Sky News - The Clarifying Report

(video here)

It seems that an unpublished report from CEOP commissioned by former Home Secretary Alan Johnson in 2009 and handed over in 2010 – has concluded that because so many UK agencies got involved in an uncoordinated manner, damaged relations with Portuguese police.

This obviously hampered the Maddie investigation.

Sky News aired a special on it on Monday night 20H30 GMT, “Madeleine McCann – The Secret Report”.

In the round rable discussion in the studio afterwards (not on the video) Martin Brunt says he asked Home Office to see the report and they said that he couldn’t. Because it was sensitive they said, because it’s embarrassing he thinks.

According to Martin Brunt: “I asked Home Office about a month ago if they would let me see it and they said no. And they said very broadly that it was sensitive. Now, I haven’t seen the fine detail but it’s difficult to see anything in it, from my knowledge, that is terribly sensitive. I think the answer is simply, Adam, is that it’s embarrassing…”

We think both Brunt and the Home Office are correct. We think it’s sensitive because it is much too embarrassing.

As we said on Monday night, we think we witnessed history that night: Mr Murdoch, a very relevant player assumed publicly on which side of the fence he is currently on.

Mr Murdoch has always been a significant piece on the board and Sky News Report (SKR) was a public move. Unlike the yet-to-confirmed libel trial (McCann v The Times) of which we have only heard about from some unknown journo, this taking of position by Mr Murdoch came directly from a News Corp TV - Sky News.

It doesn’t matter on which side he was yesterday or the day before that, what matters is where he’s at the moment and it seems that he will be on that side from now on.

Nothing we haven’t been explaining for the last year and a half, namely with our post “Doomed Pieces, Emerging Heroes”.

Mr Murdoch is on his way to become a hero and the McCanns heading for doom. Monday night represented one very big step in both those directions.

The move towards check-mate has been made and the opponent notified. Nothing ambiguous about it.

But before we look at the contents of both the SKR and the report itself let’s first look at what have been the reactions to it.

We have read that the SKR is a product of a Clarence Mitchell - Jim Gamble – McCanns/T7 effort.

We are unable to understand how it can be seen that way.

Independent of the various interpretations that may be made as to what the objectives the SKR may have had, we think it’s consensual to say that it gives a very bad image of UK’s involvement in the Maddie investigation.

In what way does a very bad image of UK’s involvement in the Maddie investigation benefit the McCanns? We don’t see any.

The SKR says explicitly that this uncoordinated bungled participation by UK agencies hampered the investigation. Wasn’t that supposed to be the sole responsibility of Mr Amaral according to McCann’s interests?

The SKR has literally torpedoed the entire McCann accusation against Mr Amaral at the damages trial. We think it is a significant piece of evidence that should be used by Mr Amaral’s legal team in the final allegations if they can use it.

The question remains, how can anything saying that UK – or anyone else but Mr Amaral – has hampered the investigation help the McCanns? To us it seems pretty clear that it doesn’t. On the contrary, it’s a significant public setback.

Also, in what way does it benefit the McCanns having Jim Gamble say they should have been considered #1 suspects from the start? According to the Guardian ““In the first instance, the parents should be your number one suspects,” he told Sky.”

And in what way does it benefit the McCanns saying very clearly that the UK police force was seen to be biased in their favour?

In what way does it benefit the McCanns saying Mr Amaral was sacked because of having exposed in an interview that same favouring?

In what way does it benefit the McCanns saying that the report is not released because it is so embarrassing that someone in Portugal may find it so offensive that they’ll throw the toys out of the pram?

We see absolutely no way that the SKR benefits the McCanns and see many others where it seriously hurts their interests both in the UK and in the damages trial in Lisbon.

No way would the McCanns sponsor anything that is so negative for them. So why are there people who say they produced this?

The answer is quite simple: because only the believers in the swinging theory can say that it hurts the McCanns.

All those who believe in other theories are struggling to explain this paradox and saying that this is a McCann job is not exactly helping their cause.

That’s why the internet isn’t filled with exhilarated joy it should be about what happened on Monday night but instead is rather sceptical and circumspect about it.

A waste of time and money, they say. Nothing significant was said, they say. We, on the other hand say it was a real investment of time and money and it has certainly said a lot.

In fact, we think it’s such a complex piece of the puzzle that we’re struggling – in a good sense – to try the best we can to understand all the intricate complexities it holds. A fascinating piece indeed.

Why it is that only the swinging theory believers are the only ones able to say they have fully “appreciated” what happened on Monday night?

The answer is simple: the differences in perception of the power the McCanns/T7 hold.

We say they hold very little while all others say they are very powerful. They say this group is so much so that they have literally forced the nation to cover-up for their crime. Some even go as far as claiming that the group had the capability to convene all powers of the nation to cover-up a heinous crime committed by a nepiophile and maintain absolute silence about it for at least the following 7 years. A nationally protected nepiophile. If that is not to have absolute power than we don’t know what power is.

Yet, these all so powerful people allowed Sky News to air a report that was absolutely harmful to their cause. Where has their power gone? When and why have they lost it?

Even if what happened on Monday was Sky News “defecting” and so caught the McCanns/T7 totally by surprise, where is the fear that has been shown by the media on the subject for the last 7 years? Vanished? Where has this sudden courage come from and why?

Or even in case what happened on Monday was Sky News retaliating for the yet-to-be-confirmed libel trial, shouldn’t this trial be news first on that TV station?

To say the McCanns are to sue because of the SKR is ridiculous. First because it was Sky News airing it and not The Times and second because we all know the trial started before.

The immense and uncontested power the McCanns/T7 are supposed to have does not fit in any way with the airing of this program. SKR hurts them “mortally” and yet it aired. So why didn’t they stop it from airing it? Why haven’t they reacted?

Because they hold no power, that’s why.

We, the swinging theory believers, have been saying all along that the McCanns and T7 are simply like the external symptoms of a disease. They are only the rash while the disease itself is hidden within the body. Fighting the rash is to fight the disease but it is only to do so topically.

The McCanns/T7 hold no power and have never held any. We have been saying this for quite a while now.

The whole campaign against them that started with the “3,000 calls” up to Maddie is dead and the concealment of her body was done collectively, proves it.

The airing of the SKR on Monday night primetime VERY CLEARLY proves it.

And only in the swinging theory does this absolute and evident lack of power on the part McCann/T7 fit adequately. In no other theory it does. All other theories rely on the fact that the McCanns/T7 control all. When it’s shown they don’t then they face a problem.

That’s why everyone else is struggling – in a bad way – to find an explanation for what they saw on Monday and can’t find one. Only we do.

To say the McCanns orchestrated the SKR makes no sense to us but we’re fully aware that to recognise that the McCanns/T7 are far from being in the decision centres means the reasons given to justify their protection have to be revised or seriously questioned.

Unless one says, like we do, the McCanns were never the ones being protected. But to say that one has to be a swinging theory believer.

If only for the biggest private mainstream TV Station in the UK having aired on primetime a damaging report to the McCanns thus proving how powerless they really are, SKR was important and certainly not a waste of time.

But it was important not only for that reason.

It was also important to hear Sky News say that Mr Amaral was sacked because he denounced the biased UK police. Sky News defending a man who the McCann took to the courts for having dared publish a book just because it said Maddie was dead.

According to Sky News: “that early bad feeling led to the sacking of the original Portuguese Detective-Chief Gonçalo Amaral. He was fired after suggesting in an interview that the British police were not independent and appeared to be working for the McCanns.”

Sky News saying the formerly known “bungling copper” was wrongly sacked. Who would have thought that possible?

We think we can all agree that 01 September 2014 represents a significant and positive milestone in UK’s freedom of speech.

One step towards what we said in December 2010:

“This blog was not created to report. It does that once in a while, when it deems important to do so. But the reason for its existence is to expose, by non-official, and non-paid, investigative work of it's authors, the truth of what happened to Maddie. Or at least try our best to do so.

We really hope that one day, the mainstream media will render hiding the truth useless.

That is our goal.

This blog seeks to expose all the ridiculousness of a version that is OFFICIAL, so that one day, in the future, Mankind can see how absurd Mankind can be, so we will continue to journey down the path we've set for ourselves.”

Almost 4 years have passed. It’s been a slow and agonising process but we believe that it’s getting there. The internet is forcing it.

The SKR was also important because Mr Murdoch’s Sky News said that the Maddie case was a big embarrassment to the UK. So much so that it might offend Portugal. We wouldn’t say it would as we’re sure it will.

Saying it’s an embarrassment is to confirm what Wikileaks had already revealed in December 2010 and it does explain many a reason for the “as long as government officials keep their comments behind closed doors”.

But what really is important about saying that report can’t be revealed because it’s too embarrassing is that the “embarrassment door” to the case has been opened. As of the SKR the British public now expects something embarrassing to be revealed. When it is told that David Payne (or Kate) did accidentally kill Maddie, that the whole group, including parents, collaborated in the disposal of the body and that UK helped cover-up that to cover-up a swinging event, it won’t be shocked.

Another thing that makes SKR important is that it showed with an astounding clarity who really was the UK’s Madeleine Coordinator: CEOP. Not Leicestershire Police as said.

The report’s existence was acknowledged by the Home Office. It was commissioned in 2009 and handed over in 2010.

We don’t know why it was commissioned but we know it provides an overarching opinion of all agencies involved. One can only assume that it was intended by the Home Office to have an overall encompassing inter-agency scope.

And if Home Office wants a report of such a scope, who does Home Office commission? It commissions whatever is the overarching inter-agency coordinating organism. Why commission any other?

And what was the one that was commissioned? CEOP.

Not Leicestershire Police who was said to be the UK’s Madeleine Coordinator. Not SOCA, of which CEOP was part of. Not Scotland Yard which we think did the major police work required to have been done.

It was CEOP, an agency with the mission of protecting against online crime was commissioned to provide an overarching report on all UK’s activity about one that happened in an apartment with no computer.

We have questioned the very presence of CEOP in this case in our post “The English Stove”. It made no sense. Technically speaking. But if you think politically then one could even say it’s logical.

It’s not man that makes history but history that makes the man. Man is only able to mould favourably the opportunity given to him by history. To seize it or not. The right man at the right time and location will find glory, the wrong man will shame himself.

We think Jim Gamble was the right man who found himself at the right time and location in Operation Ore. He made it work for him then started his power trip and up the political ladder of the police he went.

He was given the CEOP – Child Exploitation and Online Protection to run.

An agency designed to protect children from online paedos. A very noble mission that in the hands of the ambitious can become perversely distorted. Let us be very clear and say that all those working within the scope of the agency’s mission have our utmost respect and admiration for the services they provide.

However, unfortunately, CEOP’s scope can be conveniently ambiguous if one so desires it to be as paedos, very unfortunately, look like anyone else before they’re caught. And an online paedo acts not on the street but in the privacy of a home. So, in truth, anyone can be on CEOP’s radar. Anyone can be a suspect of online paedophilia. All that is needed is a pointed finger or a name on a list.

Anyone and everyone can be investigated by CEOP within its legal mandate.

And as it can investigate anyone and everyone – and that implies a panoply of uses – it’s ideal to have a “trusted” man running it. So who better than the one who had shown the desired qualities during Operation Ore? No one better than a person who fully understood the nitty gritty of the politics involved in all higher echelons of public organisations. Each one of them has to play the game because each one has to justify their existence and so obtain their share of the public budget they need to survive.

Operation Ore handled very sensitive information. Mr Gamble, in our opinion, mastered the art of handling this kind of information. To let others know one knows without revealing one knows. To blackmail without blackmailing. Some call this hypocrisy, others call it abuse of power, we call it what it is: diplomacy.

And as CEOP handled paedophilia, whoever was in front of it would hold the nation’s darkest secrets and if one takes into account the “baggage” brought along by Operation Ore it all makes Jim Gamble in CEOP to be “UK’s Peccadillo Sheriff”. The man who knew all the deep and dark secrets of UK.

So when the circumstances in which Maddie died threatened to expose the swinging event we think that, politically, it was a natural choice for the government to make by putting Gamble – unofficially and covertly – coordinating a sensitive operation. Protecting the reputation of all those there who were not supposed to be doing what they were doing was right up “High-Society Peccadillo Alley”, Gamble’s street. The right man for the right job.

Plus, as a child had disappeared and the “C” in CEOP is indeed for child, so there wasn’t even a need to have a far-fetched excuse to deploy the agency in PdL as quickly as possible

If it was Leicestershire Police running this group, why wasn’t the report referred to in the SKR commissioned to them but to CEOP instead?

By showing that the Home Office commissioned CEOP to write up the report, SKR confirms that from 2007 up until he resigned in 2010, it was Jim Gamble who reported directly to government on the Maddie case. In our opinion he was clearly shown by Sky News to have been the real UK’s Madeleine Coordinator.

It’s our opinion also that he also reported directly to the other group of Deciders, the ones we now call Swingers BH, who currently oppose the Government BH.

We think that with all we have said above we have explained why we think 01 September 2014 will be remembered as one of the most significant in the Maddie case, the day News Corp ship, via Sky News, turned visibly around.

We cannot emphasise more the importance of the SKR.

The SKR was, in our opinion, the official start of the process by which Mr Murdoch becomes one of “one of us” as explained in our “Doomed Pieces, Emerging Heroes” post.

About the content of the video, it was interesting to see the bashing Leicestershire Police took. Really ugly.

Martin Brunt:“The report says that a regional police force such as Leicestershire simply wasn’t up to the job But it never questioned its appointed role as UK’s Madeleine coordinator. But the force and other agencies did frequently question the way the Portuguese authorities went about their investigation and that, says the report, led to accusations that the UK was acting as a colonial power.”

Yes, Leicestershire Constabulary allegedly didn’t complain about not having enough resources to manage such a complex case but where is the responsibility of whoever gave it that responsibility? If one gives a mission to someone and don’t give it the necessary resources to accomplish the failure then the failure is not accountable to the one who couldn’t possibly succeed but to the one who appointed the impossible mission.

SKR has confirmed that Leicestershire Police never had any real responsibility and as of Monday we know who had.

It was also said that dozens of agencies went into conflict with one another in the Maddie investigation.

10 organisations were listed. In our book a dozen is still 12:

1. Leiscestershire Police

2. ACPO – Association off Chief Police Officers

3. CEOP – Child Exploitation & Online Protection.

4. Metropolitan Police

5. SOCA – Serious Organised Crime Agency

6. NPIA – National Policing Improving Agency

7. Crimestoppers

8. 10 Downing Street

9. Home Office

10. Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Of these 10, the last 3 can hardly be considered agencies and most certainly cannot be considered to cause uncoordinated havoc as they are coordinating entities by nature. And none officially set foot in Luz, except the last one with the ambassador’s presence. Although we think he caused havoc in the PJ’s investigation we don’t think he stepped on the toes of any other UK agency working on the case.

The fact they are listed reveals the high-level in which UK got involved in this case.

Of the remaining 7 we cannot see where the ACPO and NPIA would cause any hampering. That leaves us with 5.

Crimestoppers is a private agency. To say it caused havoc one had to nominate also the findmadeleine website and we cannot see either causing confusion to the OFFICIAL authorities.

Speaking of private agencies, why wasn’t CRG – Control Risk Group listed? Kate speaks very clearly of it in her book.

And the FSS – Forensic Science Service? Where is the FSS? Why an agency that really threw clutter about and caused major havoc is not on the list?

Of the four remaining, one (CEOP) was an organisation within the other (SOCA). To say they stepped on each other’s toes would be the same as now saying that Operation Grange’s officers would be complaining about the interference they would be having from SY. The analysis of a possible intra-agency lack of coordination is not relevant when trying to understand the reasons for a possible inter-agency lack of coordination and the report apparently only deals with the latter.

SOCA and CEOP should be considered as a single agency in this instance.

That leaves the dozen down to 3: Leicestershire Police, Metropolitan Police and CEOP.

One has to be imaginative to think of ways these three agencies fought each other for attention, trampled on each other’s competences in such a way it offended the PJ as SKR now alleges happened.

Then there’s Mr Gamble. He was the star of the show.

He has evidently chosen sides and is very unlikely to receive Christmas cards this year from his friends in Rothley. If he ever received any. We believe that for him, as for many, the McCanns were only a product. For Mr Murdoch to gain money and status, for Mr Gamble they served to pave the way on his power trip.

Now the product is rotting fast, best get all the juice out of it before it becomes untouchable.

To understand his presence in the SKR one must understand what has happened to him. In October 2010, he resigned in public confrontation with Theresa May.

In our opinion he was, as we have said, the man who coordinated all that had to do with Maddie in UK. Taking into account he was running a state campaign in a globalised case that turned out to be of international importance, Mr Gamble from 2007 to 2010 was in our opinion a very powerful man indeed.

But all that power had a big drawback. He became, in certain circles, the face of the Maddie case. And with the growing embarrassment that the case started to have, so those responsible started to look at him as the one responsible for that.

Probably because he was starting to be a liability he lost the position of Head of PSNI – Police Service of Northern Ireland to Matt Baggott in September 2009.

We believe that Mr Gamble really wanted this position. It must have hurt especially taking into account that Baggott had headed Leicestershire Constabulary, supposedly UK’s Madeleine Coordinator.

We wouldn’t be surprised if turns out the report referred to in the SKR wasn’t commissioned by the Home Office to CEOP just to have Mr Gamble explain what had gone wrong with the case and if it didn’t later serve to invite him to resign.

He didn't get the job, he got abused by the blogs and his company Ineqe is now facing an inquiry into corruption by one of its directors in Northern Ireland.

Our reading of Mr Gamble’s appearance in the SKR is a desperate plea to be given some sort of job, a centre he allegedly proposes in the report. He's trying convey the idea that if anyone wants to find any solution to the Maddie case he’s the man to help as he’s the only one who really knows it all.

He's using his knowledge to attempt a comeback.

On SKR we see a humble Jim Gamble, who recognises fences were trodden with PJ, acknowledges organisation leaders (that includes him) maybe over-acted and ends up by buttering up those he wants to reach by saying the Met is indeed the correct agency to handle the matter:

“I have no doubt that the relationships from the outset with the Portuguese were impacted by it, and I think that had a long term negative effect on the investigation and I think to this very day the Metropolitan Police investigation team that’s engaged now are still having to manage and massage that relationship and perhaps, to be fair to the Portuguese, mend some fences that were trodden in the early days.

(…)

I think if you look at it honestly, there were some in leadership roles who wanted to represent their organisation and be seen, or their organisation to be seen, to take lead role in this and provide critical input in this and that made it difficult for a small regional force like Leicestershire who, you know, they will say they came to London, you know, walking about from agency to agency trying to lay this off [sic].

CEOPs [sic] certainly didn’t have the capacity or the in-house expertise to deal with it given its size and focus and we ended up in the long-term where perhaps we should have been in the beginning, with the Metropolitan Police.”

Note how he highlights how SY has to please the PJ. The Met has, he says, to massage their relationship.

No one needed Mr Gamble to tell us that it was blatantly wrong to have Leicestershire Constabulary run the show while SY stayed in background as if a stranger to the issue. And everyone knew that wasn’t reality. Thanks to the SKR, the record has been set straight.

About the job he is asking for in the SKR: “in his report Mr Gamble urges the setting up of a round-the-clock UK Police Centre to respond in a more coordinated way to missing children and abroad.”

Mr Gamble wants government to give him an organisation in which he has the power to work nationally and internationally again. He’ll fully cooperate if they give him that.

This organisation he suggests is completely irrelevant in McCann case. As useful as the Facebook button he once proposed to have children freely accuse adults of being paedos. The Facebook button just shows how much Mr Gamble is appropriate to manage any child protection agency – leave to the child it's own protection. The Facebook button Mr Gamble proposed has always existed, it's called parents.

Maddie being paraded around the world in the numerous deluded sightings was fictional. That Maddie never existed. But even if she did, no extra organisation in the UK is required.

To answer bluntly the question raised after the show “if your child is abducted abroad, who you call?” you call, just like the T9 did, the LOCAL authorities. Why? Because UK is NOT a colonial power. In case you didn’t know, independent nations have their own jurisdiction and foreign authorities are not welcomed without invitation. If local authorities find the need to contact the UK ones they will do so via the appropriate channels.

Unfortunately for Mr Gamble, we don’t think he can pull this off. Yes, he holds information but as many have come to realise in the Maddie case having information you cannot use is useless. He can go to any paper, he can even go to the police but no one will risk picking up anything he has to say.

Also, he doesn’t seem to be in good favour with the government and we don’t think that while Theresa May has a say he will be given anything he asks.

Publicly he will have to explain Gerry McCann’s presence at that CEOP conference in June when everyone was already smelling rotten fish around the McCanns.

Plus, this attempt backfired completely. He didn’t realise it but he was used by Mr Murdoch. He gives credibility to having been said that inter-agency coordination was chaotic. That was all Mr Murdoch needed of him. He has no need for him any longer.

And he has come out of the SKR a turn-coat. A true Benedict Arnold. No one trusts a turn-coat. Those who already didn't like him have now another reason to not like him even more.

About the Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan book “Looking for Madeleine” to be out next week we will have to wait and see.

On one hand we have this said on Amazon “speculation that the McCanns played a role in their daughter's fate, the authors demonstrate, is unfounded” which seems to indicate a pro-McCann posture but on the other what the authors say in the SKR raises the possibility of it being a curve ball, as it seem more according with Maddie’s “new-era”:

Summers: “It was a case of too many cooks, all well-intentioned, and spoiling the broth of the initial investigation. And then the mistakes, or should I say, missteps, began to pile one upon another.”

Swan: “The problems that grew out of the race to help in the initial phase of the Madeleine investigation, the problems of the lack of co-ordination between the Portuguese and the British police, the bad feeling, the lack of translation ability, those things have not been fundamentally addressed.”

So we won’t speculate one way or the other. We will wait and see.

It's been reported that it will be serialised by Sun on Sunday. Not exactly a deal that would be done by authors claiming to write a serious book on the subject. The last one we heard was going to being serialised by that paper was Kate’s book.

(pic from here)

Lastly, we could not let pass our little obsession: the Big Round Table (BRT). That object that made us see the light back in 2009, and next to which, allegedly at least, Mr Brunt has been shown to be sitting at. In fact, as far as we know, he's the only human being to be seen sitting by it!

In the SKR the Tapas esplanade is shown. As usual, the angle just misses where the BRT is supposed to be.  If it was supposed to be behind the plastic canopy... it isn't:

In fact, the BRT just isn't there at all!

Mr Brunt, thank you for taking us into consideration. Your attitude was much appreciated.