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The BBC, the Assassination of JFK and Political Scandals


John Simkin

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Several years ago I was approached by a former BBC journalist and government advisor about making a documentary on the JFK assassination. He said that with his BBC contacts he would have no difficulty getting the film made. Over the next few months we spent a lot of time working on an outline of the proposed documentary. However, the BBC eventually rejected the proposal. I thought we should go to C4 or C5 with it because over the years they had been more interested in investigating political conspiracies than the BBC, but for some reason he had completely lost interest in the project and all the work we had put in was in vain.

While we working on the documentary he told me that he had become interested in political conspiracies because of his experiences at the BBC and in government. He had been appalled about how the BBC had quashed great stories while he was working as a political journalist. He told me one story that involved a paedophile ring in the British government in the 1980s.

In 1996 it was agreed than an investigation into claims of abuse in children's homes in Wales. It was led by Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, a retired High Court judge. The inquiry was held in private and Waterhouse heard evidence from more than 150 victims of abuse at 40 children’s homes. The published report in 2000 admitted that the children had been abused but it was decided that none of the important political figures involved in the abuse should be named. In 2001, 140 compensation claims were settled with victims of the abuse.

My journalist told me that one of the men named was Home Secretary at the time. He was later given a job in the European Union to get him out of the country. Another abuser was still a leading figure in the Conservative Party. In fact, he was the same man who had appointed Waterhouse to head the inquiry. It seems that the inquiry was all part of the cover-up. It was a bit like Lyndon Johnson putting Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission.

On 3rd October, 2012, ITV1 broadcasted a documentary, Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile, with claims by up to 10 women, including one aged under 14 at the time, that they had been sexually molested or raped by him during the 1960s and 1970s. Jimmy Savile, one of BBC’s biggest stars, had died the previous year. It has since emerged that the police carried out several investigations into Savile’s activities following complaints from under age girls and boys, but they were all dropped. Maybe it was because he was a close friend of Margaret Thatcher (they used to spend Christmas Day together).

It has also been revealed that earlier in 2012 BBC Newsnight were investigating Savile’s sexual behaviour on BBC premises (he apparently carried out his abuse of girls, usually from children homes who had been invited to appear on programmes such as Top of the Pops, Clunk, Click and Jim'll Fix It, in his dressing room). Obviously concerned that it would seem that the BBC was involved in a cover-up, they cancelled the documentary. However, journalists working on the documentary, leaked the story.

Since the programme was broadcast, over 300 people have come forward to the police stating they were sexually abused by Savile and other high-profile figures. So far Gary Glitter and Freddie Starr have been arrested. Others are expected in the next few weeks.

Last night Newsnight carried an interview with Steven Messham, who was one of those abused in the children’s homes in Wales. He claimed that he had been raped by a leading Conservative Party politician in the 1980s. In other words, the Home Secretary, that the BBC journalist told me about. I expect him to be arrested in the next few weeks. I am not so sure if the current government minister will be arrested for the same offence.

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John

An old school friend of mine worked on the "Spitting Image" satirical

Puppet show he told me to look out for a sketch involving Mick Jagger

And whoever else in the sketch it was set in a Gents toilet he would not name

Him until the show had been broadcast.

The whoever else was the minster I believe you are alluding to.

Who did indeed get shifted to Europe rather rapidly.

My friend had been given the info from a BBC tech guy he was working with.

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John

An old school friend of mine worked on the "Spitting Image" satirical

Puppet show he told me to look out for a sketch involving Mick Jagger

And whoever else in the sketch it was set in a Gents toilet he would not name

Him until the show had been broadcast.

The whoever else was the minster I believe you are alluding to.

Who did indeed get shifted to Europe rather rapidly.

My friend had been given the info from a BBC tech guy he was working with.

I will email you the names of the people involved in the story.

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It would appear to be old news going back to queen Victoria's era

If you google the name of the person in email followed by just

Pa all will be revealed . It seems the very elite of British society

Were and are involved. From the Kincora debacle to the Cleveland street

Scandal.

Saville's reference to "bringing half the station down with me" did not I think imply

That the officers were involved physically but by thier neglect in not being

Able to prosecute because of others "higher up" .

I believe the same problems abound in the JFK case in that because of Oswalds

Obvious ties to CIA and FBI it was hoped that they would contribute

To the cover up fully , When D.A. Wade informed the press that Oswald was "known" to the FBI

This could ha e been a bit of inter agency "grassing " rather than a Freudian

Slip by Wade

Edited by Ian Kingsbury
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Two years ago I was coming back from San Francisco when I noticed that a fellow passenger was Justine Greening MP. At the time she was a junior minister in the politician’s department. At the baggage reclaim at Gatwick Airport I positioned myself in front of Greening and her girlfriend and rather loudly told my partner the story about him. I also said the press had the story and it was only a matter of time before it came out. Three months later newspapers published stories about this minister sharing the bed of his 25-year-old parliamentary special adviser. He denied he was having a sexual relationship with this man. Well at least he was over the age of consent.

Two years ago I was coming back from San Francisco when I noticed that a fellow passenger was Justine Greening MP. At the time she was a junior minister in the politician’s department. At the baggage reclaim at Gatwick Airport I positioned myself in front of Greening and her girlfriend and rather loudly told my partner the story about him. I also said the press had the story and it was only a matter of time before it came out. Three months later newspapers published stories about this minister sharing the bed of his 25-year-old parliamentary special adviser. He denied he was having a sexual relationship with this man. Well at least he was over the age of consent.

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All BBC employees had a personnel file which included their basic personal details and work record. But there was also a second file. This included ‘security information' collected by Special Branch and MI5, who have always kept political surveillance on ‘subversives in the media’. If a staff member was shortlisted for a job this second file was handed to the department head, who had to sign for it. The file was a buff folder with a round red sticker, stamped with the legend SECRET and a symbol which looked like a Christmas tree. On the basis of information in this file, the Personnel Office recommended whether the person in question should be given the job or not. A former senior BBC executive recalls seeing one journalist’s security file, stamped with a Christmas tree symbol: 'For about twelve years it had recorded notes such as "has subscription to Daily Worker” or “our friends say he associates with communists and CND activists." It is fair to say that there were contemporary memos from personnel officials adding they thought this was ridiculous. But it was still on file.‘

The names of outside job applicants were submitted directly to C Branch of M5. They were then passed on to the F Branch ‘domestic subversion', whose F7 section looks at political ‘extremists', MP’s, lawyers, teachers and journalists. After consulting the registry of files, the names were fed into MI5’s computer, which contains the identities of about a million ‘subversives'.

Once MI5 had vetted an applicant their decision was given in writing to the BBC’s Personnel Office. MI5 never gave reasons for their recommendations. But, quite often, if they said a person was a ‘security risk', that was enough to blacklist him or her permanently. Members of board interviews were advised not to ask questions. And it was only when an executive or editor put pressure on the Personnel Department that MI5's decision was overruled.

Extract from:

Blacklist: The Inside Story of Political Vetting by Mark Hollingsworth and Richard Norton-Taylor

London: The Hogarth Press, 1988

ISBN 0 7012 0811 2

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On BBC 4 a radio journalist said that the media have known about the name of this politician for many years but have been unable to publish it for legal reasons. A retired BBC television journalist, George Jones, said in a recent interview that throughout his career the BBC constantly refused to broadcast his stories because they did not want to upset the government. I wonder if the same things will be said if the truth about the death of JFK ever comes out?

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Maybe some kind of announcement is due as Cameron has

Gone to bury his head in the sand in Dubai.

More names are being revealed on various blogs

Tom Watson MP has asked a question in the commons and has been promised

By Cameron that he will look into it .

Will the reveal of JFK's Killers

Come in the form of a blog too sensational to be ignored?.

The libel laws in UK have prevented this story form being public news

Although most is public knowledge .

Do we have a right to know?.

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Guest Tom Scully

If only NY Times journalists could be this earnest, direct and demanding when it comes to challenging the commitment by the executive branch to the secret, extra judiciial imprisonment and executions of U.S. citizens and foreign non-combatants by both president Obama and challenger Romney.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/opinion/nocera-the-times-gets-a-new-ceo.html

Op-Ed Columnist

The Right Man for the Job?

By JOE NOCERA

Published: October 29, 2012

The position of chief executive of The New York Times Company is not the easiest to fill.......

....No chief executive can expect to be able to make decisions independent of the Sulzbergers. The previous C.E.O., Janet Robinson, left abruptly in December, amid speculation that her relationship with Sulzberger had become strained.

So it was with no small relief that, after a lengthy search, Sulzberger announced in mid-August that Mark Thompson, the departing director general of the BBC, had agreed to take the job. Although the BBC has a radically different business model from The Times — it gets most of its money from an annual fee levied on every British television watcher — his tenure as the BBC’s boss included an international expansion and strong digital growth, two areas where The Times could use his skills.

Thompson is scheduled to start his new job on Nov. 12. His nameplate is already on his office door. He is getting to know Times employees. Yet, since early October, all anybody has asked about Thompson are those two most damning of questions: what did he know, and when did he know it?

The questions are being asked, of course, in the wake of an enormous sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed the BBC. At its center is Jimmy Savile, who for three decades was one of the BBC’s best-known personalities, his television shows aimed at the teenage set. He has also been accused of being an incorrigible pedophile; the number of young girls he is said to have molested could run into the hundreds. Although he stopped being a BBC regular in the mid-1990s, his enduring fame was such that when he died last fall, people in his hometown of Leeds lined the streets to mourn his passing.

Soon after his death, a BBC current affairs program called “Newsnight” began an investigation into Savile’s sexual proclivities. Yet despite getting at least one woman on tape who said she had been molested by Savile, the piece was killed. Then, earlier this month, a BBC competitor, ITV, ran a devastating exposé of Savile. The ITV investigation raised subsequent questions about whether the BBC had covered up Savile’s wrongdoing.

Plainly, the answer is yes. What is far less certain is how high the cover-up went. Thompson first said that he never heard the rumors about Savile, and that he didn’t learn about the “Newsnight” program until after it was canceled. Given the byzantine nature of the BBC bureaucracy, these are plausible denials.

Here is where it gets a little less plausible. Thompson now says that at a cocktail party last December, a BBC reporter said to him, “You must be worried about the ‘Newsnight’ investigation into Jimmy Savile.” Soon thereafter, Thompson asked his underlings about the investigation and was told that it had been killed — for journalistic reasons. He claims to have inquired no further, not even to ask what the investigation was about.

A few months later, the news broke in the British press that the BBC had, as The Daily Mail put it in a headline, “shelved Jimmy Savile sex abuse investigation ‘to protect its own reputation.’ ” Given the seriousness of sexual abuse allegations — look at what it did to Penn State — you would think that Thompson and his underlings would immediately want to get to the bottom of it. But, again, they did nothing. Thompson winds up appearing willfully ignorant, and it makes you wonder what kind of an organization the BBC was when Thompson was running it — and what kind of leader he was. It also makes you wonder what kind of chief executive he’d be at The Times.

Arthur Sulzberger is in a difficult spot. He believes strongly that he’s got the executive he needs to lead The Times to the promised land of healthy profits again. Although he declined to be interviewed for this column, he appears to have accepted Thompson’s insistence that he knew nothing about the explosive allegations that became public literally 50 days after he accepted the Times job. Sulzberger is backing his man unreservedly.

For the sake of Times employees — not to mention the readers who want to see a vibrant New York Times Company — let’s hope his faith in Thompson is warranted. Otherwise, the BBC won’t be the only organization being asked tough questions about its judgment.

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/pursuing-the-bbc-story-with-objectivity-and-rigor/

October 25, 2012, 1:01 pm

Pursuing the BBC Story ‘With Objectivity and Rigor’

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

A few further notes on the matter of the incoming New York Times president and chief executive, Mark Thompson, the former director general of the BBC, which I wrote about on Tuesday:

1. The byline Matthew Purdy, atop a story in Thursday’s Times, speaks volumes. Mr. Purdy is the highly respected head of The Times’s investigative reporting team. That Times top editors sent him to London — to report on the unfolding scandal at the BBC, which is under fire for killing an investigative report on sexual abuse by its celebrity TV host Jimmy Savile – says that they are indeed taking this seriously. (I want to make it clear that, as public editor, I had nothing whatsoever to do with that decision and that it was already made by the time I wrote my blog post, urging aggressive coverage.) Read more…

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

A few further notes on the matter of the incoming New York Times president and chief executive, Mark Thompson, the former director general of the BBC, which I wrote about on Tuesday:

1. The byline Matthew Purdy, atop a story in Thursday’s Times, speaks volumes. Mr. Purdy is the highly respected head of The Times’s investigative reporting team. That Times top editors sent him to London — to report on the unfolding scandal at the BBC, which is under fire for killing an investigative report on sexual abuse by its celebrity TV host Jimmy Savile – says that they are indeed taking this seriously. (I want to make it clear that, as public editor, I had nothing whatsoever to do with that decision and that it was already made by the time I wrote my blog post, urging aggressive coverage.) Read more

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/times-must-aggressively-cover-mark-thompsons-role-in-bbcs-troubles/

October 23, 2012, 2:22 pm

Times Must Aggressively Cover Mark Thompson’s Role in BBC’s Troubles

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

October 24, 10:11 a.m. | Updated

One of the most difficult challenges for news organizations is reporting on what goes on inside their own corporate walls. Two global media companies, the BBC and The New York Times, are dealing with that challenge right now, as a complicated sexual abuse scandal – with a media scandal component — unfolds in Britain.

On Tuesday, the director general of the BBC, George Entwistle, was grilled by Parliament about his role in the events at the well-respected British media company.

A tough investigative committee is raking him over the coals about whether he knew what was going on when the BBC killed an investigative segment on its “Newsnight” program about a celebrity TV personality, Jimmy Savile, accused of sexually abusing hundreds of young girls. Mr. Savile died last year.

Killing the story has impugned the BBC’s integrity.

Mr. Entwistle, though, was not the director general of the BBC when all of this was going on last year. Read more

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On Friday, the BBC programme "Newsnight" was going to name names in the North Wales scandal, but the politician involved took out an injunction to stop them. The libel laws in the U.K. are so slanted in favour of the accused that it is almost impossible for accusers to blow the whistle. Unfortunately, Newsnight didn't have the cojones to name names and the farago continues. The names are now becoming common knowledge and it is only time before they are made public.

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On Friday, the BBC programme "Newsnight" was going to name names in the North Wales scandal, but the politician involved took out an injunction to stop them. The libel laws in the U.K. are so slanted in favour of the accused that it is almost impossible for accusers to blow the whistle. Unfortunately, Newsnight didn't have the cojones to name names and the farago continues. The names are now becoming common knowledge and it is only time before they are made public.

The cover-up began in 1996. The Tories knew they would be defeated in 1997. William Hague, who was Secretary of State for Wales, created an inquiry that made it impossible for the politicians to be named. Hague of course was active as a schoolboy in the Conservative Party. Was he abused by the Home Secretary of the time? It is well-known fact that people who are abused in childhood become abusers when they become adults. One of the problems for Tory politicians is that they were sexual abused by older boys when they were at their boarding schools. However, once in power they are in a position of covering up their crimes. I suspect that Hague selected Sir Ronald Waterhouse to lead the inquiry with great care. As a judge brought up in a boarding school he probably thought there was nothing wrong with sex with under-age boys. After all, that was the way he had been brought up.

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