Novichok Nerve Agent Hysterics

Novichok-suits

Video frame from March 12 ABC News report

In the NY Times on May 25, 1999, Judith Miller reported that the Pentagon, in cooperation with the government of Uzbekistan in the former Soviet Union, would take charge of “demilitarization and decontamination” at the Nukus, Uzbekistan chemical weapons plant. The plant, she reported, had been the Soviets’ major research and testing site for a new class of secret, highly lethal chemical weapons called ”Novichok,” the nerve agent reportedly used to try to kill former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4th in Britain.

However, it’s been widely reported that since Russia [the Soviet Union] manufactured Novichok, Russia must have been behind the attack.” This text from a March 12 ABC News story was just one histrionic example.  

ABC News: And today Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament the weapon was Russian made!!!

Theresa May: It is now clear that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. It is highly likely that Russia was responsible.

Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote on his blog that “The Novichok Story Is Indeed Another Iraqi WMD Scam.” The fifth and last point of his argument is: “The ‘Novichok’ programme was in Uzbekistan not in Russia. Its legacy was inherited by the Americans during their alliance with Karimov, not by the Russians.”

Craig Murray is posting updates on the Novichok scam on his blog, CraigMurry.uk.org

 

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. She can be reached at @AnnGarrison or [email protected].

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