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Immediately following the publication of The Guardian’s ‘cash for questions’ article — accusing lobbyist Ian Greer of bribing two Conservative MPs — The Guardian receives libel writs from the lobbyist and one of the accused MPs, Neil Hamilton.

Over the next few weeks the Guardian learns that the other MP, Tim Smith, had resigned upon the article appearing not because he had taken payments from Greer, as The Guardian had alleged in its article, but because he had taken unregistered payments from Fayed himself, which the evidence shows The Guardian had not known about.

In Parliament Prime Minister John Major reveals that a few weeks before the article’s publication he had spurned Mohamed Al Fayed’s demands for British citizenship.

Faced with the fact that it had no evidence to support its story, and that there was substantial evidence to show that Fayed could have been motivated to make false allegations out of spite against the government over his failure to acquire British citizenship, The Guardian and its problematical ally then begin separate, ad-hoc manoeuvres to escape redress — moves which in time would bring them ever closer together into a full-blown cover-up.

1:
The Guardian's original 'cash for questions' article of 20 October 1994 concerns allegations that Fayed's lobbyist Ian Greer had bribed MPs Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton.  In the article The Guardian portrays Fayed as a “whistleblower” who, out of a sense of public duty, had approached the paper to expose Greer’s corruption of MPs.
      There is not the slightest suggestion in the article that by this time Fayed had supposedly also told The Guardian that he had bribed the two MPs directly himself.

2:
The day following The Guardian's 'cash for questions' article, The Guardian and other newspapers focus on the commission payments that lobbyist Ian Greer gave to MPs for introducing clients.  These articles either imply or allege explicitly that these were actually to remunerate MPs for services rendered.  

3:
During the weeks following The Guardian's original article, The Guardian's articles continue to describe the lobbyist Ian Greer as being the person at the centre of the allegations and the person accused of bribing MPs to table parliamentary questions.

4:
Shortly after learning a few weeks later in November that the MP who resigned, Tim Smith, had done so because he had failed to register payments from Fayed himself, rather than Ian Greer as alleged, The Guardian all but ceases referring to Ian Greer in its articles.

5:
A few weeks later again on 5 December Fayed announces new allegations that he himself had given Hamilton cash and gift vouchers to the value of £28,000.  Fayed states that he had paid Hamilton behind closed doors with no witnesses present.
        Six months later in June 1995 The Guardian would claim that right at the outset in July 1993 Fayed had admitted bribing Hamilton and Smith, but that its journalists and editor had never mentioned this previously in their articles because Fayed had been “reluctant to go on the record” at that time.
        However, an examination of The Guardian’s original article of 20 October 1994, plus other evidence including all articles published in The Guardian up to the announcement of these new direct-payments allegations, disproves positively this claim.  To the contrary, the evidence shows that The Guardian had no knowledge of any direct payments (whether alleged in the case of Hamilton or actual in the case of Smith) right up to mid-November, weeks after its original article was published.

Final page of Part Two

The chronology of events continues overleaf