Payroll - Key British anti-war

Payroll - Key British anti-war politician and Labour party leader George Galloway was on the Iraqi payroll to the tune of $500,000 a year, according to the Telegraph:

A confidential memorandum sent to Saddam by his spy chief said that Mr Galloway asked an agent of the Mukhabarat secret service for a greater cut of Iraq's exports under the oil for food programme.

He also said that Mr Galloway was profiting from food contracts and sought "exceptional" business deals. Mr Galloway has always denied receiving any financial assistance from Baghdad.

Asked to explain the document, he said yesterday: "Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows?"

Andrew Sullivan is cautionary - we don't know the sources, and nothing is confirmed yet. But he says about Galloway's denials:

Not exactly a clear denial, I'd say. Notice the Clintonian "maybes" and "to the best of my knowledge." Notice that Galloway doesn't clearly deny receiving laundered oil money either. I imagine the Telegraph must be pretty confident of its source materials, but I cannot independently verify them, of course. And I haven't seen the story picked up yet by anyone else. But this is the lead story in the largest-selling quality newspaper in Britain. If confirmed, it couldn't be more damaging to a man synonymous in Britain with the anti-war movement.

The big question, of course - if this is true (and it's only an allegation so far), do you suppose Hussein's secret police would have left the US alone?

Posted by Mitch at April 22, 2003 07:12 AM