SECRET ‘CIA-FUNDED’ GROUP LINKED TO UK MINISTERS
Two current ministers and two recent justice ministers have been funded by an opaque transatlantic right-wing group which includes members of the intelligence community. Declassified finds eight current Conservative parliamentarians are associated with the organisation.
The group, known as Le Cercle, was described by former Conservative minister Alan Clark in his diaries as “a right-wing think (or rather thought) tank, funded by the CIA, which churns Cold War concepts around”.
Le Cercle has existed since the 1950s but has no public presence, and has never revealed its funders. Even the group’s existence is only occasionally disclosed. It is unclear how influential Le Cercle – which is believed to meet twice a year, once in Washington DC and once elsewhere – actually is.
Declassified has found that eight current Conservative parliamentarians are associated with the group. Two current ministers – business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and his deputy minister Greg Hands – have been funded by Le Cercle.
Kwarteng was given £5,258 to travel to Bahrain in June 2019 for a trip jointly funded by Le Cercle and the Gulf regime, which is one of the UK’s closest allies.
Three former justice ministers are associated with the group. David Lidington, the justice secretary from 2017-18, and Crispin Blunt, a justice minister from 2010-12, were previously funded by Le Cercle to attend meetings in Washington DC and Madrid.
Rory Stewart, who served as a justice minister under Theresa May, was previously chair of Le Cercle.
Several high-profile US figures are also linked to the group. US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who sat on America’s most powerful court from 1986 until his death in 2016, attended at least one Le Cercle meeting while sitting on the court.
Other ministers known to have been funded by the group include former foreign secretaries William Hague and Margaret Beckett, the latter being the only known Labour associate.
Current education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, a former business minister, is another previous chair of Le Cercle.
Zahawi and Stewart both claim, despite their senior roles in Le Cercle, that they don’t know how the networking group is funded. A “Whitehall security source” toldthe Daily Telegraph that Stewart was an MI6 officer before he entered politics.
Kenny MacAskill MP, a former Scottish justice secretary, told Declassified: “Given the nature of this group and its links with other states and security organisations much more candour is required. It’s essential in a democracy that those accepting hospitality from an organisation such as this are fully transparent”.
Le Cercle
Le Cercle was founded in the 1950s by conservative French prime minister Antoine Pinay, and Konrad Adenauer, the former German Chancellor. Described as “one of the most influential, secretive, and…exclusive political clubs in the West”, it is also known as the Pinay Cercle.
The only information about the group to have recently appeared in public comes from a 2012 letter written by its then chair Lord Lothian, who is Michael Ancram, a former chair of the Conservative party.
The letter was written to the Saudi deputy foreign minister, Abdulaziz bin Abdullah and published by WikiLeaks in 2015. It stated that “the group is largely European and American” and its members include “Members of Parliament, diplomats, members of the intelligence community, commentators and businessmen from over twenty-five countries.”
Le Cercle’s meetings were said to cover “mostly foreign policy but also some domestic issues” and are held under “strict” Chatham House rules, where everything said is off-the-record. Attendance ranges from 80 to 100 people.
Other chairs of the group have included Conservative life peer Lord Lamont, a former chancellor. Lamont was funded to attend the same Le Cercle meeting in Bahrain in 2019 as Kwasi Kwarteng.
‘Security conference’
Former foreign minister Alan Duncan writes in his diaries he attended a Le Cercle meeting at St James’s Court Hotel in Westminster in June 2016. He described it as “a long-standing, slightly crazy security conference which I’ve been going to for years.”
The only significant article on Le Cercle published in the British press appeared in the Independent in 1997. It named Duncan, then a Conservative MP, as one of the group’s “leading political lights”.
Duncan, minister for Europe and the Americas from 2016-19, is a former oil trader with close links to the UK’s allied regimes in the Gulf.
He was the key government official involved in evicting Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in 2019. Declassified last week revealed that Duncan is a 40-year “good friend” of Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett, the judge who will soon decide Julian Assange’s fate in his extradition case.
https://declassifieduk.org/secret-cia-funded-group-linked-to-uk-ministers/
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