Martin Bridger, who led the Cayman Islands infamous Operation Tempura into our own supposed police corruption, is one of over 40 London Scotland Yard detectives named in a book that purports to disclose “Dirty cops, bent justice and racism in Scotland Yard” called “Untouchables”.

The book by Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn was first published in November 2008 but has just been re-issued.

Untouchables, a five year investigation which the Yard tried to stop, provides the essential context to the phone hacking and other scandals currently engulfing Britain’s most powerful police force.

Republished after seven years, it was the first book to question the cosy relationship between the Yard and sections of the media, to explain why cops are incapable of investigating themselves and to expose the lack of independence in the new police watchdog.

From the 1983 Brinks Matt robbery, through the murders of Daniel Morgan, David Norris, Stephen Lawrence, Jill Dando and Damilola Taylor to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, Untouchables reveals the cover ups, double standards and miscarriages of justice during the Yard’s phoney war on corruption.

Sunday Times journalist Michael Gillard and TV producer Laurie Flynn expose how the discredited use of supergrasses in the war on corruption has re-emerged in the new wars on terror and crime, with the same disastrous effects: prosecution misconduct, collapsed trials, huge bills for the taxpayer, victims left without justice and the guilty walking free.

Here they are – scanned from the highly censored book

THE UNTOUCHABLES

Paul Condon Commissioner (1993-2000)

John Stevens Commissioner (2000-2005); Deputy Commissioner (1998-2000)

Brian Hayes Deputy Commissioner (1993-1998)

Ian Blair Commissioner (2005- ); Deputy Commissioner (2000~-2005)

Dave Veness Assistant Commissioner

lan Johnston Assistant Commissioner

Mike Todd Assistant Commissioner

John Grieve Deputy Assistant Commissioner

Roy Clark Deputy Assistant Commissioner

Bill Griffiths Deputy Assistant Commissioner

Roger Gaspar Detective chief superintendent (Ghost Squad)

Dave Bailey Detective superintendent (Ghost Squad)

Dave Woods Detective chief inspector (Ghost Squad)

Andy Hayman Commander (CIB3/ClBlC 1999-2002)

Graham James Commander (Discipline & Complaints)

Ian Quinn Commander (CIB2)

Ian Russell Commander (replaced Quinn)

Dave Wood Detective chief superintendent (CIB3, replaced Gaspar)

Chris Jarratt Detective superintendent (CIBlC, replaced Woods)

Brian Moore Detective superintendent (ClB3 Operation Ethiopia)

John Coles Detective superintendent (CIB3 Operation Cornwall)

John Yates Detective superintendent (ClB3 Operation Russia)

Barry Norman Detective superintendent (CIB3 Operation Helios)

Martin Bridger Detective chief inspector (CIB3 Operation Ethiopia)

Bob Berger Detective chief inspector (CIBIC)

Chris McHaffey Detective chief inspector (CIB3)

Jill McTigue Detective chief inspector (CIB3)

Dave Pennant Detective chief inspector (CIB3)

Simon Cousins Detective chief inspector (CIB3 Witness Protection Unit)

Shaun Sawyer Detective chief Superintendent, (replaced Hayman)

Bob Quick Detective chief superintendent (CIB3, replaced Wood)

Barbara Wilding Deputy Assistant Commissioner (replaced Sawyer 2004)

Steve Roberts Deputy Assistant Commissioner (replaced Wilding 2004)

David Zinzan Detective Superintendent (IDG, formerly CIBIC)

Tony Fuller Detective Superintendent (IDG, replaced Zinzan)

Steve Foster Detective chief inspector (IDG)

Maxine de Brunner Detective Superintendent (ACG, formerly CIB3)

Jack Kelly Detective Inspector

Steve Bazzoni Detective Inspector

Adrian Harper Detective Inspector

Maggie Palmer Detective Inspector

Peter Ward Detective Inspector

Mark Holmes Detective Inspector

CRIMINAL SUPERGRASSES

Geoff Brennan, Evelyn Fleckney, Hector Harvey, Maurice O’Mahoney, Richard Price, Jason Procter, Ashley Sansom, Steve Warner

POLICE SUPERGRASSES

Kevin Garner, Duncan Hanrahan, Terry McGuinness, Neil Putnarn, Kalaish Sawnhney (Customs)

CRIMINALS

The Adarns crime family (north London), The Arif crime family (south-east London), Henry Burgess, Kevin Cressey, John ‘Goldfinger’ Fleming, Ray Gray, Micky Green, Dean Henry, Jimmy Karagozlu, Bob Kean, John ‘Little Legs’ Lloyd, Chris McCormack, Clifford Norris, Kenny Noye (Kenneth Noye), Stephen Raymond, Joey Simms, Michael Taverner, Gary Ward, Curtis Warren, ‘Tall’ Ted Williams, Carl Wood.  Brian Wright.

CIVILIANS TARGETED BY THE UNTOUCHABLES

Les Brown (solicitor),  Debbie Cahill (CPS), Jon Rees (private investigator).

EX-COPS TARGETED BY THE UNTOUCHABLES

DC Geoff Baldwin (private investigator)

DS John Davidson (private investigator)

DS Sid Fillery (private investigator)

DC Nigel Grayston (private investigator)

DS Keith Green

DS Bob Harrington (private investigator)

DC Martin King (private investigator)

DI Alec Leighton (private investigator)

DI Keith Pedder (private investigator)

 

COPS TARGETED BY THE UNTOUCHABLES

DS John Bull, DC Mick Carroll, DC Chris Carter, DC Michael Charman, DC Robert Clark, DC Declan Costello, D/Supt Ali Dizaei, DC John Donald, DC Chris Drury, DC Colin Evans, DC Paul Goscomb, DS Len Guerard, DS Eamonn Harris, DC Dave Howells, DS Paul Kelly, DC Tom Kingston, DS Gordon Livingstone, DI Fred May,

DC Jeff May, DS Denis Miller, DC John Moore, DC Martin Morgan, DI Tim Norris, DC Mark Norton, DS Terry Q’Connell, DAC Brian Paddick, DI George Raison, DI John Redgrave, DC Tom Reynolds, DC Ian Saunders, DC Paul Smith, DC Dave Thompson,

DS Barry Toombs, DS Gurpal Virdi, DC Austin Warnes

 

From Bloomsbury.com

Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn started their investigation at The Guardian in 1999. That year, they won the ‘Scoop of the Year’ in the UK Press Awards for exposing journalistic corruption in the fake ITV drugs documentary, The Connection.

The Guardian newspaper has done much to expose the phone hacking scandal and disclosing the extent of the inter-penetration between the Met and the News of the World hierarchies.

As former reporters in the newspaper’s investigation unit, people have asked us why Untouchables was out of print when so much of the essential context to the current police crisis is explored over 28 chapters. Copies, we also learned, were disappearing from libraries and being sold on the internet for silly money.

This book has an interesting pre-publication history. It began as a Guardian investigation of Scotland Yard in the wake of the 1999 Macpherson report into the police mishandling of the Stephen Lawrence murder.

In the course of our inquiries it became clear that the anti-corruption campaign – launched in secret and with a beady eye on the Macpherson public inquiry – was tainted by huge double standards. The senior officers chosen to run it seemed highly inappropriate. Some came from heavily compromised police stations with much to hide. Others were bullies or proven enemies of due process, sworn to resist the healthy breeze of democratic accountability. Instead, these zealots in uniform were corrupted by secrecy and the exercise of awesome power in the pursuit of what they privately called “God’s work”.

At the time, Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian editor, was far from keen on taking on Scotland Yard. One of his executives told us that the editor wanted to be “on the side of the angels”, by which he meant the Untouchables, whose motto was ‘integrity is non-negotiable.’ Unfortunately, the Met’s integrity was very much negotiable and whilst at The Guardian we were able to document a frightening array of double standards, unpunished corruption and authorised cover-ups.

In his way, Andy Hayman deserves some credit for this book. For it was he who privately wrote in August 2000 to Rusbridger smearing us and suggesting that by examining the realities of the anti-corruption campaign we were assisting criminals and frustrating his noble efforts to clean up the Met. Names of sources and notebooks were sought but we were told nothing of Hayman’s letter or his offer to the editor of a private briefing where he would be shown secret footage. We only discovered after publication of this book that one of our sources, a former detective called Derek Haslam, was also a paid informant for the Untouchables codenamed Joe Poulton and that while undercover inside Southern Investigations he had also been reporting back on us to his handlers in the Met.

The Hayman letter and other behind-the-scenes lobbying prompted Rusbridger to order us to stop investigating the police, even in our own time – an instruction we declined because it was both ludicrous and unethical. We resigned in March 2001 to write Untouchables.

From www.socialistworker

Eight years ago Laurie Flynn and Michael Gillard wrote The Untouchables. It exposed the police corruption at the heart of Scotland Yard—and the criminal links between cops, News International and politicians.

Today, as the hackgate scandal is engulfing the entire political establishment, the book has been republished. The story of how two journalists began uncovering the corruption years ago is extraordinary.

Laurie described how he and Michael stumbled upon sprawling networks of police corruption “almost by accident”.

“We’d been looking at an arms deal involving British equipment being supplied to unpleasant people in Sierra Leone,” he said.

“We were told that there was no such deal and we found this rather difficult to believe.”

Two police officers understood to have been involved in the deal were committed for trial at Bow Street Magistrates Court under the Official Secrets Act. Laurie and Michael went along.

“During the committal proceedings there was a tape that the prosecution were very anxious should not be played in court,” said Laurie. “So naturally we became interested in what was on this tape.

“We met the two officers. They told us that the tape was of a discussion they’d been having about going to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

“They said they wanted to help his family understand the context of the failed and failing murder inquiries into the death of their son.

“That context involved corrupt policing in south east London. Naturally this interested us greatly and we thought, this is very important.”

It turned out that the corruption that destroyed investigations into Stephen Lawrence’s murder was only the tip of the iceberg of what was going on in south east London.

Laurie said, “We found two other highly problematic unsolved murders in the same policing district. One was of the private detective Daniel Morgan. That connects very strongly to what’s going on with the Leveson inquiry.”

Daniel Morgan was murdered on 10 March 1987. His body was found in a car park in south east London with an axe buried in his head. Daniel Morgan was a private investigator. His family believe that he was about to reveal corrupt links between cops and News International.

Five police investigations have failed to convict anyone of his murder. The police have admitted corruption in the initial investigation.

Laurie said, “Daniel Morgan’s firm was taken over by the man who was supposed to be heading the investigation into his murder, Detective Sergeant Sidney Fillery.

“Fillery leaves the Met sick and joins the private detective firm—which becomes the News of the World’s chosen vehicle for all sorts of investigations, legal and illegal.

“This is an extraordinary state of affairs.”

Laurie also pointed to the murder of police informant and gangster David Norris. “Uncannily it’s the same name as one of the men jailed for murdering Stephen Lawrence,” he said. “David Norris the informant is some sort of relative of the gangster father of David Norris, the now convicted murderer.

“David Norris ends up being murdered, quite possibly with police involvement, in order to shut him up.

“He knows too much about what’s going on in the South East Regional Crime Squad (Sercs).

“He’s been putting up the jobs that they’ve been most successful in clearing up.”

A cop who was part of the investigation into the murder married Norris’s widow. But that was the least of the coincidental links.

Norris lent thousands of pounds to cops. The money he got for informing he used to take Sercs out to dinner.

One group of cops was terrified after the Norris killing. Ten officers had divided up £200,000 that they had confiscated on a drugs raid inspired by a Norris tip off.

Laurie explained that corruption flows from the way police work: “Quite often the only way police officers can get information about gangsters is from other gangsters.

“This is leaving aside the huge failure to police corporate crime of course—which is perhaps the biggest police scandal of the last hundred years.

“But with gangsters relationships grow up over the years between individual officers and their criminal informants.

“The informants gain from their relationship with the police and the police gain from their relationships with the informants.

“The informants are allowed to carry on committing crimes in return for information about other criminals.”

Today media figures have fallen over themselves to denounce the hacking uncovered at News International. They denounce the corruption and proclaim that it must be cleaned up.

But Laurie said it wasn’t always like that. He worked on the Guardian under editor Alan Rusbridger. “The editor of the Guardian started putting all sorts of obstacles in our way,” he said. “He even tried to order us to cease all investigations of the Met or leave the paper.

Rusbridger denies this.

Laurie went on, “We found it completely incomprehensible and decided we couldn’t do that, we couldn’t work with him anymore. So we left and wrote the book.”

Today the police pledge to be properly investigating the corruption that has marked the force.

But only last week evidence of corruption emerged within the police anti-corruption unit.

And who will investigate that? The police of course.

For Laurie, this isn’t surprising. “There is a huge history of the covering up of corruption in Scotland Yard,” he said.

“The Met’s own high profile anti-corruption campaign was itself highly problematic. It involved all sorts of unorthodox and quite possibly illegal methods.

“It involved victimising a number of police officers, including the two who had talked about going to the Lawrence inquiry.

“They were put under the most extraordinary set of pressures in order to shut them up.

“Other, much more powerful, police officers who were proven to be deeply corrupt were never investigated by the anti-corruption command.

“We started off with a very narrow frame of reference and ended up with this huge illness at the heart of the Yard.”

For more on this story go to:

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=28604