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    Tune into BBC 2 tonight. From Jimmy Savile to Carl Beech, the BBC’s lamentable coverage of VIP sex abuse.

    By Joseph de Burca. The BBC has a lamentable record insofar as VIP sex abuse is concerned. It allowed Jimmy Savile prey on children for decades while countless officials knew what he was like. Johnny Lydon (aka ‘Johnny Rotten’ of the Sex Pistols) was shut down when he tried to expose Savile. If Lydon – a complete outsider –  knew he was a child molester, it is not hard to imagine how many people inside the BBC also were aware. Why the BBC really covered up for Savile is still a matter for conjecture. The most likely answers are deference to the British Establishment and the malign influence of British Intelligence, especially MI5 which is attached to the Home Office. Savile was a friend of the Royal Family, Margaret Thatcher and other VIPs. Savile was also part of the various overlapping VIP abuse rings which were being exploited by Britain’s intelligence services for various nefarious reasons. The BBC continues to turn a blind eye to evidence of VIP sex abuse. Grotesquely, it enjoys a reputation for quite the opposite, especially in light of its tepid interview of Prince Andrew late last year, saved only by Andrew hanging himself through his hubris. During that interview, Prince Andrew was not asked about his friendship with Lord Greville Janner and Alan Kerr, a teenage male prostitute that Janner had introduced to him at a performance of the Prince and the Pauper in the 1980s. See The Prince, the pauper and the paedophile peer: the dangerous questions the BBC failed to ask. BBC 2 is about to broadcast a documentary on Carl Beech (9.30 tonight). Beech is the conman once known only as ‘Nick’, who has somehow managed to convince the British public that VIP sex abuse was a figment of his imagination. People who have defended the reputation of former British Prime Minister Ted Heath have claimed that the conviction of Beech last year for his lies was a vindication of their position. This is illogical. Logically, if Heath is to be deemed innocent of child abuse simply because Beech included him as part of his litany of lies, Jimmy Savile must be innocent too as he was also included in Beech’s output. The case against Heath was made by the Wiltshire Police after a very thorough investigation. Its commendable report can be found online.See also Does ‘Nick’s’ conviction mean Jimmy Savile and Ted Heath are innocent? Yes, if you work for the British tabloid press. By Joseph de Búrca Last year,  Village  magazine examined Beech’s background and put forward the case that he is a lot more than a mere fantasist. On the contrary, he appears to have been either used or exploited or employed by a cabal which is determined to convince the British public that VIP sex abuse did not take place. There are very serious questions to be answered about the large sums of money which Beech acquired. The acid test will be to see if the BBC documentary asks questions about:  Beech’s motives (was he is a paedophile himself, and part of the cabal which wished to protect VIP paedophiles) the motives of the police officers who afforded Beech credibility (when all the evidence pointed against Beech having any);  the source of Beech’s income (which was sufficient to purchase a house in Scandinavia where he planned to flee) Meanwhile, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has turned out to be a monumental failure. One of the many reasons for its failure has been its point-blank refusal to interview a string of living witnesses who could have provided it with evidence of VIP sex abuse. Combined, it would appear that the cabal behind Beech, the BBC and the IICSA have persuaded – and will continue to persuade –  the British public that VIP sex abuse did not exist. The former Tory MP Harvey Proctor may feature on the BBC documentary. Beech alleged that Proctor had been involved in child murder. That was a lie. Proctor never murdered anyone. He did, however, exploit teenage rent boys. He was convicted for this in the 1980s. If he is interviewed by the BBC, will Proctor provide a full account of his dealings with teenage male prostitutes, or simply focus on his reaction to Beech’s false murder allegation? Will Proctor provide details about: The rent boys he abused? Will he be asked if he paid rent boys on other occasions? Will he name other MPs who exploited them? Will he explain what steps – if any – he took to ensure that the rent boys he exploited had not been groomed and abused in orphanages or care homes earlier in their lives? Will he be asked why he thought the rent boys let him and others abuse them if not on account of poverty? Will he name the restaurant where he took one particular now high profile teenager from Northern Ireland for a meal and describe the full nature and background to his contact with this individual? Will he be asked about his views on the exploitation of impoverished and disadvantaged teenage prostitutes by adults? A balanced documentary would address these isssues as well as the motive behind Beech’s campaign of lies. The purpose of the documentary should be to strip away the lies and refocus on VIP sex abuse. The main beneficiary of Beech’s campaign of lies was MI5 and MI6. The BBC and MI5 and MI6 have a long fraternal history. The BBC was used by the various branches of British Intelligence during World War II in its operational activities. While it is difficult – if not impossible – to take issue with the use of the BBC during World War II as a propaganda tool to help suppress the Nazis, it should be noted that the deep symbiosis between the two organisations remained in place during the Cold War and beyond. MI5 was permitted to vet all employees at the BBC until at least the 1980s. The

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    Traduced (updated version): John Hume was the victim of a campaign of character assassination perpetrated by the British Secret Service, MI6, and was placed under MI5 surveillance in Dublin with the assistance of the Gardaí.

    By David Burke. UPDATE: See also Just declassified UK memo on John Hume reveals interest of PM John Major’s top civil servants in “possible press stories regarding John Hume’s private life”. John Hume was the victim of a campaign of character assassination in the early 1970s perpetrated by British spies. It was spearheaded by an individual called Hugh Mooney, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, who once worked as a sub-editor for the Irish Times. Mooney belonged to the ‘Special Editorial Unit’ (SEU) of the Information Research Department (IRD). It was responsible for the production of black propaganda. Mooney’s boss was the IRD’s Special Operations Adviser, Hans Welser, a veteran of the WW2 Political Warfare Executive. The IRD was part of the Foreign Office and worked closely with the British Secret Service, MI6, which is also attached to the Foreign Office. The IRD operated from a building in London called Riverbank House. Although Mooney worked at Army HQ Northern Ireland under the cover title of ‘Information Adviser to the GOC’, official documents show that in 1972 he was reporting to the Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence (DCI) at Stormont – not to the GOC. This means that his activities were known about at a very high level. Prior to his attack on Hume, Mooney had worked in Bermuda where his colonial and racist side had come to the fore, a story for another day. Mooney and his associates sought to depict John Hume: as part of a communist conspiracy to turn Ireland into Europe’s Cuba; as a supporter of the IRA; as a fundraiser for the IRA; as a thief who stole charitable donations; as a man for whom a warrant had been issued for his arrest in 1972. There may have been other smears which have not yet been detected. Unintentionally, Her Majesty’s spies and their colleagues in the British Army also made his task of achieving peace extraordinarily difficult at key moments in his career, such as those of Bloody Sunday in January 1972 in his native Derry. Rogue elements inside MI5 also plotted with the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) to tear down the 1974 Power-Sharing Executive of which Hume was minister for commerce. This left Hume without a reliable source of income for a number of years and could have forced him to abandon politics for a job outside of it. Throughout his career he was placed under surveillance, something that was tantamount to treating him as a subversive. In the 1980s the Gardai in the Republic of Ireland helped MI5 bug some of his conversations. A house where his deputy leader, Seamus Mallon, stayed in 1983 was also bugged by the Gardai. In the 1990s MI5 opposed his discussions with Gerry Adams. Hume was a towering political figure of immense courage, foresight and integrity. Boris Johnson has paid him a lavish tribute, praising his “strong sense of social justice” and saying that without him “there would have been no Belfast or Good Friday Agreement”. Despite Johnson’s fine words, the Tories did their best to stand in Hume’s way during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. In fact it is not an exaggeration to say that they made his life hell. HEATH IN THE 1970s: Ted Heath served as Tory prime minister, 1970-1974. He sent his black propaganda operatives to Ireland to conduct dirty trick campaigns in the early 1970s. It was they who ran the smear campaign against Hume. Ironically, it is Heath’s legacy which is in now in tatters while Hume’s has never soared higher. Heath’s reputation was destroyed by a report published by the Wiltshire Police in 2017 about his abuse of boys, one as young as 14. THATCHER IN THE 1980s: Margaret Thatcher, Tory PM, 1979-90, let MI5 (attached to the Home Office) spy on Hume in gross violation of his human rights. Some of this surveillance was carried out in the Burlington Hotel in the Republic of Ireland with the assistance of the Republic’s special branch. The first steps of the peace process were taken in the middle of Thatcher’s premiership in 1986 when a back channel was opened between Gerry Adams and Charles Haughey via Fr. Alex Reid. Haughey ‘s Northern Ireland adviser Martin Mansergh was a pivotal figure in the process. Thatcher’s battery of spies do not appear to have had any inkling of what was afoot. Had Thatcher discovered this development, it is – to put it mildly – likely she would have denounced it. The Haughey-Adams process was so secret that even John Hume did not know about it when he entered the process later and expressed disbelief when he finally discovered this fact. MAJOR IN THE 1990s: Thatcher’s successor at 10 Downing Street, John Major, PM 1990-97, was not supportive of the next phase of the process which became known as ‘Hume-Adams’. In 1993 and 1994 key elements of the press in the Republic denounced Hume’s dialogue with Adams, in particular Conor Cruise O’Brien who wrote for Ireland’s Sunday Independent. O’Brien was close to a number of dubious intelligence figures such as Dame Daphne Park, a self-confessed MI6 dirty tricks expert and David Astor, one of MI6’s most important assets in the media. O’Brien knew them through the British-Irish Association (BIA) which Astor had helped set up in the 1970s, and which Park co-chaired in the 1980s. It was Astor who appointed O’Brien as editor of The Observer. Haughey considered the BIA a British Intelligence front and forbade Fianna Fail figures (such as Brian Lenihan) from attending it. How much O’Brien was influenced by his friends in the British Establishment is an imponderable. Major, who had an exceptionally close relationship with his spymasters, was not supportive of what Hume, Adams and Dublin were trying to achieve either. Eventually, Bill Clinton had to intervene to twist Major’s arm and move the process forward. Still, MI5 tried to derail it. Haughey’s successor as taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, 1992-94, became so concerned about the hostility of MI5 that he told Major

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    The dark side of the media

    The British media is aghast at revelations that a man called David Floyd was a Soviet spy. Floyd worked for the Foreign Office in the 1950s and was assigned to a string of Eastern European embassies. He confessed his treachery shortly after the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald McClean to Moscow. Rather than admit to the Americans that yet another British official was a traitor, the British establishment hushed Floyd’s treachery up and MI5 set about finding a job for him. Malcom Muggeridge, the Deputy Editor of the Daily Telegraph, obliged – by providing a post for him at his paper. Muggeridge was an ex-MI6 officer, as was his editor, Sir Colin Coote. Floyd spent three decades at The Daily Telegraph where he reported on communist affairs and became known as ‘Pink’ Floyd. It is likely that having repented, he was obliged to do the bidding of MI5 (home Office) and MI6 (Foreign Office) to keep his post at the Telegraph. As such he joined the ranks of a legion of British journalists and broadcasters who have secretly worked for the various branches of British intelligence. The World is your lobster Lobster, a radical underground British publication, printed a special edition entitled ‘A Who’s Who of the British Secret State’ in the late 1980s pinpointing hundreds of British spies, a huge number of whom had worked at the Dublin Embassy and the Northern Ireland Office. Lobster’s research was based on published materials and can only have brushed against the tip of the intelligence-media iceberg. To its credit, it named about ten Daily Telegraph hacks including David Floyd. Lobster reported that Floyd had disseminated propaganda prepared by the Information Research Department (IRD), which was attached to the Foreign Office, during his time as a specialist on Soviet affairs at the Telegraph and also at the Daily Mail, a fact that the mainstream British media is now ignoring. Overall, the Lobster special edition gave an insight into the disturbing depth of the media iceberg. In particular, it listed more than 30 individuals with strong connections to the British intelligence community who had worked for the BBC. The corruption of the BBC as an independent body stretched from head to toe. One of MI6’s most senior officers, Dame Daphne Park, (the ‘Dragon Lady’) sat on the BBC’s Board of Governors. While in MI6 she had acted as an adviser and ‘sounding board’ to the Chief of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, on Irish affairs. Her father came from Belfast. At a lower level, MI5 had a team based in room 105 at the BBC’s HQ in London. They vetted journalists seeking entry to the corporation and promotion for those already employed by it. They also monitored the activities of broadcasters and producers. Don’t expect MI5 to divulge the content of the files they accumulated on the likes of Jimmy Savile, Russell Harty or the other paedophiles at the Beeb to the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sex Abuse in London or to anyone else. Did all of this result in the BBC serving as an instrument of the intelligence community? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is an emphatic ‘yes’. The BBC’s now acknowledged role in assisting the CIA and MI6 topple the government of Iran in 1953 has become a severe embarrassment to it. The reverberations of that operation are still being felt in Iran today where no one trusts anyone from the BBC. This fact has been ignored by the British media in its ongoing coverage of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, formerly of the BBC World Service trust who is currently serving a term of imprisonment for allegedly attempting to undermine the present Iranian administration. The BBC’s toxic relationship with MI6 has done a lot more than bring it into disrepute. In 1983 Amnesty International declared that the “government-instigated killings in Indonesia … rank among the most massive violations of Human Rights since the Second World War. A conservative estimate of the number of people killed in Indonesia is 500,000”. The BBC helped create an atmosphere conducive to the slaughter. The British Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland from 1966 to 1970 was Andrew Gilchrist. His last post before Dublin was as Ambassador to Indonesia. At the time the British Government of Harold McMillan was involved in a conspiracy to manipulate events in Indonesia. In 1965 Gilchrist informed the Foreign Office that a “little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change”. Gilchrist proceeded to work hand in glove with the IRD. Together they planted stories in the media claiming that communists were planning to slaughter the citizens of Jakarta. There was no truth in the allegation which was beamed into Indonesia by the BBC and helped provide justication for the massacre that followed. Commenting on Gilchrist’s propaganda success via the BBC, Norman Reddaway of the IRD commented: “I wondered whether this was the first time in history that an Ambassador had been able to address the people of his country of work almost at will and virtually instantaneously”. Network television MI5 and MI6 were like two giant octopi with tentacles which reached into every pore of the media. Frank Steele, the former head of MI6’s Belfast Station, became the Chairman of network television after his ‘retirement’ from MI6. Steele was a real charmer. He once told Peter Taylor of the BBC that some good had come of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972. The militant Loyalists, were “cock-a-hoop”, that the “Brits” had finally got “tough”, he opined; also that “it did us quite a lot of good with the more bloody-minded of the Protestant community. The good thing that came out of it was that it enabled Direct Rule to be brought in”. Irish Times The tentacles reached over to Ireland where Major Thomas McDowell, a former officer in the British Army, and Chief executive and Chairman of the Irish Times during much of the troubles was an ex-MI5 officer. Declassified UK files reveal that the Major, born in Belfast in 1923, dubbed his

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