeant who became ill had visited Skripal’s house. We have this on the authority of (the so-called) Lord Blair, the one-time Metropolitan Police Commissioner. And that Nick Bailey, the sergeant in question, was made ill by his attendance at Skripal’s house has been touted as a reasonable explanation in more than one place.

And yet Wiltshire police appear to be happy to put out a statement in which Bailey states that “he was part of a group of officers and other emergency service colleagues who dealt with the initial incident”.

We do know that police did go to Skripal’s home later in the same day, so did Bailey attend the Skripals in Salisbury city centre, where he remained unaffected, only to later become contaminated at the house? Some corporate-media is hedging its bets: “Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey… became ill following a visit to the Skripals’ home. He may also have become contaminated after rushing to the scene of where they [the Skripals] collapsed to treat them”.

And yet, what of the traces of nerve agent that were found in the restaurant in Salisbury? “The substance was found in one part of Zizzi in Salisbury during a continuing forensic examination” reported the BBC. And yet “No-one who was in the restaurant at the same time is thought to be in danger.” Do we conclude, then, that the “one part of Zizzi” in which the substance was discovered was inaccessible to any other patron other than Skripal? Were the restaurant staff even at risk?

Hopefully, the reader can see that there is a conflict in the information thus far examined. If the poison was the extremely potent Novichok, and the scene of the poisoning was chez Skripal, then how did the father and daughter stay compos mentis long enough to partake in all the leisure activity that they reportedly enjoyed that Sunday afternoon? The Skripals had arrived in Salisbury city centre at 1.30pm – it’s not known if they drove or walked – and they weren’t discovered until 4pm. They are known to have been at the Zizzi restaurant at 2.30pm, where they remained for 40 minutes. According to a witness (who, unsurprisingly, would not be named), Skripal became extremely agitated in a quick space of time regarding the wait for his food to be served:

He didn’t seem to have to wait long for his food. I noticed him first because they were sitting by themselves, and because he was an older man with a younger woman, and because he was losing his temper.

He didn’t seem ill physically, but perhaps mentally ill with the way he was shouting.

The witness said other than appearing angry, there was no sign that either of them were ill.

They weren’t poisoned at Zizzi. I saw the chef prepare the food.

No one could have sneaked in and added anything to his food there, the kitchen is open. The drinks are made at the bar which is by the door, but I think it is unlikely. No one could get to him.

This testimony suggests that Skripal wasn’t poisoned in the restaurant. Skripal caused a scene which means that the staff would have paid more attention to him than other patrons. The other customers (who were pleased when the Skripals left) would have also had this man and his daughter seizing their attention. Who would try and deliver a nerve agent in this place with everyone looking?

And yet the police claim a trace of nerve agent at the restaurant (and belatedly told patrons to wash their clothes, an act that looks suspiciously like re-traumatising – i.e. the reinforcement, through terror, of a detail that the authorities want to be perceived as significant). How did the poison arrive at the restaurant? It appears that an effort at an explanation was introduced in the shape of flowers laced with the nerve agent that were initially delivered to Skripal’s home, and then taken into town. This would compensate for an apparent confliction between the theory of a poisoning at home, and all the initial assumptions about the contamination having happened in the town centre, where the Skripals were discovered on a bench. The poison simply travelled with the flowers?

From a Mail article linked-to above:

Mr Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, visited the cemetery where his wife Liudmila is buried just hours before they collapsed in Salisbury city centre last Sunday.

Conveniently, there is no sense of when this visit occurred exactly; if it did happen, the author suggests that it was before dinner – who bothers to take a bunch of flowers intended for a grave into a restaurant with them? The question would still remain, how did the nerve agent find its way into the restaurant?

What the reader may have noticed is that there is a great deal of time when the Skripals were in Salisbury, and there is just no account of their activity. The author suggests that this could be when they were poisoned, and not with anything that would endanger the public. There is an implication from this that officers who are in forces other than the thoroughly corrupt Metropolitan Police should consider: we only assume that the substance used to poison the Skripals was also used to poison Nick Bailey. And note especially, none of these victims are dead – not even after they had supposedly come into contact with the terrible death-inducing Novichok.

Whether or not we think the narrative is feasible at this stage, with Russia having been accused, the primary function has been achieved. It’s hard to say if the cost is going to be worth whatever the British Government hopes to gain. This doesn’t refer alone to the ramifications of worsening relations with Russia. There is going to be price to pay in terms of an inextricable alienation of an ever growing section of the British public. People are realising that they are playing a life-size version of Cluedo where the Government alone has access to that envelope that tells of who did the murder with what weapon. The big end of game reveal never happens – the Government just makes an assertion regarding the contents of the envelope. As people discover this game, and play it, they find none of the Government’s answers ring true (based on the reality of our own hands) – and that’s when they realise that there has been some major cheating.

† News comes that Britain won’t supply a sample of the poisoning agent to Russia – and it is no surprise. It suggests that Britain doesn’t have a sample to share.

It may well be that, in Britain, things are legislated for this approach – the author is reminded of his local authority’s insistence on the power to do something without wanting to show how it is authorised – but the British Government is not dealing with its easily fobbed off Helot slave class in this matter.

‡ Link does not represent endorsement.