So Rebekah Brooks did know 18 months before it became public that Clive Goodman was no rogue reporter and was prepared to offer a deal to Max Clifford to save News International’s reputation.
Day 61, Part 1:
News International’s chief executive Rebekah Brooks knew that the company’s lone “rogue reporter” defence against phone hacking was “shaky” a year and a half before it changed its public position, the Old Bailey heard today.
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A former top civil servant who later went on to write academic articles on the love between men and boys in ancient Greece and in Benjamin’s Britten’s operas is at the centre of a Home Office inquiry into whether he sanctioned taxpayers’ cash to fund the Paedophile Information Exchange.
Clifford Hindley, who died some five years ago, was head of the Home Office’s Voluntary Services Unit from at least 1979 until 1983, which is now under investigation after a former civil servant has alleged there may have been a ” cover up ” over a grant re-application from PIE.
Reports in Exaro News and The People reveal today that the Home Office inquiry under permanent secretary. Mark Sedwill is examining recollections from the whistleblower that when he raised questions about why the Home Office should fund such an organisation Mr Hindley brushed this aside and asked him to hand over the paperwork. This happened around 1979 and 1980.
This has raised the question – as the whistleblower thinks it was a re-application -whether the Callaghan Labour and Thatcher Conservative governments actually funded PIE just at the time when the National Council for Civil Liberties was also supporting the organisation, Such a decision would be far worse than the present row going on between the Daily Mail and Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, over her role at NCCL. It would mean that taxpayer’s cash has been given to fund paedophiles.
The whistleblower originally contacted Tom Watson MP who passed him on to the Home Office.
Last night Tom Watson said: “It’s a remarkable state of affairs and the Home Secretary must make sure a report is presented as soon as possible.
“If the allegations are true, it shows how insidious an organisation PIE was that they could even convince the Home Office to give them taxpayers’ money.”
Investigations by Exaro revealed that Mr Hindley, an assistant secretary in Whitehall, holds degrees in classics and philosophy from Oxford University and a degree in theology from Cambridge.
Exaro has also found articles and book contributions written by Clifford Hindley after he retired for academic and music magazines – all entirely on same sex relationships between men and boys.
His contribution to the Cambridge Companion on the composer Benjamin Britten is entirely on emphasising the love relationships between boys and men in his operas – a view that is challenged by other experts on Britten. as too extreme.
He has also written articles on the Greek historian and pupil of Socrates, Xenophon, again entirely on love between men and youths – either in the army or in society.
Ian Pace, a lecturer in music at City University, where he is head of performance, and a researcher said: “It is very hard to deny that there are pederastic themes in some of Britten’s operas, most obviously The Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice (mirroring such themes in the original literary works of Henry James and Thomas Mann respectively); and arguably also in Peter Grimes and Let’s Make an Opera (The Little Sweep).
“Some of Hindley’s writings on Britten certainly show a strong interest in such pederastic elements.”
An example is his description of the relationship between the ghost Quint and the boy Miles in the Turn of the Screw.
Hindley writes: “‘Quint is not a monster but one who opens fascinating new opportunities to the imaginative boy. Also fundamental is the fact that their relationship is one of homosexual love. It is presented as an emotional and mutually responsive relationship, in which the physical element is barely hinted at. It is nevertheless a bond of the kind rejected by conventional society’.”
The Home Office were not giving anything away about the inquiry – though it sounds as though documents – particularly from the Thatcher era – appear to be missing on anything to do with PIE.
At the moment a search is on to find out whether a dead man files will disclose a highly damaging fact that the vile organisation the Paedophile Information Exchange was actually funded by the government.
Rebekah Brooks: Turning Down MPs expenses story ” pretty high error of judgement”, while Cabinet minister Charles Clarke responsible for another leak, she claims Scotland Yard told her!
Day 60:
Stories for which the Sun paid a civil servant thousands of pounds could have come from a variety of legitimate sources rather than a public official, the paper’s former editor Rebekah Brooks said today.
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So Rebekah Brooks admits paying out cash to public officials without knowing who they were – and that her treatment of Clare Short, a former labour Cabinet minister, over her page three campaigns was ” cruel and harsh”.
Day 59:
One of Rupert Murdoch’s most senior executives told a court today that she authorised payments to public officials in return for information for stories in his British newspapers.
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The Met Police are close to charging people in the investigation sparked off by Tom Watson’s claims of a paedophile ring at the time of the Thatcher government.
A report in Exaro News reveals that after interviewing and contacting some 100 people police are confident that they have a number of high profile witnesses -including an Anglican bishop, a pre eminent businessman and a well known journalist – who have given statements alleging sexual abuse or attempted sexual abuse.
The victims have come forward under Operation Cayacos – a spin-off from the original scoping study, Operation Fairbank – which has now been going on for over 18 months.
Watson alleged in Parliament that a network run by Peter Righton, the notorious paedophile, reached into the top levels of British politics. The MP raised the issue in prime minister’s questions soon after the exposure of Jimmy Savile, the late BBC star, as a paedophile.
The late Righton – at one time regarded as a leading specialist in child protection – was a founder of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which promoted sex with children. The organisation has recently been in the centre of a furious row after the Daily Mail published a series of stories showing that it was affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties during a period when Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, was its legal adviser. Harman has accused the Daily Mail of smears.
Patricia Hewitt, a former Labour Cabinet minister was general secretary of the NCCL and according to The Guardian was involved in discussions with PIE over lowering the age of consent for sexual activity.
According to the witness, Righton boasted of links to powerful figures in government.
When police raided Righton’s house in Evesham, Worcestershire in 1992, they found hard-core images of child abuse from Amsterdam and a “quarter-century of correspondence” between paedophiles in Britain and around the world. But police failed to follow-up the leads at the time, prompting allegations by Watson 16 months ago of an ‘establishment’ cover-up.
The move suggests that the police have made more progress in this investigation than in Operation Fernbridge – which has led to two people facing trial at Southwark Crown Court in May.
Rebekah Brooks admits she offered ex Royal correspondent and hacker Clive Goodman a job back at the Sun to prevent him going to an industrial tribunal and disclosing that he believed phone hacking was rife at News International. Interesting!
Day 58, Part 2:
Rebekah Brooks offered a phone hacker a job after he came out of prison to stop him alleging widespread hacking at the News of the World, she told the phone hacking trial today.
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Another phone hacking denial from Rebekah Brooks- this over Blunkett’s affair
Day 58:
The Sun did not rely on phone hacking to establish the identity of Home Secretary David Blunkett’s lover, the Old Bailey heard today.
Kimberly Quinn was named by the redtop as being Mr Blunkett’s partner on Monday 16 April 2004, the day after its Sunday sister the News of the World broke the news of the affair between the Labour politician and the married woman.
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Second denial re Milly Dowler story from Rebekah Brooks
Day 57, Part 2:
Rebekah Brooks today denied ordering newspaper executives to remove a reference to a hacked voicemail from a story about Milly Dowler.
The News of the World changed a story on 13 April 2002 about a voicemail left for the missing 13-year-old after police questioned its veracity.
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Rebekah Brooks defence: I learned about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone from The Guardian. Fascinating.
Day 57, Part 1:
Rebekah Brooks today denied any involvement in the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone. Giving evidence at the Old Bailey, Mrs Brooks said she had not known that the schoolgirl’s voicemail had been intercepted days after her disappearance in 2002.
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The raging fires in Bobtown, Pennsylvania- three days after the explosion. Pic courtesy; dvorak.org
A warning to Britain about the dangers of slip shod fracking operations is revealed today in an extra ordinary story published on the TUC’s Touchstone blog.
It discloses how a near disaster hit one hundred residents of a tiny Pennsylvania town where a fracking well exploded lnto a spectacular and deadly tower of flame, killing one person and burning for five days,
A missing worker (believed to be a contractor) from the Chevron Appalachia site has not been found and is presumed dead. Only a few charred human bones were recovered.The well pad has three natural gas wells. Nineteen workers were on the well pad during the explosion, a spokesman said.
Wild Well Control, an organization trained specifically to deal with natural gas explosions, was called to the site. Investigators finally gained access to inspect the well pad for the missing employee eight days after the blast when they were able to pull a charred crane off the well pad that was nearest to the still-leaking wells. The wells should finally be capped after a fires suppressant system was installed.
Chevron’s response to the disaster which terrified people living in Bobtown was believe or not to offer a free pizza voucher and a bottle of soda. Yes this is true, I am not joking.
The letter enclosing the free voucher says:”
“Chevron recognizes the effect this has had on the community. We are committed to taking action to safeguard our neighbors, our employees, our contractors and the environment.”
I don’t what crass overpaid public relations firm advised them to do this but it is the equivalent of saying to the local yokels let them eat cake. Given the gravity of the situation it is demeaning and insulting. I wonder if the dead man’s family will get a life supply of pizzas and sodas.
More worrying Chevron – which also facing protests about fracking in Romania where it is riding roughshod over protestors – is an active player in the UK.
To be fair it has a good record in the North Sea oil industry with interests in 10 oil and gas fields – and an excellent safety record according to its own website. But if it starts cashing in on the fracking boom – given the Coalition’s view that workplace safety is mainly just red tape – I for one would not like them in the vicinity. Still it might be boon for pizza delivery drivers – it gives a whole new meaning to the warning to beware of pizza vans.
Westminster Confidential 