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MI6 & BBC REVEAL OPERATION MINCEPIE – SKRIPAL BLOOD-TESTS AT SALISBURY HOSPITAL FAILED TO SHOW NERVE AGENT UNTIL PORTON DOWN ADDED IT FOR THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT TO ANNOUNCE

by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with [1]

In Operation MINCEMEAT, the brightest and the best of British secret intelligence available in London between January and March 1943, dressed up a corpse as a high-ranking British Army  courier. He was dropped into the water off the Spanish coast, so that he would wash up for a German Army patrol to find, along with a briefcase of top-secret General Staff letters and plans. They were fakes made to fool Adolph Hitler and his military commanders about where the D-Day invasion would take place.  Deceiving the enemy turned out to be a big success.  The corpse belonged to a 34-year old Welshman, homeless and mentally ill, who had been taken to St. Pancras Hospital in London and treated for acute organo-phosphate poisoning. He died. He had committed suicide with rat poison.

In Operation MINCEPIE, what’s left of British secret intelligence in March 2018 dressed up two  Russians – Sergei and Yulia Skripal, 66 and 33 years old respectively (lead images) – knocked them out on a bench in the middle of Salisbury,  and  took them to Salisbury District Hospital where they were treated for acute organo-phosphate poisoning. But they didn’t die so they have been locked up ever since.  This, too, has proved to be a big success at deceiving the enemy.

No! Whoa! Cut! Roll that sentence back! This, too, was a big success at deceiving the British people. The difference between MINCEMEAT and MINCEPIE isn’t between rat poison and the nerve agent the British call Novichok; nor between the corpse of the Welsh tramp and the live Russians who are now dead to the world. The telling difference is that the secret intelligence boys have given the game away the second time round.  The biggest similarity is that Hitler and the British people didn’t notice until it was too late.

The truth of Operation MINCEPIE has been revealed in a film sequence shot by a BBC reporter called Mark Urban. He is a Ukrainian by extraction and an agent of influence of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS aka MI6) employed in London by the state propaganda agency BBC; there, Urban is titled “Diplomatic Editor”. 

On May 30, 2018 – almost thirteen weeks after the Skripals had been hospitalised for acute chemical poisoning — Urban broadcast a report [2]  on the BBC with interviews of the hospital staff.

Yulia had been discharged from Salisbury hospital on April 9, 2018; Sergei on May 18. The BBC reported [3] in print at the time:    “Ms Skripal was released on 9 April and was moved to a secure location. It is not known whether Mr Skripal has been taken to the same location as his daughter. BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said he understood that Mr Skripal is able to walk, and has talked to police at length, but is not completely recovered.”

Skripal was talking to the police because he had no choice. He was refusing to speak to Urban, Urban admitted later.  Urban won’t answer the question of when Skripal stopped talking to him – whether it was before the attack, when he realized Urban was working for MI6,  or after the attack, when Skripal realized what MI6 had done to him.

At the time of his broadcast, Urban was also concealing from British viewers that he and MI6 had already worked together to interview Sergei Skripal in the summer of 2017. That secret wasn’t revealed until Urban, MI6 and the BBC decided to publish a book of their version of Operation MINCEPIE. The book appeared in September 2018.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/ [2]

The evidence of the Salisbury hospital personnel has been reviewed by a sharp-eyed English analyst who prefers anonymity and an internet handle called Twiki. He has discovered that the blood testing of the Skripals for at least 36 hours after their hospitalisation – that is between their admission on  Sunday afternoon March 4, and the following Tuesday morning March 6 – did not (repeat not) reveal a marker for organo-phosphate nerve agent poisoning; that is, the level of acetylcholinesterase (ACE) in the bloodstream.*

But the testimony of the hospital’s chief executive, Cara Charles-Barks – broadcast by the BBC,  not understood by Urban —  is that the detection of the marker and of the nerve agent allegedly responsible for it in the two Skripals’ bloodstreams occurred on Monday morning,  March 5. That is to say – the hospital was told what government officials had decided 24 hours before there was blood evidence of it.

This also explains why the UK Ministry of Defence and its Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down have been unable and unwilling to produce records of the Skripal blood evidence. In short, the evidence can’t be produced because the evidence doesn’t exist. The Skripal blood samples taken did not reveal a Novichok-type nerve agent until after that was added in briefings by government officials to the hospital management, then to the BBC,  and then to the world.

According to a document released by the Defence Ministry and DSTL in 2019, the Skripal blood samples which reportedly arrived at Porton Down had been “collected at some point between 1615 on 4 March 2018 and 1845 on 5 March 2018.”

Source: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ [4]

Watch Twiki’s 2-minute edition [5] of the key hospital staff testimony, and remember what this would mean if these were witnesses testifying on oath and subject to cross-examination in a court of law.  

In fact, the only court hearing to be held so far in the Skripal case ignored these witnesses. In the March 20-22, 2018, hearing at the High Court in London, the only hospital witness to give testimony was described as an anonymous “treating consultant”. He gave the court conclusions [6]about the Skripals’ condition, not the hospital’s evidence for it.

Watch the Salisbury hospital witnesses testifying again at 18-minute length in Urban’s broadcast [2].

Charles-Barks, the chief administrator of the hospital, revealed to Urban: “We then had a briefing as a group of executives and that was by 7:30, 8 am in the morning [Monday March 5] to get an update on what was happening. And then by 10 am on that Monday morning it had been declared an external incident, and of course we started working with the multi agencies.” Charles-Barks doesn’t reveal who gave the early morning Monday briefing, nor does she acknowledge that when “it had been declared an external incident”, she meant, not the hospital staff or hospital management, but the “multi agencies” – the Secret Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Defence, and the British Government.

Charles-Barks was admitting it was the government in charge by Monday morning, March 5. That was less than sixteen hours after the incident; it was eight hours before Porton Down said later it had received the blood samples.

Lorna Wilkinson, Director of Nursing, says in the film it wasn’t until another day later, on Tuesday March 6, that “by tests and various diagnostics that we were running, that’s where it became apparent that we were looking at acholinesterase inhibition, and therefore what did we deduce from that. And that was really when the question started to arise as to whether this was some kind of nerve agent.” Note that Wilkinson says “we were running”; she meant the Salisbury hospital laboratory.

Senior Sister Sarah Clark, who was at the bedside of the Skripals, says: “I was the sister in charge of the shift the evening that Yulia and Sergei were admitted. At that point [5 pm, March 4] we were led to believe they had taken an overdose. So there was no indication at that point of, obviously, no mention of nerve agent poisoning.”

The lag in time between the MI6 briefing Charles-Barks said she and hospital administrators received on Monday morning and the time on Tuesday morning when Wilkinson said the medical staff at the Skripals’ bedside received the blood test data on ACE levels was at least 24 hours. This means the political judgement of what was happening took place before the medical judgement.

Also, it means there was no trace of ACE inhibition in the blood samples which had been taken by Clark and other nurses from the Skripals in the first 36 hours, the interval counted by Wilkinson.

This is evidence that the blood samples which were drawn from the Skripals after their admission at about 5 pm on Sunday, March 4, did not – repeat not – show either ACE inhibition or nerve agent poisoning. There is no doubt about this blood sampling because Senior Sister Clark told Urban the initial emergency medical treatment required by the Skripals included “support with their cardiovascular system”.  

Christine Blanshard, the hospital’s medical director (right), explained what the Salisbury hospital laboratory could and did do at the time. “Whilst a district general hospital laboratory cannot test specifically for a nerve agent, we are able to request tests for the effects of the nerve agent so we can measure acholinesterase levels and see whether they have been affected. And it was our colleagues in Porton Down that helped us with the testing.”

In a criminal trial in a British court, Blanshard would be required on direct testimony or cross-examination to distinguish between the ACE testing which the hospital laboratory carried out, also exactly when; and the nerve agent testing which Porton Down carried out. However, there is no trial, so there can be no clarification: there is only the MI6-BBC version of what had happened.

Urban has also hidden additional, if circumstantial evidence, of what medical treatment effected the recovery of the Skripals. “After a couple of weeks,” he says in the film,  counting between March 4 and March 18, “there were gradual but distinct signs of progress. The exact timing of that and details of the drugs given remains matters of medical confidentiality.”

In the picture, as the screen is pulled by a shadowy arm from right to left,  the Mark Urban voiceover says: “After a couple of weeks there were gradual but distinct signs of progress. The exact timing of that and details of the drugs given remains matters of medical confidentiality” – Min.8:25 [2]. “Patient confidentiality” was the justification Charles-Barks gave in April of 2018 for refusing to answer questions about the Skripals’ wish to communicate with their family in Russia;  read that record here [7].

According to Stephen Jukes, the doctor acting as the hospital’s intensive care consultant for the Skripals:  “I think we all agree we were exceptionally surprised, pleasantly suerprised to see the recovery happen, and at such a pace when it did begin to happen. That I can’t easily explain”.

Urban: “Once the Skripals started to regain consciousness…there were new dilemmas. How much could they be told about what had happened to them? And what stage would the police be allowed in to interview them?”  Urban is broadcasting that the Skripals didn’t know what had happened, and were not to be told what the British Government and the British press were announcing publicly. Senior Sister Clark: “Obviously we were mindful of our responsibility as professionals in terms of what we would discuss with [Yulia Skripal] in terms of the incident and the ongoing investigations…” Urban: “You weren’t supposed to go there effectively, is that what you were saying…” Urban meant orders Clark had been given of what not to say in conversation with the Skripals. “It wasn’t our role to have those conversations,” Clark added.

In the time and event sequence of Urban’s film, the Skripals had begun to recover; they were conscious and talking, and the hospital management was deciding what they were allowed to say.  Only then, according to Urban, “when international inspectors arrived in Salisbury to gather evidence of the poisoning, they needed blood samples from Yulia and Sergei Skripal. Once again, the staff decided they had to act on the patients’ behalf.”

“These were vulnerable patients,” Jukes explained to Urban. But according to Urban this was after the recovery had begun. “They needed some form of advocate. We could not allow things to happen to them without their consent.” The implication of this witness is clear. The High Court hearing to permit additional blood sampling by court order – a hearing which took place between March 20 and 22, 2018 – occurred after the Skripals were conscious, recovering, and talking.

However, according to the published High Court judgement dated March 22, 2018, the hospital witness testified (on oath) differently:

Source: https://www.judiciary.uk/ [6]

The High Court record does not confirm that Jukes in the BBC broadcast was the same individual identified in the court record of March 22 as “ZZ Treating Consultant”. It appears he was. If so, what the witness testified to in court cannot be the same truth that Jukes told Urban in the broadcast of May 30.

If the Skripals were to be called to testify for themselves in a British court, they could end the difficulties and contradictions which the MI6-BBC broadcast has created. The conflict of evidence was not appreciated at the time. It has required the accumulation of two years of evidence gathering to reveal in retrospect.  That the Skripals are not permitted to testify in court or in public is evidence that the official account of what happened to them two years ago has been fabricated from beginning to end.

To go back to the beginning of the lie, and understand what kind of operation MINCEPIE was, who was deceived and why, read the book [8].

 [*] The standard abbreviation for the measurement of this enzyme, ACE, reflects the abbreviated term the medical staff use in the BBC broadcast, “Acholinesterase inhibition”. In the proper technical use, the abbreviation should be AChE or Ach [9];  ACE also identifies [10] a different enzyme.