Metropolitan Police TOTAL POLICING

Specialist Crime and Operations

SCO12-AC Private Office and Business Support

2.211

Jubilee House Putney

230-232 Putney Bridge Road

London SW15 2PD

Telephone

Fascsimle

Email  Daniel.Smith3@met.police.uk

www.met.police.uk

Your ref:

Our ref : Elveden

13 June 2013

Mr Robert Henderson

Dear Mr Henderson,

I write in relation to the allegations you made following your contact with DC Rooke in January of this year. I have reviewed the matters raised by you in this, and subsequent communications, with DC Rooke.

I understand that the matters raised by you relate to an article published in 1997 and that the matter was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Service (Complaints Investigation Bureau). The matter was referred to the Police Complaints Authority in 1999.

I understand that there is no new evidence or information available and as a result I have decided that no investigation will be conducted into the points raised by you.

In relation to the Perjury allegation, having read the transcripts provided, I do not believe there is evidence that shows an offence has been committed. As a consequence this allegation will not be investigated.

Yours sincerely,

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith

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Detective Inspector Daniel Smith

Operation Eleveden

Metropolitan Police

New Scotland Yard

8/10 The Broadway

London SW1H OBG

CC

Commander Neil Basu

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Gerald Howarth MP

Keir Starmer (DPP)

 mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

4 July 2013

Dear Mr Smith,

I have your letter dated 13th June which arrived on 21st June in an envelope post marked 17 June. I have mulled the matter over for a week or so before replying because your decision regarding my complaints is best described as inexplicable if taken at face value. Indeed, I think any disinterested third party would react with the same feeling when faced with the truly indestructible evidence I have supplied to Operation Elveden and your blanket refusal to investigate.

To briefly recap the evidence, I have provided Operation Elveden with a letter from Piers Morgan to the PCC when editor of the Daily Mirror. In it he admits to receiving information from a Metropolitan police officer in circumstances which can only have been illegal. You also have a tape recording of a senior police officer D-Supt Jeff Curtis of Scotland Yard promising to question Morgan and co and saying the evidence was straight forward plus transcripts of the evidence Morgan and Jeff Edwards gave under oath before Leveson in which they denied receiving information from the police illicitly. To that can be added the fact that, despite his promise to me, Curtis failed to interview Morgan, Edwards or any other Mirror employee or examine the records of the Mirror to look for evidence of payments to the police for information. Finally, there is the Daily Mirror story written as a result of the illicit information from the Met . That alone demonstrates that the police illicitly supplied information to the Mirror to their then chief crime reporter Jeff Edwards.

The fact that I was unable to get anyone in authority, not the police, nor the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) to act at the time of the original complaints is not evidence that no crime had been committed. Rather, it is further evidence of corrupt behaviour within the police and the police complaints system. The criminal (take your choice between perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office) refusal to act in this matter was generated by the implication of Tony and Cherie Blair in the case. To give you a short guide to that involvement let me quote the Early Day Motion about the matter put down by Sir Richard Body MP on 10 November 1999

CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MEMBER FOR SEDGEFIELD 10:11:99

Sir Richard Body

That this House regrets that the Right honourable Member for Sedgefield [Tony Blair] attempted to persuade the Metropolitan Police to bring criminal charges against Robert Henderson, concerning the Right honourable Member’s complaints to the police of an offence against the person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters Robert Henderson had written to the Right honourable Member complaining about various instances of publicly-reported racism involving the Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right honourable Member and the Right honourable Member failed to take any civil action against Robert Henderson, Special Branch were employed to spy upon Robert Henderson, notwithstanding that Robert Henderson had been officially cleared of any illegal action.

This motion is now part of the official House of Commons record – see  http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=16305&SESSION=702

The Blairs made a profound misjudgement when they tried to get me prosecuted. As lawyers they must have known that their complaints were bogus and were relying on their political celebrity to persuade the CPS to charge me regardless of the evidence. So feeble were their allegations that the CPS sent them back within hours of receiving them the papers submitted to them with an emphatic NO CRIME.

That immediately created a problem from the Blairs, but had they left it there that might have been the end of it, because at no time did the police contact me about the Blairs’ complaints and I might never have known of their attempt to have me prosecuted. But the Blairs could not leave well alone and made the further mistake of planting a false and toxically libellous story about me and their failed attempt in the Daily Mirror. This alerted me not only to their attempt, but the fact that Special Branch had been set to spy on me (Special Branch are mentioned in the Mirror story). I then spent the entire Blair premiership suffering harassment which I can only presume came from either Special Branch, MI5 (I used the Data Protection Act to prove they held a file on me) or some other agency employed by one or both of the Blairs. The harassment included such things as death threats, incitements to attack me on social media platforms and regular interference with my post.

In addition to my complaints to the police against the Mirror, I also made a series of allegations against the Blairs after I discovered they had been to the police. These were also not investigated in any meaningful way.

That was why everybody but everybody in the Met Police and the justice system refused to behave honestly when I first made the complaints about Morgan and Edwards. If action had been taken against them then the Blairs would have been brought into the story, something they obviously could not afford to have happen. The refusal of the police and the PCA to deal honestly with my complaints is simply explained, namely, the political implications overrode their honesty Until Operation Elveden began there was no opportunity for me to again bring any part of the scandal to the police. An amazing story but a true one.

The conduct of my complaints to Elveden has been distinctly odd. I have made repeated requests to give a formal statement and meet with a senior member of Operation Elveden. Despite those requests I have not been given the opportunity to make a formal statement, nor, despite my best efforts, met any member of Operation Elveden, junior or senior. That suggests a decision was made at an early stage to deliberately exclude me from any participation in Elveden’s consideration of my complaints. Writing a letter to me saying you will not investigate for spurious reasons is one thing: telling me to my face that the Morgan letter to the PCC is not grounds for investigation quite another matter.

The paucity of detail in your letter also suggests that no meaningful consideration has been given to the evidence I provided. Indeed, your beginning of two paragraphs with “I understand that” suggests that you have not looked at the evidence. The other telling thing is that you do not give me any detailed reason for refusing the complaints against Morgan, Edwards and Curtis. All you say is that you understand that the complaints were previously investigated. Have you examined my evidence in detail, including listening to the tape recording of Jeff Curtis and me?

Are you a gambling man, Mr Smith? Well, you are certainly taking a gamble here by refusing to investigate. Your gamble is this: you are betting that the fact that the Met are refusing to investigate the clearest evidence of serious crimes will remain outside the mainstream public domain. That is a very big wager indeed. All I need is for one politician or mainstream media outlet to take up the story…

I suggest you sit down and try to imagine how you would explain to the mainstream media or a mainstream politician Elveden’s failure to act when you have in your possession a letter from Piers Morgan when Mirror editor admitting he had received information illicitly from the Metropolitan Police. When you have done that, I hope you will reconsider your refusal to investigate and arrange to meet me to take a formal statement and tell me of the progress of the investigation you have started.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

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Morgan's letter to the PCC contained this " The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect) gave us tile detail of the letters that we then published. Nothing that Mr Henderson writes has convinced me that the article was anything other than accurate. "