The Register:Guardian pulls ricin terror debunk from website

[muriel_volestrangler]

Here's a story that, on the face of it, makes me disappointed in The Guardian. Apologies if the pulling of the debunking story was noted here on DU, and I didn't notice it. I remember seeing the original Guardian story (indeed, it was linked to from DU here), but it seems The Guardian pulled it shortly afterwards. It's still available in full at lots of places on the Internet.

From The Register:

A Guardian story on "The ricin ring that never was" has been pulled from the newspaper's website, for what are said to be 'legal reasons'. The story, by Duncan Campbell (the investigative writer, not the Guardian journalist of the same name), analysed the collapse of the UK's 'ricin conspiracy' trial, and reported Porton Down evidence that had made it clear that claims of mass poisoning attacks had no basis.
...
Experiments undertaken by Porton Down had made this clear at the trial (subtext: no ricin terror campaign), but these tests did no more than support the generally known facts about ricin. The Guardian has not yet responded to a Register request for an explanation for the story's removal, but The Insider reports that it was told the article was "removed from the archive for legal reasons", and that a further request for clarification received the response: "The article was not removed because of any inaccuracy. It was to do with a PII certicate protecting the identity of Porton Down experts who appeared as witnesses in the trial."

Campbell's piece had named a Porton scientist who had given evidence, but the names of Porton Down scientists are not a state secret. Or they weren't, anyway. A Public Interest Immunity Certificate is a relatively seldom-used legal mechanism for placing restrictions on evidence. According to the Crown Prosecution Service "the government now considers that where government documents or information are material to legal proceedings, PII will only arise if disclosure could cause real damage to a genuine public interest."

If a PII did constitute the "legal reasons" it's difficult to see where the public interest in the action lies. The removal of the article does however mean that one of the very few correctives to widespread 'UK 911 poison terror scare' hysteria no longer exists in the mainstream press. Au contraire; the weekend after the end of the trial and the publication of the evidence, the Sunday Telegraph reported that we were/are faced with "chaos and panic in London's public transport system", and our security forces narrowly averted "our September 11, our Madrid. There is no doubt about it, if this had come off this would have been one of al-Qa'eda's biggest strikes", a "senior officer at Scotland Yard" told the paper.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/27/guardian_pulls_ricin_piece/

Those Guardian excuses sounds pretty lame to me.

[evermind]

1. Well, if it's pulled because of a PII certificate, they don't have much

choice about it.

(on edit: I don't know why I'm defending the Guardian here - their coverage of Iraq in the early days of the war was put to shame by the Independent, and they're not exactly known for being unhelpful to Blair despite their obvious need to keep up their lefty image.. Sigh.)

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. But as the article says, PII certificates control the evidence

at trials. To use it to pull a story already published (and copied all over the world), and to claim its for 'the public interest' sounds like bollocks to me.

[evermind]

6. Yeah, but then it's government bollocks not Guardian bollocks

the issuing of a PII cert might well be bollocky - we've seen that before - but you'd still have to comply no matter how testicular you think it might be, right?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. As far as I can tell, a PII certificate only applies to court evidence

it's not a "you can't publish this" tool, it's a "you can't force us to tell you this" tool for the government to overrule the courts when they request documents for use as evidence.

And for pulling something that's already been published, it's ridiculous.

[evermind]

12. I see what you mean. But consider this case:

When David Shayler was on trial, he wanted to introduce evidence that MI6 had paid an Al Qaeda cell a wodge of dosh to bump off Gadaffi. PII certificates were signed which forbade him from introducing that evidence, but which apparently (I'll be the first to say I have no particular legal expertise!) also extended to the Press publishing the allegations. The observer had already published them, and was forced to "unpublish". They later wrote:

MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'

Startling revelations by French intelligence experts back David Shayler's alleged 'fantasy'about Gadaffi plot

British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

<snip>

During the Shayler trial, Home Secretary David Blunkett and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw signed Public Interest Immunity certificates to protect national security. Reporters were not able to report allegations about the Gadaffi plot during the course of the trial.

These restrictions have led to a row between the Attorney General and the so-called D-Notice Committee, which advises the press on national security issues.

The committee, officially known as the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee, has objected to demands by the prosecution to apply the Official Secrets Act retrospectively to cover information already published or broadcast as a result of Shayler's disclosures.

On top of this, you can see at cryptome reproductions of some gagging orders issued to the Observer reporter Martin Bright, which related to the Shayler case: http://cryptome.org/r-v-bright.htm

These call themselves injunctions. One of them says:

PENAL NOTICE

2. If you, the defendant, disobey paragraphs (1) or (2) of this Order you may be found guilty of contempt of court and may be sent to prison or fined or your assets may be seized.

INTRODUCTION

3. A without notice application was made on 1 November 2002 by Counsel for Her Majesty's Attorney General ("the Claimant") to the Judge who heard the application in private (having had regard to Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights) save for the making of this Order.

4. The application was supported by information provided to him by Counsel for the claimant and the Judge accepted the undertakings in Schedule 2 to this Order.

5. As a result of the application.

IT IS ORDERED THAT:

(1) The Defendant be restrained until trial [handwritten: the conclusion of the current trial of DMS [i.e. David Michael Shayler] or any retrial] or further Order whether by himself, his servants or agents or otherwise howsoever from further publishing or causing or permitting to be published or disclosed or instruction or encouraging any other person further to publish or disclose in any way whatsoever, including, for the avoidance of doubt, publication or disclosure on the Internet, the article written by the Defendant entitled, 'MI6 Hire Al Qaeda Men to Kill Gaddafi: Ex-Official" and published on 30 October 200 in Pakistan in the Dawn newspaper and on the Internet on the Dawn newspaper's Interned site or any part thereof.

The injunction also forbids Bright reporting anything said by Shayler in regard to his former employment.

Ok, this isn't a PII certificate. But it shows, perhaps, that PII certificates can give rise to gagging orders on cognate matters - so perhaps "PII cert" is just being used as shorthand for this sort of arrangement.

In the above, the Observer were allowed to publish the allegation after the conclusion of the trial. But perhaps in the other case there's some further condition added in to a PII-related injunction that still applies.

On the other hand, the Guardian could just be part of The Conspiracy! ;-)

[lockdown]

8. For all their high tech buzzwords

they don't seem to understand this Internet thing. It makes some of their desired laws like banning certain literature fairly useless. In this case though, as the Register story seems to suggest, it's probably all about making sure the info can't be had from a "reputable" source.

OT: Didn't these two Duncan Campbell's get mixed up a few years ago, when one of them was beat up seemingly after being mistaken for the other one who had uncovered some serious police corruption? The corruption was a big deal at the time, don't recall the details offhand though.

[Mr Creosote]

2. How is this for "lame"?

Duncan Campbell writes:

"We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate."

Since Bourgass was the murderer of Constable Oake an ASBO would not have been appropriate. And you don't have to be much of an "investigative reporter" to ferret out that fact.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. But that was a separate offence, for which he was convicted

at a previous trial.

[Mr Creosote]

5. Well I don't know about you

but I wasn't aware that ASBOs were used in gaols. And if I were the family of the murdered officer I'd be very upset by Campbell's remark.

[fedsron2us]

7. I have to confess that I have never fully trusted the Guardian

since the sad day that Peter Preston grassed up Sarah Tisdall to the authorities. If he had any guts he would have gone to jail to protect his source. This display of "journalistic pusillanimity, self-righteousness and the basest cowardice" means the paper is not really a fit champion of liberal democracy because when push comes to shove it will always roll over and do the establishments bidding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Tisdall

edit for link

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Seeing as she's a distant relation of mine

(though I didn't know it at the time, and I've never met her), I have to agree with you.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

11. Very disappointing from The Guardian

I'll stick to The Independent in future.