Main Index to all Sections

Section Three Index:
The Guardian's liars and their lies

In the introduction to "Guardian Lie No. 4" it is shown how a document, which Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger submitted to Sir Gordon Downey's parliamentary cash for questions inquiry as "John Mullin's affidavit", and which contained Mullin's supposed confirmation that he had asked Neil Hamilton about "cash for questions" during an interview in July 1993, had not even been signed by Mullin, let alone sworn on oath. Nevertheless Downey cited this document to accept The Guardian's submission that in July 1993 its journalists David Hencke & John Mullin had been investigating Fayed's "cash for questions" allegations against Hamilton.
    Because this interview had been conducted over a year before the volatile Egyptian had hit the roof over his passport in Sept. 1994 (following which The Guardian had published its 'cash for questions' article) Downey accepted The Guardian's claim that it proved that the passport issue could not have had a bearing on Fayed's motivation.
    However, the fact that Mullin was revealed not to have signed this document supported the alternative contentions that: a) in July 1993 Fayed had not, in fact, made any cash allegations against Hamilton; b) in July 1993 Hencke & Mullin had merely been carrying out the Guardian's own inquiries to try and bring down the lobbyist Ian Greer, nothing more; that c) Fayed had indeed been motivated to endorse the Guardian's invented story about Greer spitefully out of rage over his passport; and that d) by refusing to endorse its false story Mullin had shown himself unwilling to become embroiled in the Guardian's cover-up. 
    As the evidence discussed below shows, when Neil Hamilton's new libel action began in November 1999 The Guardian finally coerced Mullin into signing a lying witness statement to support its false tale.
    [Soon after signing this document John Mullin left The Guardian to join The Scotsman as its deputy editor. In January 2003 Mullin left The Scotsman to become the executive news editor of The Independent]

'We then confronted him with the cash for questions allegation.  Either John or I directly asked him: "Have you received any cash from Mohamed Al-Fayed in return for asking questions in the House on his behalf."  I also recollect that we mentioned the figure of £2,000 per question asked.  Neil Hamilton denied the allegation.'

Extract from the witness statement of Mullin's colleague, David Hencke, dated 26 June 1995, prepared in defence of Neil Hamilton's first libel action (against the Guardian). Hencke records in direct speech (i.e. verbatim) the question that he claims he and Mullin put to Neil Hamilton during an interview on 22 July 1993. However, despite the exactness of his recollection as to the question's pedantic wording, and despite the gravity of the proposition, Hencke fails to recall whether it was he or Mullin who had supposedly asked this most important question of all.

'This is a lie.  It is not surprising that Hencke cannot remember who asked the question, as neither of them did.  At this time, Hencke had not spoken to Fayed personally and was dependent for his information on Preston, who had met Fayed only once.  Fayed had not, at this point, made his allegation of direct cash payments.'

Extract from Neil Hamilton's submission to Sir Gordon Downey's inquiry, in which Hamilton refers to the above extract from Hencke's witness statement to support his claim that neither Hencke or Mullin had propositioned him with a 'cash for questions' allegation during his interview of July 1993.

I mean, listen, if we can talk off the record. First of all, I mean, my role in this sort of whole thing was very much at the beginning… back in '93. ...there were some certain things we were looking at and we weren't able to definitively pin them down…
…I mean, the question wasn't in our minds "who exactly was paying the money", it was "was there money received?…"
…I mean it wasn't, sort of, we weren't going in there with a pre-conceived notion about who'd handed the money over and who it had gone through and so on…
…I'd appreciate it - I mean that's all off the record, I mean if you want to go on the record now then, you know, we can go on the record…'

Taken from a transcript of a tape-recorded telephone interview that John Mullin gave freelance journalist James Heartfield during February 1998 [see "Pegs that stood up" in Section One and Heartfied's article in Section Seven].
    Mullin's off-the-record admission - that he and Hencke did not have any preconceived notion as to who had supposedly been doing the bribing - proves Neil Hamilton's long-held contention that back in July 1993 Fayed had not made any 'cash' allegations of any description against him at all; and supports fully the additional contentions that a) Fayed had made these allegations for the first time during Sept-Oct 1994 in a fit of rage over his blocked passport; and that c) in 1993 Hencke & Mullin had merely been trying to substantiate The Guardian's longstanding suspicions about the lobbyist Ian Greer, nothing more.

'At the beginning of July 1993 Peter Preston asked me to begin investigating Mohamed Al Fayed's allegations that Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton had been paid money in return for asking questions in the House of Commons on behalf of Mohamed Al Fayed... 
… I recall that even at this early stage the specific allegation which had been made was that Mohamed Al Fayed had paid the two MPs direct and the money had been given in brown paper envelopes.'

Extract from a witness statement signed by John Mullin on 14 October 1999, prepared in defence of Neil Hamilton's second libel action (against Mohamed Fayed). Mullin is categorical that as early as June 1993 Mohamed Fayed had already made specific allegations that he had paid Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton directly himself.  Little did Mullin appreciate that his taped admission of Feb 1998 would expose as a lie his belated endorsement of The Guardian's concocted story.

Previous lie

Next lie