XPost: uk.media, U$ChargingStrandedU$Citizens 
  
 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 
 Hash: SHA1 
  
 The Parallel Universe of a British Arms Co 
  
 Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit 
  
 sent by Riaz K Tayob (activ-l) 
 The Guardian - Feb 13, 2007 
  
 The parallel universe of BAE: 
  
 covert, dangerous and beyond the rule of law 
  
 How long can Britain's biggest arms company run a secret service and 
 trump the armed forces in political influence? 
  
 by George Monbiot 
  
 There is a state within a state in the United Kingdom, a small but 
 untouchable domain that appears to be subject to a different set of laws. 
 We have heard quite a bit about it over the past two months, but hardly 
 anyone knows just how far its writ runs. The state is BAE Systems, 
 Britain's biggest arms company. It seems, among other advantages, to be 
 able to run its own secret service. 
  
 Article continues 
 This week, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) hopes to obtain a court 
 order against BAE. The order would allow it to discover how the arms 
 company obtained one of its confidential documents. CAAT instructed its 
 lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, to seek a judicial review of the gov! ernment's 
 decision to drop the corruption case against BAE, which is alleged to 
 have paid massive bribes to members of the Saudi royal family. Leigh Day 
 sent CAAT an email containing advice on costs and tactics. The email 
 ended up in the hands of the arms company. 
  
 How? Correspondence between a plaintiff and his lawyers couldn't be more 
 private. The last people you would show it to are the defendants in the 
 case. But somehow the letter found its way to BAE's offices. 
  
 The arms company argues that it was the unwitting and unwilling recipient 
 of the email. So why does it refuse to tell CAAT who sent it? Why, far 
 from assisting CAAT's attempt to explain this mystery, has it threatened 
 the group with costs for seeking to reveal BAE's source? 
  
 CAAT has good reason to be suspicious. In 2003, the Sunday Times revealed 
 that BAE had carried out a "widespread spying operation" on its critics. 
 "Bank accounts were accessed, computer files downloaded and private 
 corres! pondence with members of parliament and ministers secretly copied 
 and passed on." The paper said the arms company made use of a network run 
 by a former consultant for the Ministry of Defence called Evelyn Le 
 Chene. "Le Chene recruited at least half a dozen agents to infiltrate 
 CAAT's headquarters at Finsbury Park, north London, and a number of 
 regional offices." They provided BAE with advanced intelligence on CAAT's 
 campaign against the sale of its Hawk aircraft to the Suharto 
 dictatorship in Indonesia. The arms company also obtained CAAT's 
 membership list, its bank account details, the identity of its donors, 
 its letters to ministers, even the contents of private diaries belonging 
 to its staff. 
  
 After the story was published, CAAT asked a team of investigators to 
 examine the messages sent from its offices. They found that one of the 
 group's most senior members of staff, the national campaigns and events 
 coordinator, had sent 181 emails to an unfamiliar address. Many of them 
 contained extremely sensitive information. 
  
 The coordinat! or, Martin Hogbin, denied that he was an agent of Le 
 Chene's. He claimed that the mysterious email address belonged to a 
 former CAAT volunteer, and that he had been sending him this information 
 because he might find it interesting. 
  
 The investigators contacted the former volunteer, who told them that he 
 had not received any messages from Hogbin, and did not recognise the 
 address. CAAT took the case to the United Kingdom's Information 
 Commissioner, who found that the email address belonged to "a company 
 with links to Evelyn Le Chene". Both Le Chene and Hogbin refused to 
 assist the investigations. If it was true that Hogbin was working for Le 
 Chene, it would be a tremendous coup for her and her clients. As 
 campaigns and events coordinator, he knew more than anyone else about 
 CAAT's plans. If BAE were to obtain and make use of such intelligence, it 
 could anticipate and outmanoeuvre the Campaign's attempts to expose or 
 embarrass it. 
  
 BAE's spying operations represen! t just one way in which the company 
 looks like a parallel state. It al so appears to enjoy crown immunity. 
 Last August, this column suggested that the Saudi corruption case might 
 be dropped, in order to protect a new order for 72 BAE jets. It was not a 
 hard prediction to make - Saudi Arabia had made the new deal conditional 
 on the abandonment of the case. But I could not have guessed that both 
 the attorney general and the prime minister would make such a show of 
 squashing the investigation. They seemed to go out of their way to 
 demonstrate to BAE's clients that they would do whatever it took to 
 protect the new order, even if it meant exposing themselves to 
 allegations of collusion. 
  
 The prime minister has never taken such a risk on behalf of one of his 
 departments, let alone his ministers or officials (witness how Lord Levy 
 and Ruth Turner have been left to swing). There are just two friends for 
 whom he will put his legacy on the line: George Bush and BAE. 
  
 In 2001, Blair overruled Clare Short and Gordon Brown to grant an export 
 lic! ence for BAE's sale of a military air-traffic control system to one 
 of the world's poorest countries, Tanzania. The World Bank had pointed 
 out that the contract was ridiculously expensive - Tanzania could have 
 bought a better system elsewhere for a quarter of the price. In January 
 the Guardian revealed that BAE Systems allegedly paid a $12m (#6.2m) 
 "commission" to an agent who brokered the deal. 
  
 In 2005, Blair made a secret visit to Riyadh to expedite BAE's deal with 
 the Saudi princes. He then sent both John Reid and Des Browne to clinch 
 the order. Ministers in the UK have always acted as unpaid salesmen for 
 the arms companies, but seldom has a prime minister muddied his hands 
 this much. Blair pushed the order through by promising the Saudis that 
 they could have the first 24 planes ahead of schedule. How? By selling 
 them the jets already allotted to the RAF. BAE's interests, in other 
 words, trump the requirements of our own armed forces. 
  
 Blair has also br! oken his government's pledge to publish the report by 
 the National Aud it Office on BAE's dealings in Saudi Arabia. It remains 
 the only NAO report never to have been made public. We can only guess why 
 the prime minister needs to protect it. 
  
 It could be argued, with some force, that this government has always had 
 a special relationship with big business, rather like its special 
 relationship with George Bush (it gets beaten up and thanks him for it). 
 But the special favours it grants BAE are deeply resented by other 
 corporations. After the suppression of the Saudi case, F&C Asset 
 Management, a very large institutional investor, wrote to the government 
 to complain that its decision undermined the rule of law and the 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)