by Trowbridge H. Ford
In the development of Western democracies, it was hardly suprising that all elements in them, especially the police and the media, became increasingly corrupted by the process. They were just too central to it, and had too many opportunities along the way for these well-established, underpaid professions not to take advantage of any opportunity they had, even illegal ones, once they saw that they were being left behind by the more respected ones, like doctors and lawyers. While the cops and hacks had traditionally been seen as the defenders against corrupt interests in the state and society, especially organized crime, it was not too long before its members started to close the gap in pay and prequisites with other professions by taking liberties with their powers of punishment, disclosure, and independence so as to enrich themselves both financially and in prestige.
It was during the 20th century that policemen and reporters belatedly took advantage of their opportunities, initiatives, and independence in society at the expense of the public. After the end of the alarms caused by the Napoleonic Wars, of course, such incidents had occurred - e. g., coppers fixing up suspects as criminals in order to help themselves, reporters making up stories about complicated irregularities to satisfy certain interests and individuals rather than seeking the truth, investigators assuming a certain result to a mysterious incident and then finding evidence which apparently proved their assumptions, hacks cutting corners in investigating matters of great public interest to beat their competitors in getting the story, etc. - but they became more and more institutionalized as the age of extremes progressed, to use historian Eric Hobsbawn's term for it.
The media relied on the police on getting the essentials about almost all crimes, and the coppers made sure that it received what it wanted the public to see. Along the way, they both coopted as many other organizations in the state and society as they could to help them in getting their way. The cops used interests within state confines, like the Masons, to increase their power and prosperity while the media relied upon mass productions in all kinds of venues to get its message across. "By the century's end," Hobsbawn concluded in The Age of Extremes, "large numbers of citizens were withdrawing from politics, leaving the affairs of state to the 'political class' - the phrase seems to have originated in Italy - who read each others' speeches and editorials, a special-interest group of professional politicians, journalists, lobbyists and others whose occupations ranked at the bottom of the scale of trustworthiness in sociological enquiries." (p. 81)
In the UK, police, defense, and intelligence officials are also part of its 'political class', thanks to The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and what has now come to infect the mainland with the so-called war on terror. The police traditionally relied upon the public - whether to report incidents, to provide confirming evidence, or pass judgment in court after investigations concluded, especially through various kinds of juries - but now they increasingly rely upon their own resources to make a case in any controversy, especially a criminal one, and count on the press to help confirm in the courts, and with the public at large. Through the use of informers, threats of injunctions, DA notices from The Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC), Public Interest Immunity certificates, disinformers on the internet, and former associates in the private sector, particularly alleged whistleblowers and private detectives, these securocrats are able to insure that the press only publishes pretty much what they want the public to see.
And the media is most happy with this comprehensive control of really controversial disputes since it allows it to print most fanciful reports about almost anything with impunity while more qualified military and intelligence reporters refrain from publishing almost anything the least bit controversial. As Admiral Nick Wilkinson, the DPBAC's Secretary, explained in an issue of Eye Spy! magazine: "The DA notice is an attempt at balancing the need for operational secrecy against the need for the public to hear of cover-ups, illegal actions and gross inefficiency in the spending of taxpayers' money," (Issue 8 2002, p. 77) Of course, where operational secrecy should end, and these other issues should come into play is a matter of debate, especially if those involved decide to keep an operation going for the most ill-defined, long-range purposes.
If anyone doubts the impact of such individuals and procedures on the media's performance, much less the criminal justice system, just recall, for example, what happened to John Stalker's inquiry into the Shoot-to-Kill murders during the 1982 emergency in Northern Ireland's South Armagh, thanks to the allegations against him by informer David Burton aka Burtelstein; how threats of injunctions and the use of DA notices have complemented the process by insuring that the public never learned anything really important about how British security services were colluding with all kinds of people, particularly in the Ulster Defence Association, with impunity there on a much wider scale; and how rules prohibiting government agents from dealing with the press are circumvented by intermediaries, especially by alleged whistleblowers like Richard Tomlinson, David Shayler, Oswald Le Winter, Gordon Logan, and Annie Machon, and former agents who are in the security business, like private detectives Daniel Morgan, Duncan Hanrahan, and Jonathon Rees.
Only the beginning of this whole, rotten process has been disclosed, and only then by usually dragging in the KGB as if it had something essential to do with it. In November 1969, The Times published taped conversations it had recorded, showing that Met policemen, especially Detective Sergeant John Symonds, were taking large bribes from criminals like south London gang boss Charles Richardson in order to facilitate continuing criminal activity, especially drug trafficking, across the board. When Symonds fled the country in 1972 while awaiting trial at the Old Bailey, the press was obliged to go after bigger fish in the massive scandal, resulting in 1977 in its Chief Superintendant Bill Moody being sentenced to twelve years in prison for taking bribes over eight years from Soho pornographers so that they could continue their lucrative, illegal business. Moody's whole network was linked to the Masons.
After Symonds returned to Britain in 1980 to face the music for his petty crimes at the Met instead of what he had been doing during the interim for the Soviets, the crime wave continued, thanks particularly to the fact that many of its investigators, especially in the Mets' Criminal Intelligence Branches 2 and 3, were still Masons. The biggest criminal success was the £26,000,000 gold bullion heist at Brinks-MAT outside Heathrow Airport in 1983. The success of the operation depended upon the growing number of private detective agencies, often headed by former coppers with Mason connections, which kept the honest police and media guessing about what was going on, and why. To counteract this lack of intelligence, the Central Drugs and Illegal Immigrants Intelligence Unit was created, soon to be split into two - one of which was the National Drugs Intelligence Unit (NDIU) - because of the growing scope of the problems.
Along with the growing international character of crime, and of law-enforcement to contain it was the growth of private detective agencies and bodyguard services to protect the individuals involved, whatever their occupation, from risks. Daniel Morgan and Jonathon Rees established Southern Investigations which employed off-duty policemen to do its work, some of which was so criminal that it led to a falling out between them over the disappearnce of the funds from a used-car sale. Southern relied heavily upon the input from Met detective Duncan Hanrahan who established his own detective service when he was required to retire because of injuries suffered during a robbery. Then the protection of private persons, especially mobsters and gurus, was becoming a more professional business, as Tony Geraghty has written in The Bullet Catchers: Bodyguards and the World of Close Protection, the better of them hardly distinguishable from the government agencies they previously worked for. (p. 274ff.)
All distinctions between poachers and gamekeepers in the security business disappeared when Paul Goodridge, a 'heavy' bodyguard for some of London's starlets, learned, it seems, in early 1987 that Captain Simon Hayward, while on leave from Northern Ireland's 14 Intelligence Company to reassess the performance of statsminister Olof Palme's bodyguards for Major David Walker's KMS security firm at the end of February 1986, had assassinated him when no one was looking. Now the NDIU was fixing him up as a drug trafficker in Sweden in order to reduce any possible blowback since Swedish investigators were still looking for likely suspects for the crime. The information had apparently come from what it had learned about the role of Met Special Branch officer, Detective Chief Inspector David Palmer-Hall's liaising with MI6, and a former Special Branch Commander Rollo Watts who worked with KMS's cover company, Saladin Security. Never in law enforcement and journalism had there ever been a hotter story.
Morgan was ectastic about the possibilities of the exposé, claiming that he could get £250,000 for it from a newspaper in Fleet Street, apparently Robert Maxwell's Daily Mirror, once the details of the claims were nailed down. 'Cap'n Bob' was hoping to provide Labour with something significant to slow down the Thatcher juggernaut. Maxwell, allegedly an MI6 agent, was said to be financing Labour Leader Neil Kinnock's private office. To do this, Morgan and Rees arranged a meeting with Goodridge in the parking lot of the Golden Lion pub in South London's Sydenham on March 10, 1987. The only trouble was that Goodridge did not appear at the time stated, and Rees got tired awaiting, leaving Morgan alone. Shortly later, Morgan was brutally murdered by an axe-wielding thug - quite possibly police informer, and Kray brothers-connected David Norris - splitting open his head.
The reason for the vicious murder was to warn anyone else, so tempted, of the consequences. Its timing was dictated by the fact that the NDIU, MI6, the British Army's Force Research Unit and others were already deeply involved in setting up Hayward for drug-trafficking in Sweden. Brother Christopher's Jaguar - which had allegedly been bought by someone in Sweden, and Simon was to deliver there - had already been packed with 50.5 kilos of cannabis, and he was already on his way from Barcelona there. The article that Morgan had in mind, if published, would have blown the Thatcher government sky high, catching it red-handed in a complicated coverup of what it had done to the statsminister. It would have been worse than Hayward having been caught red-handed in Stockholm, as London could claim that he was just a gamekeeper who had somehow become a poacher.
Hayward, at first, did not take his arrest in Sweden seriously, thinking that it was just some horrible mistake, but he became increasingly concerned when Swedish prosecutors took most seriously claims by the NDIU' s Detective Inspector David Morgan and Detective Sergeant Brian Moore contended - i. e., his brother Christopher was a professional cannabis trafficker, Simon was driving his Jaguar when he was arrested, had full knowledge that drugs were concealed in it, was paid £20,000 for providing the courier service, and did so also because of the 'excitement' it provided (Under Fire:My Own Story (p. 147ff.) - allegations which were made by drugs dealer Brian Walsh and auto mechnic 'Ronnie Butcher' in England, and confirmed by Forbes Cay Mitchell in Sweden. While the two NDIU officers discussed Simon's guilt without his lawyer present, they did not attend his trial, relying upon the hearsay evidence they had obtained about him to secure his conviction. And they were forbidden from revealing the sources of their information.
While the two NDIU's detectives were convinced of Hayward's guilt (pp.136-8) despite the fact that it was totally based upon hearsay evidence, other British official were not so convinced, apparently assuming that it would achieve the desired result in court, and it did. The Mets' Assistant Commissioner Colin Hewett refused to allow Morgan and Moore to appear at any hearing in Sweden since their information would be inadmissible in any English court. (p. 171) Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, had asked by fellow MP John Gorst to have HM's Chief Inspector of Constabulary to investigate the exhange of criminal intelligence between the UK and other countries in light of the Hayward case. (p. 194) And while Gorst was most critical of Swedish authorities in allowing the trial to proceed - resulting in Hayward's conviction, and a sentence of five years in prison - he was most critical of the British media's performance during it, exclaiming: "God save us from a trial by the monsters of the British press!" (Quoted from p. 260.)
The investigation of Daniel Morgan's murder was even less satisfying. The investigating team included a close friend of suspect Jonathon Rees who was removed from it when the relationship was discovered, and he then went on to replace the deceased Morgan at Southern Investigations. The head of the investigation, Detective Sergeant Douglas Campbell, was much more interested in discrediting the claim that Morgan was on to a big story for which some newspaper was willing to pay £250,000, dismissing it as "quite ludicrous", rather than solving the murder. "To earn that much from Fleet Street," he explained away about the small -time detective, "Daniel Morgan had to have been on to something very big." While Campbell's team made a attempt to try Rees, Goodridge, and his girl friend Jean Wisden, it got nowhere, as did three subsequent attempts, along with most belated his inquest. For more on this, see this link:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo040706/halltext/40706h04.htm
In Morgan's case, though, the absence of serious press interest in it was most surprising, only causing one to wonder why. And this continued after more likely suspect David Norris - still confused with a relative with the same name suspected of having helped kill Stephen Lawrence a decade later - in the Morgan killing was himself murdered, and Robert Maxwell, head of the Mirror Group Newspapers, followed, allegedly falling off his luxury yacht Lady Ghislaine on November 5, 1991 while on his way to a crucial meeting with Israelis in the Canaries to save his crumbling media empire.
For the more conspiratorially minded, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had set him up as a Mossad agent by alluding so while publicizing his new book, The Samson Option, about Israel's nuclear capability. The story was that Maxwell had tipped off the Mossad about Mordecai Vanunu's tipping off his Daily Mirror and arch-rival the Sunday Times about what Tel Aviv was doing in the field, resulting in his 'honey trap' in Rome, and his kidnapping back to Israel. For slow-learners in the media about the matter, infamous Israeli agent Air Ben-Menashi passed the claims along to various MPs, resulting in their repeating them under the protection of parliamentary privilege.
When 'Cap'n Bob' heard about it, he still had his solicitors issue writs of libel against the offenders despite the alleged protection, and fired foreign political editor Nick Davies for the inconvenience caused, stating that the Mossad claim about him was "ludicrous, a total invention". His apparent murder stopped the real examination of who he was working for, what he really knew about covert operations, and what he was willing to print.
While the performance of the police and the media seemed to improve after Maxwell's death, appearances were largely misleading. In 1992, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) was created to correct what the NDIU had failed to achieve - "to develop and assess information and intelligence on serious crimes and major criminals and to disseminate that intelligence to the police, other law-enforcement agencies and government departments." (Quoted from Michael Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger, p. 235.) To clean up with the coninuing criminal mess in the Metropolis, the Met created the Untouchables group whose performance has been discussed in the book by the same title that Guardian investigative reporters Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn have written.
The only trouble with these changes is the baggage that the personnel of the new organization brought with them. While it is reassuring to note that former Chief Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police Sir Paul Condon and Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington helped clean up the mess surrounding the continuing activites of Southern Investigation and Hanrahan Associates, their activities just became more covert. While Hanrahan as a 'supergrass' helped jail Rees and his own partner Martin King, another former detective constable, he too went to jail when it was discovered that he was not telling the whole story by any means. The Untouchables thought that he, of all people, could lead them to Daniel Morgan's killers, as Rees himself was taped saying: "Hanrahan said what (they) want to do is to fuck us all. He said they keep talking about the Morgan murder every time they see me."
What is even more disturbing is that Ian Blair, Andy Hayman, Brian Moore, and Mike Todd belonged to it too until it closed down in 1998. Hayman was forced to resign this past December over the cock-up aka "unfounded rumors" concerning the murder of unarmed Jean Charles de Menezes the day after the 7/21 attempted bombings in London in 2005. Hayman thought he was some kind of 21st century Eliot Ness, informing a few crime reporters about the terrible fiasco rather than briefing his boss, Ian Blair, about what really happened. Little wonder that his most vulnerable chief was willing to throw him to the dogs in order to stay on.
The most disturbing member of the Untouchables, though, was Brian Moore. One would have thought that since he helped throw Hayward to the dogs under false pretences would have disappeared from official view, along with the NDIU. He is best known for saying this to Hayward after he and Morgan had talked to alleged fellow traffícker Forbes Mitichell in Sweden: "We saw him last night, and he has confirmed all the information we hold. So it does not really matter what you say now." (Quoted from Under Fire, p. 139.) And once the Untouchables were closed down, Moore became Surrey's Chief Constable, making it a model county in reducing crime, and he has just recently gone on to Wiltshire to clean up its law-enforcement mess.
And if anyone is tempted to think that Moore's advancement is just a one-off, my research indicates that his superior at NDIU, David Morgan, became the Press Officer for the Gloucestershire Constabulary to justify Home Office help when it came to expenses after it became increasingly bogged down in convicting serial killers Frederick and Rosemany West, so the rise of politicized police officers in Britain is established practice no matter how dirty it gets.
As for Todd's role with the Untouchables, it seems to be without blemish, but this seems to have been his problem - knowing too much dirt about the others - especially since he was beginning to sound personally more and more like Eliot Ness himself. The famous flying policeman who destroyed Al Capone's drug operations in Chicago with the help of the press during the 'thirties did so at the expense of two failed marriages, a bad drinking habit, and a most active social life.
As for the operational failures of the Untouchables, they took too seriously what Hanrahan and Rees cooked up about Daniel Morgan's murder, apparently at the behest of MI6 - explaining why it is now such a convoluted mess that the Crown will not touch it under any circumstances - but other disinformation which suits MI6's director general Sir John Scarlett to a tee - especially their claims that The Palace, especially the Duke of Edinburgh, was behind the killing of Princess Diana and Jodi Al Fayed. Rees and Hanrahan were constantly caught on tape, stating that they were feeding the press with all kinds of stories about men shagging some Princess in Buckingham Palace, an obvious coded allusion to the Princess - what became a feeding frenzy thanks to the efforts of MI6 agents like Tomlinson, Shayler, Le Winter and Machon. As she wrote approvingly of in Spies, Lies & Whistleblowers, she and Shayler were convinced that MI6 had conspired to kill them - the same way that it had tried unsuccessfully to kill Gaddafi. (pp. 213-4)
Regarding the paparazzo, James Andanson, who arranged the crash, Machon added: "In August 1998 former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson gave a sworn statement about Andanson's connections to MI6, which has a long record of using journalists ajnd photographers as agents." (p. 214) Tomlinson told a French judge that MI6 had planned to kill Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic in the same way, and that the manager of the Ritz in Paris, apparently Henri Paul where the couple was staying, also worked for the agency. "But if one matter convinces David and me that MI6," she concluded, "is implicated in the crash, it is the involvement of Oswald or Oscar Le Winter, a conman and intelligence nuisance with connections to MI6. In April 1998, Oscar of Oswald Le Winter tried to sell an alleged telegram indicating CIA and MI6 collusion in the assassination to the Al Fayed family for $20,000,000." (p. 216)
Given the fact that all these statements were either false or misleading - what was intended to cover up killings MI6 had really sanctioned, going all the way back to the Palme one - it was hardly surprising that Gordon Logan even joined their chorus of disinformation, claiming that MI6 had also killed Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978 and Maxwell too, but not in a way which made any sense. Logan claimed that MI6 killed Maxwell to force MI6 to help seek the release of former KGB Chief, and failed coup leader in Moscow in August 1991 Vladimir Kryuchkov - what MI6's resident in Moscow John Scarlett at the time would never approve of because of his previous besting by the Soviet service, and didn't prove necessary since President Boris Yeltsin agreed to the release without any prodding, much less murders. But to spice up the claim, Logan alluded to Princess Diana having been killed with the help of then MI6 director Richard Dearlove, concluding on this note: "Because of MI6's involvement in obvious murders JIC Chairman Michael Pakenham has created top secret committee to gag British media because of article which appeared in 1999." For more on his deceptions, see this link:
http://cryptome.org/markov-file.htm
With this whole deck of cards threatening to collapse with the final verdict of the Diana killing being imminent, and Todd himself spoiling for a fight with the Untouchables because of how they had treated him during the investigation of UK collusion in the CIA rendition program, it was imperative that he be eliminated immediately, and with the full support of the media - what we have seen occurred on March 10th and llth on Snowdonia. The only hiccup in the process was the unexpected interview that Peter Walker gave Alan Rimmer and Andrew Chapman - what appeared in the Mail on Sunday, March 30th, and is posted below.
To make up for the faux pax, Rimmer and Chapman posted an article last Sunday, stating that Todd had apparently been shagging black poet Sheryl Sleigh too, though she is saving her comments about their relationship for the inquest. And for good measure, Paul Bracci and Nick Craven added in "The last secret of a ladies' (police) man" that he was another relationship with former policewoman Tracy Clarke, who was suspected, along with Todd, with trying to help a criminal escape justice in typical Met fashion when it is threatened, though there was no shagging here. More important, they have information from a "recently retired senior officer", someone sounding much like GMP former detective chief superintendent Bernard Postles or someone acting in his stead, claiming that Mr. Robinson, husband of a former lover of Todd's, must have been the anonymous caller from the North who tipped off columnist Max Clifford well before Todd's killing about bringing down now a top police chief, when Mr. Robinson only learned of her relationship with Todd four days before his death.
Little wonder that the media have now obliged the PM to surprisingly back down on prison sanctions in the new privacy legislation against its reporters and policemen who violate the privacy of popular private persons, gurus, and important officials.
In sum, the UK really needs a gagging of its press, and a clean up of its police.