Gamble v May

1. Introduction

We said that we would wait to see if Theresa May would or not satisfy the request from SY to continue funding Operation Grange for the next semester of the current fiscal year.

However there’s something about Richard Bilton’s BBC programme that we think should be brought to public attention.

As we said in our previous post “Summer Games” we think this programme was part of an agreement between Theresa May and the people that we have called here from the “other side”.

We have called them that because we think in the Maddie case they are on the other side of the Tory government’s intent since Operation Grange was launched.

But they were on opposing sides only in the Maddie case and we think that happened because everyone was, shall we say, not adequately updated on realities and consequences when it was decided to move against the McCanns so that the Maddie nuisance thing could be put to rest once and for all, which was what we think was Operation Grange main objective.

The “other side” knew that the McCanns could not be hung out to dry by themselves, that many others would have to join in the downfall as there was no way to explain how the Tapas group were able to dispose of the body without help.

In all other matters outside the Maddie case – or in a great majority of them – the “other side” people were and are government allies.

We have said in a reply to a comment in our previous post that we think the agreement reached – and in which the BBC programme was enabled to air – had a much wider scope than the Maddie case. It was to have a clear and significant Tory majority in parliament and thus eliminate politically Corbyn and Labour.


2. Jim Gamble

We also said in our previous post that we think that once the parties involved in these negotiations agreed, the Maddie bit was handed over to the person the UK entrusted it with since May 4 2007 until he felt pressured to leave CEOP: Jim Gamble.

It’s not us speculating about that, but it was what he told us as we explained in our post “Sky News - The Clarifying Report”.

Simply there’s no other reason for an agency, specialising in child exploitation and online protection – Maddie was neither exploited or subject to any online violence – to write up a report for government encompassing all things related to Maddie that happened until then and, if we are to trust Gamble, to go as far as to make proposals for the way forward on the subject.

Please note that CEOP, the agency in question, isn’t a statutory child protection agency and its title is about ONLINE child protection and it’s not a child protection agency making decisions about futures of children at risk.

With Operation Grange, as we said above, the government and the other side split on what concerned Maddie.

We think Gamble continued to be Maddie’s operational leader for the other side. We base this assessment on his role during the “Troll Dossier Campaign of 2014” which led to Brenda Leyland’s death.

Other active participants in this shameful and disgusting campaign were Martin Brunt, the Swan Lady and Summers and Swann couple.

Another person, who we will not mention, also participated but was not noticed. We would like to tell that person that we did notice and that it was him/her who helped us fully understand what happened.

Back to Gamble, we think that it was not about the skies over Lisbon that Gamble tweeted when he spoke of “Grey sky over Lisbon today” on October 24 2015, a tweet that seems to have been deleted.

We think that then he was in Lisbon to negotiate and with that tweet he was sending a message back home informing those who mattered that things weren’t going well, that the Portuguese weren’t being, shall we say, cooperative as they usually were and if someone back in the UK had any sort of leverage to use against Portugal, to do it then while he was still in the city.

Certainly a message to someone as one would expect grey skies in October. It would only be worthy of comment if it was summer.

And Gamble’s participation in Bilton’s documentary comes as no surprise.

In fact, the moment we saw him, we knew that the entire production was a farce against truth no matter how much Bilton made himself out to be against the McCanns and how much Colin Sutton said that Operation Grange was a biased “nothing-burger”.

And it’s his participation in the documentary that we deem to be the most important thing that the documentary shows.


3. The transcript

Let’s transcribe the part of the documentary which we think is most telling, as of 00:31:24:

RICHARD BILTON (voice over): In June 2010, an internal Home Office report had recommended a UK police review of the Madeleine McCann case. But it was ignored for months. Jim Gamble wrote the report.

JIM GAMBLE: I met with the Home Secretary in the lead-up, the end of the summer of 2010, with Theresa May, the new Home Secretary. It was made clear to me by her and her private secretary at the time that she hadn't had time to review the McCann Report. So at that stage I don't believe it had even been read.

BILTON (voice over): Madeleine's family were told by a national newspaper that it would put pressure on the government. In May 2011, The Sun serialized a book written by Kate McCann. The deal raised £500,000 for the Find Madeleine Fund.

CLARENCE MITCHELL: The Sun were able to offer a very wide package of how they would handle it, and part of that was putting an appeal on the front page for Mr Cameron, as he was then Prime Minister, to do something about having the Portuguese material properly reviewed and assessed by Scotland Yard. This would be a running request that would have continued to appear in the paper, should a review not take place.

BILTON (voice over): Three sources close to the government decision have told us that this front page and the threat of more to follow - changed everything. The Sun got what the McCanns wanted. The government changed its position. A police review was started.

GAMBLE: My opinion is that that report lay gathering dust up to and until there was another letter published in a newspaper on the front page and that resulted in the government responding in public and instantly commissioning something that we'd asked for much, much earlier.

BILTON (voice over): That's not what Theresa May told the Leveson Inquiry into the press.

THERESA MAY: I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

BILTON (voice over): She said the government had been considering a review before The Sun got involved.

LEVESON INQUIRY: Did you feel that any pressure was put on you behind the scenes to order this review or not?

MAY: I felt that the work we were doing to look at this review had been going on for some time, it was coming to fruition around this time anyway, and obviously the issue was a matter of public concern.

BILTON: Theresa May told Leveson that the work had gone on for some time…

GAMBLE: So it's just coincidence?

BILTON: What do you think?

GAMBLE: Well, I know that whenever I spoke to her in the late summer of 2010 that it wasn't on the agenda. Because I had presented the report to them and I know that, you know, she hadn't reflected, reviewed or read it at that time.

BILTON (voice over): However it started, the government was now persuaded. Madeleine McCann would be a special case. And Scotland Yard was asked to help.

Sir PAUL STEPHENSON (Former Commissioner, Metropolitan Police): Clearly I was aware that within the media there was a lot of media reports of connections or contacts between newspaper proprietors and senior politicians. Frankly, that was all irrelevant to me.

BILTON: Why? Why was it irrelevant? Because you're getting the request, you're the end of it, if you like.

STEPHENSON: Because it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to my decision. I was always very clear of what my responsibilities were. I was the operational lead and any decisions to get involved in this would be an operational decision, not one for politicians.

BILTON: Were you comfortable with that chain of events? Could you have said, no, we're not getting involved?

STEPHENSON: Yes.

BILTON: Would you have done that?

STEPHENSON: If my criteria hadn't been satisfied, yes. Are there legitimate lines of enquiry that we, the Met, can bring our expertise to? Do we have the background of dealing internationally that other people don't? Yes. Is there a precedent? Yes. And is there additional funding for these additional pieces of work? Yes. Based on all those four things, well, why would I not want to help?

BILTON (voice over): The British investigation into the Madeleine McCann case, Operation Grange, was started. The first job for the man assembling the team was to assess the parents.

SIMON FOY (Former Head of Homicide, Metropolitan Police): Even on the first glance of what we looked at and when we took the information back and ran it through our own understanding and verified sightings and accounts and statements and all the rest of it, it was perfectly clear to us that the McCanns themselves had nothing at all to do with the actual disappearance.

BILTON: Why?

FOY: Because it just... It was just... It was just obvious from, you know, that everything stacked up that they, you know they were, they were where they were when the child went missing.

BILTON (voice over): Commander Foy chose Andy Redwood to run the investigation. He had a full murder squad. 35 officers and staff.

We remind readers that Gamble who is the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency was presented by Bilton in the documentary as the former head of a Child Protection Agency that doesn’t exist nor has ever existed.


4. Gamble v May

We think that Gamble was not very happy for having been convinced to leave the CEOP.

In fact, we think he has never forgiven her and seems to hold a grudge against her.

From the above, it’s very clear that the relationship between them was far from amicable from the outset. May was appointed as Home Secretary on May 12 2010.

Watching the documentary it seems that Gamble is accusing May of having lied under oath. Of course he wouldn’t do that – he doesn’t as we’ll show – because that would be a mistake he wouldn’t make.

What he accuses May of is not having read his report and not of lying under oath. They are separate things.

But this accusation gives us our very first important indication: Gamble thinks the entire Maddie case revolves around him. Anything outside him or his report cannot be about Maddie.

Any doubts anyone had about Gamble being the UK’s operational leader on Maddie up until the Summer are dissipated.

It’s not us speculating, it’s him telling us that.

On her Wikipedia page there’s not a single reference about Maddie, McCanns or Operation Grange.

Many other issues are mentioned but nothing about the Maddie case. It seems that May had many other worries, or at least that Maddie was not at the top of her priorities in the Summer 2010.

However it is the Wikipedia page “Home Office under Theresa May”, that proves that May has not lied under oath. In it, there’s this:

“Speaking at the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) conference on 29 June 2010, May announced radical cuts to the Home Office budget, likely to lead to a reduction in police numbers. In July 2010, it was reported that May had corresponded with Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of the missing child Madeleine McCann. In August 2010, May attended a private meeting with Mr and Mrs McCann to discuss their case.”

This meeting is confirmed by BBC article of July 4 2010 “Parents of Madeleine McCann to meet home secretary” which says:

“The parents of missing Madeleine McCann are to meet the home secretary to discuss the search for their daughter.

The meeting has been arranged after an exchange of letters between Kate and Gerry McCann and Theresa May.”

And BBC’s article of August 6 2010 “Parents of missing Madeleine McCann meet Home Secretary” which says:

“The parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann have met Home Secretary Theresa May to discuss the search.

Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, disappeared from a holiday flat in Praia da Luz on the Algarve in May 2007, aged three.

Before the meeting on Wednesday, Kate and Gerry McCann had called for an independent review of the case”

So May is being absolutely truthful – and we wouldn’t expect anything else – when she tells the Leveson Inquiry that “I felt that the work we were doing to look at this review had been going on for some time, it was coming to fruition around this time anyway”.

So, Theresa May is not lying. But is Gamble accusing her falsely?

We will get back to that because that is exactly what is so important about the transcribed excerpt of the documentary.


5. Simon Foy

We would like to deal with 3 people before we get to the crux of post, Simon Foy, Colin Sutton and Sir Paul Stephenson.

About Foy it was one of the most embarrassing appearances of the entire documentary.

His job in the documentary seems to be one of confirming what Bilton had already stated when ‘dismantling’ the Portuguese investigation that Gerry couldn’t possibly be the man at the Smith sighting because he was said to be at Tapas by “dozens of people”, which we have shown to be untrue because if anything, the statements in the PJ Files show that Gerry McCann was absent from Tapas for a significant period of time.

What should be a confirmation of Bilton’s statement, backfires because of Foy’s extremely poor performance:

“SIMON FOY: Even on the first glance of what we looked at and when we took the information back and ran it through our own understanding and verified sightings and accounts and statements and all the rest of it, it was perfectly clear to us that the McCanns themselves had nothing at all to do with the actual disappearance.

BILTON: Why?

FOY: Because it just... It was just... It was just obvious from, you know, that everything stacked up that they, you know they were, they were where they were when the child went missing.”

Quite cringing isn’t it?


6. Colin Sutton

We have spoken of Sutton in our post “New knight in town”.

Remember, on May 3 2017 he appears by saying  “Colin Sutton said he was warned by senior friend in the Met about case in 2010”, “Friend said he would be told 'who to talk to and what to investigate', he claimed” and “'Narrow focus' would be to prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Nine innocent, he said”.

On May 9 2017 the friend no longer says that the ‘narrow focus’ would be to prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Nine innocent. He just said “an investigation where you were told what you could look at and what you could not”.

And on May 15 2017 Sutton then only assumes, and is no longer certain, that the “You wouldn't be happy leading an investigation where you were told what you could look at and what you could not” was about proving the McCanns being innocent, so he could be wrong, after all assumptions are just assumptions.

Quite the change of mind for someone who decided to pick up publicly Maddie’s banner on MSM.

A man who in the middle of this says “At the outset I should say that I don't know what happened to Madeleine McCann. All the evidence available to me – and there is more and deeper information available to the public on this than any case I have looked at – does not convince me of any theory or scenario being proved.”

But what we would like to point out is what we published as a Post Scriptum to that post which was the article from the News of the World from May 9 2010 ““UK Tabloid News: Murder chief for Maddie”:

“Top cop spearheads new probe into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

By Lucy Panton, NoW Crime Editor

BRITAIN'S top murder cop has been lined up to spearhead a new probe into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, we can reveal.

Det Chief Insp Colin Sutton, 49, who has been involved in some of the UK's biggest inquiries - including the murder of Milly Dowler and the terror reign of the Nightstalker sex beast - is seen as the best man to handle the challenging review.

Senior child protection officer Jim Gamble has asked Scotland Yard to take a fresh look at the three-year investigation.

He blasted Portuguese cops for their handling of the hunt for Maddie - who vanished aged three from her family's Algarve holiday apartment in 2007. Now the Met Police are set to review all leads in the case, using technology and standards expected in a UK homicide or kidnap.

It will delight Maddie's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. A senior police source said: "They deserve reassurance that everything that can be done has been done."

So, BEFORE Theresa May became Home Secretary, Jim Gamble already knew that Operation Grange was going to take place and he knew that Colin Sutton would head it.

Can anyone explain this other than there being a close relationship between Gamble and Sutton?

We certainly believe that the Operation Grange proposed by Gamble would be, as Sutton first said – in 2017 mind you, to serve the purpose of showing how Operation Grange was void – that the “'Narrow focus' would be to prove Kate, Gerry and Tapas Seven innocent”.

That was the Operation Grange that Gamble wanted, one led by Colin Sutton but it wasn’t the Operation Grange he got because if it had been he wouldn’t be showing so much anger about his report not having, allegedly, being read by May and he wouldn’t have been convinced to have left his job on October 2010.

Hopefully, any doubts about Sutton’s 2017 participation in the Maddie case have now been dissipated.

Oh, and doesn’t Bilton say that Operation Grange only happened or was decided when The Sun published that front page on May 12 2011?

Gamble seems to confirm it: “My opinion is that that report lay gathering dust up to and until there was another letter published in a newspaper on the front page and that resulted in the government responding in public and instantly commissioning something that we'd asked for much, much earlier.”


7. Sir Paul Stephenson

About his appearance there are 2 significant things we would like to highlight.

The first is him showing his independence as a Commissioner from the politicians:

“Sir PAUL STEPHENSON: Clearly I was aware that within the media there was a lot of media reports of connections or contacts between newspaper proprietors and senior politicians. Frankly, that was all irrelevant to me.

BILTON: Why? Why was it irrelevant? Because you're getting the request, you're the end of it, if you like.

STEPHENSON: Because it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to my decision. I was always very clear of what my responsibilities were. I was the operational lead and any decisions to get involved in this would be an operational decision, not one for politicians.

BILTON: Were you comfortable with that chain of events? Could you have said, no, we're not getting involved?

STEPHENSON: Yes.

BILTON: Would you have done that?

STEPHENSON: If my criteria hadn't been satisfied, yes. Are there legitimate lines of enquiry that we, the Met, can bring our expertise to? Do we have the background of dealing internationally that other people don't? Yes. Is there a precedent? Yes. And is there additional funding for these additional pieces of work? Yes. Based on all those four things, well, why would I not want to help?”

First, he seems to be saying the decision to launch Operation Grange was his.

That the UK Prime Minister had simply requested the review and it was him who decided.

So, according to him, the McCanns requested David Cameron for a review, and Cameron a simple and humble Prime-Minister requested the all-powerful Met Commissioner, who, it seems, decided to satisfy such a request.

We will leave it up to readers to decide on whether it was on receiving an order from the UK Prime Minister.

By the way, was it the McCanns who requested the review or was it Gamble? We are getting mixed messages about this, so we would advise the other side to tune-up this bit of their story.

The second aspect we want to highlight from Stephenson’s words is this:

“Clearly I was aware that within the media there was a lot of media reports of connections or contacts between newspaper proprietors and senior politicians. Frankly, that was all irrelevant to me.”

We don’t recall any “media reports of connections or contacts between newspaper proprietors and senior politicians”. In the first 4 months of 2011, the media was totally focused on Kate McCann’s book.

By the way, Bilton says this “Madeleine's family were told by a national newspaper that it would put pressure on the government. In May 2011, The Sun serialized a book written by Kate McCann. The deal raised £500,000 for the Find Madeleine Fund.” We would like anyone to provide a link to any of the serialisation of the book. It didn’t happen.

It was promised that there would be one after the book was published but it never happened.

When the other side realised that Operation Grange was to get the McCanns and not to exonerate them, they were so stunned that the issue was dropped like it a red hot potato.

There was no word on the MSM about any conversation between newspaper proprietors and politicians about a review.

Later, at the Leveson Inquiry, it came to light a possible forcing of hand by Rebekah Brooks to David Cameron but that was long after Operation Grange was opened.

Operation Grange came as a surprise to the public in May 2011.

So if it wasn’t public, how did the Commissioner get to be “clearly aware”?

Is SY, even its highest ranks, privy to what is talked between the government and the newspaper owners? Only SY, government and newspaper owners can answer that, and we would really like to hear it.


8. The reminder

Let’s then get to why this transcribed excerpt is really important – not that anything else we have said on this post wasn’t – and it’s what Gamble says when he says this:

- “I met with the Home Secretary in the lead-up, the end of the summer of 2010, with Theresa May, the new Home Secretary. It was made clear to me by her and her private secretary at the time that she hadn't had time to review the McCann Report. So at that stage I don't believe it had even been read” and,

- “Well, I know that whenever I spoke to her in the late summer of 2010 that it wasn't on the agenda. Because I had presented the report to them and I know that, you know, she hadn't reflected, reviewed or read it at that time.”

Did the reader pick up what the important words above are?

Let us highlight them for you: “It was made clear to me by her and her private secretary at the time” and “whenever I spoke to her in the late summer of 2010”.

Haven’t yet picked up their importance?

Let us help further by asking a simple question: who talks to the Home Secretary?

Or to put it bluntly, could the reader, even wanting to, just stroll down to the Home Office and speak to the Home Secretary? No.

See where this is leading?

Gamble explicitly says he can talk directly and on multiple occasions with Home Secretary.

Who can do that? We would say that outside the Home Secretary requesting a conversation, only the Prime-Minister and her private secretary.

Everyone else must make an appointment and that appointment must be accepted.

As we have seen, by Gamble’s own words, their relationship was not on the best of terms.

Gamble was JUST the head of a MINOR agency called CEOP. Who happened to have written a report for the government and we agree that, naturally he would have been anxious to hear a result on it.

Gamble could have asked as many appointments he wanted and would be told that the Home Secretary would be busy, or an appointment made up and he only be received by the private secretary or even someone lower down the chain who would tell him there was nothing new about his report.

We ask the reader to be an employee of a major corporation, a head of a sub-division or even a division, who was asked to write a report for its CEO.

Time would pass and the reader would start to get worried about the lack of response from upstairs.

Would the reader dare ask the CEO why he hadn’t responded to the report? We don’t think so. We, in those circumstances would patiently wait.

But if the reader did dare, would the reader pick up the phone, or walk into the CEO’s office and ask him or her about it? Only if looking for the quickest way of getting fired.

Would the reader wait in a corridor to see if the CEO passed and then when he did pop the question? Again only if on a getting fired mission.

And would the reader do any of the above in an aggressive manner in which Gamble seems to have demanded an answer for his report from the Home Secretary?

We will leave it for the reader to answer that.

We would say such an attitude and ‘familiarity’ with the Home Secretary can only come from someone who feels he has more power than that of the Home Secretary.

Being Head of CEOP doesn’t grant such a status. However, being the operational leader of the Maddie case working, or who used to work for someone above the Home Secretary does.

We will let the reader do the Math.

Gamble is just reminding May of the result of that equation.

And now the reader can easily understand why Gamble thought that all about Maddie revolved solely around him. Because up until then, it did.


9. Conclusion

Gamble in our opinion is angry with Theresa May and he shows it in the documentary.

Theresa May is not lying nor, we think, is Gamble. May may have read the report or not and if she did, she didn’t give it any importance so it’s basically the same as not having read it.

In our opinion, Gamble proposed the exemption of the McCanns, May was set on burying the McCanns with the issue.

But what Gamble is really doing in the documentary is reminding May on what level the consequences will happen if she ever considered changing her mind about archiving.

It seems, as we explained on our previous post, that she has.

That’s why we said then that the game is now resumed to a single name: Theresa May.

This post was to clarify how high the stakes are.