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The censorship of Hunt & Keith-Hill's investigation

During our research of the 'cash for questions' affair, Malcolm Keith-Hill and I came across some fascinating people.  None was more fascinating, as fun to talk to, or as supportive, as Lorana Sullivan.  During the sixteen months that I came to know her before her premature death in April 1999, she had become my friend, my confidante, and the most valued of all my supporters.
    When I was writing my book Trial by Conspiracy I wrestled as to whether I should include a reference to her.  In the end I considered that her endorsement of our work was far too valuable and so I included a few of her words from our first meeting.  Fearful that she might have preferred me not to quote her I did not, however, seek her permission before publication.
    It was, therefore, with some trepidation that I sent her a copy of my book upon its release, and, a few days later, with great relief that I received her congratulations and her news that she had even ordered a copy from her local bookshop as a gift to her old Observer City editor, Melvyn Marckus. 
    Here is the relevant passage from my book:

"On 23 July [1998] I met Lorana Sullivan for the first time, after over six months of getting to know her over the telephone.  Lorana is an American journalist who worked on The Observer's City desk in the days when Tiny Rowland owned the newspaper.  Along with her colleagues Melvyn Marckus and Michael Gillard, and freelance Peter Wickman, she blew wide open Fayed's 1985 deceit of the British press, the City of London, and the Department of Trade and Industry itself.
    We first started our telephone relationship after she read my letter in the 1997 Christmas issue of The Spectator, which gave notice of our intention at that time to release our report on the Internet.  She wrote to me enquiring when it was going to happen, so I sent her a hard copy through the post.
    From that day we became firm 'telephone' friends and her knowledge of Tiny Rowland (who she says was grossly misrepresented by the British media, regardless of his sins) and Mohamed Fayed made her a very useful ally. 
    Throughout the months that followed, especially when I became frustrated or just plain browned off, I would ring her and invariably my spirits would be enlivened.  No matter how busy she was, and though she was fighting a serious illness, she still had time to talk to me whenever I called.  Eventually, I contacted her in July 1998, suggesting that we should meet one Thursday when I happened to be in London. 
    'I'm going to be in the London Clinic in Harley Street,' she told me. 'Why don't you come and talk to me while I'm having my treatment.'
    I dropped by in the mid-afternoon whilst she was receiving her medication.  After handshakes and smiles we chatted for hours about Fayed and our report.  I showed her selected pieces of evidence from the thousands of pages we had amassed.
    'You've won,' she sighed in her soft American accent.  'The case is overwhelming.'  "
                                                                                    Taken from pages 300-301 of "Trial by Conspiracy"

Following this chat at the clinic I had given Lorana a ride north to Luton to collect her car, which was parked up at the town's railway station.  Later that evening she wrote me a thank you letter, in which she stated this:
    "It was great meeting you at last, and I really appreciated the ride to Luton.  Thank you.  I also admire your courage in coming to the London Clinic, and then not treating me like an invalid - which I'm not...  You've done a remarkable job.  Don't get discouraged. I know you'll get there in the end...  Chin up." 
     It speaks volumes about her humanity that, although she was dying of cancer, she nevertheless saw fit to write me words of encouragement.
    We had our last conversation during the closing days of March 1999.  On 8 April, the day after she died, I left England for the United States for a long-standing vacation. 
    A few days into my stay I received news that her body would be returning to America, to be buried in her home town of Elmira, in upstate New York.  Being in the States it seemed only right that I should attend her funeral.  And so, on Wednesday 21 April I flew into Kennedy, hired a car, and made my way 200 miles north in good time for the service at Our Lady of the Lord church at 11.00 am the next day. 
    There I met for the first time Lorana's old colleague from the Observer's City desk, Michael Gillard, who had flown out to handle the arrangements. 
    During the service the priest read out her obituary published in The Times a week or so earlier.  Reproduced overleaf, it gives a revealing insight into a fascinating person.  However, there is no mention of her work of which I know Lorana was particularly proud - her investigations into Mohamed 'Al' Fayed's illicit acquisition of Harrods, which had provided much of the basis of the sensational 1990 DTI Inspectors' Report that had exposed Fayed officially as an audacious lying thief. 

The British Press has never visited an injustice on its own members quite like that it served on Lorana and her fellow investigative journalists Melvyn Marckus, Michael Gillard, and freelance Peter Wickman.  Their painstaking work from Nov. 1984 onwards exposed how Mohamed Al Fayed had acquired Harrods with the best part of $1 billion stolen from the Sultan of Brunei.  However, though their research was endorsed by the Department of Trade & Industry Report of 7 March 1990 - the publication of which the British Press marked with acres of coverage - they received not one journalism award between them for their sensational work. 
    Lorana still smarted from that lack of recognition right up to her death.  In her first letter to me, dated 16 January 1998, she introduced herself as "the author of 16 of the stories that were the subject of three writs from Mr Fayed and featured in the DTI Inquiry".  She closed her letter thus: "My two colleagues who also worked on the Fayed investigations and I have always believed that had any other newspaper except Tiny Rowland's Observer disclosed what we did about Mr Fayed, it would have won all the major Press awards and been praised for performing a public service."  (Lorana's & her Observer colleagues' articles on the Fayed brothers' acquisition of Harrods are reproduced in Section Six of this website.) 

The reason that Lorana and her colleagues never received any plaudits is because of another cynical, conspiratorial campaign orchestrated by The Guardian, about which she remained ignorant up to her death:
    Unlike Britain's other broadsheets, up until June 1993 The Guardian did not have a Sunday newspaper of its own.  The Guardian had always been keen to be on a par with its competitors, but there was insufficient room for another Left-wing Sunday newspaper to compete with the established Observer.  And so, for The Guardian to have a Sunday paper of its own it would have to acquire The Observer for itself.
    During the mid 1980s The Guardian's editor Peter Preston approached The Observer's owners, Lonrho plc, with several offers, but Preston was rebuffed each time by Lonrho's chief executive, Tiny Rowland.  When Preston realised that Tiny Rowland would never sell, The Guardian then hatched an audacious covert scheme to discredit Rowland as an "interfering proprietor" and Lonrho as an unsuitable newspaper owner.  The plan involved generating sufficient adverse publicity to persuade Lonrho's board to sell The Observer over Rowland's head, at which point The Guardian would then step in.  The plot worked like clockwork.  After years of unrelenting black propaganda, Lonrho finally sold The Observer to The Guardian on 1 June 1993.
    Apart from Peter Preston, the chief conspirators were a hard-Left Observer political journalist named David Leigh (whom The Guardian rewarded with the position of Comment Editor) and a long-time collaborator of Leigh, the influential back-bench Labour MP, Dale Campbell-Savours.

Pegs who stood up

Continues overleaf

This web page is situated in Guardianlies.com/Section One: The British media's censorship of Hunt & Keith-Hill's investigation

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