Am I the only person surprised at the fact that when top secret files concerning Al Queda and Iraq are accidentally left on the London tube they are found by an ordinary member of the public and then handed over…to the BBC? Given the BBC’s opposition to the war in Iraq and its inability to understand that Al Queda is a terrorist group, I find it odd that such an organisation is handed such sensitive files. Would the London police not have been the obvious destination? I note that BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, immediately starts leaking the content, as we would expect. There is only one thing in the world worse than losing top secret security file and that is the BBC finding them!
TERROR FILES AT THE BBC.
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Or was it sitting in the internal postal system at the BBC? Has this Gardner said to whom it was handed at the BBC? Was it to a security guard at the front door or if not, then to whom? I think we should be told.
TPO
Ah , THE AndyC !
I dip into this website when I can.
This secret document story is very puzzling and the timing quite remarkable. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
More interesting,no Joel,ColonChase,Headless etc.
Millie Tant: Gardner had said he knew nothing about the person who handed it in.
BUT, the Police should demand to know. Why did this person sit on the files for 24 hours or more? Did anyone else read it? Did they make a copy?
Gardner obviously got the file from someone, who was that? who did they get it off?
Perhaps they could get that excellent reporter Michael Prick off Newsnight to investigate? Oh hang on he’s still chasing Caroline Spelman’s nanny around!
Looks like it’s up to Channel 4 to do the dirt digging on the BBC?
Why might anyone hand this to the BBC?
They are consistently the most trusted journalists in opinion polls. Way ahead of the press, especially the red tops.
But surely everyone hates them? Everyone here does…
Everyone here inhabits a fetid fantasy land, full of morbid, often contradictory obsessions. Most people don’t.
It’s the done thing to take scoops to the tabloids. Isn’t it?
You’d have to be dim to take it to a tab. They pay for nasty personal scandals. Real stories don’t sell. Plus they have a bit of a reputation for turning people over to the authorities.
And what’s so wrong with giving it to the police?
Who knows? The temptation to share other people’s secrets is strong.
OK. Why the train to Surrey?
Why not? Are we saying that civil servants never travel to Surrey?
Apparently we are. Anyway, the delay….?
Not a big delay to consider how to report such a hot potato. Lawyers will have been crawling all over it; the most senior editors cancelling everything else to argue approach, ethics, how and when to hand it over.
But six o’clock? Just before the big vote.
Also the time of the main early evening bulletin. Editors love a big scoop. And frankly the JIC acting like Mr Bean is a bit of an improvement on the endless will-he/won’t he of the 42-day debate.
Nooooooooo! This is done to please Gordon!
Fat lot of good it did him. He was still accused of doing mucky deals with the Ulster gay-baiters. And he got another lost data scandal on his watch. Anyway the BBC don’t do that stuff. Only idiots think that.
Colinchase: or are you Gordon Broon in disguise?
Please explain the missing 28 hours? The files were not handed to the BBC for over 1 day?
Why didn’t the person simply hand them to the Police?
If you’re going to come on here and defend the lies of the BBC then at least try to fill in the holes.
Why release the report at just before 6PM? There was already one BIG story going on, that being the vote in the commons which if McBean lost would almost certainly have been the end of him and probably a general election to follow.
Releasing this story pushed the 42 day vote down to story number 2 for most of the evening. This took a lot of heat off McBean. It could have been held back until say the 10pm news or even released overnight.
I’m also suspicious that for all the waffle spouted by Gardner at the end of the day these files appeared to contian nothing we didn’t already know. Big deal.
If you take the view that it’s cock up not conspiracy then you still need to explain who had these files for 28 hours and what did they do with them? The BBC don’t seem to be interested in that, yet that is as much of a security issue as the files being lost in the first place. Unless of course the BBC does know who it is.
Again any such documents should have been nanded in to the Police and they were not.
Martin:
28 hours? Why?
Why not?
Whatever the ultimate news value of the documents, the truth is that stuff of this sensitivity rarely fetches up in a newsroom. The BBC, like any broadcaster, would be going backwards and forwards over the ramifications of publication, taking legal advice on the responsibilities of its staff and the consequences for them and for the source (if he/she was known to the BBC). There’s also the danger that it’s forged or doctored. Checking the veracity of a file like this would not be easy.
Anyway, there’s no pressure to publish; the usual impetus is the fear that someone else will get the story. No chance of that here, unless the hapless JIC chap was shedding his homework all over Network South East. Bit unlikely, that.
Colin: You say why not? Just how long would it take to dial 999 and explain what you’ve found and can someone come and get it?
The BBC claim they never got it until PM the folling day Colin. So who had it for 28 hours or so beforehand? Did the person who found it try to get hold of Gardner directly? Is it a BBC person? Or is it just a member of the public.
Fact is the BBC should know who handed it in because someone must have collected it or dropped it off.
“unless the hapless JIC chap was shedding his homework all over Network South East. Bit unlikely, that.”
Yes not like learner driver’s details getting lost in Iowa.
This story has officially “died” on the BBC now. It served its purpose for 24 hours.
Think about it, it was a front line story for less time than the Caroline Spellman non story.
ColinChase:
Why might anyone hand this to the BBC?
They are consistently the most trusted journalists in opinion polls. Way ahead of the press, especially the red tops.
Oh please. That’s like being the most trusted in a poll of rapists.
As a matter of fact, opinion polls consistently put journalists near the bottom of those society finds admirable.
About one notch up from child-molesters.
ColinChase
As for polls, try taking a statistics course sometime,and learn why many polls and surveys, particularly those
with biased samples, loaded questions, false causality and data manipulation are not taken seriously by statisticians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics
Many of the polls you are talking about are not worth a cup of cold piss.
Why didn’t the BBC just hand it to their mates in the Taleban and not let on?
Why go public, thus making the Brown’s government look bad?
The BBC could have kept it quiet, despite it being seen by the highest echelons of management, amazingly they didnt drop a line to their mates in the AL-Quaeda?
These questions must be answered or I will go on believing it’s a conspiracy. Even if I do get a reasonable answer I’ll still keep believing.
joel: Yes the BBC could have handed it over to the Police and kept quiet and I suspect on another occasion they would have done.
However, although this story was embarassing for McBean (look at how the BBC has now killed it stone dead by the way) it was used to help McBean.
Again if he’d lost the vote the other night, there would have been intense media pressure (not from the BBC of course) for his to walk the plank.
Releasing this story as they did (just before 6pm) meant the BBC in particular could focus on it whilst the vote went ahead in the Commons. If McBean was victorious, the BBC would simply kill it (note despite the importance of it, the BBC have spent less time investigating than they did the Caroline Spelman story) and if he lost the vote the BBC would have simply lead with this story to help take pressure off McBean to resign.
Frank Gardner had the file very early on in the afternoon. Why did he take so long to release the story?
Perhaps he thought they were fake? Well one telephone call would have sorted that out.
This whole thing smells and the fact the BBC are involved and the story was released just before the vote (the top story of the day) makes he highly suspicious of the motes of the BBC.
Joel | Homepage | 14.06.08 – 11:05 am |
How do you know that those intrepid BBC reporters who do hang out with the Taleban and Al Qaeda-connected thugs haven’t told them a little something?
The BBC reported on these files because they shed a negative light on US progress in Iraq. There’s no reason to keep it quiet. Even having done so, they can still inform any terrorist buddies of the contents. In fact, they had at least 24 hours to contact any of their friends to get the go ahead to release the report.
I’m mostly kidding, of course, but just because the BBC reported on the files doesn’t mean they don’t still hope that Al Qaeda and the Taleban hand the US a major defeat.
Unbelievably, another UK top secret file has been left on a train; this one has apparently been handed to the liberal ‘Independent on Sunday’ newspaper, which has an article on the contents of the file.