The Leveson Inquiry are refusing to use my evidence of press, PCC and police misdoing. They will not even take up the matter of Piers Morgan’s perjury before them despite the fact that I have given them a letter from Morgan to the PCC in which he writes “ The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect) gave us the detail of the letters that we then published.” (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/piers-morgan-lied-to-the-leveson-inquiry/) . My latest exchange of emails with the Inquiry is below.
I am in contact with a published author who intends to expose such behaviour by the Leveson Inquiry. He would like to hear from anyone else who has submitted evidence to the Inquiry and believes that it has been excluded for illegitimate reasons, for example, because it would cause political embarrassment or require criminal proceedings to be taken against those with power, wealth or influence.
Anyone who wishes to expose such refusals should email me on anywhere156@gmail.com and I will forward them to the writer.
RE: FTAO Kim Brudenell – UrgentWednesday, 15 February, 2012 13:02
Dear Mr Henderson
I write to confirm that your submissions are currently being considered by the Inquiry. In relation to the letter from Mr Morgan, I would be grateful if you would confirm if you have a signed copy, and if so, please send a signed hard copy to the Inquiry.
Sharron Hiles
Dear Miss Hiles,
I supplied the Inquiry with a photstat of the copy of Morgan’s letter on 28 November –see copy covering letter below. The letter and enclosures were sent by recorded delivery. I am most concerned that you do not appear to have this in the file with the submissions I have made. Please re-check your records and let me know whether you have my letter of 28 November and all the enclosures listed in it. If not I will supply you with duplicates in person.
The copy of Morgan’s letter I sent to the Inquiry is written on the Mirror letterhead and has the PCC stamp on it showing they received the letter 20/10/1997. Morgan has not signed it but it was pp’ed, presumably by his secretary or PA. I cannot decipher the name of the person who pp’ed the letter, but the fact that it is on Mirror letter-headed paper and has been treated by the PCC as being from Morgan removes any doubt that it was from him.
As for my conversation with Miss Brundenell on 14 February, we agreed that I would not make a complaint to the police about Morgan until I have received written answers to the questions I raised in my email to her of 27 January. In case you do not have this I enclose a copy.
Please reply by return.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Henderson
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Leveson Inquiry
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC1
28 November 2011
Dear Lord Leveson,
As promised in my email of 25 November (hard copy enclosed) , I send you hard copies of the following documents:
– Piers Morgan’s letter to the PCC dated
– Mike Jempson’s correspondence with the PCC
– The Mirror story of 25 3 1997 entitled
– The front page of the Mirror 25 3 1997 which advertised the story
– The Daily Record story of 25 3 1997
All the copies are of the original documents.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Henderson
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RE: FTAO Kim Brudenell – Urgent
Dear Mr Henderson
Having considered the letter and Mr Morgan’s evidence to the Inquiry, we do not propose to take this matter any further. The relevant part of the transcript relates to questions regarding payments to police. This is not the same issue as a newspaper receiving information for which no payment had been made. It is a matter for you whether you wish to refer your concerns to the Metropolitan Police.
I can also confirm that in this regard the Inquiry do not require a formal statement from you. We have the other submissions you have sent, however, if you wish to submit anything further regarding press intrusion, as the Chairman suggested you could when you applied to be a Core Participant, you may do so. This will be considered by the Inquiry although you may not necessarily be called to give evidence.
Yours sincerely
Sharron Hiles
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Miss Sharon Hiles,
Asst. solicitor to the Inquiry
Leveson Inquiry
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC1
15 February 2012
Dear Miss Hiles,
Your latest email is decidedly odd from beginning to end. To start with the obvious , why should you assume that the Mirror did not pay for the information? Morgan does not mention payment but it does not follow from that there was no payment. In fact, by far the most likely explanation for the provision of the information to the Mirror is payment by the Mirror to the police officer. Why have you assumed the police officer was not paid? Give me a plausible reason why a policeman would without payment supply such information .
The other thing which makes no sense in your last email is context. Even if you did not have the copy of Morgan’s letter in your file containing my submissions, you had the text of Morgan’s letter before you sent your previous email asking me whether I had a signed copy of the letter. Consequently, it makes no sense for you to now abruptly tell me that the Inquiry will not proceed because “This is not the same issue as a newspaper receiving information for which no payment had been made. “ If you honestly believed that you would not have asked me whether I had a copy of Morgan’s letter with a signature because it would be an irrelevance.
You are also objectively wrong when you claim that if no payment was made the matter does not fall within the Inquiry’s remit. Let me remind you of what the Leveson Inquiry website gives as part of the remit:
•Module 1: The relationship between the press and the public and looks at phone-hacking and other potentially illegal behaviour.
•Module 2: The relationships between the press and police and the extent to which that has operated in the public interest.
Even in the exceptionally unlikely event of no money changing hands, the recipient of the information and the police officer would have committed an offence under the Official Secrets Act. (The initial recipient was the Mirror’s chief crime writer Jeff Edwards; someone I suspect may well appear before the Inquiry at some point). It was also a breach of the Data Protection Act.
There is also another side to this matter. The police were supposed to investigate the Mirror admission of receiving information illegally but failed to meaningfully do so as they concluded their “investigation” without interviewing anyone at the Mirror, the details of this non-investigation I have already supplied to the Inquiry. That is a prima facie case of perverting the course of justice.
Finally, the consequences of the supply of the information and the Mirror’s use of it was severe because I suffered more than a decade of harassment, the details of which I have already supplied to the Inquiry.
All of that puts the matter firmly within the remit of both module 1 and 2. That removes your stated reason for not proceeding with the matter. If you have another ground for refusing to use the information please let me know ASAP.
You have ignored the request in my previous email for you to confirm that the material I supplied on 28 November by recorded delivery is in your possession. Please let me know whether you have found these documents.
Why have you behaved in this way? Here is a scenario for you. Either you or your superior decided the best way to avoid taking action on the clear evidence of the Mirror receiving information corruptly from the police and Morgan’s subsequent perjury was to cast doubt on the authenticity of Morgan’s letter by raising the question of whether his signature is on it. When you received my email telling you that I had already supplied a copy of the Morgan’s letter to the Inquiry, you either found the copy I sent in November or you accepted that the details of the letter I supplied made it impossible to go down the authenticity of the letter route. That prompted the strikingly sudden – only hours before you were ostensibly giving every indication that the material would be used – and woefully feeble excuse that because you assumed no money was paid – an assumption best described as irrational based on the circumstances- the matter was outside of the remit of the Inquiry. In short, the story being told is incoherent and fractured. As a one-time Inland Revenue investigator, that behaviour strikes me as the product of panic. Who made the decision not to proceed?
The best way of testing behaviour is always to ask how would it appear to a disinterested audience. You and your colleagues need to ask yourself how your failure to use then potent information I have supplied – not just the Morgan letter but the serious misbehaviour of the press, the PCC and the police which involved me directly – would appear to the general public. I think it a fair bet that most people without a vested interest would conclude that the Inquiry has refused to use the evidence for reasons other than its relevance and that the most likely reason would be the involvement of powerful people, most notably the Blairs.
If the Inquiry does not use the information I have provided, I shall make that failure a very public matter indeed by using the multiplicity of web-based media now available.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Henderson
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RE: FTAO Kim Brudenell – UrgentThursday, 16 February, 2012 15:20
From: “Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team”Add sender to ContactsTo: “‘robert henderson’”, “Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team”
Dear Mr Henderson
Thank you for your email the contents of which are noted.
I can confirm that I do have a copy of your letter of 28 November and enclosures. I can also advise that the legal team to the Inquiry made the decision not to take this matter any further.
Kind regards
Sharron Hiles
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Miss Kim Brudenell
Solicitor to the Inquiry
Leveson Inquiry
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC1
18 February 2012
Dear Miss Brudenell,
Please answer these questions:
1. Who had ultimate responsibility for making the decision not to investigate Piers Morgan’s admission to the PCC of the Mirror’s illicit receipt of information from the police? I want a name not an obfuscating answer such as “the legal team to the Inquiry “. Where there is a hierarchy, as there is within the Inquiry, the decision is not made by a group but the person in charge.
2. Who had ultimate responsibility for deciding to ignore Morgan’s perjury before the Inquiry? Again I want a name.
3. Did Lord Leveson see the Pier’s Morgan’s letter to the PCC before the decision to act upon my evidence was made?
4. Has Lord Leveson had sight of any of the evidence I have submitted to the Inquiry?
5. If Lord Leveson has had sight of any of the evidence I have submitted to the Inquiry, when did this happen?
6. Sharron Hiles confirmed in her last email to me (16 February) that the Inquiry has received the original documents , including the Piers Morgan’s letter to the PCC on the Mirror letterhead , which I sent on 28 November . At what date and time were these found by those reviewing my evidence to the Inquiry?
7. What was the basis for Sharron Hiles claiming categorically that the Mirror had not paid for the information?
8. If the Inquiry believes that the Mirror did not pay for the information, what motive or motives does the Inquiry believe could have led a police officer to risk his career and criminal prosecution for no reward?
9. Regardless of whether the Mirror paid for the information, the illicit receipt of information from the police – both the police officer and the Mirror employees involved in receiving and using it committed serious criminal offences under the Data Protection and Official Secrets Acts – the misbehaviour falls indubitably within the remit of both modules I and 2 of the Inquiry. It is also very serious misbehaviour. That being so, why did the Inquiry refuse to proceed with the matter?
10. Miss Hiles’ first email to me on the 15 February was sent at 13.02 pm . In it she writes “I would be grateful if you would confirm if you have a signed copy, and if so, please send a signed hard copy to the Inquiry”. That clearly implied that Piers Morgan’s admission and perjury was being taken seriously and that the only serious stumbling block might be the absence of proof that Morgan was responsible for the letter. By the time Miss Hiles second email of the day was sent at 17. 40 pm the question of whether I had a signed copy vanishes. Why did it become suddenly unimportant in the In the 4 hours 38 minutes between the two emails?
You can of course refuse to answer these questions either in part or at all, Miss Brudenell, but as an experienced solicitor I am sure you are aware that a refusal to answer questions in circumstances where it is entirely reasonable to have them answered can be damning is evidence of itself. Indeed, that is what the revised caution is based upon.
I would appreciate an early answer.
Yours sincerely
Robert Henderson
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