Malcolm Rifkind
Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind is a Scottish lawyer and Conservative Party politician who was a UK/Member of Parliament from 1974 to 1997 and from 2005 to 2015.[1]
On 23 February 2015, the Conservative Party announced that it had has suspended the whip from Sir Malcolm Rifkind while a party disciplinary committee investigated cash-for-access allegations resulting from an undercover sting operation.[2] By 30 March 2015, when his 41-year Parliamentary career came to an end, Rifkind had spent the final 5 weeks sitting as an Independent MP.[3]
Contents
Background
Born in Edinburgh in 1946, Malcolm Rifkind was educated at George Watson's College and Edinburgh University where he studied law before taking a postgraduate degree in political science. From 1967 to 1968 he was an Assistant Lecturer at University College of Rhodesia in Salisbury (now Harare). In 1969, he was called to the Bar in Britain and practised as an Advocate until 1979. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1985.
Parliamentary career
In 1974 Rifkind was elected as MP for Edinburgh Pentlands and was appointed to the Opposition Front Bench in 1975, but resigned over devolution in 1977.
In 1979, when the Conservatives were returned to power under Margaret Thatcher, he was appointed a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, at first in the Scottish Office and then, at the time of the Falklands War, he was transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, being promoted to Minister of State in 1983. He became a member of the Cabinet in 1986 as Secretary of State for Scotland. In 1990 he became Secretary of State for Transport and in 1992 Secretary of State for Defence. From 1995-97 he was Foreign Secretary.
At the UK/General election/1997, he lost his Edinburgh seat to Labour's Lynda Clark. Defeated again at the 2001 General election, Rifkind was parachuted in to the safe Tory seat of Kensington and Chelsea in 2005, following the retirement of Michael Portillo. Rifkind announced his intention to seek the leadership of the party before the 2005 Conservative Party leadership election, but withdrew before balloting commenced.
He was elected as Member of Parliament for Kensington constituency in May 2010 and remained in Parliament until 30 March 2015. From 2010 to 2015, Rifkind sat on the National Security Strategy Joint Committee and was Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, which provides oversight of the UK’s intelligence agencies, MI6, MI5 and GCHQ.
Scottish Secretary
Malcolm Rifkind was appointed Scottish Secretary on 11 January 1986 and joined Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet.
On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was sabotaged over Lockerbie, Scotland resulting in the death of all 259 passengers and crew, and of eleven people in Lockerbie. The highest profile passenger was UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, who was to attend the signing of the New York Accords on 22 December 1988 and take charge of Namibia, after over a decade of illegal occupation by apartheid South Africa.
Scottish Secretary Rifkind quickly realised what had to be done. He had to persuade PM Thatcher against allowing the Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest and best resourced force, to investigate the Lockerbie bombing lest they should identify Bernt Carlsson as the prime target. Thus, Britain's smallest and least resourced force – Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary – was appointed to conduct the investigation along with the CIA and the FBI.
Following the indictment on 14 November 1991 of two Libyans, (Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah), for conspiring to bomb Pan Am 103, Rifkind encouraged fellow Scottish lawyer Robert Black QC to formulate a detailed proposal for the trial of the two accused whereby the claimants would be the Scottish police (and CIA, FBI), the prosecutor would be the Scottish Lord Advocate, three Scottish Judges would conduct the trial (without a jury) and a Scottish Court in the Netherlands would be set up at Camp Zeist, a disused US Army base to hear the case.
A complete contradiction of Nelson Mandela's dictum that "no country should be claimant, prosecutor and judge in the same case."[4]
Foreign Secretary
As Foreign Secretary, Rifkind would have been involved in the plan, hatched in late 1995 by British intelligence, to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi and was said to have authorised MI6 to pay Al Qaeda £100,000 to help fund the operation.[5]
Details of the failed assassination attempt were revealed by MI5's David Shayler, who was jailed in 2002 for breaching the Official Secrets Act 1989.[6]
9/11
By 11 September 2001, Rifkind was no longer Foreign Secretary. He had been replaced by Robin Cook on 2 May 1997, who in turn had been replaced by Jack Straw on 8 June 2001.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's appeal against his Pan Am Flight 103 conviction was scheduled to be heard at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in January 2002. Armed with Ray Manly's Heathrow break-in evidence, the Libyan's conviction would undoubtedly be overturned. More importantly, Libya would be exonerated from the crime of Lockerbie and the UN sanctions imposed a decade earlier would have to be lifted.[7] Faced with this dreadful prospect, the UK/US authorities had to do something dramatic, even world-shaking, to ensure the innocent "Lockerbie bomber" remained convicted. The eventual 9/11 highly coordinated and meticulously planned act of aggression would have been hatched in March or April 2001 soon after Ray Manly told the Scottish authorities he intended to testify on Megrahi's behalf.
Suddenly, on 11 September 2001, the Heathrow break-in evidence made front page news in a Scottish Mirror exclusive ("LOCKERBIE: THE LOST EVIDENCE"). Other newspapers also carried the story on 11 September 2001 including The Independent.[8] A BBC News report "Key Lockerbie 'evidence' not used" published at 08:42 a.m. (GMT) on Tuesday 11 September 2001 was broadcast worldwide. According to former British diplomat Patrick Haseldine, it was this BBC News report about the suppressed Lockerbie evidence that ignited the 9/11 attacks.[9]
Which raises the question: "Was the CIA complicit in both the Lockerbie and 9/11 attacks?"
The fact that the Scottish Mirror of 11 September 2001 headlined "LOCKERBIE: THE LOST EVIDENCE" on its front page strongly suggests that a Scottish Zionist was involved in planning 9-11.
Who then was that Scottish Zionist? It was none other than former Foreign Secretary and Deep Politician Sir Malcolm Rifkind who was well connected to all the other major players at the time of 9/11: Pik Botha, George Bush Sr, Efraim Halevy, Benjamin Netanyahu, Colin Powell, Tiny Rowland and George Tenet.
So there we have it, Sir Malcolm: are you going to come clean?[10]
ArmorGroup
On 13 April 2004, The Guardian reported that former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind had been appointed chairman of ArmorGroup, one of the largest private security firms operating in Iraq:
- Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who served in John Major's government during the 1990s, is now the prospective parliamentary candidate for Michael Portillo's safe Tory seat of Kensington and Chelsea. Sir Malcolm will be part-time and based in London. The US-owned company is not disclosing what his salary will be.
- According to its website, ArmorGroup has 7,500 employees in 50 locations including 650 employees in Iraq, as well as significant numbers in Afghanistan. It says its work is to "identify, reduce and resolve exceptional risks in complex, sometimes hostile, environments".[11]
Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee
Rifkind stood for the Kensington seat and was elected at the 2010 General Election with a majority of 8,616 votes. He was appointed Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, on 6 July 2010.[12] He told the BBC that the security service's record in the last few years had been "hugely impressive", as proven by the litany of plots foiled and successful "terrorism" prosecutions.[13]
Libya and Syria
In March 2011, Sir Malcolm Rifkind wrote in The Guardian that, although the first Libyan battle had been won, "this will not be sufficient to defend civilian centres from further aggression. To do that, Gaddafi's conventional forces have to be neutralised in order to bring the shelling of towns and cities to an end, something that can only be achieved by targeted strikes against Libyan tanks and heavy artillery." Rifkind acknowledged that such military action would go beyond what was authorised by UN Security Council Resolution 1973.[14]
Two years later, Rifkind advocated British military intervention in the Syrian Civil War, with or without a mandate from the United Nations.[15]
Cash for access scandal
On 23 February 2015, Sir Malcolm Rifkind was suspended from the Conservative Party after being filmed boasting to PMR, a fictitious Chinese firm, about his high-level defence contacts and membership of an international panel of nuclear security experts.[16]
On 24 February 2015, Rifkind resigned as chairman of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) after facing calls from colleagues to stand down following the Telegraph’s disclosure of his involvement in a new “cash for access scandal”. Sir Malcolm also announced that he would step down from Parliament in May 2015. He admitted that he “may have made errors of judgment” but insisted he has done nothing wrong.[17]
Rifkind, who was offering his services in return for payments of at least £5,000 per day, boasted to undercover reporters from the Telegraph and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme of the contacts he acquired during his time as Defence Secretary. He also brought up his membership of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) specialist nuclear security committee. In January 2015 he was appointed by the OSCE as a member of their Eminent Persons Panel on European Security. Other members of the panel, the Global Agenda Council on Nuclear Security, include former and serving diplomats and other nuclear experts. And in a reference to the Aspen Strategy Group of former foreign ministers, he told the fictitious Chinese firm how he was in touch with a series of former ministers who had served at “a very senior level”, including Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State:
- “She and I are good friends,” he said. “I worked with her when I was in Government and she chairs a group of 22 former foreign ministers.
- “I still have the contacts with all these people who have served at a very senior level. Some of them still do serve - are still active.”
- “But in addition to that I also, I am involved with the World Economic Forum, Davos, and they have a number of specialist committees – one of which looks at nuclear security, nuclear weapons security.
- “I was a defence minister so it’s an area that I have some interest in, so I have contacts in that area as well.” He added: “If you’ve done the kind of work I’ve done over the years without realising it, you find you know an awful lot of people.”[18]
In 2017 he dismissed the VIPaedophile claims against the late Edward Heath as "unsubstantiated gossip".[19]
Post 2015
Rifkind is currently a member of the OSCE’s Eminent Persons Group, which has reported on relations between Russia and the West. He is also on the Board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington DC. He has been appointed a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute.
He is currently a member of the Executive Board for the European Leadership Network (ELN).[20]
A Document by Malcolm Rifkind
| Title | Document type | Publication date | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Twenty-Seven Foreign Ministers Issue Call for United Nations to Coordinate Global COVID-19 Response | open letter | 12 June 2020 | Remarkably similar to the Bilderbergers' "People's Vaccine", a cliche-packed promotion of COVID panic ("Never before have we seen a challenge as acute, complex, far-reaching...") and spinning the official COVID line "none of us can be safe unless all of us are safe...", as if to promote mandatory Covid jabs for all. 9 out of the supposed 27 co-authors had attended the Bilderberg. |
Events Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/1986 | 25 April 1986 | 27 April 1986 | Scotland Gleneagles Hotel | The 34th Bilderberg, 109 participants |
| Bilderberg/1996 | 30 May 1996 | 2 June 1996 | Canada Toronto | The 44th Bilderberg, held in Canada |
| Herzliya Conference/2009 | 2 February 2009 | 4 February 2009 | Israel Tel Aviv Reichman University | Spooky 3 day get together in Tel Aviv |
| Munich Security Conference/2012 | 3 February 2012 | 5 February 2012 | Germany Munich Bavaria | The 48th Munich Security Conference |
| Munich Security Conference/2013 | 1 February 2013 | 3 February 2013 | Germany Munich Bavaria | The 49th Munich Security Conference |
| Munich Security Conference/2014 | 31 January 2014 | 2 February 2014 | Germany Munich Bavaria | The 50th Munich Security Conference, around half of the attendants have pages. |
| Munich Security Conference/2015 | 6 February 2015 | 8 February 2015 | Germany Munich Bavaria | "400 high-ranking decision-makers in international politics, including some 20 heads of state and government as well as more than 60 foreign and defence ministers, met in Munich to discuss current crises and conflicts." |
| Munich Security Conference/2016 | 12 February 2016 | 14 February 2016 | Germany Munich Bavaria | The 52nd Munich Security Conference |
| Munich Security Conference/2017 | 17 February 2017 | 19 February 2017 | Germany Munich Bavaria | The 53rd Munich Security Conference |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Lockerbie Bombing and my Reinstatement in HM Diplomatic Service | letter | 29 January 1997 | Patrick Haseldine | Former diplomat Patrick Haseldine writes to former Prime Minister James Callaghan |
| Document:Reinstatement in HM Diplomatic Service | Letter | 6 January 1997 | Patrick Haseldine | A plea for reinstatement in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by "Thatcher's Whitehall Critic" |
References
- ↑ "Malcolm Rifkind: ‘I don’t need to be nostalgic. I’ve had a fantastic parliamentary life’"
- ↑ "Straw and Rifkind suspended over ‘cash for access’ claims"
- ↑ "Parliamentary career of Sir Malcolm Rifkind"
- ↑ "Hansard 7 Nov 1997: Column 543"
- ↑ Document:MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'
- ↑ "1996: British Intelligence and Al-Qaeda Allegedly Cooperate in Plot to Assassinate Libyan Leader"
- ↑ "1992: UN threatens Libya with sanctions"
- ↑ "Lockerbie: Heathrow break-in revealed"
- ↑ "Key Lockerbie 'evidence' not used"
- ↑ User:Patrick Haseldine/Suppressed Lockerbie evidence ignited 9-11 attacks
- ↑ "Rifkind made head of Iraq security firm"
- ↑ "Torture claims: David Cameron announces inquiry"
- ↑ "Is MI5 Foiling Terror Plots of Its Own Hatching?"
- ↑ "The first Libyan battle is won"
- ↑ "The Syrian regime cannot use chemical weapons without being punished"
- ↑ "Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw have whip withdrawn over 'sting'"
- ↑ "Sir Malcolm Rifkind boasted about high-level defence and nuclear contacts"
- ↑ "Sir Malcolm Rifkind steps down as security committee chairman and as an MP"
- ↑ "Top Tory slaps down police chief claims that Edward Heath was a Paedophile"
- ↑ "European Leadership Network – Malcolm Rifkind"
