Declassified UK April 2023

Posted: 2nd May 2023

April 2023

Hi everyone – this is Phil Miller, chief reporter at Declassified UK.

We’ve had another very busy month here, with the leak of US military files on Ukraine. Our reporting led the way in highlighting what the trove of documents told us about Britain’s covert role in the conflict, from the deployment of 50 special forces to the risks taken by UK spy planes over the Black Sea. It confirms our view that Britain is much more embroiled in the war with Russia than our government would like to admit.

Meanwhile our editor, Mark Curtis, has been mining the official archives from Tony Blair’s time as prime minister, shedding new light on the early years of New Labour’s ‘ethical’ foreign policy. From cosying up to Egypt’sdictator Hosni Mubarak on behalf of British arms and energy firms, to bombing Iraq in 1998 despite government lawyers consistently telling him it was unlawful, Mark’s found a cache of damning material.

Although Blair has never faced court for his actions, some of his former allies are having a tougher time. Take Hashim Thaci, who led the KosovoLiberation Army in 1999 and went on to be the country’s president until 2020. He’s now on trial in the Hague for alleged war crimes during the conflict, when Britain fought on his side.

Of course the Labour party is now under new management, and led by England’s former top prosecutor, Sir Keir Starmer KC. Our chief investigator Matt Kennard went through his expenses and found he’d billed the taxpayer nearly a quarter of a million pounds for travel costs – including luxury long-haul flights. The story proved popular among the right-wing press, showing they will pick up on our stories when we fit their narrow party political agendas, but not when we expose wrongdoing by the security agencies.

That’s why you may have missed Richard Norton-Taylor’s extraordinary piece on whether the Royal Navy secretly diverted a nuclear armedsubmarine to the south Atlantic during the Falklands War in 1982. Was Margaret Thatcher prepared to fire a ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon at Argentina if Britain failed to recapture Port Stanley? Richard’s research, together with our adviser Professor Paul Rogers, strongly suggests the public should finally be given a straight answer.

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Another conflict where we are still waiting for the full truth to come out is Afghanistan, where the SAS allegedly executed civilians. An inquiry has opened into this most disturbing issue, which Richard and I have been keeping an eye on.

We’re also following events in Israel, where its most far-right government is escalating tensions in the region. Peter Oborne has called out Britain’s Foreign Office for its dishonest statements about “all parties” being to blame for Israeli forces storming Al Aqsa mosque during Ramadan. Such framing fits a wider pattern of double standards. I uncovered documentary evidence proving British ministers lie to parliament about Israel’s nuclearprogramme, allowing Tel Aviv to get away with proliferation – while condemning Iran.

John McEvoy has been following the money at the Foreign Office, exposing how they blew eighty grand of public funds on lawyers to support Venezuelan ‘president’ Juan Guaidó in his bid to seize $2bn of gold from the Bank of England’s vaults. Guaidó has now given up his claim to be Venezuela’s president, but we won’t get a refund on those legal fees.

Another little known Foreign Office budget stream is its £25m pot for self-styled ‘counter-disinformation’ groups. They claim to be independent arbiters of the truth, but are often staffed by former Whitehall officials who pursue strongly ideological agendas – yet are quoted uncritically in the press.

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Lastly, I expect many of you will have your bunting and flags ready for the coronation next weekend! If you make it down to the Mall, you might see King Charles cosying up to Gulf autocrats. We’ve I can afford £3 monthlyI can afford £30 annually