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Sub Index of The Brainwashing of a Democratic State

The Guardian continues with the process of portraying Tim Smith’s resignation - over taking unregistered payments from Fayed, which the Guardian had not known about - as being a vindication of its story wrongly accusing the lobbyist Ian Greer of bribing Smith.

In order to counter Neil Hamilton's and Ian Greer's claim that Mohamed Al Fayed had made his ‘cash for questions’ allegations (in reality, agreed to endorse the Guardian’s invented story) out of spite over his failure to acquire a British passport, The Guardian claims falsely that its July 1993 inquiries into lobbyists Ian Greer Associates also concerned inquiries into all of the ‘cash for questions’ allegations that were in circulation by the end of 1994.

1:
The essential allegations in Mohamed 'Al' Fayed's witness statement of June 1995 include Fayed's firm statement that his alleged payments to Neil Hamilton were not witnessed by any of his staff.

2:
The Guardian’s Peter Preston & David Hencke’s claims in their witness statements that all of Fayed's allegations against Neil Hamilton predated Fayed's rage about his passport in Sept-Oct 1994.
       (This claim is proved false by the chronology of events recorded in Parts One-Three and also by other documentary evidence.)

3:
Ian Greer's acknowledgement in his witness statement that he had given commission payments to Neil Hamilton for introducing two clients to his lobbying company; and his denial that he had ever asked Hamilton to undertake parliamentary services including tabling questions in return.

4:
Neil Hamilton's acknowledgement in his own witness statement to receiving commission payments from Ian Greer for introducing two clients to his lobbying company; and his denial that these were given in return for undertaking parliamentary activities at Greer’s behest or that he had ever been asked by Greer to do so.

5:
That barely two weeks before Neil Hamilton's & Ian Greer's libel actions against The Guardian were due to begin, The Guardian's legal team made enquiries to discover whether lobbyist Ian Greer had given a commission payment to Tim Smith (i.e. the other MP whom The Guardian had accused Greer of bribing).

6:
That just ten days before the first due date of the libel trial The Guardian's solicitors learned that Tim Smith had not received a commission payment from Ian Greer. 

7:
That upon discovering that Smith had not received a commission from Greer, The Guardian's lawyers and Fayed's legal advisers held a crucial meeting to discuss the possibility of approaching Mohamed Fayed to provide witnesses to bolster The Guardian's defence.

8:
That a few days later Fayed’s legal adviser produced to the Guardian' s lawyers witness statements signed by three of Fayed’s office staff, claiming for the first time that they had processed cash bribes to the lobbyist Ian Greer and Neil Hamilton. 

9:
That a telephone message pad from Fayed's Park Lane office — which contained a particular entry that Guardian solicitor Geraldine Proudler claimed had led to the timely last-minute ‘discovery’ of the involvement of three Fayed employees — had actually been sent to Proudler fifteen months earlier in June 1995 by Fayed's lawyer Laurence Harris with a note pointing out the very same entry.  (This is discussed further in Part Five).

10:
The unconnected events that led to Ian Greer and Neil Hamilton to settle their libel actions against The Guardian.

Final page of Part Three

The chronology of events continues overleaf