Michael Shrimpton

Michael Shrimpton

Pauline Neville-Jones

Michael Shrimpton is described on The Intelligence Summit website as "a barrister specialising in national security and intelligence law, who negotiated the national security aspects of the Pinochet case with the late Lt-General Vernon Walters, formerly Deputy Director of the CIA."

'Conspiracy theorist' or security expert or both?

He was termed a "conspiracy theorist" when introduced as a pundit on Sky News (December 3, 2007, 11.30pm) particularly with his comments on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which he believes were moved to Syria, adding: "that's what Syria's for."

Shrimpton's Wikipedia 'user page' follows the TIS biography:

His active assistance to Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies in the Global War on Terror has produced some notable success including the exposure of the Abu Graib “hood” photograph as a fake. His work in strategic intelligence takes him on regular trips to the Pentagon and he also met with senior advisors to the President of the Russian Federation in Moscow in November 2005. He participated in the Global Strategic Review conference in Geneva in 2005 and is a regular contributor at conferences such as Intelcon and the Intelligence Summit Washington DC February 2006.

The 'exposure of the Abu Graib “hood” photograph as a fake' emanates from another of Shrimpton's CVs wherein he also states that his 'objective' is "To assist interested parties."

It is a boom time for 'security experts' and those who have 'retired' or gone private such as the speakers and organizers of The Intelligence Summit (TIS), such as Pauline Neville-Jones. These people, who once preferred to work outside the public gaze, now promote themselves as public figures.

According to TIS, Shrimpton's biography is roughly this: He represents and advises intelligence officers and "is believed to have" connections to a number of Western intelligence services. He has "briefed staffers on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9-11", and "participated in panels on terrorism for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) in Washington DC and at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA". He is also promoted by the Let My People Know Speakers Bureau. He believes Dr. David Kelly was the victim of an assassination that had nothing to do with the British State or its Secret Intelligence Service.

According to his TIS biography:

He also played a major role in uncovering the Iraqi Air Force's acquisition of a Boeing 767 simulator, stolen from Kuwait Airways at Kuwait Airport in August 1990. He was of course fully aware of the significance of this discovery, given the cockpit commonality between the Boeing 757 and 767, and Al Qaeda's restriction to these two types on 9-11.

He specialises in "counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, counter-assassination, and counter-proliferation."

The TIS biography tells us Shrimpton has appeared on CNN and the BBC and is "regularly consulted by the media" on national security and intelligence matters, including the BBC TV drama series Spooks, broadcast in the USA as MI5. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs), the United States Naval Institute (USNI), the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the Defence and Security Forum, the Military Commentators Circle, the European Atlantic Group and the Royal Air Force Historical Society. He is a Fellow of the Atlantic Council of the United Kingdom, the Institute of Directors and the Air League.

Claiming Iraq involvement in terrorist attacks against the US

Shrimpton's paper for TIS, "Iraq: Then and Now" claims to explain "Iraq state involvement in the failed terrorist attack on the USS Cole ... and the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC September 11 2001". The abstract reads:

Iraq: Then and Now

Abstract:

Michael Shrimpton is an intelligence expert who has made a careful study of the links between the Republic of Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence organisation and the Al Qaeda al-Sulbah terrorist organisation. Shrimpton will detail the origins of the Ba'ath Party in the 1930s, its close connection to the NSDAP, and the contacts between the German Abwehr intelligence organisation and the Ba'ath Party and the master Islamic terrorist organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, created as a front for German intelligence in Egypt in 1928, with a view to mounting terrorist and sabotage actions in British-controlled territories in the Middle East and gaining control of Middle East oil for what became Nazi Germany.

He will name the Abwehr's Head of Station in Cairo in WW2, his deputy and the key link man between the failed pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad in 1941 and his protege Saddam Hussein. He will detail how the Abwehr's networks in the Middle East, including Iraq and Libya, were never broken up after 1945 and were taken over by the covert DVD intelligence agency, based to the present day in Dachau, Munich, Bavaria, initially under the operational leadership of GeneralLeutnant Erwin von Lahousen.

He will point out how the failure to understand the deep links behind Islamic terrorism and the allegedly secular Ba'ath Party has led ill-informed media commentators and so-called terrorism experts to obsess on the surface religious differences between Ba'ath Party and Al Qaeda leaders. He will detail Osama bin Laden's first visit to Baghdad, and list contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraqi, Sudanese and Pakistani intelligence, naming names. He will comment on the efforts to Islamicise the regime after its defeat in 1991, and the conferences held in Baghdad to improve relations with Islamic groups, as the intelligence relationship with Al Qaeda grew.

He will specify the assistance given by Iraq in the failed attempt to sink the USS Cole and the training provided by Iraq to the 9-11 terrorists, including the use of a Boeing 767 simulator, tracked down partly through Michael's efforts. He will summarise the evidence linking Iraq with the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, pay respectful tribute to the FBI agent who at great risk to his own life exposed those links (and died before his time), and state his reasons for concluding that the Iraqi Mukhabarat intelligence service provided planning, logistical and technical support for the 9-11 attacks, justifying the waging of total war by the United States and the United Kingdom on the Republic of Iraq.

B. Raman former Chief of the Counter-Terrorism Division of the Research & Analysis Wing (India)

Cdr. Richard Marcinko former Navy SEAL

Tashbih Sayyed, Editor of the Muslim World Today, adjunct fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Wayne Simmons, former CIA Operative, Intelligence & Terrorism Analyst, The Intelligence Summit

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch

Brent Budowsky former Senior Staff Democratic Leadership

The homepage of TIS boasts that "Secret Files Prove Saddam Had WMD", an odd assertion in 2007. Presumably (it is unsubstantiated on the site), this is a reference to Syria in the context Shrimpton speculated above: this piece of information handily provides the same imaginary justification for attacking Syria as the attack on Iraq.

TIS describe themselves as:

"a non-partisan, non-profit, neutral forum that uses private charitable funds to bring together intelligence agencies of the free world and the emerging democracies [...] The Summit is to provide an opportunity for the international intelligence community to listen to and learn from each other, and to share ideas in the common war against terrorism."

Of course this 'listen to and learn' aspect is somewhat restricted to a narrow band and the 'non-partisan' claim is unsubstantiated to any degree. Dr. Robert Katz is the executive director of the Intelligence Summit and also part of the American Congress for Truth with TIS' Robert Spencer, Walid Phares, James Woolsey, and former Intelligence Officer John Loftus, author of the Belarus Secret: The Nazi Connection in America, who is also a director of TIS (whose third director is the CIA's Clare M. Lopez).

Some reporters on the summit have a different perspective:

"So the gathered spooks, wannabe spooks, money men, ideologues and neo-con officials are free to strike whatever bargains, agree whichever strategies and disseminate whatever curious information they wish, safely insulated from press attention. It’s the perfect place to renew and organize a parallel intelligence service. And that is precisely what the Intelligence Summit seeks to do. It’s a hub – which brings together a gaggle of Fox News contributors such as Bill Cowan, John Loftus, Tawfik Hamid and Alireza Jafarzadeh with ex-agents of Mossad or the Israeli military such as Moshe Ya’alon or Yoram Hessel and U.S. government officials such as Harold Rhode."

According to The Intelligence Summit™ it "is a fully authorized program of IHEC". Who are they? Founded in 1995, originally incorporated as the International Holocaust Education Center, "after 9/11 IHEC rapidly expanded its educational mission from fighting racism to fighting terrorism, and is now known as the Intelligence and Homeland Security Education Center." There is a slight hint of disgruntlement in their description of government agencies:

"Because it is a private charity, IHEC can respond more rapidly and flexibly than most government agencies and has funded some of the most innovative programs in the war against terrorism. In 2002, IHEC funded a national research program using private investigators to obtain information on the financing of domestic terrorists. IHEC's educational research has aided in the exposure and subsequent indictment of Professor Sami Al Arian, and other sensitive investigations, which are still ongoing."

Shrimpton is an advisor to the Gerard Group International (GGI), which also organises 'security confrences via Benador Associates. GGI was founded in Israel and develops Israel’s approach to counter-terrorism and its potential for application in America; they say they have "150 domain experts representing a broad range of disciplines from countries around the world."Its partners are American Center For Democracy, The Intelligence Summit and SSC, Inc. Security and Investigations. Ilana Freedman is Managing Partner of GGI. Lt. Colonel Gordon Cucullu is Intelligence Director of GGI (and Benador).

Shrimpton's defections

Shrimpton's biography at the London Speaker Bureau states that he was:

A former Labour Parliamentary and European Parliamentary Candidate he defected to the Conservatives on Europe and defence in July 1997. A powerful neoconservative with a formidable intellect and tremendous energy, he has the ability to scythe through bad arguments (such as Global Warming Hypothesis), plug leaks (he has been consulted by counter-intelligence officers) and expose propaganda operations such as the faked ‘hood’ Abu Ghraib photo, or the attempt to smear the US Marines over al-Haditha.

The Telegraph reported that Tony Blair found the surprise defection "odd". It had come on the eve of a by-election in Uxbridge 12 weeks after the Labour landslide victory. The report adds that Shrimpton attempted to secure the nomination for the Uxbridge seat, but was appalled at the way the new Government had behaved:

I know there is deep concern within the Labour Party at the way the Government is behaving and the way the party machine is becoming centralised and overriding the wishes of local constituency activists.

The report adds some interesting background detail on Shrimpton's political consistancy:

Bill Rammell, the Labour MP for Harlow, a contemporary of Mr Shrimpton's at University College, Cardiff, who succeeded him as President of the Union, said: "I remember how he was elected President of the Union as a Conservative in 1981. Then he defected to the SDP, boasting he was the first Conservative President to do so. "He then switched to Labour within months, moving finally to the Socialist Workers' Party when I got the official Labour nomination for President in 1982".

Shrimpton attended a September 21, 2000 meeting in North Wiltshire of the Democracy Movement on the Nice Treaty, featuring speakers James Gray and Norris McWhirter.This is no casual chance meeting: The Freedom Association have tributes to the late Norris McWhirter on their site, wherein Shrimpton states:

I was privileged to have counted Norris as a friend. We shared public platforms more than once and enjoyed our conversations late into the night afterwards.

The Democracy Movement and other far-right anti-Europe groups (The Freedom Association, Bruges Group and so forth) have formed various alliances around issues such as retaining the pound or imperial measures and Shrimpton can be found offering legal counsel or propaganda support in several projects as various small Church Halls are troubled by sermons on Euro-doom.

What is the reality of Shrimpton's political background — A "Labour party activist", a member of the Socialist Workers' Party — a former Conservative who with the rise of Thatcher joins Micheal Foot, then the Labour-hating SDP, then Labour again, then a sudden conviction on a centralising trend in New Labour (after some 17 years) causes a 'switch' (in reality a move back, according to Bill Rammell above) to a Conservative party doomed to years in the wilderness, and this 'defection' leads to sense of belonging to a certain (and rather centralised) section of the military/intelligence-connected far-right gaining (and possibly also re-establishing) contacts in the Security Services and organisations such as the Bruges group.

Shrimpton had been a Labour Party member since 1981, stood as a Labour candidate in Horsham in 1987 and for West Sussex in the European elections in 1989 There is a certain incongruity about his status and the provenance of what appears to be disinformation - his interview on David Kelly sees him repeat the old 1970s MI5 smear that Hugh Gaitskell was assassinated by the Soviets to make way for their 'mole,' one Harold Wilson:

It’s difficult to fake an illness. It was done in the case of a British politician, Hugh Gaitskill, who was opposed to Britain joining the European Economic Community, and he came down with a tropical disease in Moscow in the middle of winter. [...]It was spotted at the time as an assassination, but MI5, although they’d brought in Porton Down, where David Kelly worked incidentally, Porton Down were brought in but Porton Down couldn’t work out how the disease which got Hugh Gaitskill, which is Lupus Disseminata, a very nasty disease indeed - attacks the organs, very similar to Ebola – how this tropical disease had found its way to Moscow, and they couldn’t work out how, what the agent was for getting the Lupus into Hugh Gaitskill. We now know it was probably aerosol, but at the time that technology wasn’t known about in England.

Perhaps Shrimpton's biography on the American Military University website might explain this convoluted peregrination. This states that under the "late, great Lt-Gen Vernon Walters, former Deputy Director of the CIA [...] he learnt the art of acting as a back-channel between governments and intelligence agencies."Could this sort of connection have predated his aquaintance with Walters?

He is a member of United Kingdom National Defence Association UKNDA), which seems to contain a selection of senior military and political figures engaged in trying to increase the budgets for their Armed Services. Shrimpton is co-chairman of the Bruges Group along with Honorary President: Baroness Thatcher, Vice-President: Lord Lamont of Lerwick , Co-Chairman: Dr. Brian Hindley, Director: Robert Oulds. Former Chairmen have included Lord Harris of High Cross and Professor Kenneth Minogue.

The previous citation is from a Bruges counter-propaganda document and Shrimpton has aided and abetted here with all of his usual tact:

UK Intelligence lawyer and politician Michael Shrimpton shocked the delegates at the WASME Conference Gala Dinner [the world association for small and medium enterprises was hosted by the Gibraltar Federation of Small Businesses] at the Casino on Tuesday night when he suggested that the Spanish Government had drawn up contingency plans for military action against Gibraltar. The comments made by the special guest speaker at the conference were declared unworthy of comment by the Deputy Chief Minister Keith Azopardi and the Governor David Durie, present at the dinner. Mr Durie said that he found the comments "incredible", whilst Mr Azopardi said that his speech was "humorous in part, whilst totally incredulous in others." Both declared the speech unworthy of serious comment. Mr Shrimpton, a member of the all party Brugge [sic] Group, drew on his military contacts, which suggested that London had become aware that Spain had drawn up military contingency plans in Cordoba for the occupation of Gibraltar in the event of a 'no' outcome to the referendum.

During late March 2007, Shrimpton gave a secret talk to the Springbok Club/Empire Loyalist Club which lamented the passing of the 'old' South Africa. He is not entirely candid about his views on race, which he alluded to in an interview with TheLawyer.com:

Now here's the funny thing about Shrimpton: he constantly comes out with statements that you thought no one believed anymore. Or if they believed them, they did not utter them in front of strangers. While I am sure that if I was sitting next to him at a dinner party, after a few glasses of wine I would want to swing for him, he is actually really likeable. While his views might be eccentric and grate on a politically correct listener, Shrimpton's bumptious enthusiasm and energy is charming. [...]But before I can relax into liking him, I have to deal with the nagging worry that Shrimpton's views make him, well, racist. Does he trust foreigners? "I do trust people who aren't Anglo-Saxon," he says. "Eurosceptics are often described as xenophobes or little Englanders. Not only do I reject the challenges of isolationist and little Englander, I describe [Europhiles] as little Europeans. Europe in an ethnic context is largely white and Europhiles tend to see the world as white and are very dismissive of the Commonwealth because it's not purely white."

The racists are the people who support Europe, according to Shrimpton, and what's more he provides a new twist on an old routine:

Much of the anti-US feeling that Shrimpton fears has become fashionable in Europe is, he argues, anti-Semitic. "The Nazis openly said that the Americans couldn't fight successfully because they're a multinational nation. I think that America's success as a multiracial democracy is the reason why many Europeans are against them."

We gain a further insight into Shrimpton's view on tolerance with a letter to the Telegraph on the subject of General Pinochet:

Pinochet was the nicest dictator I ever met

Niall Ferguson has the late General Augusto Pinochet all wrong (Comment, December 17), possibly because he never met him. He was the nicest dictator I ever met and a much warmer human being and more intelligent than, say, Tony Blair (whom I have also met). As a leader, the former Chilean dictator was also probably more tolerant of dissent and more trustworthy.

He was certainly more economically literate. The general would never have permitted the collapse of our pension funds, for example. As a military man he operated to a much higher ethical standard than mere civilian politicians like Mr Blair.

Having regard to the tens of thousands killed on the orders of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, I suspect that many more would have died if the junta had not taken on the responsibility of national leadership in Chile. Before his suicide, Salvador Allende was well on the way to wrecking the economy and turning the country into a Third World hell-hole and Chileans were fortunate that they had a serious leader in the wings, able to turn the country around.

We needn't be troubled too much by whingeing from the Chilean Left about the odd spot of torture (only when they were too slow to assist the authorities) when, as Prof Ferguson observes, torture was a practice the Chilean Left not only approved of but indulged in.

Michael Shrimpton, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

Nevertheless Shrimpton was Part-time Chairman of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal from 1992 until its abolition in 2005, and also sat as a Special Adjudicator hearing appeals against refusal of political asylum in the UK.

Further Reading

• 'The Murder of Dr. David Kelly': Alex Jones Interviews Michael Shrimpton

• There is an analytical review of TIS at http://szamko.gnn.tv/articles/2949/The_Spooks_of_St_Petersburg Sam Urquhart (2007) Private intelligence companies are gathering in Florida to plan their global operations with neocon officials in close attendance, as more interventions are planned. This states:

"It’s a new age of the privateer. A gathering of today’s buccaneers and freelance adventurers [...] Among them will be a motley crew of Iranian exiles, Israeli intelligence officials, repentent Islamists, neocon warriors and scions of the British secret service. It’s certainly a crowd of buccaneers which repays further investigation. [...] But outside of that process, private military and intelligence companies are thriving in the shadow of the Global War on Terror. In fact, they are not just thriving in its shadow, they have been constantly lobbying to make that war bigger, more bloody, more high-tech and most crucially of all, more expensive. It is hard to separate neocon officials from neocon private military contractors, or from radical think-tanks which provide them with an intellectual veneer.

The report also notes that many of the speakers are represented by Benador Associates. and states this in relation to Shrimpton specifically:

"Shrimpton is a committed “friend of Israel” – being a contributor to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and a participant in the 2003 'Lawyers Mission to Israel' which set out to 'allow participants to explore the military and strategic dangers to the Jewish state from Arab terrorism in an intensive schedule of briefings, tours and exhibitions'. After receiving 'briefings from senior commanders of Israel’s intelligence and security services, as well as the other strategic decision-makers who shape and lead Israel’s multifaceted war on terrorism.including the senior commanders of the security services and Mossad,' Shrimpton returned to the UK where he immediately penned a passionate attack on the BBC [...] Attacking the BBC’s perceived willingness to explain Palestinian actions in Raffah [sic] using Palestinian voices, Shrimpton wrote that 'It will come as small comfort, but the BBC hates Britain almost as much as it hates Israel,' before continuing, 'For over 30 years it has rammed the European Union down our throats – the same blood-stained EU that sponsors Palestinian terror and deserves to be treated as a fully paid-up member of the Axis of Evil.' The Israeli Lawyers Mission must have been some operation."

The letter (14/7/2003) that Shrimpton sent to the BBC reads:

Sir,

As a Brit who has just had the pleasure of spending nine days in your great country as part of the Lawyers Mission to Israel - including the opportunity to personally congratulate the government official who had the guts to stand up to the BBC - may I add my small voice to those of your correspondents who have hammered the corporation?

This is the same BBC that in the 1930s kept Winston Churchill off the airwaves for fear of upsetting the Nazis.

In truth, the BBC's reputation for impartiality was always overblown, and it has now gone forever. Well done, Israeli government.

It will come as small comfort, but the BBC hates Britain almost as much as it hates Israel. For over 30 years it has rammed the European Union down our throats - the same blood-stained EU that sponsors Palestinian terror and deserves to be treated as a fully paid-up member of the Axis of Evil.

May I take this opportunity to thank every intelligence officer, military commander, soldier, border guard, policeman, government official, terror victim, rabbinical scholar and judge we met during our mission, not leaving out those "ordinary" Israelis gracious enough to receive us in their homes.

I came away from Israel with an abiding sense of the decency and courage of is people in the face of terror and a renewed determination to see the UK ally itself with Israel in its hour of need.

Michael Shrimpton

Watermead, Bucks, UK

• According to a Toronto Sun report promoted on TIS siteJohn Loftus' work at loftusreport.com seems to be the provenance of the Syria WMD story. The Sun report states that the website:

"...contains 35 pages of newly-declassified documents and satellite photographs in support of his theories."

Here it is presented as a theory, rather than the 'fact' claimed by TIS propagandists and disinformation experts. The Sun report adds:

":Loftus says the best available evidence now suggests one-quarter of Iraq's WMD had already been destroyed due to pressure by the United Nations in the early to mid-1990s. Another quarter was sold to Iraq's Arab neighbours during the same period. Russia, which still had influence with Saddam, successfully demanded the removal of another quarter of Iraq's WMD shortly before the 2003 invasion. Those materials, Loftus says, eventually made their way into Syrian hands. Finally, Loftus argues, Saddam's remaining WMD -- his nuclear weapons labs and material -- were still in Iraq when coalition forces invaded, hidden in huge underground warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Loftus claims this nuclear inventory was later stolen and spirited out of Iraq right under the nose of the U.S. occupation -- a massive intelligence failure. He says the Israeli government believes some of Saddam's nuclear stockpile ended up in Syria, which was building its own nuclear facility to produce radioactive "dirty bombs" for use against Israel. The recent mysterious air strike by Israel against Syria was intended to destroy that facility, Loftus maintains."

Loftus' claims are predicated on the on the impartiality of the organisers of TIS and one source:

"Finally, there are some definitive answers to the mystery of the missing WMD. Civilian volunteers, mostly retired intelligence officers belonging to the non-partisan IntelligenceSummit.org, have been poring over the secret archives captured from Saddam Hussein. The inescapable conclusion is this: Saddam really did have WMD after all, but not in the way the Bush administration believed. A 9,000 word research paper with citations to each captured document has been posted online at LoftusReport.com, along with translations of the captured Iraqi documents, courtesy of Mr. Ryan Mauro and his friends."

Mr. Mauro's biography, from his own propaganda organisation 'World Threats', states that he is something of a precocious talent:

"Beginning at age 11 or 12, Mauro began research into the geopolitical affairs of several countries. It quickly turned into more than a hobby. In December 2002, Mauro was hired as a geopolitical analyst by Tactical Defense Concepts (www.tdconcepts.com), a maritime-related security company. He was believed to be the youngest hired geopolitical analyst at age 16. Several of Mauro’s research reports, criticizing the approaches of both political parties to geopolitical affairs and national security, were forwarded to law enforcement and intelligence agencies with great response."