The Green Ribbon

Not Just Negative Evidence: A Note on the Wanless Report

 The latest Lobster has some interesting reflections on the controversy over historical child abuse. Garrick Alder questions the role being played by negative evidence of a kind summed up by Donald Rumsfeld's dictum that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'.¹

Alder suggests that some of those pursuing the alleged Barbara Castle dossier may be guilty of inferring a cover-up from the very absence of evidence in a Rumsfeld-like way. In other instances, however, Alder is more sympathetic to negative evidence 

Quite a different kettle of fish, however, is the Home Office ‘missing child abuse files’ review conducted by Peter Wanless, who announced his findings shortly before the Castle yarn hit the headlines. Mr Wanless stated in his report that he had found no evidence that files were removed or deliberately destroyed. But hold that scorn: immediately after publication Mr Wanless was to be heard on BBC Radio 4 and 5 making it quite clear that he was not ruling out a cover-up at all.

Rather ironically, David Cameron used the Wanless review’s conclusions to remark that ‘people seeking conspiracy theories will have to look elsewhere’, which goes to show what a double-edged sword negative proof can be, in the wrong hands.

The discovery by Dr Chris Murphy of a file which surely should have been disclosed to Wanless suggests that the Prime Minister's comments were ill-judged. However, there may have been another important reason why both Wanless and Theresa May refused to rule out a cover-up following the report. That is that Wanless did in fact find significant new evidence, which did not prove Home Office complicity with the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), but which did corroborate important claims by a key witness.

Some thoughts on agent Brocolli - with a postscript on Albert Baker

Ed Moloney and James Kinchin-White have tonight published a new document from the National Archives featuring some interesting discussions about intelligence between senior Army officers in 1973. However, the evidence for their conclusion, that it points to a high-level army source inside the IRA, seems to me to be flawed.

The relevant document is an account of a meeting on 24 May 1973 between the General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland (GOC NI) Frank King and the Vice Chief of the General Staff Sir David Fraser. 

The final item in the record states:

h. Brocolli. VCGS brought the GOC up to date and discussed the problem of protection of the source.

It is this single cryptic reference that Moloney and Kinchin-White interpret as evidence of an agent in the IRA, raising the obvious alternative possibilities only to dismiss them:

There is no clue about “Brocolli’s” identity, not even that it is a person rather than a thing, and nor is it at all clear whether “Brocolli” is associated with Republican paramilitaries rather than Loyalists. However the paper makes an earlier reference to the fact that the Army now has “good intelligence” on the UDA and the absence of a reference to “Brocolli” at this point in the discussion suggests it was not a Loyalist source. That points to a Republican connection and, since the Provisional IRA was the British Army’s principal foe in 1973, that “Brocolli” was somehow associated with that camp.

However, there is an obvious reason why Brocolli might not have been mentioned in the earlier discussion of intelligence in Item B of the document. In that item, as in most of the document, the discussion was led by the GOC, Frank King, and largely concerned operations with which he would have been involved at Headquarters Northern Ireland (HQNI). For example, it mentions the Special Reconnaissance Unit, which was under the direct command of HQNI. It also discusses liaison with the Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence (DCI), Fred Rowley, who was also based in Belfast. (Incidentally, while Moloney and Kinchin-White suggest Rowley was MI5, his recent Times obituary confirms he was an MI6 officer.)