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Guardian Lie No.8

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To understand this evidence in context read "The concise true story of the 'cash for questions' affair, situated in Section Two



Guardian
editor publishes misleading and false stories and lies again in evidence to parliamentary inquiry shock!!

The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, who is also a trustee of The Guardian's owners, the secretive Scott Trust

Scott Trust trustee and editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger

Introduction to Guardian Lie No.8

The evidence discussed here is explained within the comprehensive introduction to "Guardian Lie No. 6". 
    (Like Guardian Lies Nos. 6 & 7, Guardian Lie No. 8 deals with the plethora of anomalies surrounding the mysterious late emergence of Mohamed 'Al' Fayed's three close employees, whose eleventh-hour testimony - that they had processed corrupt payments to Neil Hamilton -- Sir Gordon Downey described as 'compelling evidence'
*, and which later sank Hamilton's (second) libel action, against Fayed, of Nov-Dec 1999.)
    
*[Bizarrely, despite evaluating the three Fayed employees' last minute evidence-free testimony against Neil Hamilton as 'compelling evidence', Downey nevertheless dismissed their exactly similar, belated testimony against the lobbyist Ian Greer.]
    

THE EVIDENCE

'In October 1994, The Guardian published a lead story which told how two ministers, Tim Smith, Northern Ireland Minister, and Neil Hamilton, Trade and Industry Minister, had been paid cash to ask questions in the House of Commons..  What followed was a two-year legal battle, which ended with Hamilton's cave-in...
    
Over the following eight weeks, the full Hamilton story was revealed in The Guardian.  The coverage won the 1997 British Press Award for best team reporting.  This is how the story unfolded.'

The words above are taken from the introduction to The Guardian's special report 'Corruption in the Commons', which was installed on The Guardian's website some time in December 1996 following the stymieing of Ian Greer's and Neil Hamilton's libel action against the paper. 
    However, though this report was supposed to be the definitive account of the Hamilton story, containing as it did over 100 articles about the affair, there was not a single mention of the supposed crucial role of Mohamed Al Fayed's American lawyer, Doug Marvin; nor any mention of Fayed's supposed 'reluctance' to grant The Guardian's lawyers access to his secretaries; nor any mention of Fayed's three employees' supposed roles; nor any mention of the supposedly crucially-important telephone message pad either. 
    Instead, the main theme of the report remained the same as The Guardian's original article of October 1994 - that the lobbyist Ian Greer had corrupted Tory MPs, among whom Neil Hamilton figured large.

'In recent weeks, extensive corroboration has surfaced…  A willing Fayed, as the libel case against The Guardian neared trial, engaged a lawyer to search his papers and trace witnesses.  He obtained statements from.. Fayed's assistant..  Fayed's present assistant and a security guard.'

A repeat look at the extract from the article by David Leigh (which features in 'Guardian Lie No.6'), which figured among the 100+ articles that made up The Guardian's 'Corruption in the Commons' special report.

"Our lawyers asked with increasing fervour for evidence from the secretaries, and it is fair to Al Fayed to say that they did form the view that he was genuinely protective and reluctant to involve them in what he perceived as his own legal battle."

Taken from Alan Rusbridger's oral examination before the Downey Inquiry, 10 February 1997.  Rusbridger gives a completely different explanation for the three Fayed employees' timely last-minute 'discovery', to the preceding version written by Leigh, which, just two months earlier, Rusbridger had undoubtedly read before authorising its inclusion in The Guardian's 'Corruption in the Commons' website report. 
    Rusbridger's claim that The Guardian's "lawyers asked with increasing fervour for evidence from the secretaries" also puts Geraldine Proudler and Geoffrey Robertson QC in further difficulty.  Neither Proudler nor Doug Marvin made any mention of Mohamed Al Fayed's supposed reluctance in their submissions to Sir Gordon Downey's inquiry.  Even more curious, in his autobiography The Justice Game Geoffrey Robertson suggests that Fayed had indeed been reluctant but that his reluctance had been overcome by some unnamed person without any involvement from himself.

(Comment: Rusbridger repeats the 'Fayed was reluctant' story under oral examination by Sir Gordon Downey's Inquiry, in the presence of David Leigh, Geoffrey Robertson QC and Geraldine Proudler - each one of whom gave a conspicuously different explanation at one time or another.)

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