MEDIA STUDIES
A startling fact that the Observer failed to share with its readers
STEPHEN GLOVER
Ihope readers will remember the strange and fascinating case of Victoria Brittain, the Guardian's deputy foreign editor. Some £327,000 was paid into Ms Brittain's bank account over a period of more than two years on behalf of her close friend Kojo Tsikata, a controversial former head of Ghanaian state security. Most of the transferred funds came from Libyan sources. Ms Brittain has always denied that she had any idea where the money came from.
On 2 April this year the Observer ran a prominent story about a Libyan called Khali- fa Bazelya. It asserted that MI5 had been seriously at fault in allowing a certain Khalifa Bazelya into this country in a misguided attempt to recruit him. According to the Observer, Bazelya was 'one of [Libya's] most loyal intelligence officers' and he 'used the cover provided by Britain to monitor and intimidate Libyan dissidents' in this country. There was a more serious insinuation. 'While Bazelya was working in London,' the paper said, 'Ali Abuzeid, a leading member of the Libyan opposition living in the UK, was stabbed to death in his grocery shop. There is no evidence linking Bazelya to the crime, but fears among Libyans in London that Abuzeid's murder was a political assassina- tion sparked a crisis in the intelligence com- munity. In December 1995, shortly after the murder, foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind expelled Bazelya for "activities incompatible with his diplomatic status".'
The general import of the piece was that MI5 had screwed up badly and that Khalifa Bazelya was a very dodgy customer. Two weeks later the paper returned to its theme with even more gusto. It offered a heart- rending account of Ali Abuzeid's daughter, Huda, who had discovered her father 'lying face up in a pool of blood . . . speared through the face with metal kebab skewers'. It again blamed MI5. It also quoted from an MI5 document, recently posted on the Inter- net and regarded by the paper as authentic. According to the Observer, this document `establishes beyond doubt that MI5 had sus- picions that Bazelya, [Libya's] top spy in Britain at the time, may have been involved in the murder, despite the absence of any evi- dence linking him directly to the crime'.
All very interesting. What the Observer story did not mention — though the paper was well aware of the fact — is that this Khalifa Bazelya, top Libyan spy, is the very same Khalifa Bazelya who in numerous transactions paid more than £200,000 into the bank account of Victoria Brittain. The Guardian is the Observer's sister paper, and its editor, Alan Rusbridger, is nominally the boss of Roger Alton, the Observer's editor.
Khalifa Bazelya is not new on the block. In August 1997 David Shayler, the renegade MI5 spy, linked Bazelya with payments into Victoria Brittain's bank account. But at that time Bazelya was described only as the for- mer head of the Libyan Interest Section in London. He was not fingered as a spy, far less implicated in a murder. The new infor- mation was part of the MI5 document posted on the Internet (possibly by Shayler) at the end of March. The Observer's treatment of this document as authentic was in my view correct, and the paper used it as the basis for its revelations about Bazelya. Its object was further to embarrass the security services fol- lowing Shayler's previous allegation that two MI6 agents had been involved in an attempt to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan leader. .
Having read the MI5 document, I am not convinced that MI5's incompetence over Bazelya was quite as great as the Observer alleges. No matter. The point is that the paper was seizing a stick with which to bash MI5. In its enthusiasm for the story it forgot Victoria Brittain's connection with the man it was demonising. Or, to be precise, it did not so much forget as decide not to mention it. Paragraph 27 of the MI5 document refers to transfers made from `Bazelya's personal account to a British journalist [i.e. Victoria Brittain] who has then paid some of the money to client accounts in the name of Kojo Tsikata, a Ghanaian intelligence offi- cer, held with a British firm of solicitors [Bindman and Partners]'. According to an Observer source, senior executives on the paper were perfectly aware of this reference to Victoria Brittain but decided not to pub- lish it for fear of embarrassing her. .
There is no evidence that she knew Bazelya personally, though it is plausibly alleged that her friend Kojo Tsikata did, and had meetings with him in London on 17 September and 16 December 1993, and 25 March 1994. The point is that the Observer has decided, no doubt correctly, that Bazelya is a dangerous man. It fulminates against MI5 for letting him into the country and for not keeping a proper eye on him. But it deliberately leaves out Ms Brittain's own links to Bazelya for fear that they might embarrass her and compromise the Guardian. It is as good an example as you will find of double standards and readers being short-changed.
More Internet news. A few months ago (22 January) I wrote about the plans of Hugo Dixon and his colleague Jonathan Ford, both refugees from the Financial Times, to set up Breakingnews.com. Their idea was to provide financial commentary throughout the day for the growing number of on-line investors. It had just been announced that Dixon and Ford have raised £3.5 million, and entered into a partnership with the Wall Street Jour- nal Europe to provide the paper with a daily column modelled on the Frs Lex Column. The Journal is also taking 7 per cent of Breakingnews.com, which will be launched in the summer. The idea is that any of us will be able to access it free (revenue will come from advertising and subscriptions) to pick up the latest financial wisdom.
The Daily Telegraph and the Times have been waging a war of the heads. Which paper can carry more pictures of alluring young women beneath its masthead? Hos- tilities have recently intensified. Last Thurs- day the Telegraph went further than almost ever before: all three heads in the puff box were of young women, one of whom promised to answer the important question, `How to be a bitch and be happy'. The Times struck back on Friday with a cluster of three lovelies (How All Saints handled movie nudity') and someone called Renate Williams (`the Naked truth'). The Telegraph came back strongly on Saturday with three teadshots' of women, including Linda Barker and her 'bedroom secrets'; while the Times carried the nude All Saints again and threw in Jilly Cooper. On Monday, the Tele- graph went completely off the boil with some stuff about Churchill. The Times, too, was strangely downbeat. Come Tuesday, the Telegraph was in top gear again with its `big gun' Liz Hurley and a Miss World who had been raped. The Times only had a baby that day but on Wednesday gave us a young female student and a blonde plus baby. Its a hard call, but I think the Daily Telegraph is a short head in front, as it were, and I urge young Ben Preston, acting editor of the Times, to redouble his efforts.
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