This article was originally
written for the Madeleine Foundation website by Tony Bennett on 24 March
2011. It was revised and updated by MMRG on 17 May 2019.
NOTE: Earlier this year, editor of Spanish ex-pat newspaper, The Olive Press, Jon Clarke, published a disgraceful and libelous attack on 'PeterMac', the retired Nottinghamshire Police Superintendent, who is a member of CMOMM and has made such an extraordinary contribution to understanding what happened to Madeleine McCann and when. 'PeterMac' has responded this month (May 2019) with a detailed analysis of some of Jon Clarke's many lies, especially regarding the Madeleine McCann case.
From PeterMac's FREE e-book:
Chapter 31: JON CLARKE – OLIVE PRESS LIES AND VIDEOTAPES
Chapter 32: ON LIES AND CONSPIRACIES
Chapter 33: Jon Clarke Entrenched Lies
Does an Angolan bouncer in a Spanish basketball team know that Madeleine McCann is alive and now in the United States?
A. How the British media profit from 'Madeleine' stories'
B. The role of Clarence Mitchell
C. The Sun story which broke the news from the Angolan bouncer
D. The alleged sequence of events that led to the publication of the Sun article on 18 February 2011
E. Under what circumstances did Marcelino’s ‘dossier’ get handed over to the Spanish police?
F. Marcelino Italiano
G. Marcelino Italiano’s lawyer
H. The person at the Spanish police station in Huelva who received the ‘dossier’
I. Jon Clarke, Editor of The Olive Press, who broke the story
J. Clarence Mitchell and the McCanns
K. The Sun editor and his journalist, Emily Nash
L. Comments on the SolTimes story
M. Analysis on the ‘Little Morsals’ blog
N. Marcelino Italiano’s basketball team
O. The Algarve prostitution ring - and a claimed link with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
P. Conclusion
Introduction The Madeleine Foundation, set up in January 2008 to assist in the process of finding out the truth about what really happened to Madeleine McCann, and named after Madeleine because of our conviction that, once the full truth about her is known, her name must stand for all time for lessons to be learned about child welfare, has never made any secret of the fact that we question the McCanns’ account of what happened to Madeleine the week the McCann family were on holiday in April and May 2007.
It follows that we have always been very sceptical about all the media-generated stories about Madeleine’s whereabouts, which swing from the McCanns’ detectives’ firm conviction that she is being held in a prison lair near Praia da Luz, Portugal (where she went missing), to claims that a Victoria Beckham-lookalike took her on a boat to Australia, to recent reports of a ‘sighting’ in Dubai, and now this latest claim: ‘Maddie in U.S.’ All of these claims and many more have been made in the past 18 months alone.
A. How the British media profits from ‘Madeleine’ stories
The Daily Express once boasted that it could sell tens of thousands of pounds by putting a charming photograph of Madeleine on its front page - and indeed this newspaper, owned by ‘pornograhy king’ Richard Desmond, would gaily order an extra print run just by the device of printing any old story about Madeleine, accompanied of course by a photo, and sticking this on their front page. Other British tabloids have done the same for the past four years, caring nothing about whether there is any substance at all to their articles.
These stories are usually fed to them by the well-oiled and well-funded McCann Team machine, and, one day, the process by which these stories appeared in our media will hopefully be brought fully into the light, so that we may all learn useful lessons from it.
Few Madeleine McCann stories appear in any of the media unless the McCanns’ Chief Public Relations Officer, Clarence Mitchell, has either fed them to the media, or been allowed to influence the content. Whilst this article is not mainly about Clarence Mitchell, for the benefit of new readers of our material it is worth just giving a short biography of Mitchell before we move on to the core of our article.
B. The role of Clarence MitchellMitchell rose to prominence as a BBC journalist. There, he specialised in covering stories of gruesome deaths. He was the main BBC reporter covering the serial murders by Fred and Rosemary West in Gloucester, the murders of 9-year-olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham by paedophile Ian Huntley, and the shooting dead of TV presenter Jill Dando, where incidentally he was the very first on the scene. In the case of the Soham murders of Jessica and Holly, Mitchell teamed up with reporter Lori Campbell, who was the first journalist to openly place Robert Murat under suspicion for the abduction of Madeleine McCann, in an article in the Daily Mirror.
After working for the BBC, he then moved seamlessly on to work in the Labour government’s spin machine, ending up in the Media Monitoring Unit, right at the heart of government in the Cabinet Office. Before long he was its Director, and in an interview with Spanish newspaper Espresso in October 2007, he boasted that as Head of the ’40-strong’ Media Monitoring Unit, it was his job to ‘control what comes out in the media’.
Maybe, then, that is why, in May 2007, just days after Madeleine McCann was reported missing, Mitchell was switched from his post within the Central Office of Information to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where his assignment was, in terms: “See to it that you oversee all the McCanns’ public relations”.
On 31 January 2008, the Daily Mail ran a piece which, inter alia, stated: “Clarence Mitchell said officials had assured him in private briefings that they were treating the case as one of rare stranger abduction”.
One is bound to wander what happened at these ‘private briefings’ (note the plural). When did these private briefngs occur? Who were they with? And - most important of all - what was Clarence Mitchell told, and what did he agree to do?
In September 2007 he was, unusually, given permission to leave the Civil Service (or so we were told), to take up a full-time post as the McCanns’ Chief Public Relations Officer, at a reported salary of £75,000 a year plus expenses.
In late 2008 Mitchell announced that he was now only working for the McCanns ‘on a part-time basis’, on a salary thought to be around £30,000 a year, and had gone to work for high profile international public relations firm Freud International. Just as it happens, Matthew Freud is the husband of Elizabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert Murdoch, arguably the world’s post powerful media magnate - and by some distance.
It was Rupert Murdoch’s Sun which, in May 1997, following Tony Blair’s triumph in the General Election, after 18 years of unbroken Conservative government, trumpeted: “It woz the Sun wot won it”. It was no idle boast. The Sun then sold 5 million copies daily and had an estimated readership of double that. The previous year, Tony Blair had met with Rupert Murdopch - and no doubt they had agreed a deal. The Sun would back Labour, no doubt in return for a few ‘favours’.
Twelve years later, in the summer of 2009, Rupert Murdoch met David Cameron on Murdoch’s luxury yacht in the Mediterrranean Sea. There, once again, an aspiring, wannabe Prime Minister, David Cameron, talked turkey with Murdoch.
The following then happened in quick succession. The Sun switched its allegiance from Labour to Conservative. Then Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, formerly Editor at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, to be his ‘Director of Communications’.
In March 2010, Cameron appointed Clarence Mitchell as No. 2 to Coulson in his Communications Team. Coulson of course was forced to resign from his post earlier this year after persistent rumours that he authorised ’phone hacking by his journalists on an industrial scale.
Cameron had met with Murdoch in the summer of 2009. Cameron had appointed Murdoch’s former man at the News of the World, Andy Coulson, as his Director of Communications. Now he had appointed Clarence Mitchell as Coulson’s assistant. By then, Mitchell had been working for Murdoch’s son-in-law for over a year, and then moved to a public relations post with Lewis PR.
Unsurprisingly, the following then took place.
David Cameron won the 2010 General Election.
Months later, the government minister appointed to vet Murdoch’s bid for total control of BskyB, Liberal Democrat Vincent Cable, voiced doubts about the takeover bid. He was unceremoniously removed to a more junior post. Into his shoes stepped Jeremy Hunt, a known and vocal backer of Murdoch. It was no surprise that, last month (February 2011), Murdoch got his way when Hunt raised no objection to Murdoch’s deal going through, despite a chorus of opposition from other media owners and from the general public.
We give this little introduction to Clarence Mitchell to show that this is a man who swims in the same elite pool as Rupert Murdoch and successive British Prime Ministers. He is very close to very powerful people. That may in itself give us a vital clue as to why Tony Blair dispatched him to Portugal in May 2007 in the days following Madeleine being reported missing.
And it would help us to understand why Dr Gerald McCann and future Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke so often on their mobile ’phones to each other in May 2007, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It should have been the Foreign Secretary’s role to help the McCanns, not the man in control of the Treasury. There is significant public interest raised by the spectacle of the Chancellor of the Exchequer apparently interfering in matters which quite clearly fall within the province of the Foreign Secretary.
Two mainstream journalists have both told us, in confidence, that Clarence Mitchell is really employed ‘right at the top of MI5’. That, if true, would not surprise us. If that were the case, he would know all that there is to know about anybody who is anybody. And that would explain the almost mesmeric hold he appears to have on the nation’s media.
Whatever his true role, his main purpose over recent years has undoubtedly been the business of what is euphemistically called ‘reputation management’, whether for the Labour government, the Conservative government, or the McCanns. Some have said, a touch unkindly, that his job can be likened to that of a ‘professional liar’. For those who want a little more background on Mitchell, we’d refer you to the article, also on our website: ‘Clarence Mitchell: A Master Media Manipulator’. [NOTE: Clarence Mitchell was a publicist and Assistant Director to Andy Coulson as part of David Cameron's successful election team in 2010. In the 2015 General Election, he was the Conservative Party candidate for Brighton Pavilion. In 2019 he was included in the list of Conservative candidates in the European Parliamentary Elections, due to be held on 23 May 2019 - MMRG].
So, against that background, we can now turn our attention to the seemingly dramatic story, which first appeared in the Sun on 18 February 2011, that an Angolan bouncer working in Spain knew that Madeleine McCann was being held alive in the United States by an international, elite, paedophile ring.
C. The Sun story which broke the news from the Angolan bouncer
Let us begin by quoting in full the story which broke that morning in the British media:
QUOTE
MADELEINE MCCANN IS IN AMERICA – AND I KNOW WHO TOOK HER:
Paedo ring which snatched Madeleine McCann took others, investigator claims
From EMILY NASH and JON CLARKE in Huelva, Spain
Published: 18 Feb 2011
[Photo of Marcelino Italiano by Revelation…Marcelino Italiano claims to have located Maddie McCann…Jon Clarke/Olive Press/ ENP]
AN INVESTIGATOR has told cops Madeleine McCann was taken to the US - and he has named two key suspects. Marcelino
Italiano, 36, said she had been snatched by an Algarve-based paedophile
ring. The amateur sleuth added: “They can get away with anything”.
Maddie vanished in Portugal in May 2007.
UNQUOTE
There is one important aspect of this story to which we shall return in depth later. The story is billed as an ‘Exclusive’ - which usually means, simply, that the newspaper knows that no other newspaper has got the story. The article is by-lined to ‘Emily Nash’, a Sun reporter, but also, jointly, to ‘Jon Clarke in Huelva’.
The article is also accompanied by several photographs, one of which features a close-up of 36-year-old Italiano, reproduced above. The text underneath the photo reads: “Photo of Marcelino Italiano by Revelation…Marcelino Italiano claims to have located Maddie McCann…Jon Clarke/Olive Press/ ENP”.
From this, we learn that the ‘Jon Clarke’ who is billed as the joint writer of this exclusive Sun article is the Jon Clarke who is the owner and editor of a popular English-language newspaper in southern Spain, cleverly called ‘The Olive Press’, a reference to the huge olive groves that can be found in the regions of Andalucia and around, where the free newspaper is eagerly snapped up and read. It will become even clearer, later, that Jon Clarke is the source through which the world learnt about this latest claim that someone knows where Madeleine is. How he got hold of the story is a matter we will analyse later in our article.
It’s also of more than passing interest that when Fox News ran this story in the United States, it elevated Marcelino Italiano to the dizzy status of ‘private investigator’, not mentioning that he was a bouncer. They preferred to claim that he was a ‘private investigator’. Even the Sun more modestly described him as ‘amateur sleuth’. But then, the McCanns have books to sell in the United States and Fox News is owned and run by Rupert Murdoch. Link to the article:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/19/investigator-says-madeline-mccann-kidnapped-pedophile-ring-possibly/
D. The alleged sequence of events that led to the publication of the Sun article on 18 February 2011
The claim that Madeleine McCann was smuggled into the U.S. is not a story which we believe has any substance to it, though no doubt some strands of truth are somehow woven into what any person with common sense should immediately be able to recognise as a tissue of fabrications.
Nevertheless, let us assume, if only for a moment, that it is true. And then let us look at the alleged chain of events which would have had to have occurred, for this story to have broken on 18 February.
1. Marcelino Italiano is described as ‘Angolan-born’. Presumably he, or perhaps his parents, settled some time ago in Portugal. Angola was a Portuguese colonial territory. Presumably he must be able to speak Portuguese
2. He is now 36. He must therefore have been 32 or 33 at the time Madeleine was reported missing in May 2007
3. He appears to have been living in the Algarve, according to the initial reports. During this time he somehow encountered a group of people, ‘based in the Algarve’, who were paedophiles. He refers to them as ‘a gang of influential and dangerous perverts’, allegedly based in Faro and Albufeira, who ‘could get away with anything’. They ‘hunted children in the Algarve’ and then ‘smuggled them out of Portugal’. Not only that, but - of course without naming anyone - he says the gang ‘had high-level contacts in Portugal's judiciary’ and ‘links to a legal practice in London’. ‘Contacts’ and ‘links’ could mean anything or nothing. He also chips in with claims of two ‘prominent’ Portuguese businessmen said to have been ‘photographed at a birthday party’. It all sounds impressive on a first reading. But when you examine the claims in more detail, none of it is capable of verification. Not one of these people is named in the newspaper article, though Marcelino apparently told his lawyer and the press that he did have names.
4. At some stage, whilst on the Algarve, he appears to have become an ‘amateur sleuth’, or even, with typical Fox News hype, a ‘private investigator’
5. Then we come to some distinctly uncertain and unverifiable claims. He says he has been ‘told’ that Madeleine ‘may be’ in America. ‘May be’? So that means that even the person who is said to have spoken to him has only said: ‘Marcelino, Madeleine may be in America’. Of what possible use is that to man or beast? And he says he’s been ‘told’ this, which effectively means that he has no means of verifying whether what he has been ‘told’ is true or not. The Sun headline runs: “Madeleine McCann is in America”. It should of course have been re-written: “I have been told that Madeleine may be in America”. But then that wouldn’t sell so many papers, nor make such a good headline, would it?
6. Continuing with the lack of certainty about the claims he makes, Italiano says he thinks ‘more than a dozen’ children have been kidnapped by this ‘gang’. It is legitimate to ask who those children are supposed to be, what are their names and ages…has there been anything about these missing children in the media at all?
7. He ‘believes’ this gang can ‘get away with anything’ but also says, enigmatically: ‘I can’t say how’.
8. He says: ‘They prey on the weak and vulnerable’. What does that mean in practice? Obviously, all children are by definition ‘vulnerable’ Does he mean the children are ‘vulnerable’, or does he mean their families?
9. He says he has been attacked twice by members of the gang (or their accomplices) and in one of those two attacks, ‘lost a front tooth’
10. He says he had to ‘flee for his life’ to Spain
11.The article then goes on to day he has ‘handed a dossier’ to the Spanish police.
We might note one further point of interest. SKY NEWS (another Murdoch-owned news medium) reported the news and quoted the McCanns’ chief public relations spokesman Clarence Mitchell as follows:
“Clarence Mitchell told SKY NEWS he was sceptical about claims made by a private investigator that Madeleine was abducted by an international paedophile gang. The Angolan-born man and nightclub bouncer who made the claims also said he was forced to flee for his life when the group became aware of his interest. Madeleine was nearly four when she disappeared from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007. We should stress a note of caution here. These are claims that have been made to Spanish police, we understand”, said Mr Mitchell. “If this man has any credible information about Madeleine, he has done the right thing in the first instance by going to the police. But of course this information has to be investigated to establish if there is any truth or not”.
Mitchell’s professed scepticism may have been just to pitch himself as the wise counsellor who, amidst the undoubted ‘hype’ of the Sun story, seeks to calm his clients and damp down public speculation about the alleged ‘revelations’. But this is not the first time this year that Mitchell has made a slightly off-message pronouncement.
On 6 January this year, interviewed on BBC Radio Humberside, in a failed attempted tour of Britain’s radio stations to try to generate interest in the McCanns’ new ‘very truthful’ book, he candidly admitted that the McCanns’ claims that Madeleine had been abducted were no more than ‘an assumption’ or a ‘working hypothesis’. This concession was little short of remarkable for a man who had been paid hundreds of thousand of pounds over the past four years to hypnotise the general public into believing that the abduction of Madeleine was a stone cold fact - and backed in this instance by the powerful considerable legal muscle of Carter-Ruck (the ‘most feared libel lawyers in the U.K.’, according to a boast on their own website), who had threatened for years to sue for libel anyone who dared, or presumed, to suggest otherwise. The McCanns of course have never explained how they ‘knew instantly’ that Madeleine had been abducted.
Mitchell’s concession has led to open speculation that Mitchell may be beginning a process of distancing himself from his clients.
The SKY NEWS bulletin included an exclusive interview with Mitchell. Here’s the transcript of what he said, with our emphasis in italics:
QUOTE
UNQUOTE
E. Under what circumstances did Marcelino's 'dossier' get handed over to the Spanish police?
It is at this stage that we need to ask some pertinent questions about the exact circumstances involved in the alleged handing over of this dossier to the Spanish police. There are a number of people involved in the immediate lead-up to this story:
(1) Marcelino Italiano, the Angolan-born bouncer and part-time amateur sleuth with a dossier
(2) Marcelino Italiano’s lawyer
(3) The person at the Spanish police station in Huelva who received the dossier
(4) Jon Clarke, Editor of The Olive Press, who broke the story
(5) Clarence Mitchell, who was quoted in the story
(6) The McCanns, who would have known all about the story in advance
(7) The Sun editor and his journalist, Emily Nash, who published this story as an ‘Exclusive’.
Let us analyse the role of each of those in turn.
F. Marcelino Italiano
Leaving aside the inevitable suspicions that most people would have about the whole story, once again let us assume, just for a moment, that Italiano thinks he has reasonable grounds for believing that he knows where Madeleine McCann may have been taken. Let us assume that he then complies a dossier, along the lines of “I know so-and-so, he told me about someone else, he told me where Madeleine had been taken, he told me about other children who had been snatched etc. etc.”. This, in effect, is basically all that his story amounts to: A told me this, B told me that, and so on. What should he do, assuming he has been told all this and believes, in good conscience, it to be true?
He could of course ring the Portuguese police, especially as it seems he can speak Portuguese. He could send them his dossier by Recorded Delivery or Registered Post. But it appears he has consulted a lawyer. That is, I suppose, understandable. Then we might ask if he paid any money to get the lawyer’s advice? How did he choose this lawyer? We are not told. In fact, who is the lawyer? We’re not told that either.
In Section N of our article in PART TWO] we present evidence that Marcelino was living in Spain in 2008. He is said to have ‘fled to Spain’. He sees a Spanish lawyer in Huelva. Was the lawyer Portuguese, or Spanish? What language was their interview conducted in - Portuguese or Spanish?
G. Marcelino Italiano’s lawyer
What do we make of this anonymous lawyer’s actions? If our Angolan bouncer was unsure what to do with this information, well at least a lawyer would know what to do with it. Or you would think so. Did she (one newspaper says it is a female lawyer) quietly send her information by Registered Post to the Portuguese Police? It seems she didn’t. Did she ’phone up the Portuguese Police and ask what she should do with her client’s material? Apparently not. Did she go quietly to the Spanish Police and ask them to liaise with the Portuguese Police? No to that as well, it seems.
No, what she chose to do was to liaise instead with the media. And, so far as we can tell, it was The Olive Press editor, Jon Clarke, to whom she spoke. There is another possibility, to which we will return later. That is that Marcelino Italiano and his lawyer in fact contacted Rupert Murdoch’s paper, the Sun, and that the Sun then put her in touch with Jon Clarke to develop the story. This could have occurred if Jon Clarke was already in touch with the Sun.
One other point. Why does this lawyer need to remain anonymous? Why can’t she - or her client - say who she is? It is absolutely typical of the mystery and secrecy which surround so much in this case. There was the British banker, who at 2am in downtown Barcelona, three days after Madeleine was reported missing, said he spoke to a Victoria Beckham-lookalike who was ‘looking for a new daughter’. It took him two years of ‘agonising’ before he told his story to the McCanns’ private investigators. He was also said by the McCann Team to ‘wish to remain anonymous’, just like the ‘unnamed British barrister’ who claimed to have seen Robert Murat near the Ocean Club on the night that Madeleine disappeared.
H. The person at the Spanish police station in Huelva who received the ‘dossier’
We are not told, but may presume, that either Marcelino Italiano, or his lawyer, or both, either walked in to a police station to make a statement, or delivered their material to a police station. The question arises, when was that done? We are told that: “Officers have passed the information to Portuguese cops while private investigators hired by the Find Madeleine Fund…are also looking into the dramatic claims”.
So by the time the story appears in the Sun, we are told that the Portuguese Police have been passed the information, while the McCanns’ ‘private investigators’ are ‘looking into’ the claims. At the moment, the McCanns’ ‘private investigators’ seem to consist just of former Cheshire Detective Inspector Dave Edgar, though the McCanns a few months ago made claims that three other detectives had been appointed to strengthen their investigation team.
The information that the claims have been ‘passed to the Portuguese Police’ tells us nothing, without a comment from them. It could mean that the Spanish Police have only just passed the ‘dossier’ to the Portuguese Police. Or the Portuguese Police may have received the information and decided to do nothing with it - after all, they have repeatedly said they will only re-open their investigation of ‘new and credible’ information is received.
CONTINUED IN PART TWO
https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16099-jon-clarke-s-role-in-maddie-in-us-claim#400490NOTE: Earlier this year, editor of Spanish ex-pat newspaper, The Olive Press, Jon Clarke, published a disgraceful and libelous attack on 'PeterMac', the retired Nottinghamshire Police Superintendent, who is a member of CMOMM and has made such an extraordinary contribution to understanding what happened to Madeleine McCann and when. 'PeterMac' has responded this month (May 2019) with a detailed analysis of some of Jon Clarke's many lies, especially regarding the Madeleine McCann case.
From PeterMac's FREE e-book:
Chapter 31: JON CLARKE – OLIVE PRESS LIES AND VIDEOTAPES
Chapter 32: ON LIES AND CONSPIRACIES
Chapter 33: Jon Clarke Entrenched Lies
______________________________________________________________________
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Does an Angolan bouncer in a Spanish basketball team know that Madeleine McCann is alive and now in the United States?
Ananlysis of another media story, in February 2011, about Madeleine.
by The Madeleine Foundation
C O N T E N T S
by The Madeleine Foundation
C O N T E N T S
A. How the British media profit from 'Madeleine' stories'
B. The role of Clarence Mitchell
C. The Sun story which broke the news from the Angolan bouncer
D. The alleged sequence of events that led to the publication of the Sun article on 18 February 2011
E. Under what circumstances did Marcelino’s ‘dossier’ get handed over to the Spanish police?
F. Marcelino Italiano
G. Marcelino Italiano’s lawyer
H. The person at the Spanish police station in Huelva who received the ‘dossier’
I. Jon Clarke, Editor of The Olive Press, who broke the story
J. Clarence Mitchell and the McCanns
K. The Sun editor and his journalist, Emily Nash
L. Comments on the SolTimes story
M. Analysis on the ‘Little Morsals’ blog
N. Marcelino Italiano’s basketball team
O. The Algarve prostitution ring - and a claimed link with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
P. Conclusion
Introduction The Madeleine Foundation, set up in January 2008 to assist in the process of finding out the truth about what really happened to Madeleine McCann, and named after Madeleine because of our conviction that, once the full truth about her is known, her name must stand for all time for lessons to be learned about child welfare, has never made any secret of the fact that we question the McCanns’ account of what happened to Madeleine the week the McCann family were on holiday in April and May 2007.
It follows that we have always been very sceptical about all the media-generated stories about Madeleine’s whereabouts, which swing from the McCanns’ detectives’ firm conviction that she is being held in a prison lair near Praia da Luz, Portugal (where she went missing), to claims that a Victoria Beckham-lookalike took her on a boat to Australia, to recent reports of a ‘sighting’ in Dubai, and now this latest claim: ‘Maddie in U.S.’ All of these claims and many more have been made in the past 18 months alone.
A. How the British media profits from ‘Madeleine’ stories
The Daily Express once boasted that it could sell tens of thousands of pounds by putting a charming photograph of Madeleine on its front page - and indeed this newspaper, owned by ‘pornograhy king’ Richard Desmond, would gaily order an extra print run just by the device of printing any old story about Madeleine, accompanied of course by a photo, and sticking this on their front page. Other British tabloids have done the same for the past four years, caring nothing about whether there is any substance at all to their articles.
These stories are usually fed to them by the well-oiled and well-funded McCann Team machine, and, one day, the process by which these stories appeared in our media will hopefully be brought fully into the light, so that we may all learn useful lessons from it.
Few Madeleine McCann stories appear in any of the media unless the McCanns’ Chief Public Relations Officer, Clarence Mitchell, has either fed them to the media, or been allowed to influence the content. Whilst this article is not mainly about Clarence Mitchell, for the benefit of new readers of our material it is worth just giving a short biography of Mitchell before we move on to the core of our article.
B. The role of Clarence MitchellMitchell rose to prominence as a BBC journalist. There, he specialised in covering stories of gruesome deaths. He was the main BBC reporter covering the serial murders by Fred and Rosemary West in Gloucester, the murders of 9-year-olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham by paedophile Ian Huntley, and the shooting dead of TV presenter Jill Dando, where incidentally he was the very first on the scene. In the case of the Soham murders of Jessica and Holly, Mitchell teamed up with reporter Lori Campbell, who was the first journalist to openly place Robert Murat under suspicion for the abduction of Madeleine McCann, in an article in the Daily Mirror.
After working for the BBC, he then moved seamlessly on to work in the Labour government’s spin machine, ending up in the Media Monitoring Unit, right at the heart of government in the Cabinet Office. Before long he was its Director, and in an interview with Spanish newspaper Espresso in October 2007, he boasted that as Head of the ’40-strong’ Media Monitoring Unit, it was his job to ‘control what comes out in the media’.
Maybe, then, that is why, in May 2007, just days after Madeleine McCann was reported missing, Mitchell was switched from his post within the Central Office of Information to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where his assignment was, in terms: “See to it that you oversee all the McCanns’ public relations”.
On 31 January 2008, the Daily Mail ran a piece which, inter alia, stated: “Clarence Mitchell said officials had assured him in private briefings that they were treating the case as one of rare stranger abduction”.
One is bound to wander what happened at these ‘private briefings’ (note the plural). When did these private briefngs occur? Who were they with? And - most important of all - what was Clarence Mitchell told, and what did he agree to do?
In September 2007 he was, unusually, given permission to leave the Civil Service (or so we were told), to take up a full-time post as the McCanns’ Chief Public Relations Officer, at a reported salary of £75,000 a year plus expenses.
In late 2008 Mitchell announced that he was now only working for the McCanns ‘on a part-time basis’, on a salary thought to be around £30,000 a year, and had gone to work for high profile international public relations firm Freud International. Just as it happens, Matthew Freud is the husband of Elizabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert Murdoch, arguably the world’s post powerful media magnate - and by some distance.
It was Rupert Murdoch’s Sun which, in May 1997, following Tony Blair’s triumph in the General Election, after 18 years of unbroken Conservative government, trumpeted: “It woz the Sun wot won it”. It was no idle boast. The Sun then sold 5 million copies daily and had an estimated readership of double that. The previous year, Tony Blair had met with Rupert Murdopch - and no doubt they had agreed a deal. The Sun would back Labour, no doubt in return for a few ‘favours’.
Twelve years later, in the summer of 2009, Rupert Murdoch met David Cameron on Murdoch’s luxury yacht in the Mediterrranean Sea. There, once again, an aspiring, wannabe Prime Minister, David Cameron, talked turkey with Murdoch.
The following then happened in quick succession. The Sun switched its allegiance from Labour to Conservative. Then Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, formerly Editor at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, to be his ‘Director of Communications’.
In March 2010, Cameron appointed Clarence Mitchell as No. 2 to Coulson in his Communications Team. Coulson of course was forced to resign from his post earlier this year after persistent rumours that he authorised ’phone hacking by his journalists on an industrial scale.
Cameron had met with Murdoch in the summer of 2009. Cameron had appointed Murdoch’s former man at the News of the World, Andy Coulson, as his Director of Communications. Now he had appointed Clarence Mitchell as Coulson’s assistant. By then, Mitchell had been working for Murdoch’s son-in-law for over a year, and then moved to a public relations post with Lewis PR.
Unsurprisingly, the following then took place.
David Cameron won the 2010 General Election.
Months later, the government minister appointed to vet Murdoch’s bid for total control of BskyB, Liberal Democrat Vincent Cable, voiced doubts about the takeover bid. He was unceremoniously removed to a more junior post. Into his shoes stepped Jeremy Hunt, a known and vocal backer of Murdoch. It was no surprise that, last month (February 2011), Murdoch got his way when Hunt raised no objection to Murdoch’s deal going through, despite a chorus of opposition from other media owners and from the general public.
We give this little introduction to Clarence Mitchell to show that this is a man who swims in the same elite pool as Rupert Murdoch and successive British Prime Ministers. He is very close to very powerful people. That may in itself give us a vital clue as to why Tony Blair dispatched him to Portugal in May 2007 in the days following Madeleine being reported missing.
And it would help us to understand why Dr Gerald McCann and future Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke so often on their mobile ’phones to each other in May 2007, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It should have been the Foreign Secretary’s role to help the McCanns, not the man in control of the Treasury. There is significant public interest raised by the spectacle of the Chancellor of the Exchequer apparently interfering in matters which quite clearly fall within the province of the Foreign Secretary.
Two mainstream journalists have both told us, in confidence, that Clarence Mitchell is really employed ‘right at the top of MI5’. That, if true, would not surprise us. If that were the case, he would know all that there is to know about anybody who is anybody. And that would explain the almost mesmeric hold he appears to have on the nation’s media.
Whatever his true role, his main purpose over recent years has undoubtedly been the business of what is euphemistically called ‘reputation management’, whether for the Labour government, the Conservative government, or the McCanns. Some have said, a touch unkindly, that his job can be likened to that of a ‘professional liar’. For those who want a little more background on Mitchell, we’d refer you to the article, also on our website: ‘Clarence Mitchell: A Master Media Manipulator’. [NOTE: Clarence Mitchell was a publicist and Assistant Director to Andy Coulson as part of David Cameron's successful election team in 2010. In the 2015 General Election, he was the Conservative Party candidate for Brighton Pavilion. In 2019 he was included in the list of Conservative candidates in the European Parliamentary Elections, due to be held on 23 May 2019 - MMRG].
So, against that background, we can now turn our attention to the seemingly dramatic story, which first appeared in the Sun on 18 February 2011, that an Angolan bouncer working in Spain knew that Madeleine McCann was being held alive in the United States by an international, elite, paedophile ring.
C. The Sun story which broke the news from the Angolan bouncer
Let us begin by quoting in full the story which broke that morning in the British media:
QUOTE
MADELEINE MCCANN IS IN AMERICA – AND I KNOW WHO TOOK HER:
Paedo ring which snatched Madeleine McCann took others, investigator claims
From EMILY NASH and JON CLARKE in Huelva, Spain
Published: 18 Feb 2011
[Photo of Marcelino Italiano by Revelation…Marcelino Italiano claims to have located Maddie McCann…Jon Clarke/Olive Press/ ENP]
AN INVESTIGATOR has told cops Madeleine McCann was taken to the US - and he has named two key suspects. Marcelino
Italiano, 36, said she had been snatched by an Algarve-based paedophile
ring. The amateur sleuth added: “They can get away with anything”.
Maddie vanished in Portugal in May 2007.
Angolan-born
Italiano said the gang of influential and dangerous perverts had hunted
children in the Algarve before smuggling them out of Portugal. And he told how he had to flee for his life when his investigations threatened to unmask them.
The
6ft 4in nightclub bouncer said: "I know these people were involved and I
have been told that Madeleine may now be in America. I can't say how,
but I have known these people and believe they can get away with
anything. I think there have been over a dozen children kidnapped. They prey on the weak and vulnerable”.
Italiano,
36, said the ring was based in Faro and Albufeira, but had high-level
contacts in Portugal's judiciary and links to a legal practice in
London. He added: "They are ruthless. I have been attacked twice for
trying to investigate it and even lost my front tooth in one attack. I
am prepared to go to any length to reveal the truth about these sick
people - they need to be exposed”.
Italiano
has handed a dossier of information he uncovered to police in Huelva,
south west Spain. He says it includes the names of two prominent
Portuguese businessmen and provided photographs of them at a birthday
party in the Algarve.
Officers
have passed the information to Portuguese cops while private
investigators hired by the Find Madeleine Fund - set up by her parents
Kate and Gerry - are also looking into the dramatic claims. They
chillingly echo the case of the Casa Pia paedophile ring, which involved
the abduction of youngsters from state-run orphanages.
In
September six men including a solicitor, a former ambassador and a TV
presenter were jailed for sexually abusing 32 children living at Casa
Pia homes across Portugal. One of the chief witnesses, former resident
Paulo Namora, told the trial that many of the group's wealthy members
were based in the Algarve.
Last night a lawyer acting on behalf of Italiano told The Sun
her client had a "credible and believable story". She added: "He told
the police he believed Maddie was taken by the gang and he believes she
may now be in the US”.
A
spokesman for Kate and Gerry, of Rothley, Leics, said: "We are grateful
for the information. As with any information of this nature the man
concerned has done the right thing by informing the Spanish authorities.
Clearly it will be a matter for them and the private investigators
currently searching for Madeleine to investigate further."
Maddie
was about to turn four when she disappeared from her family's holiday
apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007. Bungling Portuguese police
named her parents as suspects before clearing them. In 2008 detectives
looked into suggestions that Maddie may have been taken ‘to order’ by a
child smuggling ring based in Belgium.
Scotland
Yard intelligence officer John Shord sent Leicestershire police an
email reporting: "Somebody connected to this group saw Madeleine, took a
photograph of her, and sent it to Belgium. The purchaser agreed that
the girl was suitable and Maddie was taken”.
Some
of the information, which came from an anonymous source, was dismissed
as not credible. And both Portuguese police and Interpol were unable to
unearth further details. Meanwhile the McCanns' team of investigators
have interviewed hundreds of witnesses, received more than 1,000 phone
calls and dealt with more than 15,000 emails from people from across the
globe. Sightings have been reported across Europe and North Africa and
as far away as Canada, Tasmania and Dubai.
UNQUOTE
There is one important aspect of this story to which we shall return in depth later. The story is billed as an ‘Exclusive’ - which usually means, simply, that the newspaper knows that no other newspaper has got the story. The article is by-lined to ‘Emily Nash’, a Sun reporter, but also, jointly, to ‘Jon Clarke in Huelva’.
The article is also accompanied by several photographs, one of which features a close-up of 36-year-old Italiano, reproduced above. The text underneath the photo reads: “Photo of Marcelino Italiano by Revelation…Marcelino Italiano claims to have located Maddie McCann…Jon Clarke/Olive Press/ ENP”.
From this, we learn that the ‘Jon Clarke’ who is billed as the joint writer of this exclusive Sun article is the Jon Clarke who is the owner and editor of a popular English-language newspaper in southern Spain, cleverly called ‘The Olive Press’, a reference to the huge olive groves that can be found in the regions of Andalucia and around, where the free newspaper is eagerly snapped up and read. It will become even clearer, later, that Jon Clarke is the source through which the world learnt about this latest claim that someone knows where Madeleine is. How he got hold of the story is a matter we will analyse later in our article.
It’s also of more than passing interest that when Fox News ran this story in the United States, it elevated Marcelino Italiano to the dizzy status of ‘private investigator’, not mentioning that he was a bouncer. They preferred to claim that he was a ‘private investigator’. Even the Sun more modestly described him as ‘amateur sleuth’. But then, the McCanns have books to sell in the United States and Fox News is owned and run by Rupert Murdoch. Link to the article:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/19/investigator-says-madeline-mccann-kidnapped-pedophile-ring-possibly/
D. The alleged sequence of events that led to the publication of the Sun article on 18 February 2011
The claim that Madeleine McCann was smuggled into the U.S. is not a story which we believe has any substance to it, though no doubt some strands of truth are somehow woven into what any person with common sense should immediately be able to recognise as a tissue of fabrications.
Nevertheless, let us assume, if only for a moment, that it is true. And then let us look at the alleged chain of events which would have had to have occurred, for this story to have broken on 18 February.
1. Marcelino Italiano is described as ‘Angolan-born’. Presumably he, or perhaps his parents, settled some time ago in Portugal. Angola was a Portuguese colonial territory. Presumably he must be able to speak Portuguese
2. He is now 36. He must therefore have been 32 or 33 at the time Madeleine was reported missing in May 2007
3. He appears to have been living in the Algarve, according to the initial reports. During this time he somehow encountered a group of people, ‘based in the Algarve’, who were paedophiles. He refers to them as ‘a gang of influential and dangerous perverts’, allegedly based in Faro and Albufeira, who ‘could get away with anything’. They ‘hunted children in the Algarve’ and then ‘smuggled them out of Portugal’. Not only that, but - of course without naming anyone - he says the gang ‘had high-level contacts in Portugal's judiciary’ and ‘links to a legal practice in London’. ‘Contacts’ and ‘links’ could mean anything or nothing. He also chips in with claims of two ‘prominent’ Portuguese businessmen said to have been ‘photographed at a birthday party’. It all sounds impressive on a first reading. But when you examine the claims in more detail, none of it is capable of verification. Not one of these people is named in the newspaper article, though Marcelino apparently told his lawyer and the press that he did have names.
4. At some stage, whilst on the Algarve, he appears to have become an ‘amateur sleuth’, or even, with typical Fox News hype, a ‘private investigator’
5. Then we come to some distinctly uncertain and unverifiable claims. He says he has been ‘told’ that Madeleine ‘may be’ in America. ‘May be’? So that means that even the person who is said to have spoken to him has only said: ‘Marcelino, Madeleine may be in America’. Of what possible use is that to man or beast? And he says he’s been ‘told’ this, which effectively means that he has no means of verifying whether what he has been ‘told’ is true or not. The Sun headline runs: “Madeleine McCann is in America”. It should of course have been re-written: “I have been told that Madeleine may be in America”. But then that wouldn’t sell so many papers, nor make such a good headline, would it?
6. Continuing with the lack of certainty about the claims he makes, Italiano says he thinks ‘more than a dozen’ children have been kidnapped by this ‘gang’. It is legitimate to ask who those children are supposed to be, what are their names and ages…has there been anything about these missing children in the media at all?
7. He ‘believes’ this gang can ‘get away with anything’ but also says, enigmatically: ‘I can’t say how’.
8. He says: ‘They prey on the weak and vulnerable’. What does that mean in practice? Obviously, all children are by definition ‘vulnerable’ Does he mean the children are ‘vulnerable’, or does he mean their families?
9. He says he has been attacked twice by members of the gang (or their accomplices) and in one of those two attacks, ‘lost a front tooth’
10. He says he had to ‘flee for his life’ to Spain
11.The article then goes on to day he has ‘handed a dossier’ to the Spanish police.
We might note one further point of interest. SKY NEWS (another Murdoch-owned news medium) reported the news and quoted the McCanns’ chief public relations spokesman Clarence Mitchell as follows:
“Clarence Mitchell told SKY NEWS he was sceptical about claims made by a private investigator that Madeleine was abducted by an international paedophile gang. The Angolan-born man and nightclub bouncer who made the claims also said he was forced to flee for his life when the group became aware of his interest. Madeleine was nearly four when she disappeared from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007. We should stress a note of caution here. These are claims that have been made to Spanish police, we understand”, said Mr Mitchell. “If this man has any credible information about Madeleine, he has done the right thing in the first instance by going to the police. But of course this information has to be investigated to establish if there is any truth or not”.
Mitchell’s professed scepticism may have been just to pitch himself as the wise counsellor who, amidst the undoubted ‘hype’ of the Sun story, seeks to calm his clients and damp down public speculation about the alleged ‘revelations’. But this is not the first time this year that Mitchell has made a slightly off-message pronouncement.
On 6 January this year, interviewed on BBC Radio Humberside, in a failed attempted tour of Britain’s radio stations to try to generate interest in the McCanns’ new ‘very truthful’ book, he candidly admitted that the McCanns’ claims that Madeleine had been abducted were no more than ‘an assumption’ or a ‘working hypothesis’. This concession was little short of remarkable for a man who had been paid hundreds of thousand of pounds over the past four years to hypnotise the general public into believing that the abduction of Madeleine was a stone cold fact - and backed in this instance by the powerful considerable legal muscle of Carter-Ruck (the ‘most feared libel lawyers in the U.K.’, according to a boast on their own website), who had threatened for years to sue for libel anyone who dared, or presumed, to suggest otherwise. The McCanns of course have never explained how they ‘knew instantly’ that Madeleine had been abducted.
Mitchell’s concession has led to open speculation that Mitchell may be beginning a process of distancing himself from his clients.
The SKY NEWS bulletin included an exclusive interview with Mitchell. Here’s the transcript of what he said, with our emphasis in italics:
QUOTE
“We, er…we should stress a note of caution here, er…these are indeed claims that have been made, er..to Spanish police, er…we understand in the first instance, er… and this man, if he has any credible evidence, credible information about Madeleine, has done the right thing in the first instance by going to the police.
That’s
exactly what Kate and Gerry, myself and everybody else helping them has
been saying for the last three-and-a-half, four years. People should go
to the police first and foremost. But of course, this information has to be investigated and it’s now incumbent
on the Spanish police, the Portuguese police, indeed any law
enforcement agency er looking at Madeleine’s case as well as our own
private investigation team, to, to, go into these claims in depth and to establish if there is any truth in it or not.
The man himself apparently did not approach the media first, he’s not seeking money for his story, he is naming names of individuals, he is producing some documentation suggesting an association with these individuals, erm…again, all of that tends to suggest he may be slightly more serious an informant than some, erm…but that’s not to say it’s not fantasy, we just don’t know at this stage and that’s the bottom, that’s the bottom line, it has to be investigated”.
UNQUOTE
E. Under what circumstances did Marcelino's 'dossier' get handed over to the Spanish police?
It is at this stage that we need to ask some pertinent questions about the exact circumstances involved in the alleged handing over of this dossier to the Spanish police. There are a number of people involved in the immediate lead-up to this story:
(1) Marcelino Italiano, the Angolan-born bouncer and part-time amateur sleuth with a dossier
(2) Marcelino Italiano’s lawyer
(3) The person at the Spanish police station in Huelva who received the dossier
(4) Jon Clarke, Editor of The Olive Press, who broke the story
(5) Clarence Mitchell, who was quoted in the story
(6) The McCanns, who would have known all about the story in advance
(7) The Sun editor and his journalist, Emily Nash, who published this story as an ‘Exclusive’.
Let us analyse the role of each of those in turn.
F. Marcelino Italiano
Leaving aside the inevitable suspicions that most people would have about the whole story, once again let us assume, just for a moment, that Italiano thinks he has reasonable grounds for believing that he knows where Madeleine McCann may have been taken. Let us assume that he then complies a dossier, along the lines of “I know so-and-so, he told me about someone else, he told me where Madeleine had been taken, he told me about other children who had been snatched etc. etc.”. This, in effect, is basically all that his story amounts to: A told me this, B told me that, and so on. What should he do, assuming he has been told all this and believes, in good conscience, it to be true?
He could of course ring the Portuguese police, especially as it seems he can speak Portuguese. He could send them his dossier by Recorded Delivery or Registered Post. But it appears he has consulted a lawyer. That is, I suppose, understandable. Then we might ask if he paid any money to get the lawyer’s advice? How did he choose this lawyer? We are not told. In fact, who is the lawyer? We’re not told that either.
In Section N of our article in PART TWO] we present evidence that Marcelino was living in Spain in 2008. He is said to have ‘fled to Spain’. He sees a Spanish lawyer in Huelva. Was the lawyer Portuguese, or Spanish? What language was their interview conducted in - Portuguese or Spanish?
G. Marcelino Italiano’s lawyer
What do we make of this anonymous lawyer’s actions? If our Angolan bouncer was unsure what to do with this information, well at least a lawyer would know what to do with it. Or you would think so. Did she (one newspaper says it is a female lawyer) quietly send her information by Registered Post to the Portuguese Police? It seems she didn’t. Did she ’phone up the Portuguese Police and ask what she should do with her client’s material? Apparently not. Did she go quietly to the Spanish Police and ask them to liaise with the Portuguese Police? No to that as well, it seems.
No, what she chose to do was to liaise instead with the media. And, so far as we can tell, it was The Olive Press editor, Jon Clarke, to whom she spoke. There is another possibility, to which we will return later. That is that Marcelino Italiano and his lawyer in fact contacted Rupert Murdoch’s paper, the Sun, and that the Sun then put her in touch with Jon Clarke to develop the story. This could have occurred if Jon Clarke was already in touch with the Sun.
One other point. Why does this lawyer need to remain anonymous? Why can’t she - or her client - say who she is? It is absolutely typical of the mystery and secrecy which surround so much in this case. There was the British banker, who at 2am in downtown Barcelona, three days after Madeleine was reported missing, said he spoke to a Victoria Beckham-lookalike who was ‘looking for a new daughter’. It took him two years of ‘agonising’ before he told his story to the McCanns’ private investigators. He was also said by the McCann Team to ‘wish to remain anonymous’, just like the ‘unnamed British barrister’ who claimed to have seen Robert Murat near the Ocean Club on the night that Madeleine disappeared.
H. The person at the Spanish police station in Huelva who received the ‘dossier’
We are not told, but may presume, that either Marcelino Italiano, or his lawyer, or both, either walked in to a police station to make a statement, or delivered their material to a police station. The question arises, when was that done? We are told that: “Officers have passed the information to Portuguese cops while private investigators hired by the Find Madeleine Fund…are also looking into the dramatic claims”.
So by the time the story appears in the Sun, we are told that the Portuguese Police have been passed the information, while the McCanns’ ‘private investigators’ are ‘looking into’ the claims. At the moment, the McCanns’ ‘private investigators’ seem to consist just of former Cheshire Detective Inspector Dave Edgar, though the McCanns a few months ago made claims that three other detectives had been appointed to strengthen their investigation team.
The information that the claims have been ‘passed to the Portuguese Police’ tells us nothing, without a comment from them. It could mean that the Spanish Police have only just passed the ‘dossier’ to the Portuguese Police. Or the Portuguese Police may have received the information and decided to do nothing with it - after all, they have repeatedly said they will only re-open their investigation of ‘new and credible’ information is received.
CONTINUED IN PART TWO
