WATCH: An ex-MI5 agent just showed precisely why the Tories are so desperate to ban Russia Today [VIDEO]

A former British MI5 agent has indicated that Russia had absolutely no motive to harm Double Agent Sergei Skripal, and also dismissed claims made by the British Prime Minister Theresa May that the nerve agent alleged to have been used in the attack, Novichok, must have originated from Russia.

Speaking with Russia Today, former-MI5 agent Annie Machon – who resigned from the organisation in order to expose the crimes of Britain’s secret services – questioned what Russia’s motive could possibly have been to attempt to assassinate Mr Skripal, stating that:

“From the very start of this story… they need to work out what the motive was […] Skripal was a guy who had been caught by the Russians. He’d been tried and convicted, sent to prison, and then released and pardoned by the Russians, and sent back to the UK.

He had been debriefed – picked clean, intelligence-wise, both by the Russians… and by MI6 when he came to live in the UK. So what is the motive there?”

And, in a statement that poured considerable cold water on Theresa May’s assertion that the nerve agent used in the attack could only have originated in Russia, Machon went on to say that:

“[Chemical] agents can be developed and used by governments all over the world. […] If this Novichok agent was developed in Russia, it doesn’t mean it’s stayed in Russia – [any more than] any of the other agents developed by Germany, the USA, or the UK have stayed in their own countries.

The fact that the […] UK facility for identifying those agents was able to identify this very quickly would indicate that they know exactly what this nerve agent is, which means that they have the chemical formula for it too. So, who knows where it came from?

It might have been developed in Russia, but it doesn’t mean that is state-sanctioned by Russia. It’s a damaging conflation in a particularly sensitive diplomatic time.”

You can watch Machon’s incredible interview below:

After resigning from MI5, Annie Machon published a book called Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair which describes in great detail the ‘crimes and incompetence‘ of MI5, as well as detailing ‘revelations about illegal intelligence operations, cover-ups to ministers, and MI6 funding of Al Qaeda operations‘ among many other things.

Machon is not the only former British Official to question the government’s version of events surrounding the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. 

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, also questioned the Tories’ accusations against Russia, stating in an article that the media were “falling over themselves in the rush to ramp up the Russophobia”, before pondering ‘which state’ was actually responsible for the attack.

In another article titled “Russian to Judgement” Murray went on to say that:

“The same people who assured you that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s now assure you Russian “novochok” nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil. As with the Iraqi WMD dossier, it is essential to comb the evidence very finely. A vital missing word from Theresa May’s statement yesterday was “only”. She did not state that the nerve agent used was manufactured ONLY by Russia. She rather stated this group of nerve agents had been “developed by” Russia.”

And, after detailing many more reasons why he is extremely skeptical of the government’s official account of the attack on Skripal, Murray finishes by noting:

“The naive view of the world as “goodies” and “baddies”, with our own ruling class as the good guys, is for the birds. I witnessed personally in Uzbekistan the willingness of the UK and US security services to accept and validate intelligence they knew to be false in order to pursue their policy objectives. We should be extremely sceptical of their current anti-Russian narrative. There are many possible suspects in this attack.”

Now, if the British media was actually impartial, don’t you think you would have heard this other side to the story – accounts from people who have literally worked inside the British government and know exactly what goes on?

And now you’ve heard their accounts, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the Tories (and many right-wing pro-establishment Labour MPs) are so desperate to ban Russia Today because, unlike huge portions of the British media, RT are actually willing to show the other side of the story that the British establishment doesn’t want the general public to think about.

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