Citation

"Grâce à la liberté dans les communications, des groupes d’hommes de même nature pourront se réunir et fonder des communautés. Les nations seront dépassées" - Friedrich Nietzsche (Fragments posthumes XIII-883)

18 - AOÛ -DÉC - Blacksmith Bureau (13b)





"My reason for writing it is simple: to give an account of the truth"

Kate McCann's preface to "Madeleine"

Nothing To Lose
Nothing has done more to damage the myth of McCann “innocence” than Kate McCann’s decision to admit lying about August 2 2007, when the couple put together an elaborate, if rushed, deception plan to conceal their own actions and the real course of the police investigation.
Sans grande raison de mentir, c'est le pire.

Under different circumstances that plan, and those lies, could have been defended by a clever lawyer as an aberration, a singularity in an otherwise spotless record, brought on by the stresses of the moment.
Il était si simple de se réfugier derrière le secret de l'instruction !

But the facts make that impossible. In inventing an illness, a virus, as a cover, Kate McCann was more prescient than she knew: the lie had uncontrollable consequences, was itself like a virus - first destroying Kate McCann’s remaining credibility, then calling into question that of her husband’s version of the day, then running rampant through the supposed truthfulness of his blogs and, finally, exposing his public statements about the whole period from mid-July to the end of August as a pack of lies.
Why did Kate McCann make the 2011 admission (in "Madeleine") ? The answer to that is straightforward: at a few, critical, junctures of the case the couple haven’t been free to lie without restraint due to the presence of other parties. In this case the PJ have the logs of their officers’ actions and the couple’s movements on August 2 so, of course, the truth was already known to investigators. But not to the outside world, yet. Back in England during that brief period from 2009-2011 when possible acceptance and respectability rather than lifelong notoriety seemed to beckon, KM took the considered decision to get her version out first. Perhaps she felt she had no choice.

The Foundation Lie
The Foundation Lie, as we can call it, the start of the contagion, has a feature almost unique in the case: full admission. The detailed admission in writing and without legal duress in a book she claims is "the truth" is effectively accepted by all “sides”. The lie is what is called in the legal process an “Established Fact" - one that is not in dispute and is therefore settled once and for all.
Remember here that we are not talking about newspaper stories or anonymous claims or suspicions or even typed timelines: we are dealing solely with what the McCanns have said, publicly and under their own names, free of third party corruption or spin. But in a way that Kate McCann could never have anticipated, the virus spread from the Foundation Lie outwards. All anyone has to do is turn from Madeleine and KM’s assertion that on August 2 they had invented a Gerry McCann illness as cover, and look at Gerry McCann’s wretched blog about the same day written four years previously.

First infection...
There it is: “Today was a bit of a write off for me as I was laid low with a probable viral illness which meant I could not stray too far from the house!”

And confirmed the next day, August 3: “We were meant to go [to Huelva] yesterday but had to cancel because I was ill.”

Wider infection...
It is now the most natural thing in the world to ask ourselves, “hang on, forget Kate McCann - if he’s been caught fibbing there twice, is he also lying elsewhere in the blogs?”
So we can turn to adjoining days. Ignoring his untrue claim to have "taken the children out of the Kid's Club" on August 9 (they had no part in the decision to exclude them) as trivial, we find August 8. The blog has a brief and colourless short paragraph about an uneventful day, the highpoint being the departure of KM’s parents “early this morning”.

There is one dull sentence about the investigation, boringly reminiscent of those other uninformative one liners that readers found in many of the earlier blogs - met with the Portuguese and British police for an update on the investigation, (June 26); our frequent meetings with the police help us stay informed, allow us to feed information into the investigation and clarify information with senior officers (July 3); we had a longer meeting than usual with the Portuguese police because I had gone back to London last week .We have a good relationship with them (July 18) - all very chummy and routine. As was August 8: GM writes: “At our meeting with the Portuguese police today we reaffirmed that we have to believe Madeleine is alive until there is concrete evidence to the contrary.”
Wait a minute. KM’s take on that encounter is somewhat different. These are some of her words about it:

“The PJ had always been optimistic that Madeleine was alive, but now things had changed…Gerry was asked to leave the room…I was afraid… the sirens in my head were deafening… tell us about that night, they said… they responded by just staring at me and shaking their heads. I was reeling with confusion, disbelief and panic… Neves stated bluntly that they didn’t believe my version of events…I was sobbing… I began to wail hysterically…desperate gasps…. Gerry gave the police his account of the events of 3 May and the reasons why he didn’t believe Madeleine had been killed in the apartment. Through his tears he pleaded…”

What? What's going on? Why has he concealed every single thing that his wife said happened? But wait another minute, if that's his version of that police meeting then what about those other ones we just quoted from weeks earlier but that his wife hasn't "revised" - how are we to know they were truthful? Looking further ahead, how do we know that any one of the blog entries is true? And, again, if a person's blog demonstrates clear evidence of lying and concealment about the investigation into his child's disappearance, of all things, then what about his police statements about that same disappearance? Are they true? And what about their endless public interviews that the police allowed them to get away with until April 2018 - how truthful are they?

Well Kate's Foundation Lie and resultant virus give us a firm answer about the period she was covering in those chapters. Watch.

Epidemic...
Kate McCann’s "Madeleine" description of the six weeks or so following mid-July – please remember this figure of six weeks – is one of melodramatic and apocalyptic hysteria and rage against a world that has turned on her and a police force that, having told her early in August that they no longer believed her version of events, has brought more terrifying news week by week and is now talking of a murder inquiry and mysterious dog searches suggesting death in the apartment. Life had been turned upside down, so fast was the police investigation developing.
It “…felt like an eternity. It was like being on some kind of endurance course run by sadists… we had no idea what was happening with the investigation… anger, bitterness, frustration, desperation… We felt like two lone figures with catapults fighting an army…" until, on August 20, "Gerry contacted Carlos Pinto de Abreu, a human-rights lawyer in Lisbon…"
You get the picture. What has Gerry McCann got to say about that? According to repeated statements made by Gerry McCann, public, on the record and transcribed, nothing had happened in the investigation during those six weeks! Literally nothing.


Show it to us
Let’s see samples of how Gerry McCann described these nightmare developments at the time, talking on August 25 to numerous broadcasters and interviewers when he was in Edinburgh during the festival. The reliably supine BBC had invited him up. All the italics are ours.
GM1: ... there clearly is a lot of pressure on people to write things just now, because they're in Portugal, when there's not actually very much happening. Uh, huh.
GM2: Absolutely, because, you know, there has been huge amounts written with no substance. Uh, huh.
GM3: … things have gone back to a degree of normality again and some calmness has settled in…Uh, huh.
GM4: Even early on, there was saturation coverage with nothing to report, and there are commercial decisions being made with filling column inches and time on TV…Particularly in the last six weeks, other than the recent searches, there has been nothing. Uh, huh.
Coo-eee sur-prise! Nice Mr Abreu's here...
So little had been going on in the investigation, apparently, that the couple had got themselves a criminal lawyer, according to wifey, five days before his Edinburgh stunt. Lucky that: twelve days later and he was in the nick trying to get them out.

...to get you out of the nick

We've never been bothered to go through the records to find further confirmation of the pattern: enough is enough. Again, after all this, which of the two do you believe? The answer, obviously, is neither; they are a dead loss, useless to any investigation, any search, anything to do with their daughter since May 3. Nobody can safely accept anything from them without independent evidence in support. That goes for us, McCann supporters, opponents, police, lawyers and judges. All the way. If any of them, or our readers, has a way of knowing when the pair are telling the truth then, in Menezes’s immortal words – show it to us.

It follows, as night follows day, that it is impossible for their version of what happened after 7.30 PM on May 3 2007 ever to be accepted. By that we mean something much stronger than disbelief or “some people think they’re guilty”. We mean impossible, as in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the investigation of which cannot begin, let alone proceed or conclude, until independent evidence for their account of that evening is found. Sure, people can try but without that independent evidence any investigative attempt will collapse at the first judicial hurdle. As the Portuguese, unable even to establish formally what crime they were investigating, were the first to discover.

No such evidence has been found by any of the three investigations over seven years active work– otherwise the parents would have been told by the police and the evidence would then have been leaked. Bureau readers can, therefore, decide for themselves whether the investigations are all a “farce” and no investigation has actually begun, or whether the two current investigations have long ago written the pair off completely and proceeded on their way by, using a cricket term, "playing around them". Without admitting it.

Next time we’ll look at this business of “no other choice”.

Quick “source stuff”
The relevant Madeleine passages will be found in Chapters 13-15. We have "sampled" many of KM's hysterical sentences about the "six weeks" rather than quoting them separately at full volume and inordinate length.
The deadening “GM blog” is to be found here. Unlike Kate McCann our professor does not give a preface to his blog - instead the first pages are, most appropriately, filled with financial details of how to give him and his fund money.
Gerry McCann’s Edinburgh publicity blitz can be found here.  The reader should scroll down past the “telecinco” stuff.
A vintage performance of Professor McCann fibbing at Edinburgh can be found here:  Note the immortal “there’s not much happening” at about 54 seconds, reminiscent in many ways of the words so shockingly alleged to have been uttered by a past mayor of Hiroshima.
The Portuguese inability even to establish the type of crime without the independent evidence: official finding - "Type of Crime: Unknown".
For those with excessive time on their hands, suffer from aimlessness and have no fear of suddenly going mad, the Bureau's philosophy and allotments correspondent, Herr-Dr Karla Spade, adds: the profound epistemological and legal problems posed by Frau Kate McCann's opening words about her book, quoted above, are outlined here:
"In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox, or Karla Spade dilemma is the statement of a liar who states that he or she is lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying" or "everything I say is false". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar is lying.
And if we write "this sentence is false" is true, then the sentence is false, but if the sentence states that it is false, and it is false, then it must be true, and so on. This is what this loony pair of McCanns haf done to our heads, Godammit. But if it gets them into jail, then who cares? Eh?"



Reminder: the crucial “Foundation Lie”

The delayed Huelva stunt. Gerry McCann has made a miraculous recovery


1. On August 2, KM writes, the McCanns were due to drive to Huelva to hold one of their “campaign” stunts, this time being filmed erecting Madeleine posters by a media pack.

2. The previous day, however, and following dog searches, the police had been granted search warrants to examine their apartment and car and seize any relevant evidence. KM says she was informed that the police were coming early on the morning of August 2 – but only vaguely by hearsay from GM. (!)

2. Accordingly the pair had to abandon the trip but decided to deceive the journalists, and therefore the public, as to the real reason. They invented an illness which would prevent Gerry McCann from making the journey.

3. The next day GM repeated the deception, this time to a much wider audience, the unmediated public, in his so-called “blog”.

All this is described in the couple's own words. It should be noted, however, that even in her belated "truth-telling" – and on the same page that she admitted lying - KM is still not telling the full truth or anything like it.

In particular she carefully conceals the knowledge of when each found out a search warrant existed – that morning, with the PJ call to Gerry, which meant that her Madeleine story of vagueness and innocent bemusement as to the reasons for the "visit" was as false as GM's blog-and- Edinburgh claims of bemusement about "rumours"? Or when the PJ arrived and waved the warrant at them, thus making it certain that they were under investigation?

Either way, of course, from then to the end of time any statements, or pretence, by the couple that they were not under investigation - suspects - from August 2 onwards are certainly untrue. That is what makes the GM blog, with its utterly dishonest insouciance about their position, such a tatty and sordid piece of deception.

Urgh!

Day 93, "The most recent searches by the police have attracted a lot of renewed media interest with satellite trucks arriving...
94, I note there was a lot of coverage of Kate's interview in the Sunday newspapers today. I managed to read one of them and certainly seemed to sum up very well how we are feeling and coping without Madeleine...
95, We are pleased that the investigation remains so active and we are cooperating fully with the Portuguese and British police, as we have done since day 1…
97, At our meeting with the Portuguese police today we reaffirmed that we have to believe Madeleine is alive until there is concrete evidence to the contrary..."

99,"If the current police activity does uncover new evidence that Madeleine has been seriously harmed we should be the first to know…
100, There was a statement from the Portuguese police today regarding the recent activity in the investigation and media speculation. They confirmed that there are new leads and that we are not suspects in Madeleines disappearance … 
102, waiting, like everyone else, for the next development in the police investigation…
106, Obviously we are desperate for a breakthrough in the investigation…"
109, [the day he engaged a criminal defence lawyer!], "We keep in regular touch with both the Portuguese and British police but there has been no major news in the last couple of days...
110, We were also asked about what is being written about the investigation and pointed out how much of this is pure speculation."

And the wonderful 113, template for the future, "...pooled telephone interview for the press to talk about the media coverage of the campaign to find Madeleine in advance of my interview at the Edinburgh International TV festival…"

So the lies pour out, day after day, like a gushing tap. As they've done ever since.

Why Did They Do It?

Clearly the pair considered it of supreme importance that the English-language media must not find out about the search warrant. So vital was it that KM uses the phrase that “we just didn’t seem to have a choice” but to lie, even though she says they “had never lied about anything” - an unusual claim from anyone.

But what exactly made it so important, so dangerous to them, that they had to take the risk of lying?

She won’t tell us. Or she can’t. Instead, in a pattern you will find at other crucial points, such as the "shall I confess?" section of Madeleine, she once again turns to windy rhetoric: “Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d announced to the journalists heading for Huelva that the police were coming to do some forensic work in our villa?”

Well no, we at the Bureau, at least, can’t. It would certainly have made huge headlines and blown open the truth world-wide about the true course of the investigation. But why should that matter so critically? How, exactly, did it threaten them? They knew they were innocent and in the book, KM wrote about the raid, after they’d been turned over, “We were even quite pleased this was happening, that something was happening which might help find Madeleine.” Uh?

What we want to know is what Kate McCann thought would happen that gave them no choice but to lie and deceive even though they were bound, eventually, to be found out. And she won’t tell us.

_______________________________



Which one of them was lying?

________________________________


Complete Exposure

We saw last week that the Foundation Lie swept outwards like a scythe, slashing away the cover in the GM blog, exposing his fibs and calling into serious doubt the reliability of other entries, and then whistling through the Edinburgh charade to expose the lies about the "nothing happening for six weeks" period.

You might think that would be the extent of the damage but the harmful range of Kate McCann’s desperate “admission” appears almost infinite in space and time, right up to today. What do we make now of the Team McCann House of Commons performance?

Roll-Up, Roll-Up - It's the Mothers of Democracy!

Has there ever been an institution that hasn't been degraded and besmirched, all dignity removed, by involvement with the couple? The BBC? The Press Complaints Commission? The judiciary? The bar? The mother of parliaments itself? The list is almost endless and reaches the Vatican.

In 2009 Gerry McCann had "no option" but to repeat his story rather than clash with his own Edinburgh evidence, when he and the Team gave their House of Commons media committee evidence. It was a richly comic, as well as an utterly squalid, event. Still, the professor actually began with a truthful statement!

Mr McCann: Thank you. I am Gerald McCann, the father of Madeleine.

Chairman: Ho, ho, ho, that's a good one.

No, we made the chairman's bit up. But that was the tone of this farcical and horribly undignified scene, a Mad Hatter's tea party on acid, complete with the presence of a skeletal and offensively bald Tony Bennett, looking like he’d been winched out of a grave into the seat behind Gerry McCann to make the latter’s neck itch. And no theatre-of-the-absurd farce is complete without the sepulchral Clarence Mitchell, seen below holding his hand up in a vain attempt to stop his porkies tumbling out of his mouth. The tone of the occasion is well illustrated by:

________

Mr Evans: [pompously] Are you suggesting that some of the stuff that we read in the newspapers was fuelled by alcohol?

Mitchell: [for it is he] Blah, blah [backtracks] blah-blah. Blah, blah, blah.

Amid the bedlam, Mr McCann, perhaps the most single-minded person in the UK, and by no means someone to trip with, keeps his eye on the ball. His testimony can be summed up here.

Chairman: Your impression was that the newspapers wanted to go on reporting stories about Madeleine's disappearance and, if there were no new facts to report, they started to resort to making up things?

Mr McCann: I totally agree with that.

Note the disintegrating corpse propped into position by unknown persons behind a hunched Professor McCann. It must not be mistaken for Dr McCann's conscience.



Another two years saw Gerry McCann bring the latest performance of the well-loved Edinburgh Tale to the Leveson inquiry. It is November 2011 and the show is threatening to outlast Agatha Christie's Mousetrap for long and rewarding runs. But what can he do? It's too late to change the story now so off he goes, GM repeating yet again, straight-faced, that while the media had been supportive - yes, yes, we know - and helpful for a while - yes, yes, get on with it - as real developments in the case dried up and there was nothing to report (from early July onwards) - yes, tell us! - so the media made everything up – meaning no police raid on the apartment, as described by KM, no seizure of their car, no screaming confrontation with the police on august 6/8, no direct accusations from the PJ they’d lied about May 3, and thus no need to engage a lawyer. No, no, none of that had happened.


____________________________________________________________

Which one is lying?

____________________________________________________________

Extracts - all italics are ours. You will be amazed at the new revelations Dr. McCann brought to the tribunal - like these.


GM: We decided we had to stay in Portugal to be close to Madeleine, to be close to the investigation, and certainly didn't feel capable of leaving at that point, so it did surprise us that there was so much ongoing interest when there really wasn't very much happening.[after mid-June.]

The Bureau says: No! Really?

Counsel: The next section of your statement deals with accuracy of reporting and you point out that after a period of time, there was little new news to report.

GM: Yes.

The Bureau says: Never!

Counsel: The date you give for the shift of the emphasis of the media reporting is about June 2007, is it…Or perhaps a bit later than that?

GM: Yeah….

Counsel: At this point we are in the late summer, obviously, or early autumn of 2007. If I can move you forward to paragraph 39 of your statement. You're making the point that the story in terms of objective fact is beginning to run dry and reporters now are thrashing around for something new.

Back in the real world, under the avuncular gaze of a doting Judge Leveson, KM sat beside her husband saying little, as she had done, we remember, on arguido day. No conflicting stories there. In 2018 the performances go on. Isn't show business wonderful? 




JB writes: Some weeks ago, on NT’s excellent and game-changing internet site nottextusa.blogspot.com/ I wrote in reply to one of its equally excellent posters that there is one thing that the McCanns and their active supporters on the net or the MSM, will never address: the proven evidence of the pair's repeated and utterly damning lies about their role in the case. I had first discovered this back in about 2014 when the only person on the internet willing even to mention the question of the couple’s veracity*, let alone its importance, was nice Mr Nessling. Perhaps the fate of that dedicated enemy of the Bureau, who, among more important differences, never forgave me for innocently describing him as a motor mechanic, had a hand in determining the subsequent unanimous policy: shoot the messenger, hide the message, run away.



A search warrant was granted to enable the police to investigate the McCann's property and possessions.



Once GA had won his first victory - job done, as it remains - I stopped bothering too much about the case details and largely left the Forbidden Area alone, apart from idly wondering now and then, why is the subject too hot for the supporters even to touch or acknowledge? What is it that terrifies them?

Anyway, as readers of the last couple of Bureau issues know, we decided to have another look at the McFibbing recently. But before getting down to the tedious and unpleasant task of re-visiting the sources, I thought, let’s take a chance on this, let’s test the theory that they dare not try and counter the facts of the lies by making a public prediction anyone will be able to check. So I said to that poster on NT words to the effect of “they won’t address it, all they’ll do is abuse, check it out for yourself when it comes up”. The words are still there.



Dated August 2 2007 the court granted the warrant because the pair were suspects in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The warrant refers to the "suspects". Not "arguidos", which Gerry McCann has told us all did not mean suspects, but "suspects" - suspeitos on the warrant.



Then I went ahead, looked at the sources in detail and found myself bewildered – the lying was far, far worse than I’d ever written about, far worse than I’d believed possible. As those who’ve read the two issues will know it's the words of KM in her book and GM on his blog & public testimony placed side by side, over a period of four years. Four years!



Kate McCann has never admitted that they were suspects under warrant on August 2. On August 11 Gerry McCann posted on his public blog that the PJ had confirmed that "we are not suspects in Madeleines disappearance."

It was a lie, wasn't it?



If what Gerry McCann told the Commons select committee and the Leveson inquiry about the most critical periods of the investigation in 2007 was true then his wife had to be lying over many pages in Madeleine: it’s there in the record. And, of course, the converse is true: if KM is telling the truth in Madeleine, as she stated she was, then Gerry McCann’s testimony in parliament and at a judicial tribunal, literally has to be lies. And those lies revolved around a constant subject: the attempt to spread deception about the course of the investigation.



And no, you didn't have to be made an arguido to be questioned as a suspected person in a case - Kate & Gerry McCann were questioned at police headquarters as suspects on August 8, with the now head of the PJ telling KM, according to her account, that he suspected her of lying to the police about the disappearance. 


Evidence-based predictions don’t get confirmed by accident. They get confirmed because they are true. On twitter yesterday and today - well you can look for yourselves if you wish. They squealed about the messenger. They ran. Then they hid.

For the McCanns this proof of lying about the investigation is, I think, a lethal one. I understand the necessity for the parent's silence and I can accept the inability of the pair to go near the subject until it comes up in court. But what about this running and hiding by their remaining supporters?

So, again, Gerry McCann was lying when he told the world on August 11 that the police had confirmed that they were not suspects.
And it would have been more truthful if he'd told Lord Leveson's tribunal that the "rumours" about the pair being suspects were absolutely true, rather than misleading it with the arguido nonsense.

Can't they see the obvious? Every time they run and hide they're telling us they don't believe in the couple any more. They're no longer claiming the innocence of the parents as they did, with justification, until the facts could no longer support them. No, they are now only mounting a defence case - where you select only the facts you favour and hide the rest.
Now we know.


*Footnotes.

1) Needless to say the MSM, having made up absurd lies about the pair after they were made arguidos - hello Jerry Lawton - and paid the legal price, are as silent about the pair's veracity as the supporters. But for very different reasons.


2) This is page one of the search warrant for the August 2 search of the McCann residence.



In paragraph 3, beginning "A busca …" you will see that the warrant refers to the suspects"suspeito(s)" - "The search should include the entire property, even the part occupied by people other than the suspects, including annexes and rented areas."

3) On August 8 the pair were interviewed at Portimao police headquarters. KM's version is, as usual, a partial one and full of rhetoric but it is quite clear that the PJ stated that evidence that the child was no longer alive would be forthcoming and, in an interview filled with tears and hysterics, she was accused of having lost control of herself and blacked out and then lying about what had happened with the child. Kate McCann herself describes it as an "interrogation". So it wasn't a witness interview, was it?

Finally, she deliberately obfuscates over what she was told about the further course of their questioning. Disguise it as she might they were told that further, more formal, interviews were to follow. As they did, until they were made arguidos on September 7, by which time, as we know, they were all ready with a fully briefed criminal lawyer. Witnesses!
Il n'est pas sûr que l'avocat ait été aussi bien informé que ça.


4) The entire conflation of suspect and arguido for the English-speaking audience was part of the continuing - and quite successful - tactic of the pair to deny that police suspicions and theories of the parents' involvement had grown throughout the investigation for multiple reasons, not suddenly appeared as a result of the dog (misleading and unjust) searches. "Nothing was happening in the case" so the media homed in on dodgy police links to pass the time and invented mad rumours that the pair were under serious suspicion before they were made arguidos, which just wasn't true. The plan and, once again, the deception can be clearly seen in G. McCann's Leveson testimony.

Counsel: One key event in this narrative is you becoming, if I pronounce it right, arguido, under Portuguese law, which occurred on 7 September 2007, and this is paragraph 34 of your witness statement. To be clear about it, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong because you know more about this than me, "arguido" does not mean "suspect", it means "person of interest"; is that correct?

McCann: That's what we were advised was the closest correlation or translation within UK law at the time, and I think it is probably important to emphasise that as a witness in Portugal at that time you were not entitled to any legal representation. So if the police wanted to ask any question, which your answer may give incriminating evidence, then they must declare you arguido, then you were entitled to have a lawyer there.(1) And in many ways you could argue that all parents of a missing child, certainly those who would have been the last to see them, could have to answer questions like that. So being labelled arguido was not necessarily such a bad thing.

As stated in Point 3 above on August 8 Kate McCann describes the police rightly or wrongly "asking questions to which her answers could have been incriminating" while being a suspect but not an arguido. The police asked them anyway. GM's reply is therefore untrue. 
Difficile à dire car ce jour-là et techniquement les MC n'étaient pas des témoins, mais des "victimes".

Counsel: Maybe there are two points here. The first point is the obvious one that needs to be stated. There isn't an equivalent concept of arguido in English law?

McCann: No. And I think the aspect on that is we've never been arrested, we've never been charged with anything. We've never stood trial.

Counsel: Do you happen to know whether under Portuguese law they have a category of suspect?

Wait for Professor McCann's answer to this one. It's a beauty

McCann: I think it is loosely used, but you could have multiple arguidos within any investigation, and at that time, the title "arguido" stayed with those involved until the file was closed.

Did you hear that, to the most important question of them all? The only answers to the question were "yes", "no" or "don't know". Instead he ran away from the question and bull-****** his way along according to plan.

Counsel: Do you think, rightly or wrongly, the British press somehow interpreted "arguido" as equivalent to “suspect", which carried with it, therefore, its own connotations?

You won't be surprised at this answer: it was a "green ink" one.

McCann: Yes. I mean clearly the word was used that way almost exclusively.

And with the help of the appalling counsel Jay, who became a judge, McCann can now come to the point that all his answers were leading up to. Remember it? Nothing happening in the case, all lies.

Counsel: At this point we are in the late summer, obviously, or early autumn of 2007. If I can move you forward to paragraph 39 of your statement. You're making the point that the story in terms of objective fact is beginning to run dry and reporters now are thrashing around for something new.

That's right, Mr Jay. We repeat: whatever rubbish the MSM printed about the pair later on, the British media reports in the English language that the McCanns were suspects, an English word, during August were not rumours but completely true.




A Doddle to Find

Which way? The question – to concentrate resources inwards onto the disappearance itself or outwards in pursuit of suspect and victim – features in all suspected kidnappings and looms large in the Madeleine McCann Case.

In the immediate aftermath of such crimes, when those involved are still within range and rapid apprehension may save the victim’s life, search and pursuit is the priority, the crime scene being seen primarily as the source of a trail to pursue. The balance changes if the searches are fruitless: then resources are targeted back on the scene, both to investigate the circumstances surrounding the crime and uncover new leads to chase.

The nature of the resources will also differ. At the beginning search and pursuit is a brute- force operation requiring merely supervised volunteers with probing canes; later, as the initial trail goes cold, the balance shifts again and the crime scene starts to gobble up all available skilled staff.

An associated problem in such cases is dealing with those close to the victim. How to reassure and calm their state of shock sufficiently to gain rational descriptions of events and tease out significant details is a skill all of its own; listening officers, though – they normally do this work in pairs – must also keep a cold eye out for untold stories or tensions just beneath the shock and hysteria. The statistics, unfortunately, dictate that course.

Turning to the McCann case, we can try and ignore here such well-worn features of the affair as the role of the media, political complications etc., and confine ourselves to this “which way” question - with one exception: always remember that, because of the wild UK media presence, the profile, and thus the ability to influence events, of the family was immeasurably greater than usual in these cases.

So it's well known that the McCanns and the Portuguese police had diametrically opposed views on the which-way question. Unusually, though, the PJ, whose view was orthodox and logical, found it much harder to explain and justify it against the media fairground noise than the parents did, having brought the fairground in.



Why was it “orthodox”? The entire investigation produced a grand total of three possible trails – the Tanner sighting, the sniffer-dogs track and the Smith claim – all of them within Praia da Luz only and all of them ending in a matter of metres.

Why was it “logical”? Because without a start, a direction to follow, the search task becomes, immediately, infinite, in other words impossible to carry out. The search area is simply the whole world. And since there is no consistent and reliable description of any suspect, except the one naming Gerry McCann, the list of potential “suspects” is incalculably large.


Closer to Home

Alipio Ribeiro, then PJ boss and the true head of the investigation, a refined and honourable man and much quicker at dodging a bullet than Goncalo Amaral, explained his force’s thinking in his summer 2007 interview. He stressed that he needed no more “resources”, that is brute-force searchers: there was nowhere for them to be used.

Instead he compared the current stage of the case to a crime novel, an object in which most of the facts except a very few key ones, are clear to the reader. It was successful analysis of what he possessed that was necessary, he suggested, not the garnering of yet more "information" – information in the form of “sightings” had nearly drowned them – from the wider world.

His force wasn’t successful, however, and he carried the can and - no can would ever be carried without the McCanns and their spokesman smearing shit all over the carrier - probably read Team McCann's gloating media lies on arguido release day that the Ministry of Justice had "mocked him" for his interview.


Alipio Ribeiro - took one for the team


The PJ orthodox? Yes, completely. Logical? Indisputably. And they were right, as eleven years of the comic opera “Search” have proved. The latter has produced much needed buffoonery in the shape of the Edgars and Suttons but results? Zero.

So much for the PJ view. What about that of the child’s next of kin and their friends? Well, we know, don’t we? For a start that well-known and truthful account "Madeleine" tells us that before the police had arrived and almost certainly before they’d even been called at 10.40 PM:

“Aware that we were only an hour and a quarter’s drive from southern Spain, and beyond that lay the borderless continent of Europe – not to mention the short hop across the Strait of Gibraltar to north Africa – David was saying, ‘We need roadblocks set up. The borders to Spain, Morocco and Algiers need to be alerted.’ Russell later asked us for our digital photos of Madeleine and went off somewhere with our camera.”

So, it’s outwards folks.

And, some hours later:

“Dave, seeing Gerry’s anguish and frustration at how little was being done, knew Madeleine needed more help than she was getting. At some point before the PJ left, a retired British couple in a nearby apartment lent him their computer and he sent an email to Sky News alerting them to the abduction of our daughter, using an address listed on their website.”

So that’s the media being readied to help take it further out. Useful, eh?

And, in the morning, the final piece of the jigsaw:

“That morning I learned of the man Jane had seen in the street. Although Gerry and our friends had been trying to protect me from further distress by not telling me about this sooner, when they did I was strangely relieved. Madeleine hadn’t just disappeared off the face of the earth. There was something to work on.

Something to work on? Something for who to work on?

She is completely uninterested, in what the police will have to offer. She hasn't managed to disguise that. At any moment a police officer or rescue worker could appear at her door and announce that the child has been found, bewildered and frightened, sheltering in a culvert. But no, there was something to work on. Kate McCann, you are not telling the truth. How could you be so certain that the police hadn't already located the child - or her corpse?

That “something to work on” led directly away from the Ocean Club and into the outside world – and ultimately, as we now know for certain, to a blank, a total void.

Kate McCann figuratively stood there at 8.30AM on May 4 shouting and pointing her finger at a person who never existed and in a direction that led nowhere; first she shouted at the police, and then called out to the world’s media. And she never stopped. Hasn’t stopped pointing to this day.

The rest of the story, including her repeated demands that the PJ attach more significance and resources to the non-existent Tanner abductor - voids 'r' us - is too well known to repeat. But why? Why was she at once so certain that expanding the investigation outwards by any means was the answer? Note that she quotes the owl-like David Payne, a man not famous for his knowledge of the world, or for getting to places on time, or for making a Mark Warner booking that didn't end in a child vanishing, as twittering about “alerting the borders”. Did it really never occur to her that her fellow holiday makers might have been misdirecting?

Lying failure, invented image, hapless buffoon, show business

Yep, your child's fate in those hands

Oldfield was the last one to look in the child’s bedroom, she says. How could she possibly not have wondered what exactly he did there? Mothers in our experience will turn like snarling tigers on anyone who might have had contact with an abused, harmed or missing child, even their own relatives. Some of the “seven friends”, indeed, were hardly known to KM. Yet, not a breath of from her about investigating or probing any of them has come to light.

And when the time came for clarity about the doubts, the final act of the “turn within”, the police-requested reconstruction - far from leaping at the opportunity, any opportunity, to find out more about her daughter's fate, she was utterly uninterested.

Why? Why?





From the Bureau, April 2018.

“They are not suspects or persons of interest and have not a tea-stain on their characters. Still, their informal spokespeople, the famous Mr Friend and his chum Mr Pal, all otherwise known as Clarence Mitchell, tell us that the parents have been banned by the Yard from publicly discussing the case, or “specifically advised not to” as Mr Pal describes it.


So, as Grange enters its final stages, every one of the Tapas Nine has at last been silenced and the horrific farce of the media being used to bypass or influence the normal legal route – Expunge it! being the words of the then head of the McCanns’ criminal defence team for the policy – has, it seems, come to an end after ten years.

We shall see whether Mitchell thinks he can get round it. It will be tough because anything he says from now on about the case will mean either a) he is inventing things without authority from the parents or b) the parents are knowingly breaching the new requirements of the Yard. Since Mitchell is a mentally exhausted shell who has contributed nothing but his contact list to the team for at least three years he is unlikely to be up for the challenge.”

The “mentally exhausted shell” has indeed been unable to meet the challenge. Readers who have missed his recent efforts on behalf of his only known “clients” can feast on this devastating PR initiative from a few days ago:

“A source close to the couple from Rothley, Leicestershire, said today: 'They have been here before. They simply have no idea if the search will abruptly come to an end or will carry on. It is a daunting prospect they face once more.’”

Punchy, isn’t it? You couldn’t get a more inert and submissive message of defeat by Grange unless you watched a pink-haired baboon bending over and baring its arse to fate in London Zoo. Still, it confirms what we’ve all suspected – that the stuff Mitchell's churned out for years about “Kate and Gerry are kept fully up to date with the progress of the investigation” is and was a load of tosh. They've been told nothing.

Anyway, depressed Mitchell, (google “new job for Clarence Mitchell 2018”), who has found it hard to get up in the mornings since 2014, can now stand alongside Mrs Kate McCann who, as everyone will remember, told the world in the libel writ against Goncalo Amaral about the horrific depression, insomnia and suffering that had struck her after being made arguida after that wicked book had been published.

And today, shuffling forward to join them, comes Gerry "I will never be silenced" McCann, 50, who has granted an interview in a token effort to show defiance to Grange to discuss “his own agony in honest, personal and sometimes painful terms” to raise awareness about mental health, saying he hoped it might lessen the taboo of males talking frankly about their emotions.” He’s all heart, isn’t he?

Our Mental Health Correspondent Olivia de Manning writes:

In fact Professor McCann has impressive qualifications for such a role. He is no stranger to mental difficulties, as his wife once told us when she described the terrible episode that struck him down over a decade ago. Like most others, they were caught completely unprepared: having been running a successful international campaign, welcome at the Vatican and the White House, safe in the knowledge that “nothing had been happening” in Portugal, they were preparing a leisurely farewell when nightmare suddenly struck. Soon Kate witnessed the early signs: “I could see by this time that Gerry was starting to crack.”

Nor is he afraid to admit shedding tears – his wife remembers with touching concern that, “Gerry was distraught now. He was on his knees, sobbing, his head hung low. ‘We’re finished. Our life is over,’ he kept saying over and over again.” That was when he was faced with the terrible dilemma that so many ordinary people suffer in their lives, or as Kate McCann put it – “Was this what it came down to? Confess to this lesser charge or risk something much worse?”

But Gerry came through it, dried his eyes and shouted that immortal message to all fellow sufferers, words of comfort that echo across the years - “They’ve got nothing!”.

Three people, three decent, caring people. And all suffering, or having suffered from, the agony of mental distress. Is there a common factor, a pre-condition, something that somehow unites them? The doctors, as yet, have no answer. Life can be so terribly unfair.


JB adds: Yep, and it's getting worse.


The disarray as every seam of the McCann’s oh-so-clever strategy starts to unravel at once is something wondrous to behold. Yet the more it unravels the more puzzled many people are. It just doesn’t seem to fit in with the supposed invulnerability of the couple, courtesy of Unknown Forces and Hidden Hands. And, to be fair, there's a secret, much more forgivable, can this really be happening? feeling abroad, a pretty reasonable response to eleven years of well-rewarded deceit.
Yes, it can and is. And no, we haven't said that before. The McCann strategy that has been clear since 2007 and has never changed is starting to collapse under pressure. And that strategy is? No extradition.
As we know, the head of the McCann legal team, Smethurst, gave the game away in 2007. After stating that the couple had been subject to “trial by media” since their return to the UK he told BBC Panorama “… there were two strands to this case, part of it is the criminal case, but part of it is the media speculation and the media perception, and we see it as incumbent upon us to portray the truth to the media and in particular to try and expunge any ill-founded theories about Gerry and Kate's involvement…”
il y avait deux volets dans cette affaire, une partie était l'affaire criminelle, mais l'autre était la spéculation et la perception des médias, et il nous incombait de dépeindre la vérité aux médias et en particulier d'essayer d'éliminer toute théorie mal fondée sur l'implication de Gerry et Kate…
More Than Meets the Eye
Now that famous statement posed a couple of serious questions. Why should adverse media comment in the UK affect a Portuguese prosecution? How could changing opinion in Britain help the couple if they stood in a Portuguese dock? And secondly, it suggested a certain lack of confidence that the facts alone would ensure they walked free out of a Portuguese court.
The answer to both questions is the same. The defence aim was to ensure that they never came within a hundred miles of a Portuguese courtroom, let alone allow the facts to “demonstrate their innocence” in one. Smethurst and his team were many things but they weren’t stupid, which is why one of the two senior members of the team was Britain’s foremost extradition lawyer.
L'objectif de la défense était de s'assurer qu'ils ne se trouveraient jamais à moins de 100 miles d'une cour de justice portugaise, et encore moins d'y laisser les faits «démontrer leur innocence».
In extradition cases law meets politics – and politics usually wins since countries generally don’t extradite people their “public” feel sorry for. So, in a case where innocence is hardly self-evident, you get stuck in and work on manipulating people's emotions in the suspect's favour by inventing simplified, show business models of them to replace the rough stuff you're actually defending.
The public, in general, can't handle real human beings but crude, highly coloured, celebrity cartoons of them, victims or villains, always go down a treat and the McCanns loved being soap opera characters and played them beautifully except in their unguarded moments, apparently untroubled that it might end up making them lose their minds. Again Smethurst’s team wasn’t stupid: the other of the two senior lawyers was a media celebrity expert, with the usual skills and contacts.

The details and methods can be found in the most open of these cases, that of Gary McKinnon the “superhacker,” to which the reader is referred. It’s all there: a budget provided largely by sympathetic well-wishers, a huge PR campaign to create the “victim” role (and mental health issues), to whip up xenophobia, (“wicked American dungeons” “against “wicked corrupt cops”) to trivialise the charges (“just a bedroom hacker” against “we’ve all done it”) and so on. The similarity isn’t surprising – the McKinnon people were following the same template. It’s dirty but it works. No extradition!
Smethurst didn’t decide this strategy, any more than the other “experts” who grew fat on the fruits of the Madeleine case. By some instinctive brilliance, or exceptionally unusual cunning, the parents found their own way to the “twin strands” within days of the disappearance, stumblingly at first and then gaining pace and conviction as time went on, with the assistance, no doubt, of Gerry's bedside reading, Lance Armstrong's memoirs. Thus, as we know from reading Nigel Moore’s McCann Files, the “second strand”, the endless, glutinous media sentimentalising about the poor parents’ suffering, building on natural public sympathy, was accompanied by a quite different, much more brutal first strand – secretly working behind the scenes, through proxies and anonymously, to muffle the facts and divert attention.

And all this is what the Bureau and others have been addressing over recent weeks. The fraught interviews, the “blogs”, the desperate attempts to conceal the search of their home and the seizure of their property, the fantastic lying at the Edinburgh festival, the claims that they were being forced into confessions – those aren’t random reactions but have had a single aim: don’t let the UK public think badly of you. Countries don’t extradite people the public feel sorry for. And within days of arguido time they legged it to the safety of the UK and never came back until the case had been shelved.
No extradition. The attempt to stop Amaral from bringing his theories to the British public; the innocent-schoolgirl fiction of Madeleine ; the toe-curling anniversary celebrations and the regular reminders of the empty bedroom shrine; the performance at Leveson, with its repetition of the Edinburgh lies. Whatever happens keep the dimmo public believing in the cartoon goodies.
And then look at the other strand. The passage of time has not produced anything to counter or dismiss the official reservations about their innocence. The Attorney-General’s specific claims about their failure to assist the investigation and the lack of explanation for it, the Leicester police statement, still not withdrawn, that there is no evidence to exclude them from involvement in the disappearance, the Portuguese Supreme Court’s 2017 detailed refutation of their “cleared” claims. Nothing there to make them look forward to demonstrating their innocence in a Portuguese court. No extradition is still the only game in town.
So the distortions of relations between Scotland Yard and the Portuguese police over the last five years can hardly be unwelcome, can they? Nor can the threats to Grange funding. Nor can the repeated, and invented, attacks on the professionalism of both forces and the supposed list of “last suspects” garbage.
Les distorsions des relations entre Scotland Yard et la police portugaise au cours des cinq dernières années peuvent donc difficilement importuner les MC. Les menaces sur le financement de Grange non plus. Les attaques répétées et inventées contre le professionnalisme des deux forces et la prétendue liste des «derniers suspects»  non plus.

Shambles (foutoir)
But now they’ve nearly all run out. Since Grange tightened the screw on the couple in April all that stuff has suddenly stopped. The mysterious Mr Pal, so voluble and useful in those fictions has disappeared with them. Instead of the confident assertions about the course of Grange that Heriberto Janosch had been providing to the UK media, courtesy of a mystery English PR man’s media contacts book, for the last three years we have the extraordinary collapse of the entire Team McCann media machine.
Just look at that “machine” - the professional feeds featuring Mr Pal, a spokesman for the couple and a “source” have disappeared since April in favour of a disorganised and leaderless ragtag collection of junk – first of all the amateurish Totman lead balloon and now GM’s depression, poetry (poetry and the McCanns?!) and a bizarre set of stories on the “fund” that twitter readers, understandably, suspect are elaborate practical jokes, so gross are they in their untruths and so opaque in their aims.
But why? If the McCanns are certain of their undemonstrated innocence then why on earth should they be so unsettled by Grange's instruction to stop discussing the progress of the investigation? Why, indeed should they have stopped discussing it - for none of the recent examples are about the investigation itself.
As we said, it would all be happening in 2018. Perhaps it’s time to call up Mr Smethurst. Oh, and a family member to remind us of what she said repeatedly in 2007/8 - that poor Kate McCann might be "too mentally fragile" to travel to Portugal. Just like Gary McKinnon. Or even a crazed-looking Gerry McCann.



Pain

JB writes: A hello to one of our long term readers Carole Shooter. Carole lost faith in the Bureau but that was in the dark days of 2015 when more or less everybody else on the scene did, a process that culminated for me with that bellwether site, the Maddie Case Files, the only forum I was a member of, booing virtually every one of my few posts within hours of their appearance.

That was for my heresy in believing that Grange was a perfectly routine and straight operation and my stupidity in not recognising that Martian Bean-Counter and Nick Kollerstrom (Auschwitz gas chambers were “disinfectant plants”) supporter Richard Hall held the keys to the case. The auto-da-fe culminated in Saint Pamalam demanding my head for calling honourable MCF member and serial libeller Hidiho a “snivelling coward” for skulking in Canada rather than facing the numerous young UK women she daily defamed. I got the message and slunk away. My, when people lose hope can’t they get f*****g nasty?

Anyway, Carole, I’ve seen from twitter that your health hasn’t been good and that you suffer a great deal of pain without overly complaining about it, something which the angelic McCann supporters – motto “we care about innocent people’s suffering” – find as irresistibly attractive as a pool of fresh blood and dolphin guts to passing sharks. Hence their mocking of your suffering. Nice, aren’t they, those supporters? All four of them.

But Carole, apart from refusing to be silenced by weirdos, had something very sensible to say recently. We can all get behind Operation Grange. Simple but true. So simple that, when you think about it, what possible reason could there be for not doing so?

Because it's a fraud or a fix-up? Don't be childish: if it's one of those then nothing you post can affect matters one way or another, can it? So what harm can supporting it do? And every possible objection from the Usual Suspects, the ignorant and the merely easily led is covered by the same answer. OK, so it's Martian Beans running Grange, you think - but what harm can supporting it do?

Carole's real service is to make one aware of just how little people who noisily support the McCanns have anything to say in Grange's favour either. Oh yes, they make the occasional token reference but it's never expressed with anything approaching sincerity and it's normally used in the context of "why don't you stay quiet and wait for the result?"

However much they try and conceal it, supporters of the McCanns [I exclude the filthy four who are something other than "supporters"] haven't really believed in McCann innocence since the Lisbon 2009/10 hearings. Until then they'd been sure that all the stuff about the PJ being unanimous in suspecting the McCanns had been invented by Amaral, the "lone rogue cop". The live twitter feed from Sky - three cheers for Murdoch - left them absolutely stunned, shaken, resentful and disbelieving - as I know because I followed the main supporters' site as the feed came through.

Since then it has been loyalty and sympathy but not real belief and conviction. The brighter ones took the hint and deserted the cause without waiting for Amaral's later victories. The rest, like the McCanns, are stuck exactly in the position they were in when the bad news rained down that awful day - like the victims of Pompeii.

Stopthemyths forum in posting positions


If they really believed in the pair's innocence they'd be cheering Grange on. And if the Usual Suspects really believed in their own version of events they would too. But that takes us into swampland and hidden motives and the strange determination of Bennett and his clique to help the McCanns out by doing what his friend Hidiho does - attacking and making up stories about innocents.

Stumbling Around...

It was Tony Bennett, also in 2015, who was unwise enough to take exception to the Bureau treatment of Hall’s arse-licking interview with Kollerstrom and the immortal way in which Hall the “researcher”, after plugging Kollerstrom’s latest book, said that he didn’t know whether Kollerstrom’s Auschwitz claims were true or not because, said Hall, “I wasn’t there.”


Hall hasn't got the education, let alone the nous, to realise the resonance of those words of his in that context. He doesn't know that he was repeating exactly what Nazis, and many other Germans, said for thirty years after WW2 - until the photographs started to come out...



But Baldie climbed out of the cesspit sludge,gathered himself up and lumbered to the defence of Hall and Kollerstrom in his own inimitable, not to say unreadable, way. It was American authoress Gertrude Stein who wrote that poor, mad Ezra Pound, whose crank views were surprisingly similar in both content, expression and lunacy to Baldie’s (that’s why he spent twelve years in the nuthouse) was, “a village explainer, all right if you were a village, if not, not.”


Well Baldie has his villagers, even if they are a little whiffy with long-term cess these days, and once they’d all dried out, or crusted over, he addressed them in sonorous tones. Blacksmith was a liar, he said – but in two thousand words rather than four – Kollerstrom (whom he was pretty keen on) was not a Holocaust Denier. And he defined what a Holocaust Denier was before stating the evidence for Kollerstrom's not being one, point by tedious and ill-written point.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Bennett once again didn’t know his evidence from his elbow. It took fifteen minutes for us to select the documents showing the absolute truth of our statement and another five to locate a quote from Kollerstrom in which the words he used were exactly those that define a Holocaust denier. And Bennett himself had copied and pasted the definition in his post! As usual Bennett was a) wrong b) backing the wrong horse c) unaware of the facts d) an ignorant bullshitter who provides false evidence. What else he might be, and exactly what his motives are, we have yet to find out.

Don’t people ever wonder whether those as childishly deficient in both facts, judgement and scruples as Hall and Bennett might be the wrong people to believe about anything, even the time of day? But like I said, 2015 was the year when exhaustion and despair set in and people clutched at even more straws.

...Looking For a Way Out

Still, that problem is a diminishing one since, like at least two more of the Usual Suspects, Bennett has now started to disintegrate under the pressure of that dangerous stuff, emerging truth. His unravelling has a curious resemblance to that unpleasant episode when he and his business partner Marsden, having worked their way into the trust of 3As forum owner Brenda Ryan, took advantage of her mental unravelling due to loss of belief in her cause to try and snatch the forum away from her. Brenda eventually went to pieces and took to her bed, pursued by numerous email threats - of suing for libel! - from Bennett. She’s been vacant and harmless ever since.

Now it's Bennett's time to join her. He's started abusing his own posters in precisely the same way that Brenda Ryan did as she began to weaken and has taken to manic activity on twitter attempting to defend his reputation - and been greeted with mockery, indifference or contempt, just as Brenda was. Bennett is learning, as Brenda did, that when you argue a case without being able to ban unfriendly rejoinders your arguments have to stand on merit alone. Stand? Merit? Under questioning twitter has revealed an incoherent old man struggling to present anything, like a dribbling tramp in stained trousers selling matches on a wet street corner, and a "case" that stands up, in so far as it's a case at all, like a plate of wet spaghetti. Perhaps that's why his tweets are now apparently being written for him by others.

It won’t do any good. By the way, Mr Bennett, when Brenda lost her grip the ones who turned on her with the most ferocity were her erstwhile biggest fans and disciples. Bye-bye, Tone.


Ode To The Tears Of An Onion

On the other hand we have the big story in which Gerry McCann, known previously for the public immortalization of one of his urinations, "opens up" on radio and discovers that he also possesses a heart. And aesthetic feelings.

I’m sorry, but I couldn’t bear the prospect of listening to it, not even for thirty seconds. I read extracts on the admirable Not Textusa blog but even with that distancing device I could hardly hack it. Their public performances these days just induce a sense of embarrassment. As regular Bureau readers are aware, I'm sure, the parents have no choice at present but to mark time where they stand and say nothing more about the case, and not just because of Grange’s instructions. We aren't going to get anymore from them of significance. We know and they know that it’s the quiet before the storm.

A little reminder to our conspiratorialist friends, as you would expect from the Bureau these days. The radio reviewer in the New Statesman magazine was not just impressed by GM’s latest performance but clearly sympathetic, respectful and moved – and without a trace of cynicism. The New Statesman is an innocent left-wing magazine for people who haven’t yet learned the hard ways of the world and its contributors are as suspicious of big power, police and monster-figures like Murdoch as anybody. Yet there we have the review. A useful corrective for that (now disappearing) catch-all that “it’s only protection that could have kept the McCanns free until now, so obvious is their [undefined] guilt”.

No it isn’t. Not as long as people like that radio critic – and unknown numbers more – take them at face value. Inside the bubble of this case we tend to forget just how large that number may still be.

But still - isn’t the peace and quiet wonderful for those on "our" side? Unlike the McCanns, the four McCann supporters and all the Usual Suspects, Bureau regulars can look forward with that delightful sensation you get in the theatre when the lights go down, voices die away to a whisper and you know the next act is about to begin. And it's going to be a belter. Take your seats.

Best wishes Carole.







Only some lives matter...those were the words the Bureau used in 2014 after reading of the death of one of its supporters, Brenda Leyland, in the British media. Re-reading the reports of her fate in Nigel's McCann Files, from the BBC ("we decided to report the McCann case from the point of view of the parents", a policy never rescinded) upwards to the tabloids is as horrendous today as it was when I first read them.

They literally dehumanised her: the normal rituals of western civilization which accompany and honour a human death seek to invite us to dwell on the higher mysteries behind everyday "reality" and, just possibly, help reduce the terrors of the last journey; this time Brenda was spat upon and ground into the earth - whack- by the MSM.

They denied her the right to die in her own name. No, she was just "a troll", as headline after headline announced, not a human being in her own right at all but someone to be buried only under the designation provided by her enemies. As I also wrote at the time, reading the words they used was like the whack of a body being tossed into an unmarked grave. I'm an over-hard person, a Scorpio who never relents, God forgive me; but I admit that I wept when I read those words.

Not just for her but for what this dreadful affair had become, courtesy of Kate and Gerry McCann and their determination to defend themselves whatever the cost to others. Whatever the cost. October is a time to remember just what that cost has been.

One of these trolls, Brenda Leyland, is a church-going 60-something divorcee who lives in a pretty village in the Home Counties. She looks like a perfectly respectable woman. But of course she isn’t. She’s a cowardly bully who hides behind her smart front door and spews her bile in secret because she doesn’t have the guts to do it in public. Carole Malone, journalist, the Mirror

She thinks she’s entitled to threaten, hound and bully the innocent? Is that because her own life is so lonely, so miserable, so poisoned that she wants others to suffer the same? Or is she just a twisted, fecked up bitch who gets her kicks from hurting people.
Recently we've had a rather different kind of death, that of Jamal Khashoggi.

The MSM, in both the UK and America, are still reeling from the late discovery that most of the public - especially those who, like Brenda Leyland, have actually encountered the bastards in action - literally hate them. The MSM will weep and weep and weep over Mr Khashoggi. That's because he was a journalist. If you believe they're sincere you're in dreamland: no journalist is ever sincere. To the MSM only some deaths matter.




Grange

I mentioned briefly the other day that I thought "the investigative phase of Operation Grange is complete". This surprised some but I'm not sure why. How do you think an international investigation of a major crime - "crime of the century" - can be carried out by four people, and perhaps a dog?

When you get down to those numbers what our military friends call "wastage" or "depletion" have a disproportionate effect. We all know the threats and dangers that Yard officers face daily, especially if they're out of their cars; all it needs is for one officer, six foot four and sixteen stone Mick Burke for example, to be suspended for refusing to wear the pink frilly knickers and short tutu he was obliged to don in the swimming pool as part of his seven week Transgender Awareness & Sensitivity Course at Ali Dizaei House and the twelve million investigation is down by a third of its effectives.

Then another officer is struck down by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, this time as a result of seeing a Deputy Commissioner's expenses claim lying open on a desk in the Ali Dizaei Memorial Library. All we need is for winter colds and the results of a policeman's diet to result in the customary sick note and you have a Luis Neves on the phone drumming his fingers impatiently because Operation Grange is in the lavatory and can't yet speak to him.

No, come on, be realistic. The conclusions, including the "critical" Smith lead conclusions, have all been drawn, for better or worse, and five visits to Portugal in a year is not exactly a close dragnet, is it? No, the four and a half have been on administrative, not operational, investigative duties. Some of them pretty important.


Noise. Lot of It

When I wrote that Act Three of the psychodrama was imminent, I was thinking chiefly of the police and the alarms and surprises that the post-operational phase is bound to bring us. I wasn't prepared for the first scene coming from the public, not police, sphere: the empty cupboard, that phrase our opponents so hate, has now begun to starve the Usual Suspects and followers out as public and private McCann support was starved out by the end of 2017. They are hungry, dispirited and very, very cross. That's what starvation does.

Readers may remember that before the McCann supporters' club lost its belief and conviction twitter noise levels went up to a last-minute eleven+ in both intensity and vilification. There was no sense in it - it wasn't going to affect the outcome of anything - but they couldn't stop themselves, the hatred was an inner reaction that they had no control over. Then they fell away to their present impotent selves. That's what starvation does.

The claims of the motley collection of chancers and fantasists saying they are "researching the case" have met with the same fate by a different route. The Kate and Gerry version pointed to physical objects - windows, doors, shutters - as the basis of their stories and produced a wonderful typescript from their friends filling in the gaps and providing a useful and versatile abductor suspect with a child in his arms.

Time and its acid tears, the PJ and nice Mr Redwood and his people unpicked this edifice a brick at a time leaving only the couple and their words; there they now stand, staring silently into a void. Nothing remains.

The Usual Suspects had never pointed at anything in the first place: despite the nonsense about creche records and "information groups" and "research" the only pointing has been exclusively inwards. The theories came first not the facts, which were adduced afterwards by selectively picking from the Case Files. But where, then, did the theories come from? The imagination, where else? The supporters' belief disintegrated along with the destruction of the parental claims; the Usual Suspects haven't witnessed any destruction because there was never anything to destroy, just wraiths. You can't destroy the imagination. Unfortunately you can't demonstrate anything with it either.

Once all the low-hanging fruit had been picked from the files the "researchers" ran out of road. Being imaginary none of these theories could ever be developed or refuted, only repeated, and somehow, so devilish are the forces ranged against the poor sods, so wicked the background operators at work, those smoking guns never, ever turn up.

That's what stops people listening. That's what makes people restive. But where to go to bolster the theories and retain the sense of mission? Sources like Grange press releases are much too earthbound and besides, whatever else they disagree on, they all agree they're released by Pat Brown's Grange and Pat Brown's Grange, remember, is corrupt to the core and will lie to the "researchers". Oh no, you don't fool them that easily.

They are left with newspapers. And here's the first comical irony. Where do the papers get their stories from? Well, little things like libel laws mean that they've come from one source for the last five years or so. Do you begin to get the connection yet? The "researchers'" evidence is coming from Kate and Gerry McCann; and it's provided to them via the MSM, the people that drove Brenda Leyland to her death.



Why now?

And so we return to the four men and the dog. Whether they or the dog have called on Kate 'n' Gel since April we don't know - but someone from Grange has, haven't they? Non-MP Clarence Mitchell gave a public statement that they did. With instructions to stop working the media.

The Portuguese and UK police have, bit by bit, silenced the McCanns completely, finishing them off in April when their dodgy newsfeeds and "anniversaries" were ended. By the time the pair have found a way round that one it will be too late: the parents will either be cleared and without any need for newsfeeds or a pre-trial situation will be in force, including the contempt of court rules on what the rags can print.

So the Usual Suspect "researchers" are left to be even crosser and starting to fight among themselves, as twitter demonstrates. And, wonderfully, it is the despised, corrupt and useless Grange that has starved them out by turning off the newspaper "sources" tap! Something just isn't right and they can't understand why they don't they have any cans of factual baked beans, or even factual paper darts to hurl back at the wicked NT and his like. Oh irony, how delicious you are.

And the four men and a dog? My guess is that, having anaesthetized the newsfeeds, they've spent a lot of time quietening things down further, taking down the press statements and generally letting the investigation slip quietly from the mind of the greater public, if not from ours. Still, if you ring them up you can proudly tell your friends that you were reassured by a quarter of Operation Grange.


The Mystery Legacy

Back, finally, to where we began: what Kate and Gerry McCann unleashed on us by using the decayed and hollowed-out MSM as a tool in their own defence. After all their efforts over eleven years and the expenditure of millions what are they leaving us as Grange, so we're told, whitewashes them into the sunset?

A trail of sheer destruction. What stands out most is their essentially unfathomable genius for triggering hate and dissent between friends or strangers alike - look again at Malone's choice fruits above, look at what is being shouted on twitter, look back again at how Portuguese and British tore each other apart - real, bitter enmity that touches almost everybody in their ambit. The wrecked career of Gonçalo and the desecrated body of poor Brenda Leyland stand as lasting symbols of the McCanns' legacy. Beside that, almost nothing is of any significance, not even the parents' eventual fate.




Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo

Textusa
NB. Because of its extreme reticence the Textusa persona presents more personal pronoun problems for commentators than a newly trans-gendered school-lavatory door. The rumours are that Textusa is feminine, the prose tends to be masculine, the sensibility clinically asexual. We'll stick to "it."
Textusa is quite influential among critics of the McCanns. Anne Guedes, to whom we all still owe a debt of gratitude, is an avid reader and occasional comment maker. Its readers are fiercely loyal and, when appropriately stimulated, are quick to leap to the defence of their leader.
Its theory about the case is straightforward: the child met an accidental death that was covered up because a singing group was in residence at the Ocean Club that didn’t wish to be identified. From that all else followed.
Who these singers were has not been established - there were rumours that it was Led Zeppelin - but Textusa has over the years built up a formidable list of accessories to the conspiracy.

Present Activities
Around June 2018 Textusa suspended its "investigative work" and abruptly changed the blog into a weird and rather wild anti-personnel machine. The space freed up by Grange's suppression of the fake news stories and the failure of any evidence to appear to develop its singing villains "theory" has been filled ever since with cut and pasted tweets and comments from all over the net, chiefly concerned with the personalities of others.
Reading it is now like listening to a row next door among a family you don't know. Voices are raised, furniture thrown or toppled, a cry or expletive sometimes penetrates the wall, harsh shrieks - of contempt, resentment, anger - rise up. Yet one can never work out quite what it's all about and whether the grievances are real or imaginary.

Present Stance
Textusa's most recent post runs to some six thousand words, about 10% of a short novel, split about 50-50 between its words, anonymous comments and other’s tweets. I found it completely incomprehensible. No doubt its fans will disagree. One of them, a Mr Albert Hall, will no doubt turn up to post “it was a relief to read something short and kogent for once instead of that Blacksmith bullshit.”

Expertise
Self-educated. An autodidact.

Theory Category
Of all the many commentators on the McCann affair Textusa is the most purely imagination-based. This has been illustrated by the way that its now-abandoned speculations about the case always resembled plum puddings or, more appropriately, Spotted Dick: a thick and spongy mass of rampant and uncontrolled imagination surrounds three or four tiny raisins of fact. But the famine that has left Textusa cutting, pasting, gossiping and fighting has made certain, shall we say, conceptual cracks widen into chasms.
One of it's recent gossip/fight columns featured a Mr N. Townsend, a well-known researcher and McCann-supporting fanatic from Gosport. In what many considered was one of Textusa's "jokes" it decided to claim that Nick Townsend didn’t exist. It was a worthy variation on At Swim Two Birds by the immortal Flann O’ Brian, a classic of high Modernism in which characters struggle against the various fates and indignities that the author, a crazed pedant - sound familiar yet? - is inflicting on them.
For the first time in an unusually unmarked life Textusa became known, a must-read. In a demonstration of the essential absurdity, the nobody-could-possibly-take-this-junk-seriously craziness of every single one of the Usual Suspects’ “theories”, Flannel O' Texty stated calmly that Mr Townsend does not exist and had never existed, and then added several thousand words or so of detailed proof. The proof’s method and mode of argument was identical in every way to its “theories” about the McCanns and their singing accomplices, except that it contained more factual raisins. It was one of the most brilliant self-parodies imaginable.
And then it became clear that this wasn’t a joke at all. Textusa, dense, convoluted, Bedlam-prose and all, was proving to readers that a known, living human being does not exist. And continues to do so to this day, at great length.
At which point the readers clogged its site with abuse and disparagement and then gave up reading, either out of nausea or shame. No, we made that bit up: normal things like that don't happen in Usual Suspects land.
Townsend himself, whose latest post on his victim, the admirable dog-handler Mr Grime, can be found here today https://stopthemyths.info/viewtopic.php?f=149&t=8899&start=50 is an exceptionally unattractive character, a slightly mad libeller with an uncertain grasp on reality who’s been known to suffer from pre-senile paranoia in the past, especially since some villains years ago registered a bent car under his name and at his suburban address. What he has made of this science-fiction onslaught on his existence, which Textusa has continued, regularly and in detail, with additional "evidence", we do not know.
It won't do any good but here it is for the record. Your hero can't tell its arse from a hole in the ground. Worse, it can't tell the difference between a living person and a corpse. It cannot accept that it has invented, single-handedly the idea that Nick Townsend doesn't exist. When confronted with copious evidence, including the words of the man himself it is incapable of seeing it. Madeleine McCann is dead and cannot rise to bewail the lies told by rogues and mad people in her name. Nick Townsend is alive libelling and walking,a piece of show it to us! evidence, if ever there was one, you poor bemused fantasist. You have condemned yourself in your own words more conclusively than any enemy of yours could.

Solidarity With
Who knows? If it told me I wouldn't understand.

Any Development?
In the big theory? No, that's gone.

Assessment
Lost. No way back; no way forward. As we warned her.







Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo

The "Nick Pisa fiction" story was not the aberration of a gormless free-lancer. It was a multiple-outlet news feed using new information provided by the McCanns, not an "exclusive": the Mail version of the same feed - which contained additional quotes - came out three hours after the original Sun piece - during the night and before the story had appeared in the paper editions. Both included a quote from Mitchell.


As in the previous clumsy feed put out by the McCanns this autumn, it was an amateurish attempt to get round the Yard "request" not to comment on the investigation and to distance themselves from the old recognition codes used by Mitchell so they could, as always, lie about the story's origins.

__________________________


The almost forgotten American author Norman Mailer's perverted love of violence and relentless misogyny (the two traits neatly encapsulated by his bloody stabbing of his wife) wrecked any chance of his becoming a serious writer. But the same qualities made him an excellent sports journalist, especially about boxing.


Mailer particularly liked those loosely refereed fights where "the boys", usually from poverty-stricken loser backgrounds, beat each other almost to death and occasionally, as in the Emile Griffith fight at which he was present, well beyond that point, with the loser, Benny Paret, left on the canvas to wait for the wagon that would carry him to hospital and then the morgue.


It was after that fight that Mailer wrote that, when a boxer has got on top of his opponent' he seems to get bigger, actually swells up, as he dominates the centre of the ring, while his opponent, in contrast, begins to shrink as he backs away. Mailer wrote, in a very Mailerian way, that this was a physical reality, not just a "seems so" illusion. Nobody had ever made such a suggestion before but certainly when you look at the boxers in When They Were Kings, the 1996 movie about the Ali-Forman fight in which Mailer appears (outclassed by the more genuine George Plimpton), it seems, weirdly, to bear him out.

(...)
And Then We Have...

GM at the Leveson tribunal, little red spots of anger burning on those pasty cheeks, demanding, like some crazed Wolf Hall Henry VIII, draconian punishment for journalists who didn’t meet his approved standards. Watch Judge Leveson, who’d leered and sneered at the “little people” like David Pilditch as they testified, bend beneath this gale of malevolence until he was able to murmur sadly, as though soothing a madman, that what McCann demanded was against the law. Watch the recording or read the transcripts. Italics and titles in this abridged extract are ours.

Henry VIII McCann: [viciously] I think if there are repeated offenders, then they should lose their privilege of practising as a journalist…

Little Judge: [murmurs] Quite difficult, that. I understand exactly why you're saying that, but just let me share with you the difficulty…what journalists do is exercise the right of free speech…it’s quite difficult...that’s not to say that there shouldn't be penalties…holding to account…

Henry VIII: Sure!

Little Judge: But –

Henry VIII: [interrupts excitedly] Thank you, sir. [rants]…they should be held to account…

Judge Tom Thumb: Yes. [tactfully, greasily] I wasn't criticising you at all, but I was simply seeking to explain why that particular remedy may be very difficult to apply in this context.

That would be the same Henry VIII who told Ye Olde Radio Tudor Four that "he had not read the [Sweepyface] tweet but police should be more willing to charge internet trolls.I'm glad to see the law around this area has been reviewed. We need to make examples of people who are causing damage." No, some temporary kings don't just swell up like slugs, they act like them as well.

We were a couple of swells, We stopped at the best hotels...

They don't talk and look quite so big these days, do they? Of course you must take our word for that because the faces that launched a million clips tend to be kept out of the media these days.

Whereas Gonçalo Amaral, who shrank to a really alarming skinniness in the days when the dodgy couple were on board Phillip Green's jet or swanking it "searching" at the Dom Pedro hotel at their private fund's expense, looks older but just fine, with much of his winner's weight back on and, rather more importantly, the face of someone able to sleep at night with a clear conscience, not lie awake weeping.


So what are our past royalty up to in 2018? Still telling judges who to punish? Still warning prime ministers what they'll do if they don't get their way? Still wanting to hold middle-aged women "to account"? Still complaining that Goncalo Amaral, dared to keep them waiting at the libel trial? Not exactly.


What do the 2018 press digests say?

______________________________________________________

Shrinking

Gerry McCann weeps uncontrollably as he recalls Maddie ...I just want to hug her…Gerry McCann to open up about his mental health …Gerry McCann will speak candidly about his own mental health…Madeleine McCann's dad Gerry dreams about hugging his daughter … Kate McCann shuts online store to find Madeleine as donations ... Gerry McCann to reveal depression and his grief over...Madeleine parents Kate and Gerry 'warned by cops not to talk…
____________________________________



We're a couple of frauds, hiding behind closed doors...


And so back to that feed. We repeat, it was not one bad reporter who got it all wrong. It was a the terminally disorganised "pathetic remnant of Team McCann", as we described it after its abortive September feed also went belly-up, that had fed Pisa his junk and left him to disguise it as a news report.


The attempts to find their way round the quasi-legal constraints imposed on their public campaigning by Grange have resulted in Chaplinesque farce. The newsfeed's school playground, "if Amaral wants a fight we'll give him one" [you lost, losers] and equally childish abuse of Amaral [grow up, losers], it's "he made all that money" envy [while yours is being taken away, losers] and it's appalling misstatements of fact have left the McCanns, whose purpose was to keep public sympathy [because you've got none from the police, have you?] looking absurd.


It doesn't help, of course, that in the old days when Mitchell provided the main lines of the feeds the editors themselves or senior reporters did the cutting and pasting in of old quotes made to look like current ones etc, the appropriate "pal" and "family friend" codes and the "responses" of a named Mitchell. Now the McCanns, while big news, don't have the status to get top people working on the feeds and the work was given to Pisa, an ignorant nonentity, to finish off.


They can't intimidate the sweepyfaces of today anymore, they don't threaten to sue the MSM anymore, they can't spread fake stories about Grange anymore, even though people like Tony Bennett stand at the ready to help them do so. Not until the current legal phony war ends. So they're trying desperately for the only card they think they have left before then: the weepy sympathy 'n' suffering vote that made their name when they were little, as-yet-unswollen nothings. And Mitchell? You've all seen what's happened to that wreck.


 
Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo
Making waves in the justice world at the moment is the hitherto unreported libel case of Townsend. V. C. Box. It seems injunctions may have been operating which is why neither of the parties has mentioned it in public. The Bureau will print the extracts it receives from its sources as we get them.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

The Lord MisKlaudie of Dee, sitting without a jury.

Extract from the opening speech by counsel for Mr Townsend.

(The judge is - we quote from Who Sues Who? the factbook of the legal profession - the Lord Misklaudie of Dee, known by his colleagues, for obvious reasons, as Lawdy Miss Clawdy. A small, late-middle aged,zq genial figure with gold rimless spectacles he presides with friendly and informal dignity. Mr Llewelly Davis QC, aged forty, is a rising figure in the legal world, whose questions describe him better than we can.)
________________________________________
Mr Llewelly Davis QC:…omnium prevorum or even omnium odium would then apply,my Lord. But this is an entirely different matter. The claimant, Mr Townsend, took action against the defendant on the grounds that his claims were not merely defamatory and ultra vires –
Judge: Mr Davis, a little less of the Latin might be better today.

Davis: I apologise my Lord. As I said, Mr Townsend is a known researcher and public campaigner who has led a blameless life. He is a particular authority on dogs, my Lord.
Judge: Dogs? What sort of dogs? Pet dogs?
Davis: I understand they are Springer Spaniels mainly, my Lord.
Judge: Ah, gundogs. That's different.
Davis: If I could continue outlining –
Judge: Of course.
Davis: An authority on dogs and other matters, including the naval history of gunpowder at Gosport, where the claimant resides, my Lord. He is a well-respected member of the community. He also comments widely on the internet which features large in his life.
Judge: Does it? Oh dear.
Davis: And there is no doubt of his standing. That is a matter of importance when we look at the claim.
Judge: Yes, yes, I appreciate that. What is the essence of it?
Davis: My Lord, I was about to deal with that. It is, I have no hesitation in saying, an unprecedented claim in legal annals. In terms, the defendant has asserted on numerous occasions that no such person as Mr Townsend exists and continues to make this assertion.
Judge: That seems rather silly to me, Mr Davis. Couldn’t they have settled it over a cup of tea?
Davis: There was a pre-trial arbitration meeting between the parties, my Lord, as per the protocol, but it was aborted when the defendant claimed that Mr Townsend was not present in the room. The defendant not only looked under the desk at which they both sat, according to Mr Townsend, but ostentatiously lifted the trilby hat off Mr Townsend’s head, sniffed inside it, put it on the desk and said, [reads out from brief]the actual words were, “See? There’s nobody under there.” This claim brought the meeting to an abrupt end, my Lord.
Judge: I trust, Mr Davis, that we are not straying into the grounds of frivolity.
Davis: By no means, my Lord. The defendant has claimed a defence of truth, something that has never happened in this context before. He claims, my Lord, that Mr Townsend is actually dead. As dead as a...as a...
[spectators lean forward expectantly as one]
Judge: [indulges them and leans back] As a parrot, Mr Davis?
[Uproar in court]
Davis: [after order restored] [smiles indulgently] Your Lordship's knowledge of the mot juste is unexampled, my Lord. But Mr Townsend claims that this is a very serious matter -
Judge: Is it? That's not how it appears from the bench.
Davis: Mr Townsend states that the shock of having his reality, and if I may be so bold as to add, his humanity, questioned has not only caused him immense mental distress but, due to childhood experiences which he has not expanded upon, actually caused a serious mental breakdown. It made he himself question whether he is in fact alive.
Judge: That could form the basis of agreement between the parties, if rather a perverse one, couldn't it? Or am I being flippant?
Davis: Medical evidence will be presented ab initio indicating the seriousness of the problem, my Lord. It is an extremely serious matter for the claimant.
Judge: I shouldn't have said that, I really shouldn't. But I plead the effect of the bizarre nature of this case in my defence. I keep getting the feeling that you are making this up. Look, are the two parties aware of the costs that bringing this case to trial will eventuate?
Davis: They are, my Lord. The question of funding will be considered later.
Judge: Is he recovered?

Davis: [quick as a flash]Which one?
Judge: The claimant, Mr Davis
Davis: [pauses] With respect, my Lord, this case it not one where it is easy to answer a question like that.
Judge: [perplexed] Very well. Of course, I hope he is.
Davis: [carefully] As an example, my Lord, of the territory we are entering [searches through pages] the defence have asked that the defendant may give evidence later in the case –
Judge: I greatly look forward to that.
Davis: Wearing a square box over its head.
[profound silence in court]

Judge: Mr Davis, I think this may be time for an adjournment.
Davis: [innocently] You may wonder why I referred to the defendant as "it", my lord. The defendant has also asked to be addressed in the witness box, while wearing a large square box on the head, in gender-neutral terms, My Lord. He or she wishes to be addressed merely as Textusa, or T. [pauses]. On human rights grounds. [pauses again, lengthily] And on national security grounds.
Judge: [fanning himself with a Manilla folder] Are either of these two here today?
Davis: [looks slowly and deliberately around the court as though on a ship’s bridge] I see nobody there.
[loud laughter in court]

Judge: I mentioned frivolity earlier, Mr Davis. That was not worthy of you.
Davis: I apologise my Lord. No, neither of them are here today. My Lord, if I could just conclude. In the case of Eliot V Mr Chomondly-Brogue-Whacker-Ragland-Fars-Rasta-Spliff-Mann, after lengthy consideration in 1983, the court ruled that subject to rigid identification measures and for the retention of the dignity of the court, the defendant could be referred to by agreement as Shaggy.
Judge: I remember that from studying. That judge was having no nonsense and nor am I. He was an excellent shot, by the way. I'll think that one over but now the strange nature of this case demands a rest for all of us.
Davis: With your permission, my Lord.[passes note]
Judge: [after a minute's reading] I want to address the public for a moment. Some of the material you have heard sounds like jovial invention. Mr Davis has asked me to point out that, while it has its, I think I said bizarre, side both parties are maintaining that they are telling the truth and that the public have been witness to the alleged claims made. There are indeed internet web sites, easily found on Google, where these claims are being discussed with absolute seriousness, however hard that is to believe, or however mad or comical they might sound to people like us. We must endeavour not to mock.
Court was adjourned for the afternoon.



Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo

Welcome to the Bureau court reporting service and extracts from day two of this gripping drama.
The morning was dominated by legal arguments over defence submissions which, after lengthy consideration, the judge rejected. Falling back on what he called the precedent of Anglo-Saxon common sense rather than the common law - muttering to himself that both were identical - he ruled that the defendant was to be referred to exclusively as Mr. Textusa, occupation: a hermit.
On the defendant's application to be a litigant-in-person the judge held that the normal right to do so faced "enormous difficulties". How, he asked, can the majesty and intellectual subtlety of the law, or even its dignity, be expressed by a person wearing a two-foot square cardboard box over his head?
He rejected the national security argument for such a measure but accepted that, as a hermit, a human rights argument could be made [see the U.S 1970s "smack a midget for Norm case" - Short People .V. Randy Newman, a singer] in his favour on the grounds that dealing with real people rather than screens might induce health problems. He reserved judgement.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

In the matter of Townsend .V. Textusa.

The Lord MisKlaudie of Dee, sitting without a jury.
3.30 PM. A large LED screen has been set up visible to both the court and the noticeably crowded and expectant public gallery. Mr Llewelly Davis QC, counsel for Mr Townsend, is taking the court through on-screen material produced under discovery rulings by Mr Textusa. Our extract starts some way in.
Judge: A what?
Mr Davis: A blogger, my Lord. As you can see on the screen, Mr Textusa is not a believer in using one word where forty seven will do. In examining this material, in fact, we have been handicapped by the logistical challenge it presents.
[Mr Davis, it is becoming clear has a way with understatement designed to intrigue judges or perhaps provoke them. His hair is dark and his refined, thin eyebrows are eloquent when, in the middle of describing matters, he raises one of both of them; they act as a running commentary on his own words. He has won many cases.]
Judge: This one seems inordinately long.
Mr Davis: This blog-post, as these things are referred to, took us thirty two minutes to read. It consists of 38, 500 words.
Judge: What on earth is it about? I can't make head or tail of it, and I'm a judge. Is it a report on an expedition or something?
Mr Davis: Only in a sense, my Lord.
Judge: Then what is it? A commentary on the Evolution of Species?
Mr Davis: It is a shopping list, my Lord.
[Turmoil in court. A small number of people stamp their feet, a hooray at the back shouts "Bravo!"]
[the judge admonishes and warns public]
Judge: Please continue Mr Davis.
Mr Davis: It is indeed a shopping list, my Lord, which the defendant posted publicly, whether by accident or design.
Judge: How many items?
[Mr Lewis's left eyebrow, the one visible to the public gallery, is in the "up" position]
Mr Davis: [in measured tones] Four, my Lord. I -
[His words are lost in further uproar; under the judge's sharp eye, order is rapidly restored]
Mr Davis: [continuing] Yes, four, my Lord. They are a box of muesli, a tube of Germolene ointment, a copy of the Fortean Times and some chicken.
Judge: How many words again?
Mr Davis: Thirty eight thousand, five hundred. My learned assistant M/S Oliver has turned to the Marquis de Caulaincourt's With Napoleon in Russia and informed me this morning that the French army's entire supply requisition list for the invasion of that country in 1812 was only half the length of this post. [pause] I thought you might be interested, my Lord.
Judge: Mr Davis, we must endeavour to be totally fair to this defendant. It is not strictly relevant but perhaps you could give us some insight into how it has swelled to that length.
Mr Davis: I think it is relevant, my Lord, because it gives us some insight into the background of the person who is making these most unusual claims against Mr Townsend. It may help us in our task.
Judge: Go on.
Mr Davis: Mr Textusa is prone to diversion in the way that the authors of the Anatomy of Melancholy or The Compleat Angler were, my Lord, but perhaps with not quite the same charming effect. There is a lengthy disquisition on the production of muesli in the list, for example, dealing with its history and its possible use as an improved form of water-boarding by security services, that sort of thing.
The journey to the pharmacist for the Germolene is made extremely lengthy by some of Mr Textusa's preoccupations, which depend perhaps excessively on Wikipedia and the 1998 Childrens' Encyclopedia, including a section on whether road maps are trustworthy documents. In Mr Textusa's opinion, exhaustively expressed, they are not. He is particularly troubled by cul-de-sacs, my Lord, which in his view should not exist; likewise with railway maps, which he believes are definitely not accurate, with malice aforethought. As a result, of course, Mr Textusa, on one of his rare forays out, suffers intense trauma at level crossings, about which he also writes in a prolix, though guarded, manner. And then there is the question of the shoes...
Judge: [faintly, wearily] Shoes?
Mr Davis: Mr Textusa's visits to shops and so forth are complicated by a certain literalness in his approach to life. [One eyebrow, the one facing the judge, is rising] He insists that his Rocky Mountain High walking shoes are just that and, therefore, cannot be used for anything but walking. This leads him into certain difficulties -
[the public gallery is completely hushed, rapt -]
Judge: In what way?
[- as Mr Lewis's other eyebrow begins to climb. His voice, however, remains heroically steady]
Mr Lewis: Following his own ruthless logic he always takes them off when he gets on a bus. This has -
[the public gallery is stirring]
- led to repeated difficulties and, naturally, to very long descriptions of them online. Sometimes, on certain bus routes, there can be trouble. On June 21 2018, for example, his removal of shoes led to schoolchildren passengers on their way home booing and holding their noses and shouting what'sthatstink? whoo'sthepoxyweirdo? and -
Judge: [yet again has to admonish the public gallery while Mr Lewis, with a look of quiet satisfaction on his face, adjusts his watch] That's enough detail, thank you Mr Lewis.
Mr Lewis: [is not to be stopped] In addition he tells us that running shoes must only be used for running and as a result, in another seven thousand words describes how -
Judge: Mr Lewis -
Mr Lewis: [pleadingly] Can I ask the court if they can guess what Mr Textusa wears on his occasional railway journeys, having removed his Rocky Mountain Highs? On trains, my Lord?
Judge: By no means; I think we have the picture. What was the last item on the shopping list?
Mr Lewis: Line 3401, I believe. It is Kentucky Fried Chicken, giant family freezer pack.
Judge: And Kentucky Fried Chicken is?
Mr Lewis: Broadly what it says, my Lord. It forms the majority component of Mr Textusa's diet but it also has a wider significance in this case which, if we have time, I will enlarge upon.
Judge: Yes, but what distinguishes it from other chicken? Can it be shot?
Mr Lewis: The distinction is best summarised by saying that it is eaten out of buckets.
Judge: Buckets? Buckets?
Mr Lewis: With the hands. Hence the denotation "finger lickin' good" [deadpan]
Judge: I think the joke making has gone too far this time, Mr Lewis.
Mr Lewis: I am in absolute earnest, my Lord. I do not believe they are shot, no, not even in America. Among some sectors of the population there, and particularly in the UK, it is considered a delicacy -
Judge: I've never seen it on the menu at Wiltons. Have you?
Mr Lewis: No my Lord. But if I could continue, because it is a matter of some importance in this case -
Judge: Is it?
Mr Lewis: Indeed there are motorway service stations -
Judge: [clearly growing tired] What is a motorway service station?
Mr Lewis: -
Judge: It doesn't matter. I was just being a judge.
Mr Lewis: Many motorway service stations in the UK encourage relaxed family inter-actions by letting groups consume the chicken together out of large cardboard or plastic buckets. They gnaw on it. [pauses.an invisible dagger is slowly raised]
Judge: Thank you Mr Lewis.
Mr Lewis: This has considerable significance for the case. Each service station has a little section, a kind of reservation, for members of the less discriminating, or economically disadvantaged, or simply obese, parts of the population. Here, and in store-rooms at the rear of the building they keep a number of [the dagger is plunged] Big Round Tables, known as Chick'n Lick'n Tables at which they sup and on which the defendant endured traumatic suffering in the past -
Judge: Mr Lewis -
[but the public gallery has broken into loud and spontaneous applause and foot-stamping. Mr Lewis brushes some invisible dust off the sleeve of his Gieves suit and makes a microscopic hint of a bow to the public galleries -
Court Usher: All stand!
[Court adjourned]

 
Flectere si nequeo superos 
Acheronta movebo

Background

We began our campaign against the various frauds and conmen - the Usual Suspects - earlier this year. A major charge of ours was that all of them, from Pat Brown downwards, had actively improved the McCann couples' public reputation.


We founded this Bureau in 2009 with one aim only: not to sleuth, not to "be there for the child", not to put forward theories but to destroy the public reputation of Kate and Gerry McCann by proving beyond doubt over the long term that their reputation rested on lies and deceit. That is what the motto at the head of the page means.


People like the Usual Suspects work against that achievable aim by making such patently untrue and wicked claims against the McCanns that neutrals are able to dismiss almost all sceptical comment about the couple on the "Kier Simmons" grounds that they are all mad or wicked. That is a view still held by a majority of the population and we have the Suspects to thank for week after week providing the evidence to confirm that view. That is the reason I attack them.


As recently as a week ago a young columnist on the left-wing journal the New Statesman confidently repeated that charge against McCann critics at length and in detail, citing as evidence that internet "conspiracy theorists" even claimed obvious realities "did not exist". It was a disturbing experience to read in a non-tabloid, idealistic journal that dislikes what it calls the "establishment", just what people think of all of us.


We originally included Textusa as a Suspect, and we accused her devoted followers not just of terrifying ignorance and gullibility but of actively encouraging Textusa in the fantasies. Then, concerned at Textusa's mental state, we more or less left her alone. In response Textusa posted, "we are waiting for Blacksmith to show us where we have ever lied".

Fact Check

So we responded by stating that she had lied in the most fantastic and irrefutable way possible by suggesting that a living person, Nick Townsend, of Gosport didn't exist at all but had been invented as part of a plot, a conspiracy by the blogger Not Textusa and others. I provided links demonstrating the truth.



In response Textusa simply refused to acknowledge any reality at all, thus proving to the letter the accuracy of the New Statesman's claims. I repeat, most of the population think that McCann critics on the net are actually mad and cannot tell truth from fiction - and they are taking that opinion directly from the proof that Textusa, Brown, Bennett, Hidiho, Shepherd, Marsden, Roberts and Hall and their supporters offer up for them, without charge, every week, week after week. People can read.


And as a little reminder of the links between people's "harmless opinions on the net" and the real world, let me repeat again that in the absolutely crucial Lisbon libel trial the only real name that the McCanns and their lawyers were able to present in evidence as "threatening the safety of the McCanns family" was the name of one of the Usual Suspects: Tony Bennett. The only one. And their lawyers are ready for the next time: they can also read.


These are Textusa's words, taken from the August blogs. They remain up and can be viewed there now.



"As we said in our comment at 20 Aug 2018, 15:59:00, the “Nick T hoax” is as relevant as anything else that is in the [2007 McCann investigation Case] files as it shows, very clearly, the tentacles of the cover-up on the internet. Nick Townsend is just a character, an account. As we have seen, no one has been able to prove that Nick Townsend existed before May 2016."


"We have never said that Nick Townsend is [blogger Not Textusa]. We have said that Nick Townsend is his creation."


"We taunted and we teased. We have given the impression we were being distracted. We weren’t. Nick Townsend is either a secret agent who has erased all his past off the internet (leaving only a £10,00 donation and a ref in a spoof twitter account) or he is as we say, a creation."


"Then, it was very easy to see who indeed Nick Townsend was, or best, what was the purpose of his existence."



Not one of Textusa's supporters has dissociated themselves from these psychotic ravings; not one has made any effort to make up for the damage; not one, it appears, can see that if Nick Townsend exists then claims made in thousands and thousands of words by Textusa are pure fantasy. Textusa goes Textusa's way, dragging Textusa's disciples along. And not one of them can yet put two and two together and work out that, like the McCanns, if Textusa is irrefutably inventing on that scale, then Textusa cannot tell truth from fiction and therefore cannot be telling the truth in the assertions about the McCanns and the innocent forty or so people that have been defamed.


Prompted by the New Statesman's rather chastening article I put a little reminder together for Textusa that 38 500 words of invented drivel about tables hadn't made the question of Textusa's personal dishonesty go away. I highlighted these questions of truth establishment - which of course lie behind the current public battle of "fake news" and are therefore significant way beyond our McCann internet circus - this week. I did so in a mocking sketch following the time-honoured English route of presenting very real and very important issues in an entertaining form so as not to bore people.



Until today.


Late last night, while fact-checking that Court Reports sketch, I became aware for the first time that a long-term victim of Nick Townsend's perverted stalking was dead. The news was made worse by the fact that Townsend had, as recently as late 2017, publicly accused Not Textusa of being that person by addressing the latter, madly and insultingly, by the victim's name on a public forum. He then repeated the accusation on the Stopthemyths website where it was, to their rare credit, deleted. The dirty old man couldn't even get his stalking right.



So in a very creepy way it transpires that both Townsend and Textusa - who gratuitously named the victim for no apparent reason in the blog - are mirror images: neither of them can even tell the difference between a corpse and a living person. Neither of them can respect the living and neither of them can respect the dead. One insane representative of the Usual Suspects, one wicked and perverted stalker and fanatical supporter of the McCanns who didn't care who died as long as he could stalk. The thing that unites them in a continuing bond is harming innocent people - and persuading their easily-led supporters to join them in the harm they do.



I apologise to readers but all interest in continuing the Court Reports stuff drained away from me as I read of the death of this person. The deeper you go, the filthier it gets in McCann land: I feel like I've been wading knee-deep through sewage for the last few days. The McCanns are at least recognisable human beings, just: these people, and their supporters, are like horror-film creations.
Case abandoned amid overwhelming disgust and nausea at all of them.
 

Flectere si nequeo superos 
Acheronta movebo

Meanwhile…

We referred briefly elsewhere to the fact that a number of the Bureau’s claims against the McCanns dating back to 2009, and once considered as speculative, have been confirmed by judicial or investigative evidence as time has passed. How are the McCanns’ various stories faring these days?

Here's a very small selection, some of which have been dealt with in detail in recent Bureaus. They only cover May-September 2007!


The Abduction

Claim: Apartment found with shutters forced open (“jemmied”) and intrusion by shuttered window by the parents when they returned from restaurant.

Nature of claim: Public, to the media. First week in May 2007.

Source: Healy/McCann family members, including Kate McCann’s father and Trish McCann, stating that Gerry McCann had given them that information by phone on the night May 3/4.

Confirmation/rebuttal: None.

Present status: Claim abandoned.


Claim: Madeleine McCann's safety and welfare was being checked every half hour between 8.30PM-10PM by parents or members of the group.

Nature of claim: Police statements.

Source: Parents and Tapas 7.

Confirmation/rebuttal: refuted by Archiving Summary Section G ("... they didn't check on them like they afterwards declared they did"; refuted by evidence from Archiving Summary author Menezes at Lisbon libel/HR trial 2009/10; refuted by case files. In fact Madeleine McCann was only checked once at the most, supposedly at 9.05 PM by Gerry McCann ("by his watch".)

Present status: Untrue


Claim: An abductor was seen carrying the child away from the apartment at around 9.15-9.20.

Nature of claim: Public.

Source: Kate McCann, Madeleine. "There was little doubt in my mind then, nor is there now, that what Jane saw was Madeleine’s abductor taking her away."

Confirmation/rebuttal: Public statement from Grange discounts JT evidence as an "abductor sighting" on timescale and identification grounds.

Present status: No supporting evidence. Scotland Yard "almost certain" after investigation that it was not an "abductor" carrying a child.


Claim: Material evidence of an intruder in the apartment between 8.30 - 9.05PM and 9.10-10.00PM.

Nature of claim: Public plus police statement. Otherwise inexplicable movements of child's bedroom door.

Source: Gerry and Kate McCann. KM in Madeleine: "What we do now believe is that the abductor had very probably been into the room before Gerry’s check." GM noted "strange" position of bedroom door at 9.05PM in May 10 statement - not in May 4 statement.

Confirmation/rebuttal: Unconfirmed.

Present Status: Like the dogs' results: No supporting evidence.

_____________________________________________


The Investigation

Claim: Gerry McCann disabled by a virus on August 2 2007.
Nature of claim: Solely public.
Source: Gerry McCann, Kate McCann.
Confirmation/rebuttal: Untrue.
Present status: Admitted lie.


Claim: Unexplained visit to apartment by police on August 2 2007.
Nature of claim: Solely public.
Source: Kate McCann. "Something to do with forensics, they’d said. Great timing. And forensics? What was that all about?" and "When you are innocent, it doesn’t occur to you that you could be considered in any other light. Whatever the case, difficult as it is to believe, I still didn’t smell a rat."
Confirmation/rebuttal: Case files: Search warrant issued to search suspects' ("suspeitos") apartment, presented and executed. Both suspects questioned by detectives in connection with disappearance of Madeleine McCann
Present Status: Untrue.



Claim: Police offered the parents a deal: a lighter sentence if she would plead guilty to disposing of the child.
Nature of claim: Public.
Source: Kate McCann. On the morning of 7 September KM, the person who insists that she always abided by the Portuguese secrecy rules, gave a "green light", as she described it, to family members peddling a line to the UK media about the police having offered an illegal "deal" the previous day to intimidate and incentivize her into a false confession to disposing of the child's body. She spent two hours spelling out the stories. Her press spokesperson contacted editors so they were ready for them.


The reports dominated the media for more than a day. The Telegraph reported: "In an interview which Mrs McCann gave hours before being declared a suspect, which was published on Sunday, she said: "They want me to lie - I'm being framed."They are basically saying, if I confess Madeleine had an accident, and that I panicked and hid the body in a bag for a month then got rid of it in a hire car, I'd get a two or three years' suspended sentence.""

Confirmation/rebuttal: At no time has KM asserted - rather than implied - that any police officer made any such suggestion, or anything approaching one, or ever spoke to her about deals. The police and justice department gave a comprehensive denial that any such offers had been, or could have been, made. That just leaves her lawyer, who KM, claimed, had acted as messenger for the claim. The lawyer, whose assistant was present when the alleged "message" was delivered, has rebutted her story, stating that the "deal" was a "misunderstanding" on KM's part. No supporting evidence has ever been provided; KM has taken the matter no further. 
C'est une variante de "how doing things with words", le secret étant que le message soit rapidement capté et multiplié.


Present status: It's up there with the jemmied shutters, which also featured intensive phone-calling to family members. Like the shutters claim it has been abandoned.
See a pattern yet?
More to come.




In the Beginning...
When we wrote about the “Foundation Lie” we described Gerry McCann addressing the Commons committee in March 2009 by reading out a framework of a history, a narrative of events in 2007.
It began with a brief paragraph on the usual 
we had to engage with the media who’d suddenly appeared stuff 
before moving on to the real beginning, the decision to step back from the publicity in the summer, followed by the “mysterious” onslaught on the McCanns by a wicked media. It excluded almost all that had happened in between.
It was essentially a development of the story that GM had started telling everybody at the time of his visit to Edinburgh in festival week, also in a recent Bureau, and that was no accident. By 2011 the narrative appeared in its final form in Kate McCann’s Madeleine and was expounded to the Leveson inquiry in 2011/2012.
Why did history for the McCanns begin in August 2007?
The short answer is - that’s when the McCanns engaged a criminal lawyer.
Game Changer
They did so knowing they were going to be questioned as arguidos. From then on, their task was to prepare a convincing defence case to save themselves. And, eventually, they would have a battery of lawyers and journalists to help them do it.
Until August the McCanns had been obliged to play the tabloid-invented role of innocent suffering victims “working with the police”. Now, with the PJ finally showing their hand, all that was going out of the window.
There were limits to what could be done about the police statements: they were fixed in stone. There was room, though, to hide or muffle them using the secrecy rules, the language barrier, the confusion and their state of trauma early on. If a police vendetta was added in – impossible while playing the “working with the police role” - then they might withstand all but a determined prosecution.
But there was no appetite for a prosecution, in Portugal or the UK. With luck the PJ, who, as GM guessed on September 11 had “nothing” solid, would abandon the case and the police documents would never see the light of day. Who then would start combing through the millions of words of leaks and counter leaks to decide stuff like whether GM had used his key to the apartment door at 9.05 or not? Most of it wasn’t even available in English.
“Yes,” goes the final narrative, “ we used media at first because they suddenly appeared and to help find our child - the police were sceptical and backward but we stuck by them for Madeleine’s sake - under pressure for results the PJ turned on us, saying we had got rid of the child! They fed horrible stories to the media who lied about us – the PJ couldn’t accept they were wrong and hounded us until we were terrified – in the end we proved they had no evidence, it was all just invention by a suspect cop and an incompetent team. We don’t hold this against the decent Portuguese people, of whom we’re very fond but it all hurts terribly to this day.”
See? It's the same story we're telling.

But…
Universal and all purpose, eh? Defence document, attack on the lying media document, libel claim document and, importantly, "the truth" for the good old British public. All one story.
There was, however, a problem. The McCanns are pathological liars. That doesn’t make them guilty in the disappearance, not at all, but it’s a complicating factor. It means that, however much they might want to tell the truth, their mental database doesn’t necessarily provide it when called up. It's just a disability: the old Mark Twain saying, “if you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything” applies.
So the construction of this narrative, even with the help of defence experts, was a great deal of challenging work.
So much for our own narrative. Now, let’s just lift the corner of the tablecloth, as it were and give you a small example of the process in action.
Let’s take the December 2007 Times article Beyond the Smears. As the Times boasts, it represented six months of work for its author David James Smith. They say little about the fact that, whatever its original aim and form, by December it was being used as a conduit for the developing narrative by the parents.
By then the "history's" construction had been in public view for three months as the McCanns and the defence used Mitchell to fill in the gaps and inconsistencies and counter Portuguese claims – about the sighting, GM’s “memories” about intruders and the rest, and, particularly, about PJ suggestions that a KM too-unstable-to-be safe-with-her-own-child had suffered “missing hours” before 7PM. All that, together with the Panorama blockbuster, was demonstrating that the narrative was not just for the Portuguese courts but the British public.
So how did it develop on the way to Madeleine? The truth always stays the same, doesn’t it? Have a look at Part Two.





First we show some sentences from Beyond the Smears (BTS). It is immediately obvious that KM has copied chunks of the article word for word from Madeleine, thus ensuring that her own version remains consistent with what had already been printed. Smart, eh?
Ce sont manifestement les MC qui ont briefé DJS, comment aurait-il autrement connaissance de l'interrogatoire informel, donc pas dans les PJFiles, du 8 août ?

But, even more interesting – the truth always remains the same? – are the alterations. The second sentences are by Kate McCann. (KM).




___________________________________________________

BTS: Gerry had knocked up at the start of the 4.30PM tennis-drills session, but had decided not to exacerbate an injury to his Achilles tendon, so had dropped out and waited around by the courts until the children came back from the kids’ clubs at 5pm for tea. That had been one of the most enjoyable times of the holiday, all the children together for tea, then the adults playing with them afterwards.


That's all you're going to get of May 3 events before 7PM. The few hours before that are steeped in mystery to this day. DJS wasn't being allowed near any of them. And KM? We punched in tennis and got thirty results but no Achilles Tendon. Make your own mind up. Abandoned

_________________________________________________________

BTS: Gerry was in his apartment at 7pm, had a glass of water, then a beer, while the children sat with Kate on the couch having stories with a snack.

KM: Gerry arrived back promptly at 7pm, sat down on the other couch and we all chatted for a while.

Pretty word for word, right? Maybe that means it's true. Funny, though, isn’t it? Why couldn’t she just tell us in her own words?

_________________________________________________________


BTS: The twins were asleep virtually the moment they lay down. Madeleine not far behind them.

KM: We were in no doubt that all three would be asleep in an instant.

Pourquoi "aucun doute" ? Sédation ? Absolutely.

_______________________________________________________

BTS: At about 7.30PM, Kate and Gerry showered and changed and sat down to have a quiet glass of the sauvignon blanc.

KM: Between 7.15 and 7.30pm Gerry took his shower and I went to blow-dry my wayward fringe and put on a bit of make-up.

Absolutely. Wait a minute, wait a minute - what happened to her f*****g shower?

Oh, yes. She’d already had a shower around 6.30PM, witnessed by the owlish eyes of David Payne. But that is before 7PM and any discussion of that and David Payne is VERBOTEN. And she hadn’t told the PJ about the DP visit until September 2007, had she? So she hadn’t told Smith either. Anyway, "Madeleine" tried to repair the damaged shower.


KM: Every other evening I’d waited until the children were asleep before showering, but as we were ahead of schedule, and I wanted to freshen up after my run, I thought I’d take advantage of these quiet few minutes. At around six-forty...


It's the best she could do but the second shower is in her police statement so abandoning it doesn't work this time...

_____________________________________________________

BTS: The McCanns sat down after a few minutes and then ordered some wine. The Oldfields were next to arrive, then Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner and, finally, always last, Dave and Fiona Payne with Dianne Webster.

KM: As we chatted, our friends began to appear. Jane arrived first, at about eight-forty, followed a few minutes later by Rachael and Matt. Next came Russell, and finally Fiona, David and Dianne.

A discrepancy. No big deal.

_________________________________________________________

BTS: The Paynes were on the floor above, the only couple with a functioning baby monitor. Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner had brought a monitor too, but theirs wasn’t getting much of a signal from the Tapas restaurant 50 yards away.


KM:...Dave and Fiona, who had a state-of-the-art baby monitor with them.


What happened to Jane's baby monitor, Kate? Why was it abandoned ?




Dear Mr Smith, In your article "Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears", from 16th December 2007, you mention this fact: "Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner had brought a monitor too, but theirs wasn’t getting much of a signal from the Tapas restaurant 50 yards away." The couple never mentioned to the PJ that they brought a monitor as well, in all their statements they claim that the Paynes were the only ones with a baby monitor. Only in April 2008, in the rogatory interviews conducted by Leicestershire Police, this piece of information appeared. It might seem a small omission, but in the light of possible neglect charges, would have been important. Jane Tanner claims in the rogatory interview that she brought it with her in the evenings and positioned it on a ledge/wall behind her. This was NEVER mentioned to Portuguese Police as the released statements show. The question I have is, how did you get this info before the rogatory interviews even took place? I know you have to protect sources, but this seems a very strange inside knowledge. Thank you in advance. Kind regards [Johanna]



http://unterdenteppichgekehrt.blogspot.com/search?q=David+james+smith

____________________________________________________


BTS: [on GM's 9.05 "check"]: Gerry paused over Madeleine, who – a typical doctor’s observation, this – was lying almost in “the recovery position” .


Jesus Christ! Recovery position? What they do with you when you’re drugged or unconscious? Recovery position? A sigh of relief all round when we get the "developed" version.

KM: Madeleine was lying there, on her left-hand side, her legs under the covers, in exactly the same position as we’d left her.

Whew! Thank goodness for that. Abandoned

_____________________________________________________

BTS: Putting the door back to five degrees, he went to the loo and left to return to the restaurant…

David James Smith, do you ever get the feeling you might have been used? Five degrees? When did your wife last ask you, “did you shut the door, darling?” And you replied, “yes, dear, five degrees.” Come on.


KM: After pulling the bedroom door to, restoring it to its original angle, he went to the bathroom before leaving the apartment.

_______________________________________________________


BTS: It is widely believed among the Portuguese media, and perhaps the police too, even now, that the McCanns called Sky News before they called the police. For the record, Sky News picked up the story from GMTV breakfast television, at around 7.30am the following day.

No, not before the police. DP emailed them afterwards - as was long denied but as KM has to admit. How did BTS miss that, do you think?

KM: Dave, seeing Gerry’s anguish and frustration at how little was being done, blah blah knew Madeleine needed more help than she was getting blah blah…at some point before the PJ left he sent an email to Sky News...

_____________________________________________

BTS: The PJ had told them four weeks earlier [August 12] they were going to be subjected to formal interviews and the McCanns had stayed on, instead of going home at the end of August as originally planned, [our italics] waiting for the interviews to take place. Waiting. Waiting.

KM: [mid-August]However, for many weeks I’d fought against the idea of going home. Even considering it was an enormous emotional and psychological mountain for me to climb. We had always said we would not leave without Madeleine, and I still felt that to do so would be to abandon her. In mid-July I had slowly started to come round to Gerry’s way of thinking – we had to return some time, after all – but now, a month later, with matters taking a turn for the worse, there was even more reason to stay. If we didn’t, it would feel as if we were caving in to the bullying tactics of the media and the PJ. We were beginning to suspect that there was an agenda to force us out of the country and take the pressure off the police. I had no intention of allowing that to happen.

And

KM: On Monday 27 August I had a call from Esther McVey, a Liverpool friend from my late teens, by then a television presenter and Conservative parliamentary candidate. Esther was on the board of Madeleine’s Fund. She said she was scared by our current situation and uncomfortable with what she felt was a ‘political shift’. For our own safety, and ‘to protect Madeleine’s good name’ (I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that), she thought we ought to come home. It seemed I was being pressurized from all quarters and I didn’t like it.



As it happened, however, the very same day we learned that we would need to vacate our villa by 11 September – news that put a different complexion on matters and forced Gerry and me to tackle this difficult and emotionally charged issue.



So no, "as originally planned" was the old database failing again. It wasn't true

_______________________________________________


That's all a part of The Narrative, the one that remains - apart from the chunks bitten out of it by Operation Grange - in place today.





A number of Scotland Yard police officers have been at the Rothley home of Kate and Gerry McCann in the last few weeks, it has emerged. The police have refused to say anything about why they were there, on or off the record, and have not confirmed that such a meeting took place.

A concerted newsfeed provided to the major tabloids, the Express, Sun, Mirror and Mail, however, brought the news of the "meeting" to the public in a series of synchronised reports, all of which featured the McCanns' long-time spokesman. The feed quoted a number of anonymous "sources" but none of them were from the police.
The McCanns have rarely been seen in public in 2018 and made no comment today.

The Bureau comments: As always with the MSM, the only question is: "why has it appeared?".






Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo

Act Three, continued

So we have a further set of newsfeeds directly from the McCanns - Sun, Mirror, Express, Mail, all fed and synchronised during the night of the 24th November. It may be that not everyone has thought about the implications. The same feeds team has only just finished telling us that Scotland Yard officers had made a recent "visit" to their Rothley home. True. And why were they there? They told us that too.



If you read the Bureau regularly you'll know that the same people, the McCanns, used almost the same words to describe that Rothley visit as they did eleven years ago when they described a "visit" by the PJ to their Praia da Luz apartment. The one when Gerry McCann had a "virus". The one where they somehow forgot to tell us the police carried, among other things, a search warrant. After eleven years nothing whatever has changed: they want you to hear their version before the real ones emerge. By pure co-incidence this chat with those nice people from the Yard has been followed by "a meeting" at the Portuguese ministry of justice attended by the prosecutor in the case. Quite a lot happening behind the feeds, isn't there?

Gone!


And now for the message that matters. For the very first time since 2007 the UK press is carrying stories meaning that no abduction ever took place. No threats to sue from the McCanns, no outrage, no appearance by Tony Parsons or David Baddiel screaming of malicious sardine-eating rumours. Nope, the parents put the story out themselves.


"'Hinting both forces [our italics] may have gone cold on the idea the youngster had been the victim of a botched burglary or a paedophile who had forced entry to snatch her," the insider said: "'The theory that Madeleine left the flat of her own accord to go looking for her parents is not something that hasn't been discussed before.'"

Forget any contempt or outrage or mystification. Forget, even, about the dogs. None of that matters for now: what matters is that "woke and wandered" is not compatible in any way with an abductor. It has to mean that nobody was standing outside the window on that chill night.


No abductor coming in the window. No abductor opening doors and closing them again. No abductor armed with drugs or chloroform. Nobody listening to Gerry McCann urinate. No abductor going out of the window. Nobody walking through the streets at 9.15 with Madeleine in his arms - as Grange told us three years ago and the parents are now acknowledging. No hidden lairs in the Algarve.

You don't have to worry about what it all may mean in the long run or what is going on - frantically or with resignation - behind the feeds. All you have to remember is this : Kate and Gerry McCann are preparing us all for the news that abduction by a stranger never happened.
More if it occurs.






Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo

MADELEINE 'INSULT'

Kate and Gerry McCann hit back at claims Madeleine woke up and left the apartment.

________________________________________________


They haven't. Not a word. Not a single word.

The "hitting back" consists of some dodgy blah-blah from Mitchell and quotes from - guess what? - the seven year old book Madeleine.

There is not the slightest doubt that the stories supposedly from Portugal, the ones that a "family source" - oh, how tired and old these gambits are - claims the McCanns are "hitting back" against, are pure McCann stories, fed by the pair themselves.



Ask yourself - who else could it have been? Neither the Portuguese nor British police have ever used UK multiple feeds in this way in the McCann case. For the PJ it is literally impossible, because they don't have either the authorization or the contacts in Britain's media, or the trust from British editors, to get away with it; Grange has always used its own website or open media conferences followed by journalists' questions to provide background information. And for either party to try and do so would risk exposure that could only benefit the McCanns.



Who else? Goncalo's people? Not a chance. Again, they don't have the contacts and know from the past that the UK media scum would double-cross GA while pretending support, just as the Mail did years ago. There isn't anyone else with a stake in the case and a history of newsfeeds about it. Except, of course, the original conspirators, the MSM itself, which conspired with the McCanns to invent and sell the abduction story and wreck the Portuguese investigation. But they don't do feeds - they just carry them.



Who has the information to leak? Well, the McCanns are always telling us how the Yard keep them updated, aren't they? And they even had a friendly visit the other day to spell some things out. And the Portuguese public ministry and the UK ministry of justice are not so tightly bound to secrecy as both police squads. No, the Portuguese source angle is simply a tired Mitchell/McCann attempt to get round the Yard ban on their media interference.



So in case anyone is in any doubt we aren't quoting newspapers or their bullshit as sources: we don't care what the disgusting MSM, BBC included, say or think: we're repeating what the McCanns are telling us. That is, what the McCanns want us, the public, to believe for now. Whether you believe us or not is your decision but we can promise you the Bureau is being a great deal more truthful than the erstwhile conspirators and their successors, the MSM.

What evidence has prompted this desperate pre-emptive stuff we don't yet know. Except that it's concrete, a threat to the couple's credibility and involves the 100% police discounting of the abductor claim. And that, since the Rothley meeting, it's finding its way out.



We wrote this month that the McCanns kept up the pretence that they were "co-operating with the police" in 2007 until the gains of doing so were outweighed by the constraints - that is, once the PJ turned up on August 2 with a search warrant and accusations. Soon afterwards the couple engaged a criminal lawyer and a few weeks after that they were in flight to the UK.

History is repeating itself. We said yesterday that the McCanns described the Yard presence in Rothley in eerily similar terms to the pack of lies they gave us all about August 2 2007, with the identical underlying message - whatever they came to talk about it wasn't, it reely, truly wasn't, bad news for us. Promise. Not at all.

As Kate McCann famously wrote in Madeleine, "we felt we didn't have a choice".

And that's how they feel now.






Gerry McCann's Blogs
Gerry McCann: September 3 2007
After dropping the twins off Kate and I popped into church for 10 minutes to pray for Madeleine. Spent most of the day going through mail, e-mails and I had a number of calls to make. It was good to spend some time with my family and Sean and Amelie certainly enjoyed their auntie’s dinner- sometimes it is hard to beat mince and ‘tatties’

Kate McCann: September 3 2007
I dropped my head in my hands in utter disbelief. I began to shake and cry. I shouted at Ricardo, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I can’t believe what’s going on! This is ridiculous. It’s despicable.’ I shook my head over and over again. ‘This can’t be happening. This just cannot be true!’Trisha and Eileen were staying with us for what was intended to be our final week in Luz. Hearing the commotion from the next room, where they were playing with Sean and Amelie, they came running in demanding to know what was happening. Within seconds there were more tears and more shouts of dismay and disbelief.

Gerry McCann October 1 2007
I am still amazed at the irresponsible reporting going on in the press with unsubstantiated reports from unreliable sources being repeated in the UK and Portuguese press unquestioningly.

Gerry McCann's Newsfeeds
2018, The Mail, November 25 - Part of the original newsfeed
The British and Portuguese efforts to find out what happened to the toddler are being carried out separately - but the two are believed to have met to discuss the theory.
A spokesman for Portugal's Attorney General's Office refused to comment, but a well-placed source said: 'The heads of the two police investigations are corresponding with each other directly and have combined their efforts without resorting to rogatory letters like before.
A meeting took place recently at the HQ of the General Attorney's Office in Portugal, which was attended by the prosecutor from Portimao who is in charge of the Portuguese inquiry. One of the lines of investigation that continues to be pursued is that the child could have walked out of the holiday flat herself.'
So the story goes:
1) Mitchell/McCann claim "woke and wandered" is a current Portuguese line of investigation.
2) Mitchell/McCann suggest that it was discussed at a high-powered meeting in the Portuguese AG's office.
3) Attorney-General's office refused to confirm the story.

2018 Metro, (part of Mail group) 27 November
A spokesman for Portugal’s Attorney General’s Office confirmed the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance – which is being conducted separately to Operation Grange – is ‘ongoing’ and benefitting from the same bilateral cooperation as before. She [the spokesman] said: ‘The Portuguese judicial authorities do not comment on the lines of investigation that are being pursued by the British authorities.’
But the source [read those three words again carefully]: said: ‘The heads of the two police investigations are corresponding with each other directly and have combined their efforts without resorting to rogatory letters like before. A meeting took place recently at the HQ of the General Attorney’s Office in Portugal, which was attended by the prosecutor from Portimao who is in charge of the Portuguese inquiry. One of the lines of investigation that continues to be pursued is that the child could have walked out of the holiday flat herself.’

1) Mitchell/McCann now claim a spokesperson for the AG's office confirmed the meeting with the prosecutor.
2) Mitchell/McCann now claim the same spokesperson for the AG's office - "But the source" - confirmed that "woke and wondered" is a current line of investigation.
3) Mitchell/McCann imply, in all the feeds, that the Yard and PJ investigations are operationally divergent.
The Bureau has missed this official statement by the Attorney-General's office spokesperson.
Amid all the fibbing in the feeds, all the non-existent "rejection" of the "woke and wandered" theory and all the other junk, the pearl at the centre of the mush remains:
1) The police did not come to the McCanns' family home to discuss funding, despite the earlier feeds designed to suggest that was the reason.
2) They came to tell the McCanns officially that "the investigations" are pursuing leads that do not involve any form of abduction of Madeleine McCann from the apartment.
The McCann response has been desperate defensive spin unseen since 2007/8. But they haven't denied those central facts. They can't.
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The Acid Tears Of Time
That strange, inexplicable and utterly sublime masterpiece Astral Weeks is fifty years old today
"Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world..."
Reminding us that truth, beauty and art in the end outlive dishonesty, lies and greed.






Flectere si nequeo superos
Acheronta movebo

The Bureau's Selection of Seasonal Literary Treats
Safe in Those Hands
Rewilding by David Edgar
Arnold Lane Books, 325 pages

Honey Potts writes: In this superb account of his struggles to put us back in touch with our earth Mr Edgar takes us from his beginnings as a self-taught sheep strangler in the suburbs of Londonderry to his creation of the Algarve Wilderness Project in Portugal.
Dave took what was once a patchwork quilt of golf courses, Disneyland package holiday resorts for NHS workers who want to “eat English” when abroad, football grounds and rock venues – the whole earth-insulting and unsustainable environment that threatens our universe –and transformed it unutterably.
With the financial backing of the Expunge Foundation and George Monbiot Edgar has gradually turned it into what it was ten thousand years ago, a savage but beautiful jungle of dense forests and banana swamp peopled by imported indigenes who terrify those who dare to take their pictures.
As Monbiot has said, at least we have the chance of a new beginning. Teething troubles? Yes, a few. Sometimes people are held underground for years before being ransomed and the occasional ritual consumption of abducted infants in chili-flavoured olive oil and vine leaves has aroused disquiet in the right-wing press but we should still all be grateful to Mr Edgar. The planet and the climate demand it.
Honey Potts is a Guardian and Times Literary Supplement journalist. She is the author of How My Vagina Will Begin World War III
Not As Nice As He Looks
Catyrisi Exfolia by Brigham Home Young
Oxford University Press, 725 pages, 231 diagrams.
John Terry writes: A dry title for a thrilling book! Very similar to the best-selling The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, leather-dressed biker-neurologist-with-a-permanent-erection Oliver Sach’s medical masterpiece, this is a revelation.
Professor Home Young’s subject is initially unpromising: a study of how peoples’ hair can turn grey or white and the psychological and physical factors that might come into play in the transformation.
For years his work was routine and unsung but then he stumbled on a genuine oddity – a person whose hair and head had turned not grey but salmon pink! What, wondered the professor, could have explained such a radical mutation? We won’t give any spoilers but the professor’s study of his subject is a gripping one as, year by year, he began to uncover the terrifying way in which an otherwise extremely ordinary man was gradually taken over by toxins which proceeded to eat him away from within, like someone harbouring a voracious eight foot long tapeworm coiled just above his anus.
There are few light moments in this compulsive but harrowing tale. The extraordinary poisonous and explosive flatulence which accompanied the condition and which had been known to set off fire alarms in television studios - the affliction was measured at 81.5 decibels by the professor’s team, all of whom had to be paid overtime rates and provided with oxygen masks – is too unpleasant to be funny, especially when Professor Home Young’s registrar insists that “it was the subject’s true personality showing at last”. The question - perhaps the question in life - remains teasingly unanswered: are our fates, as well as our appearances, decided by physical ailments or spiritual sepsis?
Oliver Sachs's reputation was posthumously dented by the discovery that he had cared for and studied his patients while under the influence of vast amounts of Crystal Meth. In this case it is the patient, particularly in the illustrations - not for the faint-hearted - who reminds one of a bad case of the meth bugs.
John Terry writes about football for Stig Unable, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and is the author of Insights of the Endoscope.
Test Your Skills!
I Am Telling the Truth by Kate McCann
Munchausen & Aesop, 144 pages, 50 game cards.
Sorry, your search in images for Kate McCann Telling the Truth returned no results
Geordie Grieg writes: One for the foot of the Xmas tree, this is, a quite superb games book - forget charades! After all the scoffing on the 25th, flop down, tighten the paper hats, sip the remnants of the 1991 Chateau Carla-Spayed and begin! Each player has to be Kate McCann telling others how to get to their Cretan holiday hotel from various country crossroads. Since all Cretans are liars the rest of the group has to trap her into telling the truth by various stratagems suggested by the cards, since she is programmed only to give false answers. Bores reveal themselves, there are deliberate cheating cards, tempers rise and family stresses start to bite along with the alcohol. Tears flow. Partners separate. But it all gets patched up in the end. Gerry McCann remains silent. Wonderful!
Geordie Grieg is an editor who writes about philosophy for the Times Literary Supplement under and sometimes over Stig Unable. He is the author of You Too Can Become a Gent Like I Am.
Post-Modernism
This Is My Truth by Kate McCann
Limited Edition of 400 copies. Signed with a Bic biro on the Recto by Kate McCann. Printed on Arches paper and linen bound. £17 200 per copy. Any sales receipts money left over may be given to a charity or fund such as the Ex-Prisoners' Association.
Sorry, your search in non-fiction for This is my Truth by Kate McCann produced no results. Hint: try “fiction” or “fantasy” or "business" instead.
Jon Jones writes: One for the adult stocking, not the tree: it's a beautifully bound little piece of Duchamps-lite irony for your more culturally knowing guests and the metro-cognoscenti, with the back cover carrying Bauhaus-styled mini-text recommendations by a host of faux-celebrities, from Gordon Brown to oh-so-delicious - especially with a beard - icon David Beckham. Achingly hip!
Inside are 148 beautifully blank pages.
What statement is it making? Who knows and who cares - does it matter? Just buy it and put it on the very top of your tree which this year, Nicky Haslam tells me, must not be the anti-leafdrop type. So common.
Screaming Jay Jones is chief arts bullshit writer for a national daily and Provocateur of the Times Literary Supplement's Cultural Studies section. He is the author of If I Lose Weight Will They Listen To Me?
Innocence Achieved
Heartbroken by “John Smith”.
Vatican House Books, 128 pages.
John Blacksmith writes: Xmas defines books like this, a charming little tale rather like St Exupury’s twentieth century classic The Little Prince, delicate, deep and profound with an abiding sense of the dignity of humanity and a willingness to accept life’s mysteries. Beyond lies redemption and, with it, a glorious belief in other human beings.
The hero’s family background remains a mystery but in Smith's disarmingly simple, if somewhat colourless, prose he grows up in the classic Dickens-redemptionist manner, into a whizz doctor. But the more successful he is the more he thinks that there may be something, an intangible presence, missing from his life. For two decades he works frantically and devotedly in a windowless hospital room, dwarfed by banks of advanced cardiac monitoring equipment and screens, struggling to answer his Ultimate Question – does he possess a human heart?
He can’t find it.
Then, one day, a mysterious Christmas figure appears beside him while he is urinating with his usual relentless determination. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He feels a presence. It is a revelation. “My son,” says the white-bearded but strangely blue-eyed figure, in soft, rolling, curiously reassuring tones, “you will never find if you have a heart this way. You must take a different path. Shake yourself off and go now in peace.” And he was gone.
So The Doctor sought within himself and located new sources of energy, belief and, after years of struggle, understanding. From then on Christmas became a pleasure, an adventure in comprehending your deeper self and the needs of others.
Finally he went on radio and talked of bringing hope to others, of the prospect of redemption, of the value of those beyond yourself, of the role that poetry plays in life, of the renewed importance of human tolerance and of how, with the snow falling in soft waves outside the frosty studio window and the chimney-smoke from the houses nearby curling upwards and the Salvation Army playing a mournful yet profound God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on the pavement below, he told us all of how he hadn’t yet found his heart but, given time, he’d find that fucking thing whatever anyone says, the arseholes. Arseholes!
John Blacksmith is a pretentious failure.
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That lot will fill you with cheer, won't it? We want to wish all regular readers a Happy Christmas and a great New Year.