RICHARD BOUCHER: I would note that while we have been very consistently critical of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, we're very concerned about the outbreak of violence in Andijan, in particular the escape of prisoners, including possibly members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organization we consider a terrorist organization. I think at this point we're looking to all the parties involved to exercise restraint to avoid any unnecessary loss of life.

AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher. I also want to play a clip of Human Rights Watch executive director, Kenneth Roth, from May of last year and then ask the ambassador about the U.S. response to the killings. This is Kenneth Roth.

KENNETH ROTH: Human Rights Watch’s main conclusions are, first, that the scale of the killing and the deliberateness of the slaughter means that this can only be fairly classified as a massacre.

AMY GOODMAN: Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch. Former ambassador Craig Murray, you were in Uzbekistan leading up to this. You were not there during what happened in Andijan. Your response?

CRAIG MURRAY: I think it was a dreadful massacre. I mean, what was happening in Andijan was effectively no different to the pro-democracy demonstrations that you saw in Ukraine or in Georgia, that brought down a, you know, dictatorial regime and succeeded in doing so. In Andijan, the Uzbek government rather predictably responded by shooting the demonstrators, and those 700 people who died were not armed. I was completely flabbergasted by the White House’s approach. On one hand, you’ve got unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators, and on the other side you’ve got the government troops with tanks and heavy weapons shooting them down, and the White House called for restraint on both sides. You know, what do they want the people to do, die more peacefully? It was sickening, frankly. It really was a sickening response from the United States, but, you know, of a peace with their relationship with the Karimov regime, which they were trying desperately to maintain.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you say that this president, President Bush's relationship with Karimov in the Uzbek regime goes way back, and one of the links is Enron. Can you elaborate more on this?

CRAIG MURRAY: Yes. Enron cut a deal with Uzbekistan to exploit Uzbekistan's natural gas reserves. Central Asia has the largest untapped reserves of oil and gas in the world. Uzbekistan doesn’t have much oil; it has a terrific amount of natural gas. And Uzbekistan dominates Central Asia. It has half the population of the whole region. It has, by far, the biggest army and the most muscle. So Uzbekistan was key to the energy policy, and that's why Enron and Halliburton and all of the companies you very much associate with the Bush administration were in there plugging this policy of staying close to Karimov. And that’s why he was such a welcome guest in the White House.

The war on terror, if you like, was a cover for these activities. And that's why they needed this false intelligence, saying that the Uzbek opposition was all Islamic terrorists. I mean, it’s quite astonishing. Again, the White House spokesman in that clip was saying that the prison break in Andijan would have released terrorists. The majority of people in Andijan jail -- and I’ve been to Andijan; I knew two people who were killed in the massacre -- the majority of people in Andijan jail were perfectly peaceful political and religious prisoners. There were also some petty criminals who released, too. But the wellspring of the whole policy of the United States was the ruthless pursuit of sectional oil and gas interests, and that originated with Enron. Obviously, once Enron collapsed, those interests passed on to other U.S. companies.

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

CRAIG MURRAY: Basically other major oil companies. But the sad thing, or the ironic thing, I suppose is the way to put it, is that ultimately the policy didn't work, because having given probably about $1 billion over a three-year period and having even supported the Uzbek government at the time of the Andijan massacre, when the rest of the world was expressing outrage. The Uzbeks eventually cut a deal with Gazprom of Russia, and the United States then got kicked out of Uzbekistan very unceremoniously. They didn't leave.

The Bush administration is trying now to put the best possible gloss on it, and say, ‘We left because of the human rights situation.’ Absolutely untrue. The human rights situation seemed not to bother them at all. They left because they were kicked out. The Uzbek government withdrew the lease on the American Air Force base there. They kicked out the Peace Corps, kicked out most American NGOs and U.S. Aid operations, and, you know, we had the very pathetic sight of America having really kowtowed to this terrible dictator, then being humiliated by him and chucked out of the country. So, all that loss of moral authority, all that waste of money and resource has come to nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the Bush administration will succeed in getting back in?

CRAIG MURRAY: It’s not impossible. Karimov is a person entirely motivated by cash and power, basically, and he saw short-term advantage, effectively short-term advantage in massive, massive bribes paid to his daughter by Gazprom, in going with Russia on the gas deal. And part of that was that Putin insisted that the United States be removed from Uzbekistan as part of that deal. In a couple of years time, if Karimov sees personal advantage and the chance to make money out of letting the United States back, he will equally do it, too, to Putin.

AMY GOODMAN: We know about black sites, about the U.S. sending people to prisons in Eastern Europe. It’s believed Romania, Poland are among those places. Is Uzbekistan one of those places, and do you know anything about secret flights, these so-called torture flights where prisoners are taken, spirited away to other places to be tortured?

CRAIG MURRAY: I think the most important thing I can say about extraordinary rendition is that the end product exists. The United States, as a matter of policy, is willing to accept intelligence got by torture by foreign agencies. I can give direct firsthand evidence of that and back it up with documents.

On the existence of flights, the C.I.A. planes did come into Uzbekistan. They did bring prisoners, Uzbek prisoners, back from Afghanistan into Uzbekistan, to my certain knowledge. They also came in from other places. For example, the C.I.A. flight, which famously stopped at this secret location in Poland, went on Tashkent. That was the next destination of that plane. I cannot say, to my knowledge, while I was ambassador there, that the C.I.A. had any secret imprisonment facilities or brought in third country nationals to Uzbekistan. If that was happening, I wasn't aware of it. Since I left, a number of journalists, in particular reputable journalists, have told me that they have inside C.I.A. sources who tell them that is happening. I believe that’s probably true. I believe it probably is happening, but I would be lying if I said that I knew it was happening while I was there. I didn't. But what I can say for sure is that the C.I.A. is happy to get information from foreign torture chambers, and that is, of course, the basis of this program of shipping people around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who has just flown into this country, to the United States, last night. I want to read you a bit from a Reuters report that says, “Britain believes the C.I.A.’s reported secret transfer of terrorism suspects to foreign countries for interrogation is illegal, according to a leaked government document that has just been published today. The Foreign Office memo says the practice known as extraordinary rendition could never be legal if the detainee is at risk of torture, according to extracts that are printed in The Guardian newspaper.” It adds, “British cooperation would also be illegal, if we knew of the circumstances, according to the paper. Human right groups have accused the C.I.A. of running secret prisons in Europe and elsewhere, abducting suspects, transferring them between countries by plane. President Bush last month said the United States does not secretly move terrorism suspects to foreign countries that torture to get information. He said, ‘We do not render to countries that torture. That has been our policy, and that policy will remain the same.’

”Washington has come under growing pressure to explain why hundreds of flights by C.I.A. planes have crisscrossed the world, stopping in many European countries. Britain, a key U.S. ally, has repeatedly sought to play down its role in the rendition controversy. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told Parliament, January 10, Britain has approved only two C.I.A. rendition flights. However, the leaked document dated December 7, 2005, says the C.I.A. may have used British airports more often. According to the BBC News website, quoting from an extract of the memo, the papers we have uncovered so far suggest there could be more than two cases referred to in the House of Commons by the Foreign Secretary. It was sent by an official in Straw’s department to an aide in Prime Minister Tony Blair's office. It was leaked to the New Statesman magazine, parts were reprinted in several British newspapers today. The briefing document's author, named as Irfan Siddiq, appears to suggest that British government should seek to sidestep difficult questions over its role in renditions. ‘We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail and to try to move to debate on,’ he wrote, according to the newspaper. A spokesperson for Blair declined to comment. A Foreign Office spokesman had no comment. He said in a statement, ‘The government does not deport or extradite anyone to another state where there are substantive grounds to believe they would be subject to torture.’” You actually ran against Jack Straw, is that right?

CRAIG MURRAY: I did. I stood against him on the torture issue in his Blackburn constituency.

AMY GOODMAN: He won.

CRAIG MURRAY: Yes. I didn't have a backing of any political party. So I didn't get a huge number of votes, but it was worth doing.

AMY GOODMAN: So what about this latest leaked document?

CRAIG MURRAY: I think there's no doubt now that extraordinary rendition is happening. I mean, this is just further documentary evidence. And the, you know, certainly, ethnic Uzbeks, the United States was bringing into Uzbekistan. So that, itself, proves that President Bush is lying in saying that they don't take people to countries that torture. And, you know, one of the amazing things is that even a country like Syria, which occasionally is in the sort of list of evil places, cooperates with the C.I.A. in the extraordinary rendition program and in giving intelligence. So, there is no doubt that George Bush and Condoleezza Rice have been lying through their teeth about extraordinary rendition for some time. And more and more information is going to come out about it. The Council of Europe is conducting an investigation, and I’m going to be testifying before that inquiry.

AMY GOODMAN: When is that?

CRAIG MURRAY: That’s on Monday in Strasbourg.

AMY GOODMAN: And what will you say?

CRAIG MURRAY: I will again say that what I can testify to for certain is that the C.I.A. is prepared to get intelligence from foreign torture chambers, that as a matter of policy, it will do that, and I have firsthand experience with that. I’d like to mention one thing --

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that firsthand experience.

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, when I was complaining about our obtaining this torture material, before I went back to London, I asked my deputy to call up the American embassy just to make sure I wasn't missing something here and to ask them, ask the C.I.A. station there, whether they, too, believed that this Uzbek intelligence was probably coming from torture. And so, my deputy went off to the American embassy. She had a meeting there, which was either with a political counselor or the head of the C.I.A. station. I’m not quite certain which [inaudible]. She came back and reported to me that she had had the meeting, and the American embassy had said, yes, it probably did come from torture, but they didn't see that as a problem.

And then, of course, I was called back to this meeting in London, where I was told that it was quite legal to get the information, even though it was obtained under torture. So no one, no one was denying internally that the information came from torture. And no one -- it hasn’t yet been denied. Neither the British government nor the American government has denied what I’m saying, that they were getting intelligence from Uzbek torture chambers.

One thing I want to mention, which is very important in this, is the U.K.-U.S. intelligence sharing agreement, under which the C.I.A. and MI6 share everything they've got all over the world across the board, and the N.S.A. and G.C.H.Q. share everything they've got around the world across the board, and that subsisted since it was negotiated by Churchill and Roosevelt, I think. And that means that, in effect, the British government doesn't have an independent policy on these things, The British government is tied to whatever the U.S. policy is, because however the C.I.A. gets its material, however the N.S.A. gets its material, the British intelligence services are getting the same material. So the British policy is the American policy, and that's why this whole question of extraordinary rendition is extraordinarily difficult for the British government, which can't pretend it doesn’t know what’s happening. Plainly, it does know what’s happening, and it’s on very, very difficult grounds.

But frankly, it’s been let, so far, very much off the hook by a very weak media. If you think the media in the United States is bad, I think in some ways it’s worse in the U.K. And people just aren’t asking the difficult questions of ministers. They aren’t pursuing the kind of points that that memo raises. I mean, everyone has known, if you like, the truth about extraordinary rendition and the points in that memo that’s been leaked today. But no one has really backed -- in questioning, no reporter has had the nerve to back Tony Blair up against the wall on it.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have ten seconds. But what has given you the courage to speak out?

CRAIG MURRAY: I think it’s just what any decent person would do, I mean, when you come across people being boiled and their fingernails pulled out or having their children raped in front of them, you just can't go along with it and sleep at night.

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Craig Murray, I want to thank you very much for joining us. That does it for today’s broadcast. He will speaking this weekend at Riverside Church at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, the title of that, at BushCommission.org. Our website, DemocracyNow.org, will post all of the memos there.

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