The protection of the McCanns by José António Saraiva

The blog received a comment from our reader Strawberry Vodka, posting a link to an article which went unnoticed, was ridiculed or disregarded and although we haven’t expanded on it we believe it to be of the utmost importance.

This was the comment on our post “Rua Segura - April 9/10/11 2019 ”:

“Anonymous 28 Apr 2019, 10:23:00

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6968571/Portuguese-newspaper-makes-crazy-claim-missing-Maddies-mother-MI5-spy.html

SV”

We’ll start by simply putting up the first words of this article:

“'Kate McCann was MI5 spy': Portuguese newspaper makes crazy allegation that missing Madeleine's mother was member of security services

- Kate, 51, branded a 'spy' by veteran Portuguese reporter in wild unfounded claim - Journalist Jose Antonio Saraiva made the claim in weekly national newspaper Sol - Also wrongly identifies Gerry McCann as being a school-friend of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown

By Gerard Couzens and Tracey Kandohla For Mailonline

Published: 09:20 BST, 28 April 2019 | Updated: 18:47 BST, 28 April 2019”

Right up front we can see the names of 2 journalists known for their transparency and endless efforts to reveal the truth about what happened to Maddie, Gerard Couzens and Tracey Kandohla. Yes, we are joking.

Gerard Couzens then also signs an article on this in the Sun, again the first words:

“MADDIE MISERY
Fury as Madeleine McCann’s mum faces ‘ridiculous’ claim she was MI5 spy when daughter vanished

The claims are made by a Portuguese newspaper editor in the run-up to the 12th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance

Exclusive

By Gerard Couzens, in Portugal

29th April 2019, 9:30 am | Updated: 29th April 2019, 11:17 am

MADELEINE McCann’s mum Kate has been accused of being a secret MI5 agent when her daughter went missing, sparking fury from the family.

The ridiculous slur in the run-up to the 12th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance on May 3 is not the first time Kate, 51, has been accused of being in the UK’s secret service.”

The first reaction to those who are familiar with the case and are serious in finding out what happened to Maddie was to say that Mr Amaral never claimed that Kate was MI5, he has only said that MI5 is involved (and does anyone doubt that MI6 – so often called MI5 by mistake – was and is involved?) and ask who is this… H. Santos, this Portuguese woman? Did she really say this or was she misquoted?

We don’t know who she is and apparently, she did tell the editor of Sol, José António Saraiva that Kate McCann was a MI5 operative.

To say that Kate McCann is MI5 (we will stick with the wrong designation because it is the intelligence service that has been repeatedly mentioned) is an absurdity.

But is the article as absurd as it appears to be, or as the British media tried to make it?

We don’t think it is. We don’t think it’s absurd at all, the article that is. On the contrary, we would even say and intend to explain.

We won’t blame the social media for not realising its importance because one has to read the original to understand it and it is written in Portuguese. Our translation:

“LIVE TO TELL – April 22 2019

Maddie: the mystery remains

It is very strange the effort that the girl's mother has put in the abduction thesis, saying that she saw the shutters of the room open and the curtain move away with the wind…

José António Saraiva

The MADDIE CASE returned to the spotlight with the release by WikiLeaks of a PJ report on the disappearance of Maddie McCann, which virtually ruled out the abduction thesis.

Curiously, two weeks earlier, a lady, a medical geneticist by profession - H. Santos - whom I did not know, had contacted me about this subject. According to her, the abduction hypothesis was also not plausible. It could only happen for two reasons: either to sell the child for adoption, or to rape her.

Well, if they were to sell her, they would have abducted one of the twins (or even the two), still babies, not a girl who already knew how to speak and would always be harder to hide. And if they were to rape her, the parents (even because they were doctors) would know that she would already be dead, because child raping invariably end up that way: either they die during the sex act or are killed afterwards.

AS SUCH, H. Santos thought that the motive of the crime would be a different one. Simply put, it would have to do with the British secret services, the MI5. The disappearance of the girl would be related with the secret activity of the parents. One of the couple's members, possibly Maddie's mother, would have belonged to the MI5.

That would explain the immediate arrival in Portugal of a representative of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It was said that Brown did it because he was Gerry's schoolmate. But this explanation doesn’t stick: the English are very formal and the friendly-friendship which characterize the Latins does not rule over there. A minister does not send an official representative to find out about the disappearance of a girl for having been with her father in school ...

BUT THERE ARE strange facts. At the time, phrases such as "The spokeswoman for the McCanns, who works for the British Foreign Office," or that the McCanns had "surprising political connections, showing themselves after all to be a very special middle-class couple with a strange power of influence in the lands of Her Majesty Elizabeth II,” were written.

That connection to the intelligence service would also explain the immense effort that the British have engaged in this case - and which is not over yet. Because, if the motive was political, the girl may still be alive. And her recovery may be important.

THERE ARE MEANWHILE weak points in this thesis, such as the cadaver scent found at various points in the apartment and in the car. And the dog that detected it was tested 200 times and never made a mistake.

On the other hand, it is very strange the effort that the girl's mother has put in the abduction thesis, saying that she saw the shutters of the room open and the curtain move away with the wind. If she saw this, which alone would educe abduction, how does the PJ almost rule out this hypothesis? The conclusion to draw is that they don’t believe in Kate.

Another strange fact is the girl's father having said that he left the restaurant to go to the apartment’s bathroom, and - instead of choosing the shortest way - went by the longest route. Now this is incomprehensible. On the one hand, he could have urinated in the restaurant’s WC. On the other hand, in conditions of need, he would choose the fastest route.

And how to interpret the fact that the other friends of the group did not go immediately to the apartments to see if the children were there? After an abduction, it would have been the natural reaction... And why did everyone - parents and friends - refuse the reconstitution?

THERE IS ANOTHER incriminating fact against the parents: the mother having spent the rest of the night seeing if the twin children were breathing. Now, if Maddie had been abducted, it wouldn’t have anything to do with a respiratory problem. The question would only arise if the girl had died of suffocation.

And this was probably what happened. Maddie maybe died perhaps a result of a sedative to sleep. The father discovered the body and, in a panic, hid it – to afterwards, make it disappear. This would explain the fact that he had said that he had chosen the longest way to go to the apartment to urinate: it was the way to justify the delay.

Maybe the mother didn’t even know – or knows - the whole story. The husband may have given her some explanation - and asked to speak later of the open window and the abduction, to mislead the police.

THIS DOES NOT mean that the thesis of the secret services can’t have some truth to it. The arrival of the Gordon Brown’s representative, the immediate travel of the British ambassador to the Algarve, the money that the United Kingdom continues to spend on this case - all this makes one think.

What mystery lies behind the disappearance of Maddie McCann?”

As can be seen, José António Saraiva does not say that Kate is MI5. He is very clear that it is someone else’s opinion.

We will deal specifically with this but for now we would like to ask this, if when before something that one is absolutely baffled by and ventures an absurdity to enhance that same bafflement, is one validating the absurdity or highlighting that one is indeed baffled? The answer seems obvious.

Let’s use the Maddie case to exemplify. If, because one is absolutely baffled with the secrecy surrounding the Maddie case, one was to say “it’s like Maddie was some sort of rogue experiment from Area 51, that ended up in Luz…”, would one be speaking literally, thus suggesting that Maddie came from Area 51 or would one just be ironic to highlighting how absurd that secrecy is?

From the article above, it seems that H. Santos is speaking literally and José António Saraiva is appears to be speaking ironically. Maybe not as we will see.

But before we get to the content of the article, let’s first look at its author and the newspaper in which it appeared.

Let’s start with the newspaper. The Sol comes only second to Expresso in prestige in Portugal. It’s not tabloid news.

In terms of general or non-specialised news, we would say that if were to speak about daily papers, Público and Diário de Notícias hold the most prestige. Correio da Manhã, has the highest sales but it relies on its tabloid style.

If we are to speak of weekly newspapers, Expresso and Sol hold the highest prestige. Weekly magazines, that would be Sábado and Visão.

In Portugal and again in terms of prestige, the weekly news is seen as being much more serious, and the weekly publications hold much more weight than daily ones. Reason is simple to understand, they present a much more matured and worked product.

To buy and to be seen reading a weekly newspaper, Expresso or Sol in an esplanade on Saturday is a status affirmation. Usually, when one buys one, one buys the other. It’s a way of showing off one’s high cultural and educational standings and standards.

As explained, this article was not published just in some paper. It was in the Sol, very respected and with lots of prestige. It would be the equivalent having been published in the Times in the UK, the New York Times or Washington Post in the US.

Not exactly the paper to promote conspiracy theories, much less crazy ones.

Then, it’s not exactly an article but an op-ed. It is written by its editor, or in Portugal, its director. Do add the weight of this to the importance the article has.

To be the director of such a prestigious paper, one evidently has to have value, be respected and have prestige. And be very self-conscious about one’s reputation and credibility. So, one in such a position decides to put in an editorial that someone has alleged that Kate was MI5, one knows that one is not ridiculing oneself.

José António Saraiva is an entity in Portugal, it needs nothing else to be said about him as all the educated people in Portugal know who he is.

But he does have some prestigious and respected family ties to someone who is in the heart of everyone Portuguese, he’s the nephew of José Hermano Saraiva.

José Hermano Saraiva, who has passed away, was (and still is) to Portugal what Richard Attenborough is to the UK. He used to have a TV program dedicated to telling the stories of History and was very, very dear to the Portuguese.

So, without reading a single word from the article, just the fact that it was published in the Sol and that it was written by António José Saraiva, its editor, makes it rank in seriousness and importance that it deserves a very attentive reading.

In fact, we would say that in terms of authorship, this is the highest the Maddie case has ever been published in Portugal. Above this, we’re only seeing someone from the government or the presidency writing about it and we’re not seeing that to ever happen.

The importance of the paper and that of the author in Portugal, we imagine, will have caught our British readers by surprise. We imagine that many are now scrolling up and reading the article again with this perspective that they were not aware of.

Summing up, without even looking at the content, this article is written by a heavyweight author and published in a heavyweight newspaper, so by all accounts and measures it couldn’t be more heavyweight than it is.

Now let’s look at the content.

See how precise and damning it is. And how understandable it is in its inaccuracies. No, Gerry did not go to the apartment to urinate (although he did say he did do that while there), so the argument that he could have used the toilets of the restaurant falls to the ground.

What doesn’t fall to the ground and remains unexplained is the why he went the long way around and José António Saraiva points out that absurdity.

He says in the article that the abduction thesis is ridiculous, he speaks of Gordon Brown’s immediate and strange commitment. He speaks of the strange level of protection the couple got and the strange level of influence the couple had. And of the ambassador’s rapid appearance on the scene. The McCanns really had to be “a very special middle-class couple”.

He also speaks of the “cadaver scent found at various points in the apartment and in the car” and the accuracy of the dogs, of the shutters and curtain whooshing to push the abduction thesis, which he clearly says was very much pushed by the parents and states the fact that the PJ didn’t buy into such an absurd theory and that clearly means they didn’t believe the McCanns, mentions how the parents and friends refused to do the reconstruction and the fact that Kate spent all night checking if the twins were breathing.

We would say a lot of detail pretty much all damning stuff to the McCanns. And do note that it’s not then “netflixed”. It’s not, this happened… but. There are no buts. They are facts and they are undeniably facts that are damning to the McCanns.

Understand why the article was immediately ridiculed? Why the British media tried to laugh it off?

Certainly there are inaccuracies. For example, he raises the possibility of Maddie having died from over-sedation. As our readers know, we fully agree that the twins were sedated, as we believe all other T9 children were. We agree that there was sedation.

Where what he says that is inaccurate, where we disagree with José António Saraiva and other genuine sedation theorists is that we don’t believe Maddie was ever sedated, and so we don’t believe she died because of an accident related to sedation. We say that said sedation happened but only after Maddie’s death.

But we accept that sedation is to those who are not familiar with the details of the case and don’t realise the full scope of the hoax, a conclusion they may reach, so in no way is José António Saraiva less credible for believing in it.

There is one apparent inaccuracy which we cannot state as fact that it is indeed so. José António Saraiva speaks of a representative from Gordon Brown. We are not aware of such a person having been present.

However, José António Saraiva moves in the high circles of society where the common citizen isn’t allowed. He may have been aware of such a person, a person who was not reported on and known only to those higher up on the Portuguese establishment and peers, its elites. For that reason, we will not state that this is incorrect, we simply don’t know.

And could he be referring to Clarence Mitchell, as he worked for the government as media monitor? But saying that Mitchell was Gordon Brown’s representative seems to be quite excessive, in our opinion. Only José António Saraiva knows who he referred to.

Moving now towards the MI5 issue, José António Saraiva states something that is absurd and that is that Gordon Brown and Gerry McCann were schoolmates. Note, he doesn’t state that it was so, he says it was said – we don’t recollect ever having read such a thing.

He uses this absurdity to ridicule Gordon Brown’s commitment to the case. Even if they had been schoolmates – impossible due to the age difference, Brown was born in 1951, Gerry was born in 1968, Brown was at Edinburgh Uni and Gerry at Glasgow – he says that it couldn’t possibly justify such a dedicated and personal engagement.

Note, and that is what is important to retain, he states a fact – Gordon Brown’s strange involvement – and ridicules a (im)possible justification, them having possibly been schoolmates, for that fact to have happened, which it did.

By doing that the author leaves unanswered the question he raised: why did Gordon Brown engage decisively? They weren’t schoolmates and even if they were the idea is preposterous, so why was it so? That question, unanswered , is left hanging in the air.

An unanswered question put by the editor of one of the most prestigious newspaper in Portugal to its readers.

It’s with another unanswered question that, in our opinion, the MI5 allegation is made.

How something apparently absurd, the MI5 allegation becomes, because of something else that is much more absurd, the context which is not an absurdity.

Underlying the MI5 allegation in the article is a fact that baffles us all: the protection the McCanns have had all these years.

And that is the question José António Saraiva raises with the MI5 allegation. For something that is so inexplicable, there can only be an explanation that apparently will seem absurd at first glance.

The protection is enormous, monstrous, visible to all and that is factual.

It’s absurd they enjoy such protection and yet they do.

So why? Why does the entire UK establishment have this middle-class couple in particular under its wing?

That is the exact question that the editor of one of the most prestigious newspapers in Portugal asks with this article.

Because such level of protection can only come about if state interests are at stake. That is the only reasonable explanation, there’s no other possible reason, is there?

Taking into account that such huge and palpable protection does exist, and as we said is factual, easy to confirm, then is it so preposterous to consider the idea, completely absurd under any other circumstances, that the couple is linked to UK’s intelligence service?

Under this perspective, José António Saraiva’s article stops being ridiculous. Something has to justify the protection... but what? It must be something strange, it must be something big, it must be something right out of a... spy movie!

And here the irony is that José António Saraiva may not even be speaking ironically, he may be speaking literally. He may really be venturing as real the possibility that Kate may be MI5.

Why would he do that? Why would a serious journalist venture into apparent absurdity? Before one laughs it off, maybe one should give it a thought.

Kate being MI5 is straight out of a movie plot, no question about that. But hasn’t realism long abandoned the Maddie case? With all its evident and transparent lies shoved unceremoniously down the world’s throat shown itself to be something beyond reality even though it’s very real?

Something has to justify the absolutely abnormal protection the couple enjoy and logic dictates that the reasons must be as abnormal.

So, even if wrong it is reasonable to deduce from the obvious fact that the twins were sedated that Maddie perished from over-sedation, it is perfectly reasonable when faced with the inexplicable self-evident protection of such proportions and magnitude that the couple has, to deduce that the reason for that to happen must involve state secrets, or in other terms right out of a movie plot.

The British have turned Maddie’s death into a film, sick, absurd with very bad casting and very poor scripting, but a film nonetheless. Reality turned into sick fiction. Is it then unreasonable to take as reasonable something that one would never do unless in this particular case?

José António Saraiva faced with what he sees, ventures that H. Santos may not be that wrong, she may have a point. So much evidence against the couple, so much evidence being ignored, so much complicity by the British media and government, is it unrealistic to think that?

And here resides the irony. The more this MI5 allegation is laughed off the more out of this world is the protection the McCanns have.

Is  José António Saraiva being ridiculous by considering the possibility that Kate is MI5? Then that is only so because the Maddie case has been made absurdly ridiculous before everyone’s eyes.

Example of this? The British media ridiculing the allegation and highlighting the inaccuracy of Gordon Brown and Gerry McCann having been schoolmates while ignoring all the damning facts damning for the McCanns that José António Saraiva wrote in the same article. Could there have been a better example of the existence of that same protection that he speaks of? We would say not.

José António Saraiva says there is protection and the British media show that it is so.

Having someone as José António Saraiva to even consider that possibility as real and then feel comfortable to express it publicly is the price to the UK has to pay for lying so blatantly about the case. In other words, the price for protecting so shamelessly who appears to have no reason at all to be protected so overtly, thus inviting speculations as to why.

Ridiculousness and the Maddie case are joined at the hip. The protection is a clear sign of this.

These are the two questions that José António Saraiva leaves hanging unanswered:

Question #1 – Why was Gordon Brown so committed to this case (and why is the UK still committed to it)?

Those disagreeing with the schoolmate idea, have to explain why this was so, because it was so. The blog has shown the idea is ridiculous but has extensively explained why Gordon Brown committed himself the way he did.

A lot of people on that holiday were high profile in their professions. If their reputations were exposed - brother John McCann spoke of “calling in favours” - then sectors of the UK establishment had a lot to lose.

We believe that there were also some high profile people in Portugal who attended social events, of a public kind, in Luz and who could also be called on to pull strings, which they did.

Question #2 - Why is the McCann couple protected by the UK?

Those ridiculing the MI5 idea – and in our opinion it should be – have to explain why this protection was so, because it was and is so. The blog ridicules the idea and but has extensively explained why the couple is being protected.

In no way, in our opinion, was an emotionally volatile doctor a member of British intelligence services but we believe in Mr Amaral when he says that British intelligence met Martin Grime at the airport.

In her book, Kate says they were escorted home from the UK airport by Special Branch. Why did they even need an ordinary police escort, let alone SB? And if someone requires SB protection then it is ludicrous to think that British intelligence services were not involved. Of course they were. And are.

José António Saraiva is absolutely right. And both questions are pertinent.

Add to these 2 questions all the damning and accurate details mentioned by José António Saraiva in his article.

Do keep in mind who is the target readership for this article. It is not the people who read the Daily Mail or the Sun. It’s the educated Portuguese public, those who buy newspapers like Sol.

This is not a Sandra Felgueiras on a entertainment show saying that “here in the laboratory where we are, there are more than a hundred people who have an identical sample (according to her 17 in 20 alleles), and that makes this sample criminally irrelevant“a very special middle-class couple”.

This is not a 20 million dollar waste of money by Netflix (please, let’s have a show of hands from all those who watched the entire 8 episodes... yes, that's what we thought would be as many) in blatant bias in favour of the McCanns.

This is not even a former cop, who headed the investigation appearing on CMTV telling his side of the story, damning to the McCanns.

This is from, as we have said, from a prestigious and respected editor of a prestigious and respected Portuguese newspaper. This targets the elites, this targets sectors of society which have not been reached in such an overt manner against the McCanns.

There may have not been a reaction but the message has sunk in, as it mirrors what everyone thinks.

We hope to have shown our readers something that they probably missed.

And also hope to have shown what the perception of the well-educated sectors of the Portuguese society (the readers of Sol) is of the case: foul-play at the highest level of British society.

It shows how embarrassing it will be for the UK if it archives the case. Either it opts for the truth, which we sincerely hope it does, or it may decide to close down OG without results.

Time does to embarrassment what it does to lies: only makes it all bigger.