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David Leigh is The Guardian's comment editor and the brother-in-law of The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger.  Leigh was also the engine of The Guardian's invented 'cash for questions' campaign, and firmly at the heart of the inner circle of Left-wing zealots along with Andrew Roth, Mark Hollingsworth; and former Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours.
    David Leigh's mendacious, disingenuous style of reporting, of which the 'cash for questions' affair makes an excellent case study, and the multitude of conspiracies he has enacted over the years in league with Dale Campbell-Savours and others - including the outrageous smearing of The Observer's editor and journalists to facilitate the paper's acquisition by The Guardian* - has shown him to be little other than a conscienceless amoral political warrior.  His continued employment in the senior post of comment editor confirms that The Guardian's transformation, from a standard bearer of liberal ideals into an unaccountable subversive juggernaut, is complete.

Like Campbell-Savours, Roth, and Hollingsworth, Leigh had a key role in The Guardian's 'cash for questions' campaign and its subsequent cover-up.  Like them, too, over the years Leigh has also done his best to undermine the workings of Britain's intelligence services and their relationships with their American allies.
    During the 1980s Leigh worked on The Observer.  There, under the trusting freedom allowed by his editor Donald Trelford (whose reputation he would later seek to destroy*) Leigh continually wrote articles that sought to undermine MI5 and MI6.  These varied from articles alleging that MI5 was improperly vetting BBC journalists for political extremism, all the way up to an article alleging that MI6 was involved in terrorist bombings in Nicaragua on behalf of the United States government. 
    During one four month period alone from September-December 1988 David Leigh penned at least eight stories attacking Britain's security services.  They included an article published on 18 September about a supposed bungled joint MI5-CIA operation in London involving the defection of a Cuban intelligence officer; an article published on 2 October alleging that MI5 had undertaken improper surveillance of a leading liberal academic named Fred Halliday; an article on 16 October alleging explicitly that MI5 had been involved in a plot to smear former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson during his tenure of office; an article on 23 October alleging that MI5 had improperly put under surveillance and interrogated the Russian wife of Labour Housing Minister Naill MacDermot during 1968; an article on 30 October announcing the publication of his book The Wilson Plot and alleging that MI5 had been involved in smearing trade union leader Jack Jones; an article on 27 November reporting that legislation proposed by Margaret Thatcher's government would put MI5 above the law by allowing the service to "burgle homes in pursuit of people who undermine democracy by political or industrial means"; an article on 4 December alleging that the UK Atomic Energy Authority's research centre at Harwell was involved in research into nuclear weapons; and an item on 11 December denouncing planned reforms to the Official Secrets Act as attacks on freedom of speech.
    Leigh's collaboration and friendship with Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours (now Lord Campbell-Savours) has existed since January 1984.  Since then Leigh's various investigations have been largely facilitated by the scores of parliamentary questions that Campbell-Savours tabled on his behalf. 
    Through parliamentary motions, oral questions, and points of order, Campbell-Savours also voiced in the Commons the headline allegations in Leigh's various anti-Conservative articles, which Leigh then reported in The Observer, which Campbell-Savours then championed back in the Commons again, thus creating a "virtuous circle" between The Observer and the Labour backbenches resulting in full-blown political controversies that often dominated the news agendas of the BBC and Britain's other broadcasters for weeks.

Leigh's involvement in the conspiracy to destroy Conservative MP Neil Hamilton and the lobbyist Ian Greer on wholly false allegations has been akin to some kind of demented, evil, personal mission (backed by a liberal newspaper).  In addition to helping The Guardian's legal team concoct a bogus defence to Hamilton's & Greer's libel actions, Leigh wrote many of The Guardian's misleading articles that followed the settlement of their actions on 30 September 1996, including a front-page story the next day of 1 October headlined A liar and a cheat. 
    Leigh authored an equally misleading account of the affair for his book, Sleaze: the corruption of Parliament, published on 16 January 1997.  A month after its publication he then journeyed 180 miles from London to Hamilton's Cheshire constituency, in an official Guardian bus called a Sleazemobile.  Upon its arrival in Wilmslow, Leigh and others  then endured the winter cold to tour around the constituency (stopping for a photo-shoot outside Neil Hamilton's house) wearing T-shirts bearing reproductions of his 1 Oct. A liar and a cheat story, and giving away scores of copies of his book to bewildered passers-by.

David Leigh gives away copies of Sleaze:The corruption of Parliament outside Neil Hamilton's Cheshire home (reproduced from the Guardian-owned Wilmslow Express, 20 Feb. 97)

A couple of months later on 9 April 1997, during the general election campaign, Leigh journeyed up to Cheshire again, this time with the supposed co-author of Sleaze, The Guardian's Washington correspondent Ed Vulliamy.  Leigh had made the trip to advise Neil Hamilton's opponent, the independent candidate and ex-BBC war reporter, Martin Bell, on 'wrongdoing' allegations that he had conjured up against Hamilton from scrutiny of his 14 years as an MP.  (The trip had been necessary because Sir Gordon Downey's report into The Guardian's 'cash for questions' allegations had yet to be published at that time.  By concocting the 'wrongdoing' allegations, Leigh enabled Bell to claim that he had not pre-empted Downey's verdict on 'cash for questions' whilst allowing him to benefit from The Guardian's press campaign on that very issue.)

David Leigh arrives in Tatton during the 1997 general election to advise Martin Bell on Neil Hamilton's 'wrongdoings'

Six months later on 24 October 1997 David Leigh telephoned freelance journalists Jonathan Boyd Hunt & Malcolm Keith-Hill and threatened that The Guardian would issue libel actions against them if they released their report, as planned, accusing The Guardian of a cover-up.  Four days later on 29 October Leigh turned up early at Hunt & Keith-Hill's press conference, accompanied by David Hencke (and followed by a researcher working for Dale Campbell-Savours) whereupon he threatened Hunt & Keith-Hill with libel actions again and warned them of the damage to their media careers that would be caused by going ahead.  Having failed in his intimidation, when the conference got underway Leigh then began heckling as soon as Hunt began discussing the evidence against The Guardian.**
    A year later on 19 October 1998 Hunt launched his book Trial by Conspiracy in the Palace of Westminster.  Leigh turned up with Mark Hollingsworth, whereupon he disrupted the conference with the same fervour as the year before.**  Three other Guardian political reporters also attended.
    A year later again in November 1999 Neil Hamilton began his new libel action against Mohamed 'Al' Fayed.  Five weeks later in December the jury dismissed Hamilton's action largely on the basis of "highly convincing" testimony given by Fayed's employees and Fayed's personal tax adviser of 14 years. 
    Three months later it transpired that the three employees' testimony had been enhanced by their having foreknowledge of the questions they would be asked in the witness box.  On 13 February 2000 The Mail on Sunday reported that prior to the trial Fayed had paid £10,000 to Mark Hollingsworth for draft cross examination documents that had been stolen from the chambers of Hamilton's barristers by a certain Benjamin 'the binman' Pell, who makes his living from such activity.  Later still Pell admitted that he had stolen the papers on the express instruction of Hollingsworth's fellow expert on MPs' probity -- David Leigh.
     [see "The concise true story of the 'cash for questions' affair" and "The brainwashing of a democratic state", both in Section Two].
     *The Guardian's covert smear campaign against The Observer's proprietor, editor and journalists is covered in Section Eight.  **Photographs of Leigh disrupting these news conferences can be found in News Releases dated 29 Oct. '97 and 19 Oct. '98 in Section One]

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