Wednesday 17 June 2015

It's not what you know, it's who, or could it be both?

It's not what you know, it's who...

We all know the McCanns lie, there are examples of their deceit everywhere. One of the first, and possibly most powerful set of lies they told, were the porkies Kate told to her old friend Jill Renwick.


Jill Renwick is a long standing friend of Kate McCanns, both Kate and Gerry worked with Jill at Glasgow hospital in the 90's. Jill was one of the friends Kate phoned during the early hours of the 4th May 2007, and possibly the most influential. It was through Jill that the lie about an "abductor" gaining entry to apartment 5a having smashed the shutters, manifested across the nation within hours of the parents reporting Madeleine missing. This fabricated story was remember, concocted by Kate and Gerry who sat indoors, whilst scores of volunteers searched throughout the night for a missing 3 year old girl they had never met. 

In an article for the Guardian by Esther Addley, on June 2nd 2007, Jill Renwick discusses her conversation with Kate:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jun/02/ukcrime.comment


"She just said, 'Help me, please help me'. She said, 'We've been searching all night until 4.30am, and then everybody left us'. At that stage there was only one police officer at the door. They didn't know what to do. So I phoned GMTV."

First line, and it's a lie, Kate did NOT physically search, and Gerry managed an hour, but that's by the by. Good old Jill phoned GMTV, surely GMTV would check that the information Jill gave them was correct, precise, and accurate? Not a hope, what they did was to fail Madeleine, whilst at the same time, helping the McCanns plant the abduction seed. Jill provided more lies to 6.1 million UK viewers:

"They were just watching the hotel room and going back every half-hour."

"Poor Kate and Gerry don't know where to turn. She's obviously been taken as she couldn't have gone out on her own and the shutters had been forced open. The shutters had been broken open and they've gone into the room and taken her."

BANG! In one fell swoop we have 6.1 million people being told that A, there was opportunity for an abduction, and B, there had been a forced entry. Total and utter nonsense, we now know, as did the McCanns, that there was NO forced entry, but there it was, out in the public arena. 

Support began to gather pace. Think about it, of those 6.1 million viewers, how many of them went into work that week, spoke to friends and told them; 

"hey did you hear on the news today? An intruder broke into an apartment in Portugal and snatched a little girl" 

The lie grew legs and multiplied, the press reported it as fact, and before the week was out the Mcanns had a nation behind them, in fact they had so much support based upon lies that when the Official Find Madeleine website was set up on the 10th May 2007 it received 75 million hits in the first 48 hours, and all due to one phone call. Pretty impressive stuff eh, but that's the way the media work. Being the first with the stories is more important than being the first with the facts. As we know facts are something that the Official Find Madeleine website is seriously lacking in.

So the McCanns owe their friend Jill a huge debt of thanks, but her influence on this case didn't stop there, far from it.

The high level of support might not be as much of a mystery as people think. Renwick, possibly with perfectly good intentions, and without knowing she was being used as a pawn in the McCann's scheme, rallied more support, in the form of Gordon Brown. Jill lived on the same street as Gordon's brother, John Brown. The following quote could explain just how the future Prime Minister came to be so involved:

"I stopped him in the street the day afterwards and said, 'These are my friends. Do you think you could speak to Gordon about it?' And he said of course."
As we know Gordon Brown took up the post of Prime Minister at the end of June 2007, in September that year his head of media monitoring, Clarence Eden Mitchell, resigned from his reported £75,000 a year cabinet office job to work as PR consultant for the McCanns. A bold move indeed if he truly believed that Madeleine could be found any day. Much has been said about the influence Gordon Brown had upon the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine Mccann. Certainly the political intervention in this case was something the like of which had never been seen before. 

In her diary, Kate McCann wrote:

"WEDNESDAY, MAY 23: Gordon Brown (then Chancellor and PM in waiting) called and spoke with Gerry -very kind and giving encouragement.
Feeling a bit emotional afterwards."

On the 27th May 2007, and with the original source being the Guardian, Brendan de Beer wrote:

"Gordon Brown has personally intervened in the search for missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann after her parents became frustrated by the lack of progress in the police investigation.
After a series of telephone conversations with Madeleine's father, Gerry McCann, in recent days, the Chancellor requested assistance from the Foreign Office and the Home Office. He asked that pressure be brought to bear on the Portuguese authorities to allow more information about the inquiry to be made public.

Gerry and his wife, Kate, have been desperate for a description of a man seen carrying what appears to have been a child on 3 May to be made public, but Portuguese police refused for three weeks because of the country's laws, which forbid the details of an investigation being released.
The Observer understands that Brown gave the McCanns an assurance he would do 'anything he can' to help. The British embassy duly applied pressure on the Portuguese authorities to find more flexibility in their secrecy laws. British ambassador John Buck visited the Algarve last Thursday. A day later Portuguese police made a U-turn and issued a detailed description of the man, said to be white, 35 to 40, 5ft 10in and of medium build, with hair longer around the neck, wearing a dark jacket, light beige trousers and dark shoes.

Asked whether Brown had influenced the decision, Clarence Mitchell, a Foreign Office spokesman for the McCann family in the Algarve, said: 'Draw your own conclusions.' He said in a statement: 'I can confirm that telephone conversations have taken place between Gerry McCann and Chancellor Gordon Brown. During them, Mr Brown offered both Gerry and Kate his full support in their efforts to find Madeleine, although details of the conversations will remain private.''

http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/press/1may7/GUARDIAN_27_05_07.htm

This efit was of course the man Jane Tanner saw, that sighting eventually amounted to nothing. I find it very strange the McCanns didn't push the Smith sighting with such vigour, but then from all of Tanner's many descriptions, none looked like Gerry.

We're not done, Renwick's sister called a friend she had in CID, and another contact was made, the former Defence Secretary, Des Browne. 

Can you see how this charade snowballed?

Two lies, made by Kate McCann, convinced a nation of their innocence within the space of three media frenzied days, and these bastards had a nerve to sue others! 


So whilst we're all considering theories as to why the McCanns have got away with so much, and the pros bleat like sheep claiming "The McCanns were just an ordinary couple like any other who didn't have friends in high places", let's not forget that they only needed one friend, Jill Renwick. As the old saying goes, it's not what you know, it's who............



Or could it be both?
Let's rewind, to a time before Madeleine was taken. a time when Gerry McCann was already linking himself to some pretty high profile figures, figures that would rush to his side like a fly to the proverbial.


Gerry McCann was a member of a sub committee as a medical advisor for an 'independent' investigative organisation known as COMARE, or to give it it's full descriptive title, Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment.

The committee's role is described on their website as this:

COMARE is a Department of Health expert committee, but it provides independent advice to all government departments and agencies.

With the terms of reference being:

To assess and advise government and the devolved authorities on the health effects of natural and man-made radiation and to assess the adequacy of the available data and the need for further research.

Basically the committee, which was made up of medical experts and scientists, were asked by the Labour Government, to investigate and advise as to the dangers and risks of radiation given off by power stations, pylons, and medical equipment such as CAT scanners.

Now let's have a look at some of the names surrounding the issues COMARE were investigating, and how they are linked to Kate and Gerry, starting with..........well I'll be jiggered by Jupiter, it's another one of Mrs Brown's boys:

Andrew Brown:

Andrew, the younger brother of former Prime Minister Gordon brown, was given the role of head of media relations with EDF Energy in 2004.
EDF were a company who would have been more than hopeful of a favourable report from COMARE. The reason for this being that EDF were wanting to build a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Those plans are now going ahead having been given the green light just last month. We're not talking pocket change either, with a reported cost of £16 - £25 billion it is clear to see that such a project will not only generate a huge amount of power, but also a huge amount of cash to the fat cats at the top.


Gordon Brown:

The former PM, who spoke over the phone to Gerry McCann after Madeleine's disappearance. Brown was pushing for the reintroduction of nuclear power plant projects In 2008 he called for oil-rich states to invest heavily in the development of nuclear power in the UK. In March 2008, he made the announcement that not only would the rebuilding take place on the 23 existing reactors, but that it would extend to the development of more brand new sites. If it's somewhere between 16 and 25 billion for one site, imagine the amount needed for over 23! That's a lot of investment, and for that sort of money the potential returns must have been astronomical.

More on Gordon Brown and the McCann case can be read here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1489950171278179&set=gm.720078951421515&type=3

JK Rowling, another financial backer of the McCanns in the early days, although in fairness not any more, said of Gordon Brown:


“I know him as affable, funny and gregarious, a great listener, a kind and loyal friend.”

Aww, that's nice..............moving on.

Tony Blair:

In 2006 Tony Blair, having worked behind the scenes on developments for some time, officially showed his hand. He announced that the future of UK power lay with nuclear energy, and pre-empted what Gordon Brown would later follow up, with the introduction of over 23 new power stations.

Blair was also responsible for giving a peerage to Lord Timothy Bell, of Bell Pottinger.

Bell Pottinger:

Bell Pottinger represented the McCanns, as well as Mark Warner Holidays (The Ocean Club in PDL being one of Warner's complexes). Lord Bell admitted to taking a £500,00 sweetener to keep the McCanns on the front pages of our daily papers for a year."The McCanns paid me £500,000 in fees to keep them on the front page of every single newspaper for a year, which we did"

A simple google search reveals the PR specialists have enjoyed a long professional relationship with the mighty Carter Ruck, who acted on many occasions for the McCanns. Most recently when they successfully sued the Sunday Times on behalf of the couple on a no win no fee basis. This was after a complaint by the McCanns that the newspaper had claimed Kate and Gerry had hidden the efit that many claim is Gerry himself, for a period of 5 years. It was in fact a year, but that matters not, Carter Ruck won the case, and now the suppression of evidence story appears as though the McCanns did nothing wrong.

The threat of Carter Ruck circling like predators stalking their prey, has every newspaper in the land afraid to print anything that paints the McCanns in a bad light. Newspapers must be sold however, and the McCann case sells, what we find ourselves left with is a set of editors too weak, and without moral substance who decide to print any old rubbish, if that means framing others or printing ludicrous stories, as long as it sells tomorrow's fish and chip wrappings then so be it.

Back to Bell Pottinger.

In November / December 2005, Private Eye revealed that Bell Pottinger was receiving £8,000 a month to give strategic advice to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The Eye asked:

"Why is the Bell Pottinger PR firm passing on potted biographies of MPs focusing on their supposed attitude to nuclear power to the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA)? The NDA's job, after all, is to clean up the mess left by the old atomic generation, not to promote new nuclear power stations."

Using the Freedom of Information Act, NuclearSpin obtained a copy of Bell Pottinger's pitch to the NDA. It underlined the extent of the companies involvement with the nuclear industry. It states that Bell Pottinger's consultants "have worked in a variety of capacities with the nuclear industry. These include:

-Providing strategic advice and support for the Chairman and Chief Executive of BNFL including crisis management
-Advising BNFL on corporate and financial communications
-Developing day-to-day public affairs programmes for BNFL and the BNIF
-Working with Parliamentarians with interests in the nuclear industry
-Monitoring and tracking nuclear issues ranging from Parliamentary committees to public enquiries
-Directly managing the in-house communications for the UKAEA and AEA -Technology through privatisation
-Briefing and rehearsing industry executives appearing before Select -Committees."
-The NDA's briefing paper for potential PR consultants boasted that the "NDA is not unique in being an organisation committed to open and transparent engagement with stakeholders, but it may well be the first organisation that has such objectives built in to its statutory requirements". -Nevertheless, Bell Pottinger's successful pitch includes:
"Advising on the handling of particular announcements identifying the issues and bear traps in advance, advising on messaging, media strategy and tactics, questions and answers"
"Advising on an appropriate contact programme ie who are the journalists that should be courted, what are their issues, how best to handle them"
"Providing off the record information".


Which brings me nicely onto British Nuclear Fuels Limited.

Edward Smethurst:

Much is written about Smethurst on the internet, some of it extremely sinister, but let's start with a little background information.



Edward Smethurst is a 33rd degree mason  At the age of 23 Smethurst, already a successful property developer, joined the in house legal team at BNFL, he would go on to serve the state owned nuclear company for 7 years, after which in 2000, he joined the board of directors for a conservatory company, Ultraframe. Ultraframe was bought for a sum of £58 million in 2006, by Brian Kennedy, and was the only member of a 13 man board that Kennedy kept on. Smethurst later went on to become a director of the Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd fund, and became legal advisor to the McCanns.


Brian Kennedy:

Not to be confused with Kate McCann's uncle of the same name, this Brian Kennedy is a multi millionaire who officially became involved in the case on the 21st september 2007 when he made the following statement: 

"In light of the quite literally incredible accusations against Gerry and Kate McCann, which are clearly exacerbating their emotional torture, I felt compelled to offer, along with other like-minded businessmen, financial support and the full logistical support of the Latium team.

"That support is principally our in-house lawyer Ed Smethurst and (official spokesman) Clarence Mitchell.

"This will relieve the McCanns of the daily pressure of co-ordinating the legal teams that will expedite the clearing of Gerry and Kate's names, allowing all parties to refocus on finding Madeleine."

Prior to this help, legal costs to protect the McCanns had been met by donations from the public to the McCann's fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd. After questions as to why the fund was being used for the McCanns legal and PR expenses, the arrival of Kennedy and his wallet couldn't have come at a better time. 

Indeed it was Kennedy and Smethurst who arranged a meeting with Robert Murat, the man it appeared was being framed by a number of the tapas 9 in the early days of the investigation. According to Goncalo Amaral, Jane Tanner identified Murat as the man she saw carrying a small child on the street in the immediate vicinity of 5a at 9:20pm on the night Madeleine was reported missing:

"Jane Tanner was placed inside a police surveillance van (with windows that allow you to look outside, from the van, without being seen), the van was parked in a strategic position, near apartment 5A, and PJ investigators took Murat with them, making exactly the same walk the man carrying a child had made, according to Jane Tanner.Jane Tanner looked at Murat walking and told police she was sure he was the same man, she recognised the way he walked, with no doubt."

http://frommybigdesk.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/maddie-truth-of-lie.html

Tanner later denied this,and reports emerged that Murat had filed papers against JT for calumnious denunciation.

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2010/02/robert-murat-criminal-complaint-against.html

But back to the meeting between Kennedy, Smethurst, Robert Murat and Murat's lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, below part of a report taken from the McCannfiles:

Excerpt:

Brian Kennedy, the home improvements tycoon backing the McCanns, admitted yesterday that he flew to Portugal last November and spent an evening with Robert Murat, apart from the McCanns the only other official suspect. A source close to Kennedy said he was "gathering information".

Kennedy's lawyer, Ed Smethurst, approached Murat through a mutual friend and said that Kennedy wanted to offer him a job.

But the job offer never transpired. Kennedy spent the evening with Murat and his lawyers at his aunt's house in Praia da Luz, discussing Madeleine's disappearance.

He left with a "flea in his ear" after being confronted over reports that Metodo 3, the McCanns' private investigators, had suspicions about Murat.

The full details of what was discussed that night have never been revealed, but it is reported that a deal was reached that stopped Murat from suing the McCanns and members of the tapas 7 for their part in framing him. 

Kennedy's cash also paid for private investigation team Metodo 3, a rag tag and bobtail team who regularly lied about knowing who had taken Madeleine, and that they were close to solving the case. Their false claims were printed in all major media outlets, and, at a point when Kate and Gerry had been named arguido by the PJ, went a long way to diverting attention from the suspected couple, convincing the public that Portugal had it wrong, and the McCanns were innocent.

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id76.html

In 2013 the owner of the agency and three other detectives were arrested for  activities, including money laundering and illegally spying on politicians.

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2013/02/mccanns-former-detectives-metodo-3.html

Reports were now surfacing that Metodo 3 were using money from the fund to pay witnesses to change their story and even fabricate stories designed to swerve ideas of the McCanns involvement in the disappearance of Madeleine, cue Clarence:

Clarence Mitchell:

"It is a ridiculous suggestion to claim Metodo 3 are paying witnesses to change their story"

Clarence acted on behalf of the McCanns as a PR spokesman. He spun the truth for his employees, "fed the media stories" and openly claimed to manipulate the press into changing the McCanns words, when he announced the following at a self promotional gig at coventry university on the 18th October 2007:

"I would pull journalists to one side and say, look, if you want further co operation, this is what we said, and this is what we meant"

Mitchell's involvement has without doubt deflected blame away from the McCanns with a series of leaked stories, and misinformation.

Was it so ridiculous, as Mitchell claimed, that stories were arising about Metodo 3?

In an interview, Portuguese lawyer, Dr Marcos Aragão Correia claimed that:

"the Spanish detectives (Metodo 3) asked me to arrange for evidence against Gonçalo Amaral".

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2008/12/spanish-detectives-asked-me-to-arrange.html

Also here, claims that Metodo 3 were trying to frame Goncalo Amaral:

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/02/detectives-hired-by-mccanns-want-to.html

Dr Marcos Aragão Correia:

As we've seen Correia and Amaral don't have what you'd call a glittering friendship, In Correia we have a man on a mission, and the people paying for his services Metodo 3 were employed through Brian Kennedy's wallet, by the McCanns. Correia himself confirms he was contracted to Metodo 3 in the following statement:

"The secrecy of the contract which bounds me to Método 3 stops me from revealing details regarding the private investigation"

As I said earlier, Metodo 3 had claimed throughout their time working for the McCanns that they knew where Madeleine was, and that the case would be solved soon. Now with Marcos Correia on board, a story that reflected the McCann's early version came to light. A story that was totally unfounded, but filled the front pages with the subliminal message that the McCanns were, despite being arguidos, innocent.

What Correia claimed was that some "underworld contacts" had told him that Madeleine had been kidnapped by paedophiles, murdered, and her body disposed of in a reservoir. What followed was an publicised investigation, showing divers entering the reservoir and discovering bones. The papers lapped it up, Kate and Gerry gained more support, and very little followed. Especially as the bones weren't even human.  


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-534130/Bag-small-bones-reservoir-lawyer-claims-Madeleine-McCanns-body-dumped.html
Ok, I'm nearly there smile emoticon if you're still awake I thank you for staying with me and I will buy you all a jar of coffee in this life or the next.

So now we've got the names linked to the case out of the way, let's get back to COMARE.

In 2011 COMARE announced that, contrary to a German report of studies between 2002 and 2007, nuclear power didn't pose any cancer threat to children.

The German report had found a cluster of leukaemia cases occurring near the Krummel nuclear power plant. This wasn't breaking news from COMARE, but more reaffirmation of reports from a time when Gerry McCann was a medical advisor on the sub committee.

Would it be fair to assume Gerry played a major role in the report?

If not, it is obvious that he was moving within circles of very influential people, and that billions of pounds were at stake.

Could that be the reason a sudden influx of a dream team of powerful figures bent over backwards for the McCanns?

Goncalo Amaral was asked the following question during an interview for Porto Canal on March 14th 2014:

Q:" Were you removed from your post and sidelined until you left the Judiciary Police because you were too close to finding the truth?"

A: “No, no. I left the investigation, I was removed from the investigation because the case had to be dominated politically. Just that. Because I opposed the archiving. I told directors in the Police directly that I did not agree with the archiving. They suggested to me, they told me that there are processes, there are investigations that do not end, that have no result. And that I shouldn’t do a lot. That I should consider the case had ended. I always opposed that. That is why I left the investigation, not because I was close to anything. I don’t see my leaving as being the result of someone fearing anything. The question was that the case is political. Only politics. It’s politics that is driving this matter. When politics enters the investigations, when investigations are politically correct, we get nowhere.”

Whatever your thoughts on this, it's an interesting topic, and one that the more is looked into seems to throw up more and more links. I'm not saying it's the catalyst of a cover up, but it certainly makes you wonder.